CIA Origins

[Anthony Frank]

The vast corruption in the CIA, besides being made possible by a corrupt and unconstitutional government, is a direct result of the incredible secrecy with which the CIA is able to operate. President Truman’s top advisors warned him about potential problems when the CIA was created in 1947, but they obviously did not foresee problems like massive infiltration, renegade CIA officers, killing Members of Congress, and terrorist attacks on the United States.

The Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 marked the beginning of the Government losing control of the CIA. The New York Times articles from 1949 clearly show that the United States Congress didn’t even know what was in the 1949 legislation, legislation which also provided for the President’s National Security Council to broadly expand the power and authority that the CIA would operate under in the future.

Not much was said when the CIA was first created under the National Security Act in July 1947. The main focus was on the newly created Department of Defense which replaced the Department of War, and on the newly created National Security Council, both of which were created under the National Security Act. The CIA simply took the place of the Central Intelligence Group, which Truman had created as a successor to the OSS under an executive order in January 1946.

Two years after the National Security Act was passed, Congress passed the Central Intelligence Agency Act, which made the CIA a much more powerful entity.

On March 4, 1949, “The House Rules Committee cleared a super-secret measure legalizing the work of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

The New York Times article said the work of the CIA had been “accomplished under executive order,” even though it was an act of Congress that created the CIA. It said that “the super-secret measure gives legal backing to the work of the Central Intelligence Agency . . . Members of the Armed Services Committee have said that the spy bill is so vital and so confidential that almost nothing can be told of its aims.”

On March 6, 1949, Representative Clarence Brown, a member of the Rules Committee, said that “he was ‘confident’ that Congress would not put through secret legislation to hurt the nation, but only for its benefit . . . without much explanation, the measure gives the CIA authority to hire secretly and spend money freely, and without strings, in carrying on its activities.”

On March 7, 1949, “In an atmosphere of defense secrecy,” the House approved the bill 348 to 4. “The vote was taken with the Members generally knowing little about how new authority proposed for the Central Intelligence Agency would be used.”

The Armed Services Committee “bluntly” told the House “that this program could not be discussed openly . . . House rules were suspended to take up the bill under conditions permitting no amendments and requiring a two thirds vote for passage. Members yielded readily. Few questions were asked.”

Debate was “limited to twenty minutes for and twenty minutes against” the measure that took just four days to get from the House Rules Committee to passage.

The Senate unanimously passed the bill that would “maintain the utmost in secrecy for all aspects of the Central Intelligence Agency, including all of its activities, personnel and expenditures . . . The measure was described by its principal sponsor, Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland, as granting to the agency a degree of secrecy for its operations, even from Congress, that had no parallel in peacetime.”

“The bill gives immunity to the CIA from every ordinary form of Congressional supervision and restraint . . . It authorizes the agency’s director to disburse the money ‘made available’ to him ‘without regard to the provisions of law and regulations relating to the expenditures of government funds.’”

“The measure lets the Central Intelligence Agency do its hiring and spending in a secrecy not allowed to other Government agencies . . . and authorizes the Central Intelligence Agency to assign its agents to schools, industrial organizations, labor unions, and other groups in this country,” supposedly “for training.”

“The House and Senate Armed Services Committee both held secret hearings on the bill and told Members of Congress that full details could not be discussed in debate.”

On June 20, 1949, “President Truman signed a bill setting up statutory operating authority for the super-secret Central Intelligence Agency.”

This would have to mean that for some reason, the National Security Act of 1947 that was signed into law by President Truman wasn’t really a law. “Statutory operating authority” is obviously the excuse for the new legislation as Congress began to relinquish control while setting the stage for the CIA to take control.

(Truman was willing to supplant the Constitution and rule by decree during the Korean War. During that war, he seized the country’s steel mills to prevent a “crippling strike.” When the steel companies sued to get their plants back, Government lawyers claimed that the President had inherent power under the Constitution to prevent a catastrophe. The Government counsel utimately said “that the Constitution gave only limited specified power to Congress and the courts, but gave the President ‘all the executive powers.’” The judge rejected the claim of unrestricted executive power and ordered the steel mills returned to their owners.)

(It should also be noted that two years before he created the powerful CIA to fight the cold war, Truman dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to end WW II.)

On July 19, 1953, the New York Times reported that President Harry Truman had given pardons to two CIA officers in 1952. It began when the two agents reported information from a Seattle travel agent that Professor Owen Lattimore, a target of Senator McCarthy’s investigations, was planning to go to Russia. The FBI investigated, found no evidence of it, and the CIA reported it had additional information verifying its original report. The FBI interviewed the travel agent, investigated further and still didn’t find anything. The travel agent was indicted on two counts of giving false information to Federal Agencies. The two CIA agents refused to testify and the travel agent was acquitted, but the two CIA agents were subsequently held in contempt and sentenced to fifteen days in jail. While their appeal was pending, President Truman pardoned them.

The New York Times stated in 1953: “By his pardon, President Truman took cognizance of the CIA position that it should not be made to talk about its activities.”

