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ISBN 978-0-16-090937-5

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ISBN 978-0-16-090937-5
The Creation of the Intelligence Community:
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Table of Contents

Mission Statements ................................... i

The Founding of the Post-WWII US Intelligence 

Community ............................................. 1

The Cornerstone Box .................................. 4

Central Intelligence: Origin and Evolution ........ 5

Milestones in the Creation of the US

Intelligence Community.............................. 19

Selected Intelligence Documents.................... 22
Mission Statements i

The History Staff in the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence 

fosters understanding of the Agency’s history and its relationship 

to today’s intelligence challenges by communicating instructive 

historical insights to the CIA workforce, other US Government agencies, and the public. CIA historians research topics on all aspects 

of Agency activities and disseminate their knowledge through publications, courses, briefings and web-based products. They also 

work with other Intelligence Community historians on publication 

and education projects that highlight interagency approaches to 

intelligence issues. Lastly, the CIA History Staff conducts an ambitious program of oral history interviews that are invaluable for 

preserving institutional memories that are not captured in the 

documentary record.

The Historical Collections Division (HCD) of CIA’s Information 

Management Services is responsible for executing the Agency’s 

Historical Review Program. This program seeks to identify and declassify collections of documents that detail the Agency’s analysis 

and activities relating to historically significant topics and events. 

HCD’s goals include increasing the usability and accessibility of 

historical collections. HCD also develops release events and partnerships to highlight each collection and make it available to the 

broadest audience possible. 

The mission of HCD is to: 

n Promote an accurate, objective understanding of the information 

and intelligence that has helped shape major US foreign policy 

decisions.

n Broaden access to lessons-learned, presenting historical material that gives greater understanding to the scope and context of 

past actions.

n Improve current decision-making and analysis by facilitating 

reflection on the impacts and effects arising from past foreign 

policy decisions.

n Showcase CIA’s contributions to national security and provide 

the American public with valuable insight into the workings of 

its government.

n Demonstrate the CIA’s commitment to the Open Government Initiative and its three core values: Transparency, Participation, and 

Collaboration.
The VC-54C Sacred Cow

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt flew to the Casablanca Conference in 1943 on board a 

commercial Boeing 314 Clipper Ship, he became the first U.S. president to fly while in office. Concerned 

about relying upon commercial airlines to transport the president, the USAAF leaders ordered the 

conversion of a military aircraft to accommodate the special needs of the Commander in Chief. 

After encountering difficulties with converting a C-87A transport, the USAAF arranged with Douglas 

Aircraft to construct a new transport aircraft specifically for presidential use. Nicknamed the Sacred 

Cow, this VC-54C became the first military aircraft to transport a U.S. president when President 

Roosevelt took it to the USSR for the Yalta Conference in February 1945.

On 26 July 1947, President Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 while on board the 

Sacred Cow. This act established the Air Force as an independent service, making the Sacred Cow the 

“birthplace” of the USAF. 

Extracted and quoted from: The National Museum of the US Air Force
Introduction 1

Its Tortuous Creation Initially Revealed in Eight Hundred Newly Declassified 

Documents Released by CIA's Information Management Services/Historical Collections 

Division at a special Release Event at Culver Academies, Culver, Indiana, 14 May 2009

Elizabeth Bancroft

As World War II was coming to a close, General William Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services – the 

wartime intelligence agency run by the War Department 

– put forth a plan to continue intelligence activities as an 

independent agency reporting directly to the President. The 

need was recognized, but his proposal as presented, met a 

cautious, chilly reception. Other senior US officials began 

debating the closing, restructuring, and creation of new 

agencies or internal intelligence-gathering divisions within 

existing arms of the government (often their own agencies 

or military branches), to form a new, centralized, post-war 

US Intelligence Agency. 

These plans faced a major obstacle: a skeptical Harry 

Truman, as an unenthusiastic new President distrustful of 

post-war secret intelligence activities becoming a permanent government function. As his first decision, Truman had 

little hesitation in marshaling support for shuttering OSS at 

war’s end. But in its absence, the State Department, the Navy, 

and the War Department recognized that a secret information vacuum loomed, triggering calls and discussions for the 

creation of something to replace a wartime intelligence service...something different from OSS...to take over in 1946.

 Showing the need for a new, centralized capability, and 

arriving at its creation, was not easy. It required skillful diplomacy, awareness of openly or secretly coveted activities 

or interests by existing military, FBI, State, and other entities, and the desire to shape any new agency so it would work 

seamlessly with, and support, existing military capabilities 

and enterprises. These previously released documents alert 

researchers to some of the plans and suggestions that were 

colored by political expediency, conflicting goals, personal 

antipathy to all forms of intelligence, and turf battles among 

existing Intelligence Community players...all of it overlaid 

by the widespread recognition that an expanded, permanent, 

centralized intelligence group was urgently needed to face 

the post-War world.

This rich mix of declassified historic material weaves a 

fascinating story of the twists and turns in communications 

and events that culminated in CIA’s creation. They were thus 

the perfect tools for a public symposium jointly sponsored by 

CIA’s Historical Collections Division and the Culver Academies’ Global Studies Institute on 14 May 2009. This release 

event hosted more than 300 students, faculty, and guests at 

the Academies’ Indiana campus. The symposium, titled Creating Global Intelligence: The Creation of the US Intelligence 

Community and Lessons for the 21st Century, spotlighted the 

public release of more than 800 declassified documents from 

the late 1940s to the early 1950s. The documents are a montage of notes, letters, memoranda, radio bulletins, briefings, 

minutes, routing slips, drafts, reports, speech transcripts, directives and executive orders. They display the considerable 

political and legal finesse required to assess the plans, suggestions, maneuvers, and actions that ultimately led to the 

establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency and other 

national security entities possessing special safeguards to 

protect civil liberties. 
2 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents

It was the intent of Congress in establishing CIA to 

establish an independent agency which would be the 

focal point of all foreign intelligence information, to 

correlate and evaluate all such information and to 

disseminate the product to the necessary Government officials. The Congress felt it had conferred the 

statutory authority necessary for CIA to perform 

these functions, even though it left broad direction 

largely to the NSC and the President. We believe 

there is ample authority latent in the law, and that 

adequate directives will permit CIA to fulfill the role 

which, even now, the Congress believes the Agency is 

playing as an essential element in the national defense and security.

Lawrence R. Houston/2/

Walter L. Pforzheimer

Memorandum From the General Counsel (Houston) and the Legislative Liaison Officer of the Central Intelligence Agency (Pforzheimer) to the Executive of the Central Intelligence Agency (Shannon) 

Washington, 27 September 1949.

This symposium was particularly important because it 

provided two beginnings. For scholars, the public, and the 

students, the event presented the first ‘beginning’– the many 

steps that led to the founding of CIA, highlighted through 

declassified documents, one convoluted step after another. 

The second ‘beginning’ fell to the young symposium participants, for whom this was the first time they had heard official 

government and academic experts discuss the creation of the 

modern intelligence establishment, and the first time they had 

seen or worked with newly declassified national security and 

intelligence documents. It also provided exposure to some of 

the existing, and occasionally bewildering, intelligence war 

year acronyms and entities: FBIS, CIG, ICAPS, IAC, CIA, 

SSU, OSO, OSS, NIA, DCID, NSCID, IAB.1

 Symposium participants were able to glimpse the give-and-take required by 

military branches, government agencies, Congress, and the 

White House, to establish duties, responsibilities, personnel, 

leadership, reporting, funding, and physical locations for an 

entirely new agency...today’s independent CIA. 

Christine Burke, a Culver Academies Global Scholar, 

opened the event by saying that reading the declassified 

documents was “like watching history come to life.” She 

commended CIA for making the documents available to 

the Culver students, noting that reading first-hand accounts 

of historical events is “a lot more intriguing than just reading out of a textbook.” CIA Chief Historian David Robarge 

kicked off the event by describing how the United States’ intelligence requirements after World War II interacted with 

political, legal, and institutional forces leading to the overhaul of the US national security apparatus. These activities 

ushered the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, 

which created a National Security Council, a Secretary of 

Defense, a statutory Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Department of 

the Air Force, and a Central Intelligence Agency. 

Other speakers included NSA Chief Historian Dr. David 

Hatch, who provided a presentation on how inter-service 

rivalries in the field of communications intelligence created the underpinnings for the creation of the National 

Security Agency. Dr. David Barrett, Professor of Political 

Science, Villanova University, described how the relationship between Congress and the Intelligence Community 

has evolved since 1947; and Eugene Poteat, President of the 

Association of Former Intelligence Officers, gave a personal 

perspective of the role of intelligence in informing senior 

US policymakers.

