Transcripts For CSPAN3 Origins Of The CIA 20240712 : vimarsa

CSPAN3 Origins Of The CIA July 12, 2024

The u. S. Military command in vietnam, with his retirement from the cia he went to the Georgetown School foreign service. Hes also founding member, and is the author of a new book the foundations of the cia harry truman, and the origins of a cold war. Rick, come on up. Think you all for coming out when you could be at the Christmas Market across the street. I appreciate that. As vince said ive been with the sea i a for going on 50 years. For the last 20 years ive taught intelligence in georgetown. In teaching their at george town ive discovered from participating with the museum that theres a great interest in the cia and the general subject of National Intelligence. Also considerable misunderstanding, suspicion and outright hostile itty about National Intelligence. So one of the reasons that i wrote this book is as a primer to try to explain not to knowledgeable people like yourself or my colleague, but the general public what it is that the Intelligence Community does, and the kinds of functions and capability we have. But also the kinds of challenges we have. So what i wanted to do was, youll forgive me for reading from notes, but my class is two and a half hours long so im used to speaking excessively for two and a half hours and i know known if you want that. Let me read this. This is a simple little book about how the modern u. S. Establishment was created, but also to highlight major intelligence function, by focusing on important themes, episodes, and lessons. I want to emphasize that these are not necessarily lessons that we learned. Or that we remembered. Its also about the men, because the missouri game were all men, who conceived and implemented the vision of International Intelligence service and the face of widespread opposition and multiple near death experiences. The only thing new and the world is history that you dont know. As someone else said its the job to all over again. The theme of repeatedly having to relearn the same lessons over and over again runs from the early days of the oas as right down to the president. Some of the experiences of early see i a officers would seem very familiar to our colleague today. Because im a historian myself, let me step back and remind you that every advance undertakes what deputy state mourner, describes as foreign entity influence. There we have technology in action. 20 mendes, another member of the board has pointed out at some Point Technology will let you down. Remember that. Throughout our history, the u. S. Has repeatedly conducted impressive intelligence drink wartime but then forgotten or upended the discipline in wartime. Thats a scene that goes through the revolution. Anyone that has served in the 19 nineties will remember the cold war peace dividend. Remember that . Weve defeated the soviet union, there is gonna be no more history and we wont have this peace dividend. And for those of us in the business, it means that we went down 25 in budget, 25 in personnel in the 1990s. Just in time for 9 11. The u. S. Was filled with a Great Respect for u. S. Intelligence. George washington can be considered the First National intelligence. But the u. S. Was slow to join the great power, great game. The greek game is called that because its based on a book by richard cabling. A book he wrote in 1901 about afghanistan. So we were a little late to this great game. In fact, the First Permanent Intelligence Agency was the office of Naval Intelligence in 1882. It was created in response to the growing power and reach of the super weapons of the day. These were battleships. First time that foreigners, foreign powers could credibly project power in a way that would really threatened in it in states. In the 18 eighties the United States with the 12 largest in the world, even smaller than brazil. But in 1945 youll notice quite a number of u. S. Naval officers, world war i shows we were an intelligence. Thats a direct quote from eight Intelligence Officer named john allen. There he is. Led by herbert, who did in quest of work. After the First World War, guess what the United States did again . The experience wasnt allowed to go to waste after the war. We faced a global threat in the thirties. By then only a few good practitioners remained as well as a handful of amateurs. I will briefly discuss a number of these characters. Many members of the missouri gang. For more details youll have to read my book, or ask me questions after the presentation. Here we have truman in the middle. We have his military, chief of staff for the commander in chief. We have the first dci, the second, not from missouri. And on the other side we have the first director of the cia. We have leery houston as well who was general counsel, also from the cia. So a good number of these people were in fact from missouri. But the reason why they were called the missouri gang was not a compliment. In kansas city, harry truman during the First World War volunteered military and artillery units that served on the western front. He later became the approval and support of the pendergast machine. First is county executive, mayor of kansas city, and then senator, from missouri. In fact pendergast, kansas city, the dance halls and stuff. He was originally called the senator from pendergast. Richard gee daily, Something Like that. In st. Lewis, very wholesome, carnival in 1904. The son of german american mail carrier earned his commission. He had an outstanding record, then served aboard ship and then staff officer. He taught romance languages, and excelled, for a uniformed officer in paris. Finally, businessmen sydney worked his way up through st. Louis. Getting to know fellow businessman. New york businessmen james forestall, who will