Central Intelligence Group

Last updated
Central Intelligence Group
Agency overview
Formed22 January 1946 (1946-01-22)
Preceding agencies
Dissolved18 September 1947 (1947-09-18)
Superseding agency
Agency executives
Parent department National Intelligence Authority
Child agency
  • Intelligence Advisory Board

The Central Intelligence Group (CIG) was the direct successor to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and the Strategic Services Unit (SSU), and the direct predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). [1] The official duties of CIG are quoted by Assistant Executive Director Shields:

Contents

The Central Intelligence Group is a recently created interdepartmental organization in which the State, War, Navy, and sometimes other departments participate. It coordinates all activities of the Government involved in obtaining and analyzing information about foreign countries which this country needs for its national security. It also furnishes interdepartmental analyses of this type of information or use by Government officials. [2]

The supervising authority of the CIG was the National Intelligence Authority. [3]

History

With the official end of World War II, newly elected President Truman and members of the US Congress decided to officially dissolve the vast intelligence agency of the OSS. [4] The OSS had been specifically a wartime organization, and the war was over. [5] [6] The assumption by many in the government during the war was that upon the conclusion of hostilities, the United States would immediately terminate any hegemony it had fostered in global intelligence gathering. [7]

President Truman and Sidney Souers. Photograph of President Truman in the Oval Office presenting the Distinguished Service Medal to Rear Admiral Sidney... - NARA - 200402.jpg
President Truman and Sidney Souers.

CIG formally came into being with Directive 1181/5, the President's directive of 22 January 1946, wherein the President authorized CIG to: "...perform for the benefit of said intelligence agencies, such services of common concern as the National Intelligence Authority determines can be more efficiently accomplished centrally." [4] [8]

Members of the Bureau of the Budget and the Department of Justice were not satisfied with the legality of a group being established by a Presidential Directive without any accompanying Executive Order, but following discussions resulted in satisfaction of all parties by 23 May 1946. [7] For the entirety of its short existence, the CIG was enumerated in law only by the Presidential Directive, until such time that the United States Congress created the CIA. [7]

The activation ceremony of this intelligence agency two days later, on 24 January 1946, involved the President of the United States of America, Harry Truman, calling Rear Admiral Sidney Souers and Fleet Admiral Willian D. Leahy to the White House, and presenting them both with black cloaks, black hats, and wooden daggers, before reading aloud the Presidential directive outlining their new duties. [4] The playful attitude of the President in standing up the CIG indicated the Administration's desire that US intelligence remain small during peacetime, and not become again a behemoth agency like it had been during the war. [4] Souers and Truman agreed at this stage that CIG should be a small group, composed of members assigned by the military Departments, and to be operated as a cooperative interdepartmental activity. [7]

Admiral Souers immediately showed that his approach to running an intelligence community was different than the practice of his predecessor, Wild Bill Donovan. [7] Donovan had believed that the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) should have as much power as a Cabinet Secretary, but Souers believed that the DCI should be subservient to them. [7] Souers believed that the CIG should be fostered under the leadership of the Secretaries, under both the President and the National Intelligence Authority, and also understood that the military Chiefs were not comfortable with an intelligence community that could become more powerful than they were. [7]

Souers understood that if the DCI were as powerful as a Secretary, they would constantly have to battle with the Cabinet in order to gain the President's ascent for memoranda and directives. [7] Further, having such power would also mean that the DCI would constantly be battling a secret war of politics at home, in addition to the real wars they would have to wage abroad. [7]

Souers' mandate was "that the CIG should bring all intelligence activities into cooperation and harmony..." [7] This involved the creation of the Intelligence Advisory Board, which was to be composed of four permanent members (the intelligence chiefs of the Departments of State, War, Navy, and the Air Force), and representatives from other agencies at the Director's invitation. [7]

Souers initially wanted to create Ad Hoc committees for the study of specific areas, but organizing them proved difficult, so he instead assigned these duties to the Central Planning Staff, which was managed by William B. Goggins. [7]

Organizational structure

Source: [9]

Office of Special Operations (OSO)

On September 20, 1945, President Truman signed Executive Order 9621, terminating the OSS. [10] Potentially due to an administrative error, the order only allowed the agency ten days to close. [11] Wild Bill Donovan is noted as having "exploded" upon the news that he only had two weeks to dissolve the OSS, and pressured the government to maintain some of the organization's strategic structures. [4]

The War Department took over the Secret Intelligence (SI) and Counter-Espionage (X-2) Branches, which were then housed in the new Strategic Services Unit (SSU). Brigadier General John Magruder (formerly Donovan's Deputy Director for Intelligence in OSS) became the new SSU director. He oversaw the liquidation of the OSS and managed the institutional preservation of its clandestine intelligence capability. [12]

On July 11, 1946, at the behest of Louis Fortier and John Magruder, the National Intelligence Authority (NIA) authorized Souers to create within the structure of CIG a new office which would absorb personnel and functions from the Strategic Services Unit. [13] The new office at CIG which would absorb those duties of the SSU, thereby consolidating U.S. clandestine intelligence activities under a unified command, would be called the Office of Special Operations (OSO). [13] This reorganization aimed to create a professional and secure clandestine service, setting the foundation for future CIA operations. [13]

The Assistant Director for the Office of Special Operations (ADSO) became Donald H. Galloway. [13]

References

  1. ↑ "History of CIA - CIA". www.cia.gov. Retrieved 2024-06-25.
  2. ↑ Edwards, Sheffield. "Memorandum to Chief of Naval Intelligence" (PDF). NCISA History Project.
  3. ↑ "Historical Intelligence Documents: From COI to CIG - CSI". www.cia.gov. Retrieved 2024-07-07.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Michael, Warner (1995). "The Creation of the Central Intelligence Group" (PDF). Studies in Intelligence. 39: 111–120. Retrieved 2024-06-25.
  5. ↑ Lee Ferran. "Before the CIA, There Was the "Cloak and Dagger Group of Snoopers"". InsideHook. Retrieved 2024-07-07.
  6. ↑ "Ask Molly: The National Security Act of 1947 - CIA". www.cia.gov. Retrieved 2024-07-07.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Darling, Arthur B. (December 1953). "Chapter III: The Central Intelligence Group Beginnings Under Souers". catalog.archives.gov. THE DCI HISTORICAL SERIES. The Central Intelligence Agency, An Instrument of Government to 1950. CIA Historical Staff. Retrieved 2025-02-04.
  8. ↑ "Directive on Coordination of Foreign Intelligence Activities | The American Presidency Project". www.presidency.ucsb.edu. Retrieved 2024-06-25.
  9. ↑ Vandenberg, Hoit S. "ORGANIZATION CHART FOR CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE GROUP" (PDF).
  10. ↑ "Executive Order 9621—Termination of the Office of Strategic Services and Disposition of Its Functions". September 20, 1945 – via The American Presidency Project.
  11. ↑ Huw, Dylan (2020-04-30). CIA and the Pursuit of Security: History, Documents and Contexts. Edinburgh University Press. p. 10. ISBN   978-1474428873.
  12. ↑ George C. Chalou, ed. The Secret War (1992), pp 95-97.
  13. 1 2 3 4 "THE FOUNDING OF THE OFFICE OF SPECIAL OPERATIONS | CIA FOIA (foia.cia.gov)". www.cia.gov. Retrieved 2025-02-06.
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