Dr. John Buggeln, Director of the Global Studies Institute 

and host for the symposium, closed the event noting that 

the program contributed to the school’s goal of providing 

students a forum for learning about significant events that 

shaped the country, and our relations worldwide. 

Each symposium attendee received a CD-ROM containing 

the released documents—providing detailed insight into the 

complex issues senior US Government officials grappled with 

in establishing the Intelligence Community. 

1

 FBIS – Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service; CIG – Central Intelligence Group; ICAPS - Interagency Coordinating and Planning Staff ; IAC – 

Intelligence Advisory Committee; CIA – Central Intelligence Agency; SSU – Strategic Services Unit, War Department; OSO – Office of Special Operations; OSS – Office of Strategic Services; NIA – National Intelligence Authority; DCID – Director of Central Intelligence Directive; NSCID – National 

Security Council Intelligence Directive; and IAB – Intelligence Advisory Board.
Introduction 3

L-R: David Robarge, CIA Historian; David Hatch, NSA Historian; Eugene Poteat, President, AFIO; David 

Barrett, Prof. of Pol. Sci., Villanova Univ.; John Buggeln, Director, Global Studies Institute.

History balances the frustration of “how far we have to go” with the satisfaction of “how far 

we have come.” It teaches us tolerance for the human shortcomings and imperfections which are 

not uniquely of our generation, but of all time. 

—Lewis F. Powell, Jr. US Supreme Court Justice
Contents of the Cornerstone box include:

n Memorandum for President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 

Major General William J. Donovan, Director of the Office 

of Strategic Services, dated 18 November 1944, regarding 

the establishment of a permanent centralized intelligence 

service and Memorandum from President Roosevelt to 

General Donovan, dated 5 April 1944, directing that General 

Donovan discuss his plan with the appropriate officials of the 

Government.

n President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Letter of 22 January 

1946, establishing the National Intelligence Authority and the 

Central Intelligence Group.

n Statement of General (then Lieutenant General) Hoyt S. 

Vandenberg, Director of Central Intelligence, before the Senate 

Committee on Armed Services, on 29 April 1947, in support of 

the sections of the proposed National Security Act of 1947 to 

establish the Central Intelligence Agency.

President Dwight D. 

Eisenhower at the 

cornerstone laying 

ceremony and installation 

of a copper-covered steel 

time capsule at the new 

CIA Headquarters Building, 

Langley, Virginia, 

3 November 1959.

n A Text and Explanation of Statutes and Executive Orders 

relating specifically to the Central Intelligence Agency, including 

Enabling and Appropriations Acts for the construction of the 

new CIA Building.

n Reproduction of the CIA seal and its official description.

n “William J. Donovan and the National Security.” A speech by 

Allen W. Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence, to the Erie 

County Bar Association, Buffalo, New York, 4 May 1959.

n An aerial photograph of the area of the CIA Building site.

n Drawings of the CIA Building as it will appear when completed.

n The Program, a recording, and photographs of the Cornerstone 

Ceremony.

n Microfilm copies of daily and weekly newspapers of 

3 November 1959.

4 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents
Central Intelligence: Origin and Evolution 5

Historical Perspective

“...what have appeared to be the most striking successes have 

often, if they are not rightly used, brought the most overwhelming disasters in their train, and conversely the most terrible calamities have, if bravely endured, actually turned out to benefit 

the sufferers.” 

–Polybius, The Rise of the Roman Empire, Book III, 7 

The explosions at Pearl Harbor still echoed in Washington when President Harry Truman and Congressional leaders passed the National Security Act of 1947. A joint Congressional investigation just a year earlier had concluded that the 

Pearl Harbor disaster illustrated America’s need for a unified 

command structure and a better intelligence system.1

 Indeed, 

the President and many of his aides rightly believed that the 

surprise attack could have been blunted if the various commanders and departments had coordinated their actions and 

shared their intelligence. With that thought in mind, the creators of the National Security Act attempted to implement 

the principles of unity of command and unity of intelligence, 

fashioning a National Security Council, a Secretary of Defense, a statutory Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Central Intelligence Agency. 

In almost the next breath, however, the National Security 

Act made important concessions to the traditional American distrust of large military establishments and centralized 

power. The Act (among other qualifications) ensured that 

the Joint Chiefs would not become a Prussian-style “General Staff,” created an independent air force, and insisted 

that the new Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) would have 

no law enforcement powers. The Act also decreed that the 

intelligence divisions in the armed services and the civilian 

departments (what came to be called the “Intelligence Community”) would remain independent of the CIA. 

Since 1947, Directors of Central Intelligence (DCIs) have 

served within the bounds of this ambiguous mandate. They 

have had the responsibility of coordinating national intelligence collection and production without a full measure 

of the authority they needed to do so. Many Presidents and 

Congresses—not to mention DCIs—have expressed their 

frustration with this ambiguity and have assumed that the 

solution to the dilemmas it created lay in concentrating more 

power in the office of the Director of Central Intelligence. 

This centralizing impulse has prompted various reforms to 

increase the Director’s ability to lead the Intelligence Community. For years these attempts were made by the National 

Security Council (NSC) through a series of NSC Intelligence 

Directives. In the wake of “the time of troubles” for the Intelligence Community in the mid-1970s—marked by investigations into questions about excesses and accountability—three 

Presidents issued successive executive orders aimed at one 

goal: rationalizing American intelligence and increasing the 

DCI’s power. Since the end of the Cold War, Congress itself 

has taken up the task, repeatedly amending the intelligence 

sections of the National Security Act. 

The various regulations and amendments, however, have not 

fundamentally altered the “federalist” intelligence structure 
6 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents

created in 1947. Strong centrifugal forces remain, particularly 

in the Department of Defense and its Congressional allies. Indeed, the case for centralization seems to be countered by historical illustrations of the perils of excessive concentration. In 

actual practice, the successful end to the Cold War and the lack 

of any national intelligence disasters since then seem to militate in favor of keeping the existing structure until some crisis 

proves it to be in dire need of repair. 

Reform After World War II

The Agency began its statutory existence in September 

1947—its creation ratifying, in a sense, a series of decisions 

taken soon after the end of the Second World War.2

 That 

conflict ended in the summer of 1945 with Washington decisionmakers in broad agreement that the United States needed to reform the intelligence establishment that had grown 

so rapidly and haphazardly during the national emergency. 

Nevertheless, when President Truman dissolved the wartime 

Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in September 1945, he had 

no clear plan for constructing the peacetime intelligence 

structure that he and his advisers believed they needed in an 

atomic age. President Truman wanted the reforms to be part 

and parcel of the “unification” of the armed services, but the 

overhaul of the military that the President wanted would take 

time to push through Congress.3

 In the interim, he created 

a Central Intelligence Group (CIG) to screen his incoming 

cables and supervise activities left over from the former OSS. 

In early 1946, the White House authorized CIG to evaluate 

intelligence from all parts of the government, and to absorb 

the remnants of OSS’s espionage and counterintelligence operations.4

 Initially these disparate components of the new CIG 

shared little in common except an interest in foreign secrets 

and a sense that both strategic warning and clandestine activities abroad required “central” coordination. Indeed, these 

two missions came together in CIG almost by accident. Under 

the first two Directors of Central Intelligence, however, CIG 

and the Truman administration came to realize how strategic 

warning and clandestine activities complemented one another. 

Meanwhile, the military “unification” issue overshadowed 

intelligence reform in Congressional and White House deliberations. In mid-1946 President Truman called again on 

Congress to unify the armed services. That April, the Senate’s 

Military Affairs committee had approved a unification bill 

that provided for a central intelligence agency, but the draft 

legislation had snagged in the hostile Naval Affairs committee.5

 Perhaps with that bill in mind, Secretary of War Robert 

Patterson and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal in May 

agreed among themselves that a defense reorganization bill 

should also provide for a central intelligence agency. President 

Truman the following month sent Congress the result of the 

Secretaries’ accord (with modifications of his own), repeating 

his call for lawmakers to send him a unification bill to sign.6

The administration’s judgment that a central intelligence 

agency was needed soon firmed into a consensus that the new 

Central Intelligence Group ought to form the basis of this new 

intelligence agency. Indeed, CIG continued to accrue missions 

and capabilities. Oversight of the CIG was performed by a 

committee called the National Intelligence Authority (NIA), 

comprising the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy, joined by 

the President’s chief military adviser, Admiral William Leahy. 

