Foreign Relations of the United States, 1945–1950, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment

381. Memorandum From the Assistant Director for Policy Coordination, Central Intelligence Agency (Wisner) to the Counselor of the Department of State (Bohlen)⁰

Washington, April 15, 1949.

SUBJECT

• Material for use in connection with proposed conversations with General McNarney, et al.

1. Pursuant to your oral request of last evening, I am submitting to you herewith a number of points which I believe could be employed to great advantage in your forthcoming conversations with General McNarney.¹ These points all relate to the central issue which is involved in this matter. This issue is a fairly delicate one, not merely because of the anticipated opposition, but also because of the disposition on the part of the service people to feel that there is an implied criticism of the competence of the services as a whole in the suggestion that there should be a civilian director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The following points have been drafted in the light of these “angles”.

2. In the first place, I should like to call your attention again to the arguments set forth in subparagraph (f) of paragraph 4 of my memorandum² to Mr. Webb dated 18 March. Although I agree with you that not all of these statements are appropriate for use in connection with your proposed conversation with General McNarney, there are, nevertheless, some points here which are very important and which could and should be used. For example, I think that you should point out the fact that virtually every individual who has had occasion to deal with or to look into the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency has recognized that the system of rotating the director and the top staff personnel at frequent intervals has had disastrous consequences. This is the argument about continuity. I am convinced that continuity of direction is essential for the Central Intelligence Agency “not only for the reasons which make it desirable in any governmental department but also because secret intelligence and secret operations are the most highly specialized undertakings, and it is very harmful to be constantly educating a series of new chiefs and their immediate staffs”. It should take a new chief up to at least a year to begin to understand the very technical and complicated ramification of this business and to learn about the personalities throughout his own service and also in the foreign intelligence services sufficiently well to be able to deal with them intelligently and incisively. The service system of rotation renders it inevitable that just about the time a man becomes proficient at this new complex job, he can expect to be relieved. Apart from the question of secret operations (OPC), the significance and character of a sound secret intelligence operation is a very slow and long range affair. In order to accomplish really valuable penetrations, it is sometimes necessary to allow the operatives to lie completely dormant for a period of years, gradually working their way into the confidence of their chiefs. Such operations are not apt to have much of an appeal to people who will only be with the outfit for a short period of time, for they will regard themselves as only sowing the seeds for a harvest to be reaped by a successor. The tendency, as already demonstrated, is to achieve quick and spectacular results in order that the incumbent may have something to show for what he has done while in office. Along with this comes the very strong tug to allow or even stimulate publicity. The recent series of articles and news items which have appeared in a number of magazines and newspapers can no doubt be traced to this, at least in part. The absolute requirement of this particular profession is a “passion for anonymity”.

3. A related security argument is that the chief of the CIA must necessarily come to know all of the most significant secrets of the organization, and upon his departure it is inevitable that he will take many of these with him and outside the organization. It is generally impossible to predict what his next duty will be but it may well turn out to be such as to place him in an exposed position. He might become a military attache in a sensitive area or be placed in command of a battleship or division in some forward area with the incident risk of capture. He would obviously be a prize target for capture and it would be foolish to suppose that the enemy would not make a concerted effort to pick him off and to squeeze out of him all possible information which he might have.

4. The next argument proceeds from the regrettable but very definite fact that the services generally have never in the past and do not now acknowledge that intelligence is a function which requires (a) specialization, (b) continuity, or (c) particular recognition. (There are, of course, many in all the services who disagree with this standardized point of view—such as Generals Gruenther and Wedemeyer—but even they acknowledge the existence of this condition.) It is the natural consequence of this general approach toward intelligence within the services that the best service people shun an intelligence service assignment like the plague—and are even less prone to accept an outside intelligence assignment than one within the services, such as G–2, ONI and A–2. Al Gruenther has told me that unless and until recognition in terms of both rank and influence is given to the function of intelligence in far greater measure than is now the case, it is unreasonable to expect and unfair to ask the people with bright futures in the services to go into it. [I think that this is a particularly good line of argument to use with General McNarney, and even more so with Mr. Johnson, because Mr. Johnson has already recently taken issue on this precise point with the various service representatives with whom General McNarney is discussing this matter. When these persons told him that they did not think much of the argument of continuity, he replied, with Johnsonian firmness and some heat, that intelligence is a highly specialized business which requires experience to learn. Obviously this bracketed material is for your own information and guidance, since it would be unwise to reveal our knowledge of the argument which took place in the other camp.]³ You should also be careful to make it clear that the arguments in favor of a civilian chief do not mean that the State Department does not fully recognize and heartily subscribe to the importance and necessity of the fullest service participation in the CIA enterprise. The argument has been used and will be used again and again by the military that the CIA is a joint venture and that even under present circumstances the percentage of military personnel on duty with CIA is very small (2 or 3% of the total). I would suggest a response that the number of military personnel should be much increased—and that is certainly the line which I am taking in my activity. This is the best way that I can think of to dispose of this very specious argument.

5. There is also the argument which you yourself suggested concerning the fact that no representative of one of the services could adequately and fairly reflect the point of view of the other two services. I shall not develop on this argument because it is already well known to you. However, I should like to point out that there may be some loopholes in this general argument which should be well plugged in advance of use. For example, it is conceivable that the service reply to this argument might be that the directorship should consist of a director with two deputies and a periodic rotation as between the services for these three spots. This is admittedly a weak counter to your argument because it overlooks entirely the essentiality of continuity—but it might nevertheless be used by persons who are no respecters of continuity.

6. Here is a tricky one which I am a bit uncertain about myself and which I would not suggest at all but for the fact that General McNarney is the person with whom you will be dealing. I am reliably and I believe accurately informed that notwithstanding the dressing down which General McNarney received at the hands of General Marshall in connection with McNarney’s UN responsibilities, he is very beholden to General Marshall for his rapid advancement in rank during the war, for his elevation to the position of Mediterranean Theater Commander and for many other things. Moreover, he well knows General Marshall’s great abilities of mind and is believed to hold his judgment in some degree of veneration. General Marshall has constantly been concerned, and he reiterated this concern to me only yesterday, about the damage to the services which can result from the popular distrust of too much brass in too many high places in the government. This is the “military mind” line which has been so heavily played by certain columnists and editorial writers and General Marshall’s views on this can best be summarized as a conviction that it is best for the country and best for the services themselves for the military—and most particularly those still on active duty—to stick to their last and not allow themselves to become too deeply and personally involved in other governmental affairs. I say that this is a tricky argument because it is difficult for a non-service person to make it to a service person—and accordingly, I leave it to your own best judgment as to whether and if so how to employ it.

7. In conclusion, I should like to take the liberty of suggesting to you that the happy issue out of these present afflictions can be a matter of great importance to yourself in the new position to which you are going. You are no doubt aware of the fact that the Western Union and Atlantic Pact setups and apparati in France will include as a very significant part thereof a mechanism for the coordination of clandestine efforts on both the secret intelligence and secret operations sides. If at Paris you should find yourself in a position of having to deal with unenlightened and unsympathetic individuals on the American side in the intelligence side of the show, it will render your overall job much more difficult. As a concrete illustration of what I mean, the present chief of this service had already designated General Pinkie Wright as the top CIA representative upon the Western Union Clandestine Committee, and this would have become effective but for the fact that General Wright was “rotated” to some relatively minor duty in Japan. If you are not personally acquainted with Pinkie and desire further information about him, I suggest that you speak to George Kennan or John Davies. In a word, however, he is the Regular Army top-sergeant type, the smallness of whose knowledge and comprehension of foreign affairs and foreign personalities is matched only by his certainty that he knows these and all the other answers.

FGW

0. Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Records of the Department of State, Records of the Executive Secretariat, NSC Files: Lot 63 D 351, NSC 50, Box 4207. Secret; Eyes Only.
1. No record of these conversations has been found. McNarney was an adviser to the Secretary of Defense who subsequently prepared the comments and recommendations on the Dulles Report embodied in NSC 50, Document 384.
2. Document 375.
3. Brackets in the source text.