Central Intelligence Agency formed
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was established on July 26, 1947, as a response to the evolving geopolitical landscape after World War II, particularly the onset of the Cold War and concerns over Soviet expansion. Formed from the remnants of the disbanded Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA was created to provide a centralized coordination of intelligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination. President Harry S. Truman played a crucial role in its formation through the National Security Act, which also restructured the U.S. military and foreign policy apparatus.
Despite facing opposition from other governmental entities that had their own intelligence roles, the CIA emerged as the first peacetime intelligence agency in the United States. Initially authorized to conduct covert operations in 1948, the CIA quickly became involved in significant international affairs, including actions in Greece and Italy aimed at countering communist influence. Unlike its Soviet counterparts, the CIA operates as a civilian agency without domestic law enforcement powers, focusing instead on intelligence activities abroad. This foundational period set the stage for the agency's complex legacy and the controversies that would follow, as it became a pivotal tool in implementing U.S. policies during the Cold War.
Central Intelligence Agency formed
Identification Agency within the executive branch of the federal government charged with coordinating intelligence activities on a governmentwide basis, including the correlation, analysis, and dissemination of foreign intelligence relating to national security
Date Established by the National Security Act of 1947
The Central Intelligence Agency was an important Cold War tool for the United States during the late 1940’s. The agency gathered intelligence and carried out covert and clandestine national security operations.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was formed from the remnants of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which had been disbanded after World War II, its functions scattered among the Interim Research and Intelligence Service of the State Department and the Psychological Warfare Division and the Strategic Services Unit of the War Department. Quickly recognizing a need for permanent coordination of intelligence gathering, analysis, and dissemination, President Harry S. Truman, by executive order, brought those units together again in the Central Intelligence Group. Despite heavy opposition from the State Department, the military, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—all of which had intelligence and counterespionage roles they wanted to preserve—Congress took up the reorganization of the entire national security apparatus. Truman signed the National Security Act on July 26, 1947. The act restructured the nation’s military, foreign policy, and intelligence operations at the outset of the Cold War. It set up the National Security Council (NSC) in the White House, created the Department of the Air Force, merged the Departments of War and the Navy into the National Military Establishment (later renamed the Department of Defense), and established the CIA as the nation’s first peacetime intelligence agency.
In 1948, the president, through the NSC, gave the CIA the authority to conduct covert operations, and in 1949 Congress exempted it from the usual fiscal and administrative procedures and allowed it to keep its personnel and organizational functions secret. Covert operations soon began, and the CIA was instrumental in defeating communist insurgents in Greece and communist candidates at the polls in Italy. In 1949, after the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb, the CIA began parachuting agents into the Soviet Union and other Soviet bloc countries.
The CIA and its first director, Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, soon came under severe criticism. Two reports in 1949—the Eberstadt Report of the First Hoover Commission and the Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report by the NSC—both recommended further centralizing the intelligence functions and consolidating covert and clandestine operations within a single directorate in the CIA. Implementation of the suggested reforms began in the 1950’s.
Impact
With the CIA, the United States became the last of the post-World War II major powers to establish a national intelligence agency. The CIA was analogous in some respects to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Soviet NKVD and MVD (later the KGB), though unlike the Soviet agencies, the CIA had no domestic police powers. Despite its role in coordinating military intelligence activities, the CIA was by law a civilian agency, and Congress specified that it would have no police, subpoena, or law-enforcement powers or internal-security functions.
The CIA was created as an intelligence agency in response to fears of Soviet expansion after World War II. With its subsequent authority to conduct covert and clandestine operations while maintaining budgetary and administrative secrecy, it soon became the U.S. government’s primary tool in carrying out the Truman Doctrine of Soviet containment during the Cold War that followed. These operations laid the groundwork for the controversies that would swirl around the CIA for decades afterward.
Bibliography
Leary, William Matthew. The Central Intelligence Agency, History and Documents. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984.
Parry-Giles, Shawn J. The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945-1955. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002.
Smith, W. Thomas. Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency. New York: Facts On File, 2003.
Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. New York: Doubleday, 2007.