A Look Back …Creating the CIA: A New Instrument of Government
At the beginning of
the Cold War, looking back to the lessons of Pearl Harbor,
Congress and President Harry S. Truman approved the creation of a peacetime
intelligence service. This new organization, deliberately fashioned to be
independent of all the Cabinet departments and military services, was to
provide senior U.S.
policymakers with judgments on political and military issues and
coordinate clandestine activities overseas. Washington thus created an agency dedicated
to collecting and analyzing the secrets of actual or potential adversaries. more>