National Intelligence Authority Directive 5, issued on 8 July 

1946, provided the DCI with the basic implementation plan 

for the broad scope of powers envisioned in President Truman’s charter for CIG. Indeed, it was NIAD-5 that created 

the real difference between OSS—an operations office with a 

sophisticated analytical capability—and CIG, a truly (albeit 

fledgling) national intelligence service authorized to perform 

strategic analysis and to conduct, coordinate, and control clandestine activities abroad. 

NIAD-5 represented perhaps the most expansive charter 

ever granted to a Director of Central Intelligence. It allowed 

13 June: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a military 

order establishing the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) 

and naming William J. Donovan as its Director. Donovan 

remained a civilian until 24 March 1943, when he was 

appointed brigadier general. He advanced to the rank of 

major general on 10 November 1944.
Central Intelligence: Origin and Evolution 7

CIG to “centralize” research and analysis in “fields of national 

security intelligence that are not being presently performed 

or are not being adequately performed.”7

 NIAD-5 also directed the DCI to coordinate all US foreign intelligence activities 

“to ensure that the over-all policies and objectives established 

by this Authority are properly implemented and executed.” 

The National Intelligence Authority through this directive 

ordered the DCI to conduct “all organized Federal espionage 

and counter-espionage operations outside the United States 

and its possessions for the collection of foreign intelligence 

information required for the national security.” 

In NIAD-5, the National Intelligence Authority determined 

that many foreign intelligence missions could be “more efficiently accomplished centrally” and gave CIG he authority to 

accomplish them. This in effect elevated CIG to the status of 

being the primary foreign intelligence arm of the US government. This mandate did not, however, give CIG the controlling role in intelligence analysis that DCI Hoyt Vandenberg 

had sought. The NIA’s authorization was carefully phrased to 

allay fears that the DCI would take control of departmental 

intelligence offices; the Cabinet departments were not about to 

subordinate their own limited analytical capabilities to an upstart organization. In addition, NIAD-5 did not force a consolidation of clandestine activities under CIG control. Indeed, the 

Army defended the independence of its Intelligence Division’s 

own collection operations by arguing that NIAD-5 gave CIG 

control only over “organized” foreign intelligence operations. 

National Security Act of 1947 

Congress initially paid scant attention to the new Central 

Intelligence Group. Indeed, CIG had been established with 

no appropriations and authority of its own precisely to keep 

it beneath Congressional scrutiny. As CIG gained new authority in 1946 and the White House gained confidence in 

its potential, however, a consensus emerged in Congress that 

postwar military reforms would not be complete without a 

simultaneous modernization of American intelligence capabilities. 

The budding consensus even survived the death of the 

Truman administration’s cherished unification bill in 1946. 

Ironically, prospects for unification only brightened when 

the opposition Republicans subsequently swept into control 

of the Congress in that year’s elections, taking over the committee chairmanships and displacing powerful Democrats 

who had made themselves (in Harry Truman’s words) “the 

principal stumbling blocks to unification.”8

 With the President’s goal of military modernization suddenly in sight, the 

White House firmly told DCI Vandenberg that enabling legislation for CIG would remain a small part of the defense reform bill then being re-drafted by the President’s aides, and 

that the intelligence section would be kept as brief as possible 

in order to ensure that none of its details hampered the prospects for unification.9

This tactic almost backfired. When President Truman sent 

his new bill forward in February 1947, the brevity of its intelligence provisions had the effect of attracting—not deflecting—Congressional scrutiny. Members of Congress eventually debated almost every word of the intelligence section, 

and made various adjustments. Ultimately, however, Congress passed what was essentially the White House’s draft 

with important sections transferred (and clarified in the process) from Truman’s 22 January 1946 directive establishing 

CIG—thus ratifying the major provisions of that directive. 

Thus the Central Intelligence Agency would be an independent agency under the supervision of the National Security 

Council; it would conduct both analysis and clandestine 

activities, but would have no policymaking role and no law 

enforcement powers; its Director would be confirmed by the 

Senate and could be either a civilian or a military officer. 

What did Congress believe the new CIA would do? Testimony and debates over the draft bill unmistakably show that 

the lawmakers above all wanted CIA to provide the proposed 

Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles at Cornerstone Box 

ceremony for new CIA building, Langley, Virginia, 3 November 1959.
8 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents

National Security Council—the new organization that would 

coordinate and guide American foreign and defense policies—with the best possible information on developments 

abroad. Members of Congress described the information 

they expected CIA to provide as “full, accurate, and skillfully 

analyzed”; “coordinated, adequate” and “sound.” Senior military commanders testifying on the bill’s behalf used similar 

adjectives, saying the CIA’s information should be “authenticated and evaluated”; “correct” and based on “complete 

coverage.” When CIA provided such information, it was believed, the NSC would be able to assess accurately the relative 

strengths and weaknesses of America’s overseas posture and 

adjust policies accordingly.10

Congress guaranteed CIA’s independence and its access to 

departmental files in order to give it the best chance to produce authoritative information for the nation’s policymakers. 

CIA was to stand outside the policymaking departments of 

the government, the better to “correlate and evaluate intelligence relating to the national security.”11 Although other 

departments and agencies would continue to handle intelligence of national importance, the Agency was the only entity 

specifically charged by the Act with the duty of producing 

it. To assist in the performance of this duty, the DCI had the 

right to “inspect” all foreign intelligence held by other agencies, as well as the right to disseminate it as appropriate. If the 

DCI happened to be a military officer, then he was to be outside the chain of command of his home service; this would 

help him resist any temptation to shade his reports to please 

his superiors.12 Finally, the Agency was to provide for the US 

Government such “services of common concern” that the 

NSC would determine could more efficiently be conducted 

“centrally.” In practice, this meant espionage and other clandestine activities, as well as the collection of valuable information from open sources and American citizens. 

Having approved the placement of these authorities and 

activities under one head, Congress in 1947 expected that 

CIA would provide the best possible intelligence and would 

coordinate clandestine operations abroad. Congress also 

implicitly assumed that the executive branch would manage 

CIA and the Intelligence Community with these purposes in 

mind.13 After fixing this course in the statute books, Congress 

stepped back and left the White House and CIA to meet these 

expectations. This was how Congress resolved the apparent 

contradiction of creating “central intelligence” that was not 

centrally controlled. The institution of central intelligence 

would henceforth steer between the two poles of centralization and departmental autonomy. 

Not Only National But Centr a l 

Congress passed the National Security Act on 26 July 1947 

and President Truman immediately signed it into law. The 

act gave America something new in the annals of intelligence 

history; no other nation had structured its foreign intelligence 

establishment in quite the same way. CIA would be an independent, central agency, but not a controlling one; it would 

both rival and complement the efforts of the departmental 

intelligence organizations.14 This prescription of coordination without control guaranteed friction and duplication of 

intelligence efforts as the CIA and the departmental agencies 

pursued common targets, but it also fostered a potentially 

healthy competition of views and abilities. 

The National Security Council guided the Intelligence 

Community by means of a series of directives dubbed 

NSCIDs (the acronym stands for National Security Council 

Intelligence Directive). The original NSCIDs were issued in 

the months after the passage of the National Security Act. 

Foremost was NSCID 1, titled “Duties and Responsibilities,” 

which replaced NIAD-5 and established the basic responsibilities of the DCI and the interagency workings of the Intelligence Community.15

The National Security Act was amended on 10 August 1949, to put 

the service secretaries under the aegis of the defense secretary. At 

the same time, the National Military Establishment was renamed the 

Department of Defense.
Central Intelligence: Origin and Evolution 9

NSCID 1 did not re-write NIAD-5, but instead started 

afresh in the light of the debate over the National Security Act 

and the experience recently gained by the new CIA. Where 

the earlier document had authorized the DCI to coordinate 

“all Federal foreign intelligence activities” and sketched the 

initial outlines of his powers, NSCID 1 had to work within 

the lines already drawn by Congress and precedent. The Director who emerged from NSCID 1 was more circumscribed 

in his role and authority than previously. He was now to 

“make such surveys and inspections” as he needed in giving the NSC his “recommendations for the coordination of 

intelligence activities.” Nonetheless, the DCI was—in keeping with Congress’ implicit intent in the National Security 

Act—a substantial presence in the intelligence establishment. 

