- Info
A Look Back … Walter Bedell Smith Becomes DCI
The fourth Director of
Central Intelligence, Gen. Walter Bedell Smith (1950-53), was one of CIA’s most
successful and influential directors. A forceful manager with decided ideas
about running CIA, Smith:
- Established a permanent system for daily intelligence
reporting to the President
- Reorganized CIA missions at a crucial time in its
history—the period of the Korean War—and
- Fostered cooperation within the emerging U.S.
Intelligence Community.
A generation of Agency
leaders following his tenure, and historians since, regard him as having “put
CIA on the intelligence map” in terms of visibility and impact.
- Bedell Smith (center) with top Agency leaders, including outgoing DCI Hillenkoetter (to Smith’s left, in light suit), 7 October 1950.
Smith made
significant and durable changes in CIA that substantially improved the
effectiveness of operations, support and analysis.
- Within CIA, Smith
instituted the directorate structure that endures today.
- He resolved a
debilitating conflict between foreign intelligence collectors and covert action
operators (who also reported to the State Department) by merging their
components into the Directorate of Plans,* whose leader reported directly to
the DCI.
- He combined a
collection of uncoordinated support functions into the Directorate of
Administration.*
- To provide daily
and topical intelligence analysis, Smith established offices dealing with
current, military, economic and scientific analysis as part of a new
Directorate of Intelligence.
- Lastly, to
increase accountability in the new structure, he appointed the Agency’s first
inspector general.
Smith Establishes
Intelligence Bulletin for the
President
Smith also established a
permanent system for providing intelligence support to the White House. Besides the Office of Current Intelligence
(OCI), which prepared material for Smith’s weekly briefings of President
Truman, he launched the new Current
Intelligence Bulletin and the Current
Intelligence Weekly Review. He tailored these publications for the President
and senior policymakers.
After President Truman
received the first Bulletin, he
wrote, “Dear Bedel [sic], I have been reading the intelligence bulletin and I am
highly impressed with it. I believe you have hit the jackpot with this one.” The
OCI and these publications continued largely unchanged for 25 years. Smith also established the precedent of
providing intelligence briefings to presidential candidates and
presidents-elect.
Central Oversight of
National Intelligence
Three months after the North
invaded the South, Smith created a Board and Office of National Estimates (BNE
and ONE). These groups reported to the DCI. This change assured central
oversight of national intelligence. This structure was responsible for
producing and coordinating national intelligence estimates for a quarter
century and was the forerunner of today’s National Intelligence Council.
Smith was especially
determined that CIA should cooperate with Army intelligence in collecting and
analyzing information about the conflict in Korea. In 1951, he requested that
the National Security Council review how disparate military entities were
handling COMINT (communications intelligence), an initiative that led to the
creation of NSA.
- DCI Smith with President Truman
By the time Smith left the
CIA to become President Eisenhower’s Under Secretary of State, the Agency had consolidated
the operational and analytical responsibilities it received under the National
Security Act of 1947 and had assumed a preeminent status in the Intelligence
Community.
According to Walter
Pforzheimer, CIA’s original Legislative Counsel,
Smith was the greatest director [but] he doesn’t get
the credit . . . General Smith was unbelievable. He really got the Agency firmly
established . . . I think others would
agree that he was a great Director, but he's not as well known as some others .
. . It was very hard to have affection for General Smith, because he was so
frosty and so chilly, but he was a very, very great man.
*The Directorate of Plans,
established on Aug. 1, 1952, was the forerunner of today’s National Clandestine
Service. The Directorate of Administration was established in 1950 and lasted
until 2001. In 2001, the Directorate of Administration was replaced with the
offices of the Chief Financial Officer, Chief Information Officer, Global
Support, Human Resources and Security Mission Support.
Posted: Oct 02, 2008 10:45 AM
Last Updated: Oct 02, 2008 11:20 AM
Last Reviewed: Oct 02, 2008 10:45 AM