p The early history of the CIA is obscured by pious legends about concern for ’national security’. ’The CIA,’ the Hoover Commission, reorganising the U.S. state apparatus, said in 1955, ’may well attribute its existence to the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and to the postwar investigation into the part Intelligence or lack of Intelligence played in the failure of our military forces to receive adequate and prompt warning of the impending Japanese attack.” This was an authoritative opinion by a commission headed by an ex-President of the United States, Herbert Hoover.

p Harry S. Truman, during whose presidency the CIA was set up, fully subscribed to this opinion. In his memoirs, completed in 1956, he wrote: ’I have often thought that if there had been something like coordination of information in the government it would have been more difficult, if not impossible, for the Japanese to succeed in the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor. In those days the military did not know everything the State Department knew, and the diplomats did not have access to all the Army and Navy knew.’

p After the end of World War II the President’s position was altogether lamentable. Truman complained: ’Such information as the President needed was being collected in several different places in the government. The War Department had an Intelligence Division—G-2—and the Navy had an intelligence setup of its own—the ONI. The Department of State, on the one hand, got its information through diplomatic channels, while the Treasury and the Departments of Commerce and Agriculture each had channels for gathering information from different parts of the world—on monetary, economic, and agricultural matters.

p ’During World War II the Federal Bureau of Investigation had some operations abroad, and in addition the Office of Strategic Services, which was set up by President Roosevelt during the war and placed under the 65 direction of General William J. Donovan, operated abroad to gather information.

p ’This scattered method of getting information for the various departments of the government first struck me as being badly organized.’^^2^^

p Truman rectified the situation by establishing, in 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency directly subordinated to the National Security Council. In the official history of the CIA written in 1975 for the Senate select committee headed by Frank Church, we read:

p ’Under the Act, the CIA’s mission was only loosely defined... The five general tasks assigned to the Agency were (1) to advise the NSC on matters related to national security; (2) to make recommendations to the NSC regarding the coordination of intelligence activities of the Departments; (3) to correlate and evaluate intelligence and provide for its appropriate dissemination; (4) to carry out “service of common concern" and (5) “to perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the NSC will from time to time direct...” The shadow of the Pearl Harbor disaster dominated policy-makers’ thinking about the purpose of a central intelligence agency. They saw themselves rectifying the conditions that allowed Pearl Harbor to happen—a fragmented military-based intelligence apparatus, which in current terminology could not distinguish “signals” from “noise”, let alone make its assessments available to senior officials.’

p Well put, but only from the standpoint of superficial logic. What Washington was thinking about was a war against the Soviet Union, and it naturally strove to improve the intelligence service. The above-mentioned history of the CIA stresses:

p ’The concept of a peacetime central intelligence agency had its origins in World War II with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Through the driving initiative and single-minded determination of William J. Donovan, sponsor and first director of OSS, the organization became the United States’ first independent intelligence body and provided the organizational precedent for the Central Intelligence Agency. In 66 large part, CIA’s functions, structure, and expertise were drawn from OSS.’^^3^^

Quite true. But why, then, was it necessary for President Truman to disband the OSS on September 20, 1945— two years prior to the establishment of the CIA? Why did the President himself create difficulties to rectify which, as he said, he created the CIA? To find the answer it is worthwhile to take a look at the legacy the OSS left as a guide for postwar American secret services.