Transcripts For CSPAN3 Origins Of The CIA 20240712

For the study of intelligence where he was the deputy director. He began his career in the cia, it age s you if i say in 192772. After two years in the United States army, also with the u. S. Military command in vietnam. Since his retirement from cia he was also National Security and teaches at Georgetown School for service. He is also a founding Advisory Board member at the International Spy museum, here since the beginning. Hes the author of a new book, the foundation of the cia harry truman, the missouri gang and the origins of the cold war. Youre not here to listen to me talk, so, thanks, rick, for coming out. [ applause ] and thank you all for coming out when you could be over at the Christmas Market across the street. I appreciate that. As vince said, ive been a cia officer for running on to 50 years now. And for the last 20 years i taught intelligence courses at Georgetown School of foreign service. And in teaching there at georgetown, ive discovered as well as from participating with the museum, i discovered that theres a great interest in the cia and in the general subject of National Intelligence. But also, unfortunately, theres considerable misunderstanding, suspicion, and even outright hostility about National Intelligence. So one of the reasons that i wrote this book is as a sort of a primer to try to explain not to specialist audiences or knowledgeable people like yourselves or my colleagues but to the general public, what it is that the Intelligence Community does and the functions and the kinds of challenges we have. So what i wanted to do was youll forgive me from reading from notes here, but my classes at georgetown run 2 1 2 hours long. Im used to speaking extemporaneously for 2 1 2 hours. I know none of you wants that. Let me just read this. This is a simple little book about how the modern u. S. Intelligence establishment was created but also to highlight major intelligence functions by focusing on important themes, episodes, and lessons. Ill talk about lessons but i want to emphasize these werent necessarily lessons we learned or that we remembered. Its also about men, the missouri men conceived and implemented the vision of a National Intelligence service against heavy odds and in the face of widespread opposition and multiple neardeath experiences. Its deja vu all over again. And that theme of repeatedly having to relearn the same lessons over and over again runs from the early days of the oss right down to the present. And some of the experiences of oss officers and early cia officers will seem very familiar to our colleagues today. Now, because im a historian, myself, let me step back a step and remind you that every advance state undertakes what deputy cia historian mike warner described as secret state activity. To understand or influence foreign entities. Oh. There we have technology in action. Remember as tony mendez, a another member of the board of advisers here pointed out, sooner or later technology will always let you down. Throughout our history the cia, or the u. S. , not the cia, but the u. S. Has repeatedly conducted impressive intelligence during wartime but then forgotten or abandoned the discipline in peacetime. And thats a theme that dates back all the way to the revolution. And anybody in the 1990s will remember the cold war peace dividend. Remember that . There wasnt going to be any more history so we were going it have this wonderful peace dividend and for those of us in the business that means we went down 25 in budget, 25 in personnel, during the 1990s. Just in time for 9 11. So, the u. S. Was founded with a Great Respect for intelligence and George Washington can be considered the first director of National Intelligence but the u. S. Was slow to join the great power, great gang, and the great gang is called that because its based on a book by Roger Kipling which he wrote in 1901 about afghanistan. So we were a little great to this great game. In fact, the First Permanent u. S. Intelligence agency was the office of Naval Intelligence in 1882 and it was created in response to the growing power of the superweapons of the day. Which were battleships. First time that foreigners, foreign powers, could credibly project power in a way that would really threaten the United States. In the 1880s, the u. S. Navy was the 12th largest in the world, even smaller than brazil. But in 1945 youll notice quite a number of u. S. Naval officers in our story. World war i showed the u. S. What green horns we were in intelligence. And thats a direct quote from a distinguished office of Naval Intelligence officer named john allen gada. And there he is right there. But officers like gada and u. S. Army coatbreakers in the American Black Chamber led by h Herbert Yardley did impressive work, but after the first world war, guess what the United States did again. This hardearned experience was allowed to go to waste after the war until, again, we faced the Global Threats of the 1930s. By then only a few practitioners remained. Along with a good number of enthusiastic amateurs. Im going to briefly discuss a number of these characters. Many of them members of the missouri gang. But for more detail youre going to have to read my book or ask me questions after the presentation. Here we have truman in the middle. We have his military chief of staff to the commander in chief, admiral William Leahy. We have the first dci. We have the second dci whos not from missouri, vandenberg. Then on the other side we have roslo hilencotter, first director of the cia. We