Free The Craft of Intelligence by Allen W. Dulles

William Leahy became the President’s designee), should constitute themselves as the National Intelligence Authority. This was to supervise the new intelligence organization which was placed under a director of central intelligence. Admiral Souers was appointed the first head of the new agency, known as the Central Intelligence Group (CIG). He resigned six months later, but continued as an adviser to his successor, General Hoyt Vandenberg.
    Later, President Truman, using his directive of January 22 and the experience gained through the operations of the CIG, approved the legislation creating the Central Intelligence Agency and included it in the National Security Act of 1947.
    Under the Act, the Central Intelligence Agency was placed under the direction of the National Security Council, which is composed of the President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and other primary Presidential advisers in the field of foreign affairs. Interestingly enough, CIA is the sole agency of government which as a matter of law is under the National Security Council, whose function is solely to advise the President. Thus there was firmly established the principle of control of intelligence at the White House level, which President Truman had developed in creating the National Intelligence Authority.
    The CIA was not patterned wholly either on the OSS or on the structural plan of earlier or contemporary intelligence organizations of other countries. Its broad scheme was in a sense unique in that it combined under one leadership the overt task of intelligence analysis and coordination with the work of secret intelligence operations of the various types I shall describe. Also, the new organization was intended to fill the gaps in our existing intelligence structure without displacing or interfering with other existing U.S. intelligence units in the Departments of State and Defense. At the same time, it was recognized that the State Department, heretofore largely dependent for its information on the reports from diplomatic establishments abroad, and the components of the Defense Department, relying mainly on attachés and other military personnel abroad, could not be expected to collect intelligence on all those parts of the world that were becoming increasingly difficult of access nor to groom a standing force of trained intelligence officers. For this reason, CIA was given the mandate to develop its own secret collection arm, which was to be quite distinct from that part of the organization that had been set up to assemble and evaluate intelligence from all parts of the government.
    One of the unique features of CIA was that its evaluation and coordinating side was to treat the intelligence produced by its clandestine arm in the same fashion that information from other government agencies was treated. Another feature of the CIA’s structure, which did not come about all at once but was the result of gradual mergers which experience showed to be practical and efficient, was the incorporation of all clandestine activities under one roof and one management. Traditionally, intelligence services have kept espionage and counterespionage in separate compartments and all activities belonging in the category of political of psychological warfare in still another compartment. CIA abandoned this kind of compartmentalization, which so often leads to neither the right hand nor the left knowing what the other is doing.
    The most recent development in American intelligence has been a unification of the management of the various intelligence branches of the armed forces. In August, 1961, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was established under a directive issued by the Department of Defense. An outstanding Air Force officer, Lieutenant General Joseph F. Carroll, was named as its first director. His first deputy director, Lieutenant General William W. Quinn, and I worked closely together when Quinn was the very able G-2 to General Alexander M.