NSCID 1 gave the DCI an advisory committee comprising 

the heads of the departmental intelligence offices, and told 

him to “produce” intelligence (but to avoid duplicating departmental functions in doing so). The type of intelligence 

expected of him and his Agency was “national intelligence,” a 

new term for the information that the National Security Act 

called “intelligence relating to the national security.”16 The 

DCI was also to perform for the benefit of the existing agencies such “services of common concern” as the NSC deemed 

could best be provided centrally. The NSC left the particulars of these responsibilities to be specified in accompanying 

NSCIDs (which eventually numbered 2 through 15 by the 

end of the Truman administration in 1953).17

Under this regime, DCIs were faced with contradictory 

mandates: they could coordinate intelligence, but they must 

not control it. Since the prohibitions in the statute and the 

NSCIDs were so much clearer than the permissions, every 

DCI naturally tended to steer on the side of looser rather 

than tighter oversight of common Intelligence Community 

issues. Because of this tendency to emphasize coordination 

instead of control, CIA never quite became the integrator of 

US intelligence that its presidential and congressional parents 

had envisioned. The DCI never became the manager of the 

Intelligence Community, his Agency never won the power 

to “inspect” the departments’ operational plans or to extract 

community-wide consensus on disputed analytical issues, 

and CIA never had authority over all clandestine operations 

of the US Government. 

Revisions and Oversight

This federalized intelligence structure did not satisfy the 

White House. Indeed, presidents from Dwight Eisenhower 

through Richard Nixon sought to adjust the NSCIDs to improve the functioning of the Intelligence Community, primarily by pushing successive DCIs to exert more control 

over common community issues and programs. President 

Eisenhower paid particular attention to this issue, approving 

in 1958 the first major revisions of NSCID 1. The September 1958 version of the revised directive added a preamble 

stressing the need for efficiency across the entire national intelligence effort, and began its first section by declaring “The 

Director of Central Intelligence shall coordinate the foreign 

intelligence activities of the United States....” 

The September 1958 version of NSCID 1 also added a section on “community responsibilities” that listed the duties of 

1 October: President Harry S. Truman’s Executive 

Order 9621 abolishes the OSS and transfers its 

functions to the State and War Departments.

CIA office workers, circa 1950.
10 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents

the DCI to foster an efficient Intelligence Community and to 

ensure the quality of the intelligence information available to 

the US Government. It also emphasized to the existing departments and agencies their responsibilities to assist the DCI 

in these tasks. To this end, the new NSCID 1 created the United States Intelligence Board (USIB), a panel chaired by the 

DCI—with the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence ( the 

DDCI) representing CIA—to coordinate a range of cooperative activities through a network of interagency committees. 

USIB soon built a sophisticated set of procedures, prompting 

former CIA Executive Director Lyman Kirkpatrick in 1973 

to declare that “the USIB structure provides the community 

with probably the broadest and most comprehensive coordinating mechanism in the history of any nation’s intelligence 

activities.”18

In 1971 President Nixon turned to the topic of intelligence 

reform and issued a directive that precipitated the first major 

revision of NSCID 1 in over a decade. In the spirit of President Eisenhower’s earlier initiatives, Nixon authorized a fulldress study of Intelligence Community cooperation, with 

an emphasis on cutting its costs and increasing its effectiveness. A committee headed by James Schlesinger of the Office 

of Management and Budget recommended major reforms, 

among them a greater role for the DCI in managing the Intelligence Community. President Nixon directed the adoption 

of many of these recommendations in a 5 November 1971 letter to the cabinet secretaries and senior policymakers who 

oversaw the community’s far-flung components.19 The NSC 

issued a revised NSCID 1 in February 1972 to disseminate the 

new guidance to the community. 

The new version retained much of the earlier text, while 

adding that the DCI had “four major responsibilities.” He was 

to plan and review all intelligence activities and spending, 

submitting annually to the White House the community’s 

overall “program/budget”; to produce national intelligence 

for the President and policymakers; to chair all community-wide advisory panels, and to establish intelligence requirements and priorities. In addition, the 1972 NSCID 1 

established several objectives to guide the DCI in discharging these responsibilities. He was to seek the attainment of 

greater efficiency, better and more timely intelligence; and, 

perhaps most of all, “authoritative and responsible leadership 

for the community.” The provision for DCI authority (albeit 

limited) over the Intelligence Community budget was new 

and significant; henceforth all subsequent directives governing the community would place at least one of the DCI’s 

hands on the collective purse strings. 

The years that followed the issuance of the 1972 version of 

NSCID 1 witnessed dramatic changes in the policy dynamic 

surrounding the Intelligence Community. For several reasons—many of them related to the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, but including Agency misdeeds under earlier 

administrations as well—Congress began to impose itself directly on CIA and other parts of the Intelligence Community 

in the mid-1970s. The White House responded to the new 

mood in Congress by acting to protect what it defended as 

the exclusive prerogatives of the executive branch. Republican and Democratic Presidents had long been content to delegate the chore of overseeing the community to the National 

Security Council, but President Gerald Ford, concerned that 

Congress would re-write the statutes undergirding the Intelligence Community, intervened with an executive order that 

supplanted the earlier NSCIDs. 

Executive Order 11905 (18 February 1976) retained much 

of the language of the 1972 NSCID 1, but added much else as 

well. Most prominently, it established a lengthy list of restrictions on intelligence activities, which ran the gamut from a 

prohibition on the perusal of federal tax returns to a ban on 

“political assassination.” E.O. 11905 also revisited the traditional ground covered by the now-obsolete NSCID 1 series, 

assigning “duties and responsibilities” to the DCI and the 

various members of the Intelligence Community. 

22 January: President Truman signs an executive 

order establishing the Central Intelligence Group 

to operate under the direction of the National 

Intelligence Authority. Truman names the first 

Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), Rear 

Admiral Sidney W. Souers, USNR, who was sworn in 

on the following day.
Central Intelligence: Origin and Evolution 11

President Ford’s executive order did not diverge noticeably, 

however, from the earlier listings of the DCI’s duties. These 

were now to be: acting as “executive head of the CIA and 

Intelligence Community staff;” preparing the community’s 

budget, requirements and priorities; serving as “primary 

adviser on foreign intelligence,” and implementing “special 

activities” (i.e., covert action). Indeed, E.O. 11905 encouraged 

the DCI to devote more energy to “the supervision and direction of the Intelligence Community.” In this spirit, it revived 

an Eisenhower administration idea and urged the DCI to delegate “the day-to-day operation” of CIA to his Deputy Director for Central Intelligence. 

President Jimmy Carter superseded E.O. 11905 with his 

own Executive Order 12036 barely two years later. The new 

order retained basically the same (albeit reordered) list of 

duties for the DCI in his dual role as manager of the Intelligence Community and head of CIA. It also revamped the 

old United States Intelligence Board, expanding the list 

of topics on which it was to advise the DCI and renaming 

it the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB). Where 

E.O. 12036 differed from preceding directives was in tasking the DCI to oversee the Intelligence Community budget. 

President Ford’s executive order had created a three-member 

committee, chaired by the DCI, to prepare the budget and, 

when necessary, to reprogram funding.20 Under the new provisions of E.O. 12036, however, the DCI now had “full and 

exclusive responsibility for approval of the National Foreign 

Intelligence Program budget.” These combined powers were 

somewhat less sweeping than under E.O. 11905, but more 

concentrated in now being vested in the DCI alone. He would 

issue guidance to the community for program and budget development, evaluate the submissions of the various agencies, 

justify them before Congress, monitor implementation, and 

he could (after due consultation) reprogram funds. 

President Ronald Reagan in his turn replaced the Carter 

directive with Executive Order 12333 (4 December 1981), 

which remains in effect today. The new order deleted provisions for the NFIB and other boards, allowing the DCI to 

arrange interagency advisory panels as he needed (DCI William Casey quickly reinstated the NFIB on his own authority). This was, however, almost the only enhancement of the 

DCI’s power in an executive order that otherwise stepped 

back slightly from the centralization decreed by President 

Carter. Specifically, E.O. 12333 diluted DCI authority over 

the National Foreign Intelligence Program budget that E.O. 

12036 had briefly strengthened. Where Carter had explicitly 

made the DCI the manager of the NFIP budgeting process, 

Reagan instead outlined a leading role for the DCI in developing the budget, reviewing requests for the reprogramming 

of funds and monitoring implementation. The change was 

not dramatic, but it was significant. 

Management of the Intelligence Community by executive 

order during this period did not forestall increased Congressional oversight. In the 1970s both houses of Congress had 

created permanent intelligence oversight committees and 

passed legislation to tighten control of covert action. With the 

renewed polarization of foreign policy debates in the 1980s, 

both Republican and Democratic officials and lawmakers 

sought to “protect” intelligence from allegedly unprincipled 

forces that might somehow co-opt and abuse it to the detriment of the community and the nation’s security. Responding to these concerns, Congress further toughened the new 

regulatory, oversight, and accountability regime to check the 

powers and potential for abuses at CIA and other agencies. 

Congress ensured permanence for these changes by codifying them as amendments to law, particularly to the National 

Security Act of 1947. 