shut up later in my story and show up as a naval residents, of all the men in the cia, he had the most actual intelligence experience, left the fewest footprints or record. And i have to tell you, it was very very difficult to find out much about the sky, even though he was the first director of the cia, and really had quite a distinguished career. Now im going to Say Something that is sort of against my interests, but if you look at the cias magazine, from march 2016, available free online. I wrote and article about military education, which is essentially a time when he served in france, and after pearl harbor was a chief in the pacific in 1942, 43. So they had a remarkably wide ranging area, for a gray officer. He served in france during turbulent years during the 30s until 41, the spanish civil war, it was nazi germany and the soviet union used war to practice wargames. Just two years later, the germans turned those practices first on poland and then western europe. It was a time of aggressive nazi expansionism, there for the first more, and in paris when the germans march ten. He exercised and demonstrated all the collection, reporting, analytic, and operational skills of a classic field officer. Here we have a picture of him, that is from his 1920 u. S. Navy academy yearbook. Here is kind of an example of the world he was in. He demonstrated collection reporting and operational skills as a classical field case officer, and in this case what he did was he took april, probe of the german land, here is the german lee burke or, who were building fortification, and heres the new mechanized equipment that the germans were using. He would drive around because he spoke need of german, as well as spanish and french. He would pick up gi soldiers, or libra court guys, hed say im an american, tell me what you guys are up to. He got remarkable reports on fortification, various kinds of military facility that they were building. This was also a period where there were repeated wars here in western europe. Repeated panic. The picture on the left there is people fleeing from paris, not during the actual war be because they got panicked. Finally he serves under the chief naval operations, the commander and chief. The picture on the side is the ambassador to occupy france, and that is his military staff, presenting his credentials to the v she, and the guy next to him, the third to the right Douglas Mcarthur the second. Not mcarthurs son but his nephew. Then you of the lady in the middle. He was in france on the 14th of june when the nazis merged into paris. The ambassadors decided to leave the military, so that they could debrief and try to elicit information from the german governor of paris, the general happened himself to be a military attache in warsaw. So he said to his army, buddy, i understand what attaches do. You are here to gather information. Ask whatever you want. He was asked how are you going to invade england. He said we have it worked out, in six weeks the world will be over, which shows something. Anyway, helen carter transferred back, in november 1941, and his battleship sent out from under him, on december seven. This is west virginia, he was the senior surviving officer on the ship. Now those of you know the spy museum well, may recognize the image of the flag right over there. The museum has an excellent video, which they show called ground troops. Have any of you cnet . Its a fantastic video but unfortunately its not running these days. It basically talks about the importance of intelligence, and how critical it is to national success, and thats the final image on that video. It happens to be the flag of the ship. Its kind of fitting that the spy museum would show an image the dates back to the former director of cia. Then he became part of the disorganized and overwhelmed Intelligence Center. Now this is another one of those things that will happen over and over again. He took over this Intelligence Center in the chaos immediately after pearl harbor. He didnt have enough staff, didnt have the proper kind people, the skills he needed. He was told it was going to be deja vu all over again to the point where he becomes the director of the cia. His predecessors were kicked to the side by eight washington rival trying to shift blame from pearl harbor onto this japanese linguist and cryptography are. Again, another lesson, whatever something goes wrong blame someone else. Ideally, blame someone who is not guilty. My editorial comment. In mid 42, he and his Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean area found itself in a similar crisis to the Central Intelligence group that was inherited in mid 1947 from directors of Central Intelligence, so again, who five years leader he will find himself in a similar pickle. Back in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt had been tried, Strategic National intelligence out of the death for. There wasnt any structural at all. In july 1941, an ambitious aggressive and equally improvisational republican new york lawyer and world war i, William Donovan to be his coordinator of information over the bitter and unrelenting opposition of the fbi and military and Naval Intelligence. This is donovans favorite picture of himself showing him as a world war i hero and congressional medal of honor winner. There he is as director, and here is a 1946 aerial photograph showing youve got the Lincoln Memorial here. Youve got 23rd street. Youve got the potomac river. There is the original headquarters of the uss and cia. This is now the kennedy center. This theme of fraternal hostility runs through the whole story, and of course repeated during the late forties and early 50s, with the foundation of the cia, or for that matter, it is repeated in 2005 with the creation of the director of National