Free The Craft of Intelligence by Allen W. Dulles Page A

Patch of the Seventh Army during the invasion of Southern France and Germany. In those days, in the summer and autumn of 1944, I used to meet secretly with Quinn at points in liberated France near the northern Swiss border and supply him with all the military intelligence I could gather on Nazi troop movements and plans as Hitler’s forces retreated toward the mountain “redoubt” of Southern Germany and Austria. Rear Admiral Samuel B. Frankel, the Chief of Staff, likewise an experienced intelligence officer, made a special contribution to the work of the United States Intelligence Board (USIB) during the years when I served it as chairman. DIA was not a merger of the intelligence branches of the armed services, but primarily an attempt to achieve maximum coordination and efficiency in the intelligence processes of the three services. On February 1, 1964, the Department of Defense issued a comprehensive directive establishing intelligence career programs to create a broad professional base of trained and experienced intelligence officers.
    Thus, in contrast to our custom in the past of letting the intelligence function die when the war was over, it has been allowed to grow to meet the ever-widening and more complex responsibilities of the time. The formation of such agencies as the DIA, like the earlier creation of CIA itself, is the result of studied effort to give intelligence its proper stature in our national security structure. There is, of course, always the possibility that two such powerful and well-financed agencies as CIA and DIA will become rivals and competitors. There is obviously also room here for an expansion of traditional Army ambitions to run a full-fledged and independent covert collection service of its own, which is hardly justifiable under present circumstances. It could also be both expensive and dangerous. A clear definition of functions is always a requisite. In broad outlines, this already exists. Furthermore, the high caliber of the officers, military and civilian, directing the two agencies, if maintained, should guarantee effective performance, but it is vital to protect the authority of the Director of Central Intelligence to coordinate the work of foreign intelligence, under the President, and to see to the preparation of our National Intelligence estimates, which I shall describe in detail later.
     

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    America’s Intelligence Requirements
    Intelligence is probably the least understood and the most misrepresented of the professions. One reason for this was well expressed by President Kennedy when, on November 28, 1961, he came out to inaugurate the new CIA Headquarters Building and to say good-bye to me as Director. He then remarked: “Your successes are unheralded, your failures are trumpeted.” For obviously you cannot tell of operations that go along well. Those that go badly generally speak for themselves.
    The President then added a word of encouragement to the several thousand men and women of CIA:
    . . . but I am sure you realize how important is your work, how essential it is—and in the long sweep of history how significant your efforts will be judged. So I do want to express my appreciation to you now, and I am confident that in the future you will continue to merit the appreciation of our country, as you have in the past.
    It is hardly reasonable to expect proper understanding and support for intelligence work in this country if it is only the insiders, a few people within the executive and legislative branches, who know anything whatever about the CIA. Others continue to draw their knowledge from the so-called inside stories by writers who have never been on the inside.
    There are, of course, sound reasons for not divulging intelligence secrets. It is well to remember that what is told to the public also gets to the enemy. However, the discipline and techniques—what we call the tradecraft of intelligence—are widely known in the profession, whatever the nationality of the