By the late 1980s, Congress’s increased oversight role (and 

its new appetite for finished intelligence) prompted then-DDCI Robert Gates to comment publicly that CIA “now finds 

itself in a remarkable position, involuntarily poised nearly 

On 26 July 1947, President Truman signed the National Security Act of 

1947 while on board the Sacred Cow, a Douglas C-54 Skymaster (VC54C) originally configured for President Roosevelt. The Act established 

the Department of the Air Force as an independent service, making 

the Sacred Cow the “birthplace” of what is now the USAF.
12 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents

equidistant between the executive and legislative branches.”21

Not until the 1990s, however, did these changes significantly 

affect the “duties and responsibilities” of the DCI and the Intelligence Community. 

Into a New Era 

For the duration of the Cold War, the White House kept nudging successive Directors of Central Intelligence to do more to 

lead the Intelligence Community. DCIs more or less tried to 

comply. The statutory and institutional obstacles to centralization, however, proved daunting. Each DCI held budgetary and 

administrative sway only over the Central Intelligence Agency; 

the much larger budgets and staffs of the intelligence agencies 

in the Department of Defense (and their smaller cousins in 

other departments) remained firmly under cabinet-level officials who saw no reason to cede power to a DCI. Faced with 

this reality, DCIs had tended to let their community coordination duties suffer and to concentrate on the management of the 

CIA. Congress had intended a different course, however, and 

in the 1990s the legislative branch began its own campaign to 

encourage greater coordination in the Intelligence Community. 

The end of the Cold War saw a subtle shift in Congressional attitudes toward intelligence. With the political need for a 

“peace dividend” acutely felt, Congress and the White House 

oversaw a gradual decline in real defense spending that affected the Intelligence Community as well. Declining defense 

budgets soon meant relatively declining intelligence budgets, 

which in turn put a premium on cost-cutting, consolidation 

and efficiency. Similar concerns had surfaced during the debate over the creation of CIA (when demobilization, not the 

incipient Cold War, was still the primary consideration in defense budgeting).22 To many members of Congress in 1992—as 

in 1947—the answer seemed to lie in increased authority for 

the DCI, who in turn could motivate a leaner, more agile Intelligence Community. 

Congress in the 1990s partially supplanted E.O. 12333 

with a series of amendments to the National Security Act. 

Those amendments were occasionally proscriptive (like the 

prohibitions added in the 1980s), but often they mandated 

various acts by the DCI. The intelligence-related passages of 

the National Security Act—which had hardly been amended 

at all before 1980—grew from 22 pages of text in the 1990 

edition of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s Compilation of Intelligence Laws to 48 pages in the 

2000 version.23

Foremost among these amendments was the Intelligence 

Organization Act of 1992.24 Inspired by the reforms of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff accomplished in the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols 

Act, the legislation—for the first time in a statute—specified 

the roles (as opposed to the duties) of the Director of Central 

Intelligence.25 The DCI was to serve as head of the Intelligence 

Community, as principal intelligence adviser to the president, 

and as head of the CIA. As principal intelligence adviser he 

was to provide the nation’s senior policymakers, commanders, 

and lawmakers with “national” intelligence that was “timely, 

objective, independent of political considerations, and based 

on all sources.” As head of the Agency he was to collect and 

evaluate intelligence (particularly from human sources), and 

to perform services of common concern and “such other functions and duties” as had been suggested since 1947. As head 

of the Intelligence Community he was to develop the Community’s budget, to advise the Secretary of Defense in the appointments of chiefs for the military’s joint intelligence agencies, to set collection requirements and priorities, to eliminate 

unneeded duplication, and to coordinate the community’s relationships with foreign intelligence services. 

After the bill’s House passage, floor leader Representative James 

W. Wadsworth of New York remarked, “It [the CIA] will be a gathering point for information coming from all over the world through all 

channels concerning the potential strength of other nations and their 

political intentions.” Wadsworth continued, “There is no secret every 

nation in the world is doing the same thing.”
Central Intelligence: Origin and Evolution 13

The Intelligence Organization Act also codified the DCI’s 

budgetary powers as described in E.O. 12333, considerably 

strengthening their provisions. The Act decreed that the 

budgets of the various components of the Intelligence Community could not be incorporated into the annual National 

Foreign Intelligence Program until approved by the DCI, and 

required all agencies to obtain DCI approval before reprogramming any NFIP funds. In addition, the Act gave the Director something new: a carefully limited authority to shift 

funds and personnel from one NFIP project to another (provided he obtained approvals from the White House, Congress, and the affected agency’s head). 

Events at mid-decade lent new urgency to the unfinished 

task of modernizing the Intelligence Community. At CIA, 

the arrest of Aldrich Ames and the spy scandal that ensued led to bipartisan calls for reform of the Agency. The 

subsequent Republican takeover of Congress in the 1994 

elections seemed to provide an opportunity for sweeping 

changes in the community as a whole. Finally, the re-ordering of national priorities after the end of the Cold War had 

meant substantial budget cuts for the US military, resulting in reduced budgets and lower personnel ceilings for the 

Intelligence Community.26 While military and intelligence 

resources had been reduced in early 1990s, however, Washington committed American forces to several, major overseas deployments in Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East, 

and the Caribbean. 

The White House responded to the new situation by reordering intelligence priorities. The burgeoning military 

deployments demanded ever more tactical intelligence support, and President William Clinton issued a 1995 presidential order (PDD-35) instructing the Intelligence Community 

to provide it. Explaining his directive at CIA headquarters a 

few months later, he emphasized that the Community’s first 

priority was to support “the intelligence needs of our military during an operation.” Commanders in the field needed 

“prompt, thorough intelligence to fully inform their decisions and maximize the security of our troops.”27 Since the 

military spent most of the 1990s deployed in one peacekeeping operation after another (often with more than one taking place at a time), the result of the commitment in PDD-35 

was a diversion of shrinking national, strategic intelligence 

resources to growing, tactical missions. 

Congress took a little longer to respond. In 1995 Congressional and outside critics coalesced in no fewer than six 

separate panels to study the US intelligence effort and recommend reforms.28 Almost all of the reports published by these 

groups endorsed a greater degree of centralization and enhanced authority for the Director of Central Intelligence.29

The wide variance in the size and scope of the study groups—

which ranged in stature from academic colloquia to the presidentially-appointed “Brown-Aspin” commission—seemed 

to highlight their basic agreement on this issue. The BrownAspin commission report perhaps expressed the feeling best. 

After considering arguments for decentralization, the report 

cited President Truman’s disgust with the bureaucratic rivalry that “contributed to the disaster at Pearl Harbor” and concluded that “returning to a more decentralized system would 

be a step in the wrong direction.” The report declined to suggest alterations in “the fundamental relationship between the 

DCI and the Secretary of Defense,” but nonetheless urged 

a strengthening of “the DCI’s ability to provide centralized 

management of the Intelligence Community.”30

Congress heeded the conclusions and the recommendations of these several reports when it drafted the Intelligence Renewal and Reform Act of 1996. That Act, among its 

other provisions, required the Secretary of Defense to win 

the concurrence of the DCI in appointing directors for the 

National Security Agency, the new National Imagery and 

Mapping Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office. 

Under the Act, the DCI would also write (for the NSC) annual performance appraisals of these three agencies.31 The 

Act also gave the DCI several new aides (nominated by the 

President and confirmed by the Senate) to assist in managing the Intelligence Community: a Deputy Director of 

Central Intelligence for Community Management, as well 

as Assistant Directors of Central Intelligence for Collection, 

Analysis and Production, and Administration. It also en18 September: The National Security Act of 1947 

establishes the National Security Council and the 

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to replace the 

National Intelligence Authority and the Central 

Intelligence Group.
14 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents

hanced the DCI’s role as an adviser to the Pentagon’s tactical and inter-service intelligence programs, strengthened 

his limited ability to “reprogram” money and personnel 

between national intelligence programs and created a subcommittee of the NSC to establish annual priorities for the 

Intelligence Community. 

Congress did not, however, resist the shift of national 

means to tactical ends. The shift of intelligence resources 

toward support for military operations worried officials and 

observers of the Intelligence Community. Indeed, DCI Robert Gates complained as early as 1992 that cuts in the defense 

budget were forcing the military to trim tactical intelligence 

programs and pass their work on to the “national” intelligence services.32 PDD-35 seemed to make the situation even 

more acute. More than one appraisal in the year after its issuance warned that “support to the warfighter” could demand 

a disproportionate share of intelligence efforts; a Congressional study even blamed PDD-35, in part, for this development.33 Nevertheless, these worries remained on the margins 

of the debate for several more years. 

