Ike's Spies Read Online Free PDF Page A

recorded, “Jim. F. [James Forrestal, Secretary of Defense] and I have agreed to try to keep the minds of all centered on the main facts of our present existence.
    (a) The free world is under threat by the monolithic mass of Communistic Imperialism.
    (b) The U.S. must wake up to prepare a position of strength from which it can speak serenely and confidently.” 6
    And on June 11, 1949, shortly after Forrestal’s tragic death, he wrote, “There is no use trying to decide exactly what I thought of Jim Forrestal. But one thing I shall always remember. He was the one man who, in the very midst of the war, always counselled caution and alertness in dealing with Soviets. He visited me in ’44 and in ’45 and I listened carefully to his thesis—I never had cause to doubt the accuracy of his judgments on this point. He said ‘Be courteous and friendly in the effort to develop a satisfactory modus vivendi—but never believe we have changed their basic purpose, which is to destroy representative government.’ ” 7
    ----
    * U.S. scientists had estimated that it would take the Russians about four years to develop the bomb. Thus, as far as the scientists were concerned, espionage played a small role. To the politicians, however, the spies’ role seemed crucial. 4

Part Two
THE PRESIDENCY

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The National Intelligence Estimates
    THE MOST IMPORTANT WORK THE CIA DOES takes place in the Washington office of the Deputy Director for Intelligence ( DDI ). There the CIA carries on the old research and analysis functions of the OSS , tapping America’s prestigious universities for specialized personnel with intimate acquaintance with the languages, history, economics, and social conditions of foreign countries. R & A has none of the glamour of an Operation PBSUCCESS , none of the excitement of an Operation RED SOX/RED CAP , none of the rewards of an Operation AJAX , but it is the heart of the matter, what the CIA is all about. For it is the DDI who provides the information that the President relies upon when he makes a policy judgment.
    Allen Dulles, as noted, was relatively uninterested in acquiring and analyzing intelligence—he left it up to the DDI .
    One of the best men ever to work on the intelligence side of the CIA was Ray S. Cline, an OSS veteran of the R & A branch and ultimately the Deputy Director of the CIA . Cline is a scholar’s scholar. After the war he wrote
Washington Command Post: The Operations Division
, one of the most widely praised volumes in the highly regarded series
The U. S. Army in World War II
, and after his retirement he wrote
Secrets, Spies and Scholars: Blueprint of the Essential CIA
, which was praised in the professional journals as the best book yet on the CIA .
    In the 1950s, Cline worked deep in the labyrinth of the CIA’S intelligence branch. There he had the greatest, andrarest, satisfaction that can come to a bureaucrat—his work actually had an impact on policy. It did so because Cline’s ultimate boss, President Eisenhower, was able to force the bureaucracy to serve him as he wanted it to, rather than as it wanted to do.
    In an NSC meeting early in 1954, Ike complained that there were two things wrong with the intelligence he was getting. First, it failed to make a clear distinction between Russian capability and actual intentions. This is a classic problem because the professional military, who are charged with the defense of the nation, always exaggerate the extent of the threat the nation faces. The military cites the enemy’s capabilities—what the Russians might do in arms production—while ignoring the enemy’s intentions—what the Russians are in fact doing.
    The second complaint Ike had was that not enough was being done to put the Russian threat into a proper perspective. He was bombarded with news that the Russians were building up here, there, everywhere, without weighing the Russian