Creating the Secret State: The Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943-1947

Abstract

Aside from the post office, the only federal department that has a fable of origin is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The company's Ben Franklin was William J. Donovan, who spoke prophetically in the 1930s of a global intelligence service warning America of approaching dangers. The attack on Pearl Harbor was Donovan's vindication, and for four audacious years his vision of one big spy ag ency was put into action as the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). With the coming of peace, the legend holds, complacency, civil libertarians, and bean counters gained the upper hand, and centralized intelligence disappeared until a new threat proved Donovan right a second time. The story inculcates the agency's institutional conceits: that it is the country's “first line of defense” and that its work will always be unappreciated and misunderstood, particularly in Washington. David F. Rudgers sets out to debunk this founding myth by torpedoing Donovan's reputation as a lone visionary, but along the way he reveals the promise “intelligence” once held for national leaders. Between the world wars, staff officers, diplomats, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conceived of a stratum of information—known as “finished intelligence” or “national policy intelligence”—above subjectivity, party, or institutional interest, an agreedupon set of facts that would allow overlapping bureaucracies to coordinate decisions. After 1942, technology gave the call for this kind of information extra urgency. Military planners anticipated that the next Pearl Harbor would be inflicted by robot bombs striking cities with biological weapons or poison gas. These are the asymmetrical threats President George W. Bush wants to counter with a national missile defense, but in the 1940s the social sciences offered an alternative: a global intelligence system capable of discerning the intentions of potential adversaries.