Contradictory Impulse s 

The net effect of the changes made both by the White House 

and by Congress under both Republican and Democratic 

majorities was to urge the DCI to exercise more control over 

the Intelligence Community while limiting his freedom to 

allocate “national” intelligence resources among competing 

priorities. Members of Congress collectively seemed impatient with executive branch implementation of reforms to 

streamline and motivate the community during a long decade of shrinking real defense budgets. At the same time, 

however, no Congress seriously considered forcing the 

various civilian and military agencies into a unitary system with a Director of Central Intelligence (or whatever the 

title) transformed into a true intelligence czar. The executive branch neither assisted nor resisted this congressional 

impulse to enhance the DCI’s authority and the centralization of the Intelligence Community. In effect, however, the 

White House’s aforementioned actions with regard to intelligence were anything but neutral. 

The contradictory impulses affecting the Intelligence 

Community showed in the way the executive and legislative 

branches together crafted a 1996 law, the National Imagery 

and Mapping Agency (NIMA) Act, which created the Department of Defense agency of that name out of components 

from CIA and Defense. While this marked a diminution of 

the DCI’s direct control over imagery analysis, the NIMA 

Act took pains to preserve DCI authority to prioritize assignments for “national imagery collection assets” and to resolve 

conflicts among competing priorities.34 The net effect was 

ambiguous; the DCI and the CIA lost actual, day-to-day control over an important component of the Intelligence Community, but gained a statutory voice in the nation’s employment of that component. 

In 1998 DCI George Tenet issued a reconstituted series of 

Director of Central Intelligence Directives (DCIDs), led by a 

new DCID-1/1, titled “The Authorities and Responsibilities of 

the Director of Central Intelligence as Head of the US Intelligence Community.” DCIDs had traditionally not been issued 

as policy statements; they had essentially been implementing 

documents for the policies established in the NSCIDs (and 

later in the executive orders). DCID 1/1 stayed well within 

this tradition, but provided an important reference for the 

entire community by arranging and citing in one document 

the key passages of Executive Order 12333 and the amended 

National Security Act. 

The preface to DCID 1/1 stated that it was only intended 

to be “illustrative.” Indeed, readers were directed to the citations “for controlling language.” This spare format perhaps 

conveyed a message more powerful than its authors realized. 

The DCI’s new-found ability to cite so many passages of the 

United States Code to buttress his authority meant that his 

powers had grown substantially since its meager beginnings 

in January 1946. The fact that a DCI felt the need to cite all 

those passages for the edification of Intelligence Community 

colleagues, however, suggests that his authority still had far 

to go. 

The blurring of the divide between “national” and “tactical” 

intelligence seemed at decade’s end to provide unclear portents for the future of the DCI’s authority. By 2000, the earlier 

warnings were widely seen to have been accurate. A high-level 

20 June: The Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 provides special 

legal and administrative authorities and responsibilities for the 

Agency and the DCI.
Central Intelligence: Origin and Evolution 15

study commission recently has complained that declining intelligence resources, combined with increased demands for 

“warning and crisis management,” have resulted in: 

...an Intelligence Community that is more demanddriven.... That demand is also more driven by military consumers and, therefore, what the Intelligence 

Community is doing is narrower and more shortterm than it was two decades ago. 35

Another commission, reporting its findings on the National Reconnaissance Office, found in PDD-35 a lightning rod 

for its criticism: 

There appears to be no effective mechanism to alert 

policy-makers to the negative impact on strategic requirements that may result from strict adherence to 

the current Presidential Decision Directive (PDD-35) 

assigning top priority to military force protection. 

That Directive has not been reviewed recently to determine whether it has been properly applied and 

should remain in effect.36

The Elusive Vision of Centr a l 

In telligence 

Today, intelligence remains the only area of highly 

complex government activity where overall management across departmental and agency lines is seriously attempted.37

Ten years past the end of the Cold War and five since the 

spate of reform proposals in 1996, this observation by the 

Brown-Aspin commission seems to remain valid. The Director of Central Intelligence is nominally stronger now; new 

laws and amendments have augmented his power to lead 

the Intelligence Community. Nevertheless, the community 

remains a confederated system, in which the DCI has leadership responsibilities greater than his responsibilities. The 

system seems roughly balanced between the need for central 

CIA South Building in what 

was called the E Street Complex, circa 1960. Located 

in the city’s Foggy Bottom 

neighborhood at 2430 E 

St. NW, it was the original 

CIA Headquarters, a site it 

took over from its wartime 

predecessor, the Office of 

Strategic Services.

1 December: The Directorate of Administration is established.
16 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents

direction and the imperative to preserve departmental intelligence autonomy. If that balance perhaps appears to be less 

than optimal, there nevertheless is no obvious imperative to 

correct it in any fundamental way. Indeed, the 2001 report 

of the blue-ribbon “Commission on National Security/21st 

Century” (the Hart-Rudman commission) recommended 

“no major structural changes” in the management of the 

Intelligence Community and noted that “current efforts to 

strengthen community management while maintaining the 

ongoing relationship between the DCI and the Secretary of 

Defense are bearing fruit.”38

The members of Congress who passed the National Security Act of 1947 had wanted the new Central Intelligence Agency to provide policymakers the best possible information and 

to coordinate clandestine operations. They assumed that the 

President’s intelligence officer—the Director of Central Intelligence—would accomplish these objectives, and left the executive branch to its own initiative for the next four decades. 

This was how Congress resolved the dilemma of having a “national” intelligence system that was not centrally controlled. 

Succeeding presidents oversaw the Intelligence Community 

through a series of National Security Council Intelligence 

Directives and executive orders, which recognized the gap 

between coordination and control and encouraged DCIs to 

do more to bridge it and to manage America’s intelligence efforts. After the Cold War ended, however, Democratic and 

Republican Congresses grew impatient with the executive 

branch and urged that intelligence be done centrally. Nonetheless, no Congress grasped the nettle of sweeping reform, 

either to decentralize the system or to give the DCI command 

authority over military intelligence and the departmental intelligence offices. At the same time, the executive branch’s 

insistence on using declining resources first and foremost to 

support military operations effectively blunted the Congressional emphasis on centralization by limiting the wherewithal that DCIs and agency heads could devote to national and 

strategic objectives. 

This ambiguity is likely to endure for the same reasons it 

arose in the first place: no one can agree on what should replace it. Reform faces the same obstacles that Harry Truman 

and his aides encountered in 1945. Everyone has a notion of 

how reform should be implemented, but everyone also has a 

specific list of changes they will not tolerate. The mix of preferences and objections produces a veto to almost every proposal, until the one that survives is the one policymakers and 

legislators dislike the least. Ambiguity is also likely to keep 

alive the durable idea—born from the Pearl Harbor disaster—that the axiomatic principles of unity of command and 

unity of intelligence can best be served through an increased 

centralization of US intelligence efforts. 

America’s national security framework forces such ambiguities on policymakers and commanders for good reasons 

as well as bad. The great economic and military strength of 

America and the comparative material wealth of its Intelligence Community has provided a certain latitude for experimentation—and even duplication of effort—in the service 

of higher, political goals. In such a context, a decentralized 

Intelligence Community may be the only kind of system that 

can maintain public and military support for an independent, civilian foreign intelligence arm in America’s non-parliamentary form of government, where it is possible for the 

two major political parties to split control over the executive 

and legislative branches of government. Decentralization assures the Pentagon of military control over its tactical and 

joint intelligence programs. It also assures members of Congress of both parties that the President’s chief intelligence adviser cannot acquire a dangerous concentration of domestic 

political power or monopolize the foreign policy advice flowing into the White House. Thus we are likely to live with the 

de-centralized intelligence system—and the impulse toward 

centralization—until a crisis re-aligns the political and bureaucratic players or compels them to cooperate in new ways. 

“Reform [of the intelligence community] 

faces the same obstacles that Harry Truman 

and his aides encountered in 1945. Everyone 

has a notion of how reform should be 

implemented, but everyone also has a 

specific list of changes they will not tolerate. 

The mix...produces a veto to almost every 

proposal...”
Central Intelligence: Origin and Evolution 17

endnotes

1

 Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, 

“Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack,” 79th Congress, 2nd Session, 

1946, pp. 252-253. (U) 

2

 Shorthand reference to “the Agency” is commonly used, and is used 

herein, as synonymous with CIA. “Community” has long been used, 

and is herein, to denote the totality of US executive branch organizations that produce and provide foreign intelligence to US policymakers 

and military commanders. 

3

 “Text of the President’s Message to Congress Asking Unification of 

the Army and Navy,” New York Times, 20 December 1945, p. 14. 

