Sources and Declassification

This third volume in CIAs Cold War Records series provides an over

view of the Agencys early development by presenting some key docu

mentsespecially those that received the Presidents personal attention

that guided its formation and work during the Truman administration. In

selecting CIA-related documents from the Truman years, we have sought

to balance considerations of novelty, space, and relevance. In recent years

CIA has declassified many of its early records. Although a few of this

volumes early documents have been published in other works, most of

its previously declassified documents were either released to individual

researchers under Freedom of Information Act requests or transferred

without publication to the National Archives under the auspices of the

Agencys Historical Review Program. The newly declassified records are

variegated, although most of them were created within CIA, usually for

internal distribution. They range from memorandums for the record sum

marizing sehior officials policy debates to working-level reports and

communications; the former show how the CIA supported the Truman

administrations foreign policies, while the latter offer insight into the

Agencys day-to-day workings.

We should add that since 1985 the CIA History Staff has actively helped

the Historians Office of the Department of State compile two supplemen

tary volumes on Intelligence and United States Foreign Policy, 1945

1950 for the Foreign Relations of the United States series. These two

volumes (one a microfiche companion volume) will include almost 1,300

documents from State, CIA, the NSC, and elsewhere, which were still

classified when the Foreign Relations volumes for this immediate post

war period were published some years ago. These forthcoming supple

mentary Foreign Relations volumes, which the Department of State

expects to publish within the next year, will include about 20 docu

mentsmainly from the 1945-47 periodthat we reproduce in this

present work.

Are there any surprises in this volumes newly declassified records?

Some, perhaps, although most of them will no doubt confirm long-held

views of the Agencys early years, such as its turf wars, its drift under

Admiral Hillenkoetter, its resurgence under Walter Bedell Smith, and the

anti-Communist activism of Frank Wisners Office of Policy Coordina

tion. Some documents also add to the relatively scarce evidence on such

developments as the OSO-OPC rivalry, the policy guidance CIA got for

covert operations, and the voracious White House appetite for CIA intel

ligence analyses of all sorts.

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The documents have been organized in three generally chronological sec

tions. Part I, covering the two years between the dissolution of the war

time Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in October 1945 to the

establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency in September 1947,

shows the bureaucratic and policy debates surrounding the birth and

growth of the interdepartmental Central Intelligence Group (CIG). These

early documents, most of which have been declassified for some time,

help explain how CIG developed into the new statutory CIA. Part II, cov

ering the three years from CIAs September 1947 founding to General

Smiths arrival as DCI in October 1950, chronicles Hillenkoetters rud

derless Agency and Frank Wisners activist OPC and describes the early

analysis that CIA provided to the White House. Part III, from mid-1950

to the end of 1952, focuses on new forms of intelligence analysis and

covert action while detailing the genesis and consequences of DCI

Smiths reforms.

This volume also includes a glossary of abbreviations, brief identifica

tions of persons mentioned in the documents, and a chronology of events

in the almost eight years of President Trumans administration. A few of

the newly declassified documents have had some words or passages

deleted to protect intelligence sources and methodsin bureaucratic jar

gon, they have been sanitized. Limitations in space have led us to print

other documents (clearly noted as excerpts) only in part. In shortening

documents for publication, we have tried to excise only such sections as

appendixes that are not essential to understanding the thrust of the docu

ment. In any event, these newly declassified records, including those por

tions omitted for space reasons in this volume, will be transferred to the

National Archives and opened for research.

The documents we have reproduced in this volume vary greatly in their

physical condition. Some are typed or printed originals, but others we

have found only in faint carbon, Mimeograph, or Ditto copies of the time,

or in Thermofax or photocopies made later on.71 When we have been

unable to find a signed original copy, we have searched for a clean, con

temporary carbon, or a typed true copya common practice in those pre

photocopy days. Sometimes, however, we have only a poor copy to work

with, and its reproduction in this volume is barely legible. For a few doc

uments, for want of the original in any form, we have reproduced a typed

transcription prepared in the early I 950s for Dr. Arthur B. Darling, the

CIAs first historian. When we reproduce a document that is not a signed

original, the caption at its head will describe the nature of the copy we

have used.

71 Mimeograph, Ditto, and Thermofax are registered trade marks.

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