Intelligence. If you remember the law net to place when the dni was established in 2005. If intelligence is all about understanding, and i think it is, then the most important function is research and analysis. Coleading, evaluating and waiting weighing fragmentary, ambiguous and contradictory and often deliberately misleading information. It is not just that we dont have the whole picture. It is that our adversaries are sometimes actively trying to mislead us. If you dont believe that that happens today, look at the cover of the Washington Post says tomorrow morning, or maybe today. Says these challenges are shared by historians, journalists and Intelligence Officers, and im both historian and an Intelligence Officer, so i can tell you, these are major challenges. Two of these Intelligence Officers were ivy league historians, who essentially invented the discipline of National Strategic analysis. And the cias analytic college today is named from sherman kent. The oasis and cia are almost unique, and this is true still today, are almost unique in putting scholars and analysis at the center of the intelligence process. Still, thrown into a global war, donovan naturally followed the british model espionage, which the oasis called the secret intelligence and covert action, which the british called, and we called, special operations. Covert action, as you know, ranges from influence operations to propaganda, sabotage, working with allies and liaison, all the way to rallying indigenous resistance and supporting military operations. Here, we have a couple of examples of that. This is the first time we see women in the picture, by the way. Donovan also encouraged the development of enabling technology and spy gear. The picture in the middle is a jet burke team just about to parachute into occupied france. On the far side, you have virginia hall. The picture of the third one over there, is the portrait of virginia all, which hangs in the cia today. Donovan awarding her the distinguished service medal. How we got here is thanks to world war ii. The United States emerged as the only an wounded global superpower. Every other great nation was grievously crippled by the second world war, but we came through remarkably unscathed. Thanks to donovan, during the war, the u. S. Created a unique intelligence framework. By unique, i mean they combine not only espionage and direct action, covert operations and things of that sort, but also analysis. The only other service in the world that does that is the german be andy. The reason they do was because they were created by the cia and followed the oasis and cia model. The war also gave us for senator, then Vice President and finally president harry truman, who unlike roosevelt, was organized, systematic, history minded, and fact oriented. Finally, the war left us facing the Nuclear Cold War against an aggressive expansionist soviet union, and gave us Harry Trumans missouri gang to create a new National Security framework, including, among other things, the cia. Here we have practically the first time truman and roosevelt ever met each other, and that was just after truman had been named roosevelts Vice President ial running mate in 1944. Everybody knew roosevelt was essentially mortally ill, and was not going to survive says the fourth term. And so truman was chosen as a compromised running mate for roosevelt, says the because unlike when dull wilkie, he was not in northeastern liberal, and unlike senator jimmy burn, he was not a segregationist. He was a solid, midwestern you dealer. By the way, hes only two years younger than roosevelt. He is 60 and that picture, and roosevelt is 62. The next picture, april 12th, 1945, he is being sworn in. As with hill in qatar and the u. S. Navy after pearl harbor, truman in april 1945, had no time to find his footing before he was pushed on to the global stage to face with Winston Churchill and joseph stalin. Hes also facing the decision to deploy the atomic bomb against japan. This is july 1945 and as you know the next month he decided to drop the atomic bomb. That was the casablanca summit in 1943. Europe was seen as the central focus to the global war and the division of post war europe that had already been at you all touches before roosevelt died. There was not any question anymore that the russians were going to get all of eastern europe. Iowa says chief allen, there in the middle, was appointed to run with says germany and many oasis officers were shipped into the far east where the war was still going on. In the picture on the right, you see on his right is another future director of the cia, richard healths. At the end of the war and september of 1945 the u. S. Served as the only nuclear arms global superpower and the uss was almost a global servant with broad strategic and tactical intelligence function and capabilities. Here you have all the hosts always says offices in western europe, and north africa, and there you have them all in Southeast Asia. This is in the end of 1944 early 1945. You notice there is no presence in latin america. And that is another reason, because of all the rivalries, the fbi exercised exclusive control over activities in latin america. The uss never got in there. Unfortunately, the oasis was also a temporary wartime agency, which by law, had to be immediately disbanded at the end of the war. As it was, within three weeks of the formal japanese surrender at tokyo bay. So three weeks after the japanese surrendered, the oasis was abolished. Basically, this whole infrastructure and most of the 13,000 to 14,000 members of the uss were suddenly, out of jobs. Almost immediately thereafter, almost the entire active duty army and navy were also abolished. We went from 16 million men in th

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