4

 President Truman’s 22 January 1946 directive establishing CIG is 

reprinted in US Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United 

States, 1945-1950, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1996) [hereafter cited as FRUS], pp. 178-179. The first DCI, Sidney Souers, recalled 

in 1954 that he had been part of the collective effort (leading to CIG’s 

establishment) to create “a central intelligence agency” that would ensure that national security policymakers “all would get the same intelligence—in contrast to the system that had prevailed, where the OSS 

would give one bit of intelligence to the President and not any to the secretaries of the military departments and the State Department, who had 

some responsibility to advise the President.” Quoted in Ralph E. Weber, 

ed., Spymasters: Ten CIA Officers in Their Own Words (Wilmington, DE: 

Scholarly Resources, 1999), p. 3. 

5

 David F. Rudgers, Creating the Secret State: The Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943-1947 (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas 

Press, 2000), p. 107. 

6

 Anthony Leviero, “Truman Offers Congress 12-Point Program to 

Unify Armed Services of Nation,” New York Times, 16 June 1946. For 

the Patterson-Forrestal accord in May 1946, see Walter Millis, ed., The 

Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking, 1951), p. 163. 

7

 National Intelligence Authority Directive number 5, 8 July 1946, reprinted in FRUS, pp. 391-392. 

8

 Harry S Truman, Memoirs, Volume II, Years of Trial and Hope (Garden City, NY, Doubleday, 1956), pp. 46-47. 

9

 Admiral Forrest Sherman, a member of the White House team that 

drafted the bill, later told the House Committee on Expenditures that 

he and his colleagues feared that a detailed CIA section would prompt 

Congress to seek similar levels of detail in the armed services’ sections 

of the bill, forcing a re-opening of the drafting process and possibly encumbering the draft with controversial specifics. See Lyle Miller’s declassified draft, “Legislative History of the Central Intelligence Agency—National Security Act of 1947,” Central Intelligence Agency (Office 

of Legislative Council), 25 July 1967, p. 72. 

10 Quoted in Miller, “Legislative History,” pp. 40, 45, 47, 48, 50. 

11 Sec. 102(d)3. The phrase came from President Truman’s 22 January 

1946 directive establishing CIG; see FRUS, p 178. The original pages of 

the intelligence section of the National Security Act of 1947 are reproduced in Michael Warner, ed., The CIA under Harry Truman (Washington: Central Intelligence Agency, 1994), pp. 131-135. 

12 The Act was amended in 1953 to provide for a Deputy Director of 

Central Intelligence (DDCI) with the stipulation (since removed) that 

the positions of DCI and DDCI must not “be occupied simultaneously 

by commissioned officers of the armed services, whether in an active or 

retired status.” 

13 Ludwell Montague believed the term “Intelligence Community” 

made its earliest documented appearance in the minutes of a 1952 meeting of the Intelligence Advisory Committee. For the sake of consistency 

the term Intelligence Community is used throughout this essay, even 

though the size and composition of the community has changed and 

now includes several large entities that did not exist when the National 

Security Act was passed in 1947. For example, of today’s 13 intelligence 

organizations in the community, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the 

National Imagery and Mapping Agency are among the eight intelligence 

organizations that come under the Department of Defense. The only independent agency (that is, not part of a policy department) is CIA. For 

the 1952 usage of the term, see Ludwell Lee Montague, General Walter 

Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence: October 1950—February 

1953 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 

p. 74. 

14 At the time the Act went into effect, the intelligence agencies of the 

US government comprised the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal 

Bureau of Investigation, the Office of Intelligence Research (State), the 

Intelligence Division (Army), the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Directorate of Intelligence (Air Force), and associated military signals intelligence offices, principally the Army Security Agency and the Navy’s 

OP-20-G. 

15 All versions of NSCID 1 have been declassified and are available at 

the National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 263 

(CIA), NN3-263-91-004, box 4, HS/HC-500. 

16 NSCID 3 (13 January 1948) defined national intelligence as “integrated departmental intelligence that covers the broad aspects of 

national policy and national security, is of concern to more than one 

Department or Agency, and transcends the exclusive competence of a 

single Department or Agency or the Military Establishment.” Its opposite was “departmental” intelligence, which NSCID 3 defined as intelligence needed by a department or agency “to execute its mission and 

discharge its lawful responsibilities;” see FRUS, p. 1109. Executive Order 

11905 in 1976 retained “national intelligence” but changed its opposite 

to a phrase used in President Nixon’s 1971 letter, “tactical intelligence” 

(which the executive order did not further define, apart from saying that 

the DCI shall not have responsibility for it). E.O. 11905 also added the 

overarching term “foreign intelligence,” defining it as information “on 

the capabilities, intentions, and activities of foreign powers, organizations or their agents.” 

17 It bears noting that the NSCIDs endorsed the NIA’s 1946 assignment of the two main missions (strategic warning and the coordination 

of clandestine activities abroad) to the DCI and his Central Intelligence 

Group. In particular, NSCID 5 (12 December 1947) reaffirmed NIAD-5 

in directing that the DCI “shall conduct all organized Federal espionage 

operations outside the United States...except for certain agreed activities by other Departments and Agencies.” See FRUS, p. 1106. 

18 Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, Jr., The US Intelligence Community: Foreign 

Policy and Domestic Activities (New York: Hill & Wang, 1973), p. 39. 
18 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents

19 Richard Nixon to the Secretary of State et al., “Organization and 

Management of the US Foreign Intelligence Community,” 5 November 

1971. 

20 The panel had been created by E.O. 11905, which titled it the “Committee on Foreign Intelligence”; it comprised the DCI (chairman), the 

Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and the Deputy Assistant 

to the President for National Security Affairs. 

21 Robert M. Gates, “The CIA and American Foreign Policy,” Foreign 

Affairs 66 (Winter 1987/88), p. 225. 

22 Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, “Why Was the CIA Established in 1947?,” 

Intelligence and National Security 12 (January 1997), p. 30. 

23 Unless otherwise noted, all amendments to the National Security 

Act cited herein are published in the several editions (1993, 1998, or 

2000) of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s Compilation of Intelligence Laws. 

24 The Intelligence Organization Act was passed as part of the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 1993. Much of its text came from S. 

2198, introduced by Sen. David L. Boren (D-OK) and titled the “Intelligence Reorganization Act of 1992.” S. 2198 proposed a “Director of National Intelligence” to head the Intelligence Community; subordinate 

to this new officer would be the newly-styled “Director of the Central 

Intelligence Agency.” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “S. 2198 

and S. 421 to Reorganize the United States Intelligence Community,” 

102d Congress, 2d Session, 1992, p. 2. The companion bill in the House 

of Representatives was HR. 4165, which offered a milder version of the 

DNI proposal. See also Frank J. Smist, Jr., Congress Oversees the United 

States Intelligence Community, 1947-1994 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994 [2d ed.]), pp. 286-287. 

25 The Goldwater-Nichols Act is widely credited with adding coherence to the Joint Chiefs of Staff structure—another creation of the National Security Act of 1947—which had long been viewed as fragmented 

and less effective than it should have been in advising the commanderin-chief. Among other reforms, Goldwater-Nichols strengthened the 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, naming him (as opposed to the Joint 

Chiefs as a body) the principal military adviser to the President, clarifying his place in the national chain of command, giving him a Vice 

Chairman and improving the Joint Staff. See Ronald H. Cole et al., The 

Chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Washington: Office of the 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [Joint History Office], 1995), pp. 

25-38. 

26 Commission on National Security/21st Century, Road Map for National Security: Imperative for Change (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 2001), p. 82. 

27 President William J. Clinton, address to the US Intelligence Community, delivered at the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters, 14 

July 1995. 

28 The six panels’ reports were: Commission on the Roles and Missions of the United States Intelligence Community [the Brown-Aspin 

commission], Preparing for the 21st Century: An Appraisal of US Intelligence (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1996); 

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, “IC21: Intelligence 

Community in the 21st Century,” 104th Cong., 2d Sess., 1996; Richard 

N. Haass, Project Director for the Independent Task Force, Making Intelligence Smarter: The Future of US Intelligence (New York: Council 

on Foreign Relations, 1996); Working Group on Intelligence Reform 

[Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt, authors], The Future of US Intelligence (Washington: Consortium for the Study of Intelligence, 1996); the 

Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the Future of US Intelligence 

[Stephen Bosworth, chairman], In From the Cold (New York: Twentieth 

Century Fund Press, 1996), and Georgetown University’s Institute for 

the Study of Diplomacy [John Hollister Hedley, author], Checklist for the 

Future of Intelligence (Washington: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 

1995). 

29 The lone dissenter was the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence’s report, overseen by Georgetown political scientist Roy Godson 

and Harvard historian Ernest May. Its authors concluded: 

. . .the failure of centralization efforts can be seen as reflecting the 

reasonable needs of the various components of the national security 

bureaucracy. In any case, the centralized model was probably better 

suited to the Cold War, with its emphasis on “national” level intelligence about the Soviet strategic nuclear threat, than to the present 

period when departmental, regional, and tactical intelligence requirements have exploded and gained new urgency. [See pp. xiv-xv.]

The Twentieth Century Fund’s report did not discuss the DCI’s responsibilities or the centralization issue, although a “Background Paper” by Allan E. Goodman (bound with the report) implicitly endorsed 

greater powers for the DCI; see p. 78. 

30 Commission on Roles and Missions, Preparing for the 21st Century, 

pp. xix, 51-52. 

31 See Sections 808 and 815 of the Intelligence Authorization Act for 

Fiscal Year 1997; Compilation of Intelligence Laws (1998). 

32 Testimony of Robert Gates on 1 April 1992 at the Joint Hearing, 

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select 

Committee on Intelligence, “S. 2198 and S. 421 to Reorganize the United 

States Intelligence Community,” 102nd Cong., 2nd Sess., 1992, p. 108. 

33 For expressions of official and outside concern, see House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, “IC21: Intelligence Community 

in the 21st Century,” 104th Cong., 2d Sess., 1996, p. 245. See also the 

joint comment by Morton I. Abramowitz and Richard Kerr in Richard 

N. Haass, Project Director for the Independent Task Force, Making Intelligence Smarter: The Future of US Intelligence (New York: Council on 

Foreign Relations, 1996), p. 38. 

34 See Section 1112 of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Act, 

which was passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 

Fiscal Year 1997; Compilation of Intelligence Laws (2000). 

35 Commission on National Security, Road Map for National Security, 

p. 82. 

36 National Commission for the Review of the National Reconnaissance Office, Final Report (Washington: United States Government 

Printing Office, 2000), p. 51. 

37 Commission on Roles and Missions, Preparing for the 21st Century, 

p. 47. 

38 Commission on National Security, Road Map for National Security, 

p. 83. 
Milestones in the Creation of the US Intelligence Community 19

1941

11 July — William Donovan is 

named Coordinator of Information 

(COI), making him responsible for 

coordination of intelligence from the 

Army, Navy, FBI, Department of State, 

and other intelligence-gathering 

entities; jurisdictional battles 

quickly followed.

October — Donovan establishes the COI’s 

New York headquarters in Room 3603 of 

Rockefeller Center (a former British 

MI6 office), and asks Allen Dulles to 

head it. 

1942

13 June — President Franklin D. 

Roosevelt signs a military order 

establishing the Office of Strategic 

Services (OSS) and naming William 

J. Donovan as its Director. Donovan 

remained a civilian until 24 March 

1943, when he was appointed brigadier 

general. He advanced to the rank of 

major general on 10 November 1944.

1944

18 November — William Donovan submits 

“Memorandum for the President” 

to President Truman, suggesting 

continuation of a comprehensive postwar intelligence entity “...which will 

procure intelligence both by overt and 

covert methods and will at the same 

time provide intelligence guidance, 

determine national intelligence 

objectives, and correlate the 

intelligence material collected by all 

government agencies.”1

1945

3 July — US Army Signal Security 

Agency establishes Cryptographic 

Security Board.

15 September — US Army Signal Security 

Agency renamed Army Security Agency 

(ASA).

1 October — President Harry S. Truman’s 

Executive Order 9621 abolishes the OSS 

and transfers its functions to the 

State and War Departments. 
20 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents

1946

22 January — President Truman signs 

an executive order establishing the 

Central Intelligence Group (CIG) to 

operate under the direction of the 

National Intelligence Authority (NIA). 

Truman names the first Director of 

Central Intelligence, Rear Admiral 

Sidney W. Souers, USNR, who is sworn in 

on the following day.

1 August — The Atomic Energy Act 

(McMahon Act) is signed into law, 

making the FBI responsible for 

investigating the backgrounds of 

persons able to access restricted 

nuclear data. 

1947

26 July — President Truman signs the 

National Security Act of 1947 aboard 

the VC-54C presidential aircraft 

Sacred Cow, the first aircraft used for 

the role of Air Force One. 

18 September — The National Security 

Act of 1947 is implemented upon the 

confirmation of James Forrestal as 

first Secretary of Defense. It merges 

the Department of War and Department 

of Navy into the National Military 

Establishment (NME) and establishes a 

Department of the Air Force separate 

from existing Army Air Forces. It also 

creates the National Security Council 

(NSC) and the Central Intelligence 

Agency (CIA) – the first peacetime 

intelligence agency – to replace the 

National Intelligence Authority (NIA) 

and the Central Intelligence Group 

(CIG).

1948

20 October — The Air Force Security 

Group is renamed Air Force Security 

Service.

1949

The Central Intelligence Agency Act 

(also called “Public Law 110”) is 

passed permitting confidential fiscal 

and administrative procedures.

20 May — The Armed Forces Security 

Agency (AFSA) is established.

10 August — The National Security Act 

Amendments of 1949 subordinate the 

three service secretaries to the new 

Secretary of Defense.

20 August — Further National Security 

Act Amendments of 1949 rename the 

National Military Establishment (NME) 

the Department of Defense, and amend 

the duties of the National Security 

Council (NSC) and further, place the 

NSC in the Executive Office of the 

President.

1950

19 July — By directive of President 

Harry S. Truman, the National Security 

Council staff is reorganized to have 

a more representative mix of agencies, 

Congress, and groups.

1952

2 January — Creation of the Directorate 

of Intelligence (DI) at CIA.

1 August — Creation of the Directorate 

of Plans (DP) at CIA.

4 November — The National Security 

Agency (NSA) is established
Milestones in the Creation of the US Intelligence Community 21

1953

2 September - The Operations 

Coordinating Board (OCB) is established 

by EO 10483 as an independent 

agency. It reports to the NSC on the 

development, by appropriate Executive 

branch agencies, of operational plans 

for national security policies.

1955

4 August — President Dwight D. 

Eisenhower signs a bill authorizing 

$46 million for construction of a CIA 

Headquarters Building.

1957

1 July — The Operations Coordinating 

Board (OCB) is incorporated into the 

National Security Council (NSC) by EO 

10700.

1959

3 November — Laying of the cornerstone 

of the CIA Headquarters Building, 

Langley, Virginia.

1960

25 August — The National 

Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is 

established based on a recommendation 

by President Dwight D. Eisenhower 

during a special National Security 

Council meeting. NRO is to coordinate 

the USAF and CIA’s reconnaissance 

activities.

1961

1 January - President Dwight D. 

Eisenhower authorizes creation 

of the National Photographic 

Interpretation Center (NPIC) – a part 

of CIA’s Directorate of Science and 

Technology (DS&T) - combining Central 

Intelligence Agency (CIA), Army, Navy, 

and Air Force assets to solve imagery 

analysis problems. 

1 February — The Operations 

Coordinating Board (OCB) is abolished 

by EO 10920.

1 October — The Defense Intelligence 

Agency (DIA) is born. It was designated 

in 1986 as a Defense Department combat 

support agency, but is made separate 

by Secretary of Defense Robert S. 

McNamara, under President John F. 

Kennedy, through Directive 5105.21.

1963

5 August — The Directorate of Science 

and Technology at CIA is created.

1964

1 December — President Lyndon B. 

Johnson receives the first President’s 

Daily Brief (PDB), supplied by CIA.

1

 From OSS Training in the National Parks and Service Abroad in World War II by John Whiteclay Chambers II, 2008, U.S. National Park Service, 

Washington, D.C., in Chapter 10, is the following: On Donovan’s 18 November 1944 plan for a permanent central intelligence agency, see Richard 

Dunlop, Donovan: America’s Master Spy (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1982), 458-459; Smith, OSS: The Secret History, 363, both of whom claim Roosevelt 

had requested it. But the much more detailed account in Thomas F. Troy, Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1981), 218-222, indicates that the impetus came from Donovan rather than the 

President. Donovan’s first recorded statement of his goal of a permanent OSS is in a question and answer period following a talk to an audience of 

Army officers in Washington in May 1943; he later put such a recommendation in a memorandum to General Eisenhower on 17 September 1943.
22 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents
Selected Intelligence Documents 23
24 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents
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26 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents
Selected Intelligence Documents 27
28 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents
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30 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents
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32 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents
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34 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents
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36 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents
Selected Intelligence Documents 37
38 The Creation of the Intelligence Community: Founding Documents

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