The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government, to 1950 - Hardcover

Darling, Arthur B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 027100715X ISBN 13: 9780271007151

Publisher: Penn State University Press, 1991

Synopsis

This unique history offers the most detailed and best documented account of the early years of the CIA currently available. It reveals the political and bureaucratic struggles that accompanied the creation of the modern U. S. intelligence community. In addition, it proposes a theory of effective intelligence organization, applied both to the movement to create the CIA and to the form it eventually took.

The period covered by this study was crucially important because it was during this time that the main battles over the establishment, responsibilities, and turf of the agency were fought. Many of these disputes framed the forty years, such as the relationship of the CIA to other government agency intelligence operations, the role of covert action, and Congressional oversight of the intelligence community.

The sources upon which Darling drew for this study include the files of the National Security Council, the wartime files of the OSS, and interviews and correspondence with many of the principal players.

About this title

About the Authors

Arthur B. Darling taught American history at Yale University and Phillips Academy. From 1952 to 1954 he served as historian for the CIA.

Bruce D. Berkowitz has held various positions in the intelligence community and also served on the staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Allan E. Goodman, Associate Dean of the School of Foreign Service and Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University, was employed by the CIA from 1975 to 1980, serving as Presidential Briefing Coordinator for the Director of Central Intelligence in 1979-1980.

Reviews

Written by the CIA's first official historian in 1952 and 1953 and declassified only in 1989, this account of the agency's establishment and early years should become a basic document in studies of U.S. government organization and power struggles of the late 1940s. Darling is not an unbiased observer; the text clearly reflects his conviction that "a single authority ought to have charge of collecting secret information outside of the United States"--an assumption not shared by all of this book's major players. When the wartime Office of Strategic Services was dissolved by President Truman, the State Department, the military and the FBI all made bids to provide the U.S. with intelligence. Jockeying for control becomes a recurring theme as Darling follows the CIA from its origins as an interdepartmental advisory committee with limited authority (and none to gather intelligence), through its confirmation by Congress as a distinct entity with its own budget and functions, to a mature organization managing psychological operations and "black propaganda" in the Cold War.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This close-up study presents important details on the CIA's upper-echelon from its origin with General Donovan through the administrations of its first three directors, Admiral Souers, General Vandenberg, and Admiral Hillenkoetter. Darling, a former CIA historian now at Yale University and Phillips Academy, reveals nothing about the substance of CIA operations, overt or covert. Although written in 1952-53 as an in-house history of the CIA, this work has been classified until now. Frequent deleted lines raise curiosity and questions about still-secret information. Chapter introductions by Bruce D. Berkowitz and Allan E. Goodman help explain the material, but this book is for the specialist. For general collections, John Ranelagh's The Agency ( LJ 6/1/86) is a better choice.
- Ron Christenson, Gustavus Adolphus Coll., St. Peter, Minn.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 027100715X
• ISBN 13: 9780271007151
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544