In 1973, the New York Times reported that President Truman’s Secretary of State, former General George C. Marshall, “the top American military leader” during World War II, wrote a memorandum to Truman on February 7, 1947, stating: “The powers of the proposed agency seem almost unlimited and need clarification.”

This was five months before the CIA was created as part of the National Security Act that Truman signed into law in July 1947, and the article said that General Marshall told Truman “that he had severe doubts about plans to create the Central Intelligence Agency.”

The New York Times reported in 1970 that “Dean Acheson says he advised President Truman when the CIA was created that neither the President, the National Security Council, ‘nor anyone else would be in a position to know what it was doing or to control it.’” Dean Acheson was Undersecretary of State in 1947 and was appointed by Truman to the position of Secretary of State in 1949.

A New York Times article about the CIA in April 1966 stated that among the duties given to the CIA were: “To perform for the existing intelligence agencies ‘such additional services of common concern as the National Security Council determines can be more efficiently accomplished centrally,’ and to perform ‘such other functions and duties related to intelligence’ as the security council would direct.”

This was in addition to the CIA’s duty “to advise the National Security Council” and “to make recommendations.”

“Congress also directed that the CIA Director should be responsible for guarding secrets,” which would mean that the CIA would do who knows what, while “guarding secrets,” including the secrets of criminal activity and corruption that took root and continued to grow.

“In 1949, the agency’s cloak of secrecy was firmly buttoned up against inquiry by the standing committees of Congress. In the Central Intelligence Agency Act, Congress allowed the agency to disregard laws that required ‘disclosure of the organization, functions, names, official titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed by the agency.’”

The article in April 1966 also said that the legislation of 1947 and 1949 is “not the only basis for the agency’s operations. Under that legislation, the National Security Council is permitted to issue directives to the CIA Director, and it is under such secret directives, often proposed by the Director himself, that the agency engages in many of its activities.”

Ten months after the 1966 article, a large-scale domestic operation of the CIA was exposed, but officially the operation was simply “a national policy established by the National Security Council” in the early 1950s.

The New York Times disclosed in February 1967 that the CIA had been channeling millions of dollars to a wide spectrum of student, legal, journalist, academic, research, and labor organizations, by using foundations identified as conduits of Central Intelligence Agency funds, and the Times stated it had been taking place since the 1950s. Among the organizations were the National Student Association, the American Fund for Free Jurists of New York, the National Education Association, the Institute of Public Administration of New York, the American Newspaper Guild, and the Retail Clerks International Association of Washington.

President Johnson appointed a three-man committee to deal with it. The chairman was Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach and it also included CIA Director Richard Helms. Less than two weeks after it was established it issued a report stating:

“When the Central Intelligence Agency lent financial support to the work of certain American private organizations, it did not act on its own initiative but in accordance with National policies established by the National Security Council in 1952 through 1954.” (National policies? For the CIA? Established over a 3-year period?)

It’s obvious that the CIA can decide to do what it wants to do and how it wants to do it, with the only possible roadblock being the National Security Council saying, “No, you can’t do that,” the National Security Council that the CIA advises and makes recommendations to, the National Security Council that can decide “such other functions and duties” the CIA shall perform, and the “additional services” the CIA shall perform for existing intelligence agencies. It’s all secret and the Director is “responsible for guarding secrets.”

The New York Times, in fact, reported on December 22, 1974, “The legislation setting up the CIA makes the Director ‘responsible for protecting intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure.’”

It stands to reason that if the CIA was intent on doing something objectionable, the Director could simply refrain from proposing it as a directive to the National Security Council, not to mention the fact that any given number of CIA officials could do as they please.

Allen Dulles, who had been CIA Director from 1953 through 1961, wrote a book called The Craft of Intelligence, in which he stated, “Espionage is not tainted with any legality,” which clearly means the CIA can break any law they want to.

Truman’s successor, President Eisenhower, who had appointed Allen Dulles to be CIA Director, didn’t express his views on espionage, but he made his views on “legality” known in 1964.

A UPI story covering the Republican convention in 1964 said that Eisenhower stated “that he believes any law passed by Congress should be assumed to be constitutional until the Supreme Court rules otherwise.” Prior to that, Eisenhower had responded to a convention reporter’s question about the constitutionality of the civil rights law by saying, “I wouldn’t know about that.”

By elaborating and putting forth the assumed constitutionality of all laws, Eisenhower effectually said that nothing is tainted with “legality” unless the Supreme Court decides it is, and since the American public didn’t know the laws governing the CIA (even the Members of Congress who passed them in 1949 didn’t know what they were), no one could challenge the constitutionality of those laws.

Eisenhower made his statement about all laws being assumed constitutional on the same day that a suit was filed against Senator Barry Goldwater for openly violating the Constitution by simultaneously holding office in the Air Force Reserve while he was a member of the United States Senate. Article I, section 6, of the Constitution states: “No Person Holding any Office under the United States shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.” (President Eisenhower had nominated Goldwater to be promoted to Brigadier General in 1959 and the entire Senate voted on his confirmation. Another section of this text will detail this open violation of the Constitution.)

If anyone wants to know a specific article that the information was taken from, just ask.

Tony