The Foundation of the CIA: Harry Truman, The Missouri Gang, and the Origins of the Cold War

by Richard E. Schroeder

This highly accessible book provides new material and a fresh perspective on American National Intelligence practice, focusing on the first fifty years of the twentieth century, when the United States took on the responsibilities of a global superpower during the first years of the Cold War. Late to the art of intelligence, the United States during World War II created a new model of combining intelligence collection and analytic functions into a single organization—the OSS. At the end of the war, President Harry Truman and a small group of advisors developed a new, centralized agency directly subordinate to and responsible to the President, despite entrenched institutional resistance. Instrumental to the creation of the CIA was a group known colloquially as the “Missouri Gang,” which included not only President Truman but equally determined fellow Missourians Clark Clifford, Sidney Souers, and Roscoe Hillenkoetter.

Genres: History, Politics

186 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 2017

Reviews

[Jerome Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A readable history of the Agency’s origins, formation, and early years.

The narrative flows well. Schroeder doesn’t provide much new material, and mostly summarizes other scholarship, but he is more appreciative of Souers and Hillenkoetter than historians tend to be. Schroeder emphasizes the Missourians involved in these events, such as Truman and especially Hillenkoetter, and the monumental tasks Hillenkoetter was assigned as the first director, as well as his struggles to forge a working relationship with the military. Schroeder ably covers the struggles between the military branches and government departments over both OSS and CIA, and the big and small decisions that shaped the intelligence community.

There aren’t too many problems with the book, although the narrative can jump back and forth a bit, and Truman himself is absent early on in the book. Schroder’s treatment of Cold War developments is a bit one-sided; he often writes of the communist world pursuing its interests, and the US as basically just acting defensively. There isn’t much coverage, for example, of Soviet interests, tensions over America’s monopoly on The Bomb, of the Soviet’s circumspect attitudes to some Cold War crises (Greece, Turkey, or Iran, for example). Much of the book also deals with World War II and the Cold War. Also, Schroeder sometimes seems more interested in the lives of the people he covers than in analysis. Also, he writes that Kim Philby was the main reason behind the failure of the CIA’s covert action in Albania, which seems overly simplistic.

There are also a few errors here and there. In a section on World War II codebreaking, Schroeder refers to JN-25 as “MAGIC,” writing, for example, that MAGIC intercepts helped the US ambush and kill Admiral Yamamoto. When describing the liberation of Paris Schroeder refers to the OSS’s David Bruce and “his new OSS officer Ernest Hemingway.” Hemingway met Bruce as a war correspondent, and it seems like he worked with the French Resistance as some sort of guide, but was he a formal member of OSS? He also writes that Claude Dansey, assistant chief of SIS, doubted the authenticity of Fritz Kolbe’s stolen documents. This assertion isn’t new; it was written about before the secrets of ULTRA were declassified. Dansey’s real concern was that, if the Germans caught Kolbe, they would take the precaution of changing their cipher systems. Dansey thought contact with Kolbe was unnecessary and wouldn’t turn up anything they weren’t getting from ULTRA.

Still, a well-researched and well-written work.

[gargamelscat · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short book (~140 pages) that doesn't really start on its topic until half way through and then gives a very high level overview of the circumstances surrounding the formation.

Handsomely produced and an easy and pleasant read with many photographs it is not deep enough for anyone with an historical interest in the Cold War beginnings of the national security state and the ensuing bureaucratic turf wars.

The copious footnotes and bibliography do point the way to more meaty fare though.

[Davy Bennett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yet again, I see no reviews.
I think that little CIA that Harry Truman created conspired to kill one of his succesors,, namely JFK.
It didn't really answer to the President after all.
Would Dewey have done it differently?
If so, maybe the Truman win wasn't so good.
Eisenhower, on his way out after serving 8 years warned us of these dark powers that were lurking.
They are still there.
I'd like to read this book, I don't have all the answers. I've read in many places that Kennedy wanted to shatter the CIA into a 1000 pieces.
Are Snowden and Assange good guys?
Is there hope?

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, but not entertainment if that’s what you want. It seemed to end a bit abruptly too.

[Grant Knuckles · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Sadly, those concerns that Truman expressed in that op-ed — that he had inadvertently helped create a Frankenstein monster — are as valid today as they were 50 years ago, if not more so.'

[Mills College Library]

327.1273 S3818 2017