have Clark Clifford, the young white house lawyer also from missouri, and we have larry houston who was general counsel of both uss and cia. Also from missouri. So a good deal of these good number of these people were, in fact, from missouri. But the reason they were called the missouri gang was not a compliment. In kansas city harry truman, during the first world war, led a volunteer military unit, an artillery unit, that served on the western front. And he later gained the ambivalent support of the pendergast machine, boss pendergast basically ran the democratic machine in kansas city. First as county executive or mayor of kansas city then as senator from missouri. In fact, pendergast in kansas city was this in a presentation, kansas city, you can see the liquor being poured out. The dance halls. He was originally called after he joined the senate the senator from pendergast. Sort of as the senator from illinois could have been called the senator from richard j. D e daley. Something like that. In st. Louis, here we have the wholesome st. Louis, fair of 1904, hillincotter, earned his u. S. Navy commission at annapolis. Hillincutter had an outstanding annapolis record then served aboard ships and as a staff officer for senior commanders. He taught romance languages at annapolis but excelled as naval attache or uniformed overt Intelligence Officer in paris. Finally, a businessman worked his way up the Mississippi River from new orleans through memphis to st. Louis making a fortune getting to know fellow businessman, new york businessman. And serving as a Naval Intelligence reservist. Of all the men involved in founding the cia, hillincotter, besides his extensive fleet experience, had the most actual intelligence experience. Left the fewest footprints or records. And i have to tell you it was very, very difficult to find out much about this guy even though he was the first director of the cia and really had a quite distinguished career. Now, im going to Say Something which is sort of against my interest, but if you look at the cias magazine, march 2016, which is available free online. I wrote an article about hillincotters military education which essentially is a time from when he entered the navy, served in france, and then after pearl harbor was the admirals intelligence chief of the pacific in 194243. So he really had a remarkably wideranging experience for a fair fair fairly middle grade naval officer. He served in france during very pivotal turbulent years from the mid 1930s until early 1941. The spanish civil war in which nazi germany and the soviet union used the war to practice war games. And just two years later the germans turned those practice s on western europe. It was a time of aggressive nazi expansionism. He was there the first year of the european war. And he witnessed the fall of france. Paris when the germans marched in. He exercised and demonstrated all the collection, reporting, analytic, and operational skills of a classic field officer. And here we have a picture of him courtesy of keith melton. Thats from his 1920 u. S. Navy academy yearbook. And then there are a couple of the ships he served on. And here is kind of an example of the world that he was in. He demonstrated collection reporting analytic and operational skills as a classical field case officer and in this case what he did was he took a probe of western germany land just before the germans sealed it off, 1938. And here are the german labor corps boys who were building fortifications and here are the new advanced mechanized equipment that the germans were using and he would drive around and because he spoke native german along with spanish and french, he would just pick up hitchhiking g. I. S, german soldiers, or the labor corps guys and he would offer them cigarettes, say, oh, by the way, im an american and tell me what you guys are up to. And he got remarkable reports on fortifications and airfields, various kind of military facilities that they were building. This was also a period with austria and the occupation of the sudatan land of czechoslovakia. When there were repeated war scares in western europe. Not actual war but repeated panics and the picture on the right there, or the left, picture on the left there, is of people fleeing from paris not during the actual war but because they got panicked in the late 30s. Finally, he served under the former chief of Naval Operations and future military chief of staff to the commander in chief, William Leahy. And the picture over on the far side is leahy as ambassador to occupied france, actually he was sitting in vishi. And that is his military staff and Embassy Staff when hes presenting his credentials to the vishi government. Lets see. You folks, the second from the right, is hillincotter with the eyebrows and the guy next to him, the third from the right, is Douglas Macarthur ii who was not douglas mcaftacarthurs son his nephew. He was a Senior State Department officer. Then you have leahy in the middle. He was in france on the 14th of june when the nazis marched in to paris and the ambassador decided to leave hillincotter and the military attache in paris so that they could debrief and try to elicit information from the german governor of paris. And thats the general there who happened, himself, to be a military attache, German Military attache, in warsaw so he said to hillincotte rr and h army buddy, said, hey, i understand what attaches do, youre here to gather information so ask me anything you want, and hillincotter said to him, how are you going to invade england . And he said, dont worry, we got it all worked out. Six weeks, the war will be over. In november 1941 just in time to have his captain killed and his battleship, west virginia, sunk out from under him during the surprise japanese attack on december 7th. The captain was killed. Hillincotter was executive officer so he was the senior surviving officer on the ship. Now, those of you who know the museum well, the spy museum well, know, may recognize that image of the flag over there. The museum has excellent videos which they show called ground troops. Have any of you seen that . Really a terrific video. Unfortunately, its not running these days because of the james bond villain special exhibit, but it basically talks about the importance of intelligence and how critical it is to National Success or failure and thats the final image on that video. That happens to be the flag from hillincotters ship, so its kind of fitting that the spy museum would show an image that dates back to the early director of the cia. After brief sea duty, hillincotter became chief of Pacific Fleet commander chester nemisis small, understaffed, disorganized and overwhelmed Intelligence Center. Now, this is another one of those things thats going to happen over and over again. Hillincotter took over his Intelligence Center in the chaos immediately after pearl harbor. He didnt have enough staff. He didnt have the proper kinds of people. Didnt have the skills he needed. Sort of began as yogi berra said, its going to be deja vu all over again. Trying to shift blame for pearl harbor on to this gifted japanese linguist. So, again, another lesson. When something goes wrong, never your fault, go blame somebody else, and ideally blame somebody whos not guilty. My editorial comment. In mid 1942, and hillincotter and his Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean area, found themselves in a similar beleaguered crisis to the Central Intelligence group that hillincotter inherited in mid 1947 from dcis directors of Central Intelligence, sydney sowers and Hoyt Vandenberg. Again, five years later hes going to find himself in a similar pickle. Meanwhile, stepping back to mid 1941 Franklin Roosevelt had been trying to run what passed for strategic National Intelligence. Out of his desk drawer. There wasnt any structure at all. In july 1941 he picked ambitious aggressive and equality impr improvisational republican new york lawyer and world war i hero William Donovan to be his coordinator of information over the bitter and unrelenting opposition of the fbi and military and Naval Intelligence. This is donovans favorite picture of himself. Shows him as a world war i hero and congressional medal of honor winner. There he is as director of oss. And here is a 1946 aerial photograph showing you got the Lincoln Memorial here. You got 21st. You got potomac river. And there is the original headquarters of both the oss and the cia on whats called navy hill. This is now the kennedy center. So, this theme of fraternal hostility runs through the whole story and is, of course, repeated during the late 40s and early 50s with the foundation of the cia or for that matter its repeated in 2005 with a creation of the director of National Intelligence. If you remember the logrolling that took place when the dni was established in 2005. If intelligence is all about understanding, i think it is, then the most important function is research and analysis. Colating, evaluating, weighing fragme fragmentary, ambiguous, contradictory, often deliberately misleading information. You know, its not just that we dont have the whole picture, its that our adversaries are sometimes actively trying to mislead us. And if you dont believe that that happens today, look at the cover of the Washington Post tomorrow morning. Or maybe today. These challenges are shared by historians, journalists, and Intelligence Officers. And im both a historian and an Intelligence Officer so i can tell you these are these are major challenges. Two of these Intelligence Officers were ivy league historians William Langer and sherman kent who essentially invented the discipline of National Strategic analysis. And the cias analytic college today is named for sherman kent. The oss and cia are almost unique, and this is true still today, are almost unique including scholars and analysis at the center of the intelligence process. Still, thrown into a global war, donovan naturally followed the british model of espionage which the oss called secret intelligence, and covert action which the british called, we called, special operations. Covert action, as you know, ranges from influence operations through propaganda, sabotage, working with allies, and liaison, all the way to rallying indigenous resistance and supporting military operations. And here we have a couple of examples of that and this is the first time weve seen women in the picture, by the way. He also encouraged donovan also encouraged the development of enabling technologies and spy gear. This is stanley lovell. Picture is courtesy of keith melton as well. Picture in the middle is a jet team just about to parachute into occupied france and on the far side there you have Virginia Hall and that picture of the third one over there is the portrait of haVirginia Hall whi hangs in the cia today. And donovan awarding her the distinguished service medal. So how we got here is the thanks to world war ii, the United States emerged as the only unwounded global superpower. Every other great nation was gr grievously crippled by the Second World War. We came through remarkably unscathed. Thanks to donovan, during the war the u. S. Created a unique intelligence framework. By unique i mean they combined not only espionage and direct action, covert operations and things of that sort, but also analysis. The only other service in the world that does that is the german pnd and the reason they do is because they were created by the cia. And followed the oss cia model. The war also gave us first senator then Vice President and finally president harry s. Truman. Who unlike roosevelt was organized, systemic, historyminded, and factoriented. Finally, the war left us facing the Nuclear Cold War against an aggressive expansionist soviet union and gave us harry s. Trumans missouri gang to create a new National Security framework including among other things the cia. Here we have practically the first time truman and roosevelt ever met each other and that was just after truman had been named roosevelts Vice President ial running mate in 1944. Everybody knew roosevelt was essentially mortally ill and was not going to survive the next, fourth term. And so truman was chosen as a compromise running mate for roosevelt because unlike wendell wilky, he wasnt a northeastern liberal and unlike senator, south carolina, senator jimmy been, he wasnt a segregationist. He was a solid midwestern new deal. By the way, hes a few years younger than roosevelt. Hes 60 in that picture and roosevelt is 62. The next picture, april 12th, 1945, hes being sworn in. As with hillincotter and the u. S. Navy after pearl harbor, truman, april 1945, had no time to find his footing before being pushed onto the global stage to face Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at pottstown. Hes also facing the decision to deploy the atomic bomb against japan. This is july 1945. And as you know, the next month he decided to drop the atomic bombs. Since casablanca, casablanca summit in 1943, europe was seen as the central focus for the global war and the division of postwar europe had already been decided at yalta just before roosevelt died. So there wasnt any question anymore that the russians were going to get all of eastern europe. Oss chief douglas there in the middle was appointed to run oss germany and many oss officers were shifted to the far east where the war was still going on. In the picture on the right, you see dulles and on his right is another future director of the cia, richard helms. At the end of the war in september of 1945 the u. S. Stood as the only Nuclear Armed global superpower. And the oss was almost a Global Service with broad, strategic, and tactical intelligence functions and capabilities. So here you have all the oss offices in western europe and north africa and there you have them all in Southeast Asia. This is this is in the end of 1944, early 1945. A presence in latin america, thats another reason because of all the rivalries the fbi exercised exclusive control over activities in latin america. The oss never got in there. Unfortunately, the oss was also a temporary wartime agency which by law had to be immediately disbanded at the end of the war. As it was, within three weeks of a formal japanese surrender in tokyo bay, so three weeks after the japanese surrendered, the oss was abolished and basically this whole infrastructure and most of the 13,000 to 14,000 members of the oss were suddenly out of jobs. Almost all the men, almost the entire active duty army and navy, were also abolished. We went from 16 million men in the army and navy down to less than a million. Without a doubt, that was the worlds greatest peace dividend. Vastly more than what happened after the fall of the berlin wall. However, the war along with the truman doctrine and the Marshall Plan, also actually the demobilization of the american military, transformed the western world because all those soldiers came home, they all get the g. I. Bill, they all got married, they all started having babies. They all bought houses under g. I. Loans. They all went to college. And the boom that the United States enjoyed in the 50s and 60s, because of the demobilization. The Marshall Plan and the truman doctrine also managed to stabilize and rebuild western europe. As the soviet union consolidated its hold on eastern europe, truman, who considered donovan a selfpromoter, ignored his calls for a peacetime strategic Intelligence Service and simply wiped out the oss. Now, theres a considerable controversy about that. Whether it was just sort of wrongheaded, thats on trumans part, the point was that as a temporary organization the oss could not continue. It had to be dissolved. And so it was. But truman was painfully aware of the war, fragmentation, disorganization, and interservice rivalries had contributed to pearl harbor and he wanted to create a new postwar military and National Intelligence structure. So he did, very consciously, want to get something in place to kind of prepare the United States for the postwar world. To do so, he turned to his military chief of staff, former ambassador to vishi, france, fleet admiral William Leahy and his white house lawyer, missourian Clark Clifford. As well as to a business friend of his secretary of the navy, and thats deputy chief of Naval Intelligence, rear admiral sydney sowers. Truman may have been an unlikely and underestimated president sow. Truman may have been an unlikely and underestimated president but sowers was an even more unprobable Intelligence Officer. Unlike hillincotter, he had almost no intelligence experience. He frankly had run grocery stores, banks, and insurance companies. Before the war. He, frankly, admitted that he got his position as deputy chief of the office of Naval Intelligence thanks to his friendship with forestall because he was bored and lonesome as local Naval Intelligence chief in charleston, south carolina, and san juan, puerto rico. Theres sowers on the far end there. His primary claim to fame in charleston was debriefing the first german uboat crew captured off the United States. Theres sowers. Theres a british navy officer. Two german uboat p. O. W. S and another Naval Intelligence officer. And thats basically what sowers did. He was a navy commander. He got promoted to rear admiral. Brought in to help create the International Structure because he understood the military position on how the new postwar organization should be created. Now the next two years were like the worlds most convoluted opera with scheming, intriguing, backstabbing and histrionics. Most of them focused on the creation of the new National Defense establishment rather than the new National Intelligence establishment which was the cia. So everybody was occupied with fighting about whether they were going to have more Aircraft Carriers or more strategic bombers. The air force naval were fighting it out and in the meantime, Clark Clifford and leahy were just trying to slip the new cia under the radar. And actually succeeded in doing that. Early agency and other military intelligence historians have concentrated on all of this insidethebeltway maneuvering, so im not going to do that. And i didnt do very much of it in the book, either. Hillincotter well out of the washington sniping had spent the war in the pacific in charge of the destroyers. Heres his flagship and all the little baby destroyers next to it. After the war, he commanded the worlds most famous battleship, u. S. S. Missouri, immediately after the war on a celebrated cruise to greece and turkey. And this is when the communists were threatening both greece, turkey, and yugoslavia. Were actually threatening italy. So by sending hillincotter ete this battleship to the mediterranean, truman was emphasizing that the United States had military power sort of indirectly reminding people, hey, we also have the atomic bomb. He then returned to paris as a naval as a military attache. And there he is on the far right as military attache. However, as you can see from the picture in the middle, during his missouri command, there he is with a bunch of sailors from the ship who happen to have been born in missouri. He was visiting st. Louis. Sort of on a vip welcome back. And one of those sailors was black. So he proved himself in an episode that i recount in the book a civil rights trail blazer in january of 1946, 2 years before truman integrated the u. S. Military. So he brought a black sailor with him and he insisted that he participate along with all the white sailors in all the festivities that took place. He was also amazingly a defender of a persecuted homosexual office of policy coordination manager by the name of carmel offey that showed mccarthy tried to smear, so here he is pioneer in civil rights, pioneer even in defending homosexuals. In france he was awarded the french legion of honor and was promoted to rear admiral before being recalled to take over trumans Central Intelligence group. Now, sowers and vandenberg had both been directors of Central Intelligence. But there wasnt a cia at that point. There was only a very, very small Central Intelligence group, so hillincotter was the first dci who actually commanded the cia. Created in september of 1947 under the National Security act. Interestingly enough, none of the early dcis from sowers to air corps Lieutenant General Hoyt Vandenberg, to rare admiral hi hillincotter, to army Lieutenant General walter beatle director, the job of trying to recreate or create a national sbernlintelli service in the face of highly skilled, organized and aggressive soviet adversary and in an atmosphere of domestic and international crises. Some i detail in the book. Kind of a hillincotters six crises. So here we have the inventors of the high five, i understand, from twitter today. Here we have harry truman watching the chief justice of the Supreme Court swearing in hillincotter, sydney sowers, and a man by the name of joseph hill who was the head of the National Defense resources board. This is in september of 1947. And there you have the National Security with let me point out a few people. Here is oops. Im standing in the way. Here we have truman. Truman, her have secretary of state general george marshall, here you have secretary of defense, remember, he is sellers friend, here you have the dci, hillenkoetter and there you have sydney sauers who stayed with truman after his brief tour as director of the Central Intelligence group. He helped create the cia and the National Security structure and he stayed on as executive secretary of the National Security council basically through the entire truman administration. So there you have there you have the whole bunch however, in the face of hostility from his washington enemies, most of whom outranked him and one of whom, alan dulles, coveted his job, hillenkoetter lasted for three eventful years before returning to the fleet to fight another war and in part the final blow to his position was the korean war. This time he went back to korea as commander of a cruiser squadron off korea and thats his flagship, u. S. S s. S. St. You will notice that the photographer of the turnover to beetle smith in late 1950, there you have hillenkoetter and beetle smith, is one of the few pictures of hillenkoetter smiling