Free The Secret Sentry by Matthew M. Aid Page A

masterstroke was instigating the
creation of an “outside” committee to evaluate and, hopefully, doom AFSA. The committee was headed by George Brownell, a New
York corporate lawyer and a good friend of the CIA’s deputy director, Allen Dulles. The military services were completely
shut out. The only representa -tion on the Brownell Committee the military got was Canine, who held the nominal position of
consul tant but was not a voting member. From the makeup of the committee, senior military officials knew that they were not
going to like what came out of its work. 6
    Rain of Devastation: The Brownell Committee Report
    At ten forty-five a.m. on the morning of Friday, June 13, 1952, President Truman welcomed CIA director Smith and James Lay
Jr., executive secretary of the National Security Council (NSC), into the Oval Office at the White House for a regularly scheduled
meeting. Smith, however, was the bearer of bad tidings. He reached into his briefcase and gave Truman a copy of a 141-page
Top Secret Codeword report on the state of health of the U.S. national SIGINT effort. It was the much-anticipated Brownell
Report on AFSA. 7
    It is clear in reading between the lines of the Brownell Committee’s report that all of the managerial sins of the agency’s
leadership would have been forgiven if AFSA had been producing decent intelligence. But it was not.
    The Brownell Committee called for a complete overhaul and reorganization of AFSA. In effect, Brownell and his fellow committee
members recommended scrapping it in its current form because it was unsalvageable. Instead, they recommended replacing it
with a new unified SIGINT agency that would possess greater authority to operate a modern, centralized global SIGINT effort
on behalf of the U.S. government.
    Not surprisingly, Smith and Secretary of State Dean Acheson enthusiastically endorsed the committee’s recommendations. Secretary
of Defense Robert Lovett also approved the report’s findings. By September 1952, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military
services, under intense pressure from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, reluctantly accepted most of the recommendations.
Throughout October, Canine tried unsuccessfully to negotiate some changes in the wording of a draft directive to be signed
by Truman; that would have given the new agency more power to do its own analysis, but this proposal was summarily shot down.
Canine was told in no uncertain terms that the deal was done and that it was time for him to take his seat and let events
take their course. 8
    The Birth of the National Security Agency
    At ten forty-five a.m. on Friday morning, October 24, 1952, Smith and Lay returned to the White House to meet with Truman
only four months after Smith had given him his copy of the Brownell Report. After the usual handshakes and brief pleasantries,
Lay placed on Truman’s desk a buff file folder with a “Top Secret” cover sheet stapled to its front. Inside the folder was
an eight-page document titled “Communications Intelligence Activities,” which had a tab at the rear indicating where the president’s
signature was required. We do not know what, if anything, was said among the three men. All we know for certain is that Truman
signed the document, and ten minutes later Smith and Lay walked out of the Oval Office with the file folder. Except for Truman,
Smith, and Lay, very few people in Washington knew that the president had just presided over the creation of the National
Security Agency (NSA). 9
    The eight-page directive that Truman had signed made SIGINT a national responsibility and designated the secretary of defense
as the U.S. government’s executive agent for all SIGINT activities, which placed NSA within the ambit of the Defense Department
and outside the jurisdiction of the CIA. Truman gave NSA a degree of power and authority above and beyond that ever given
previously or since to any American intelligence agency, placing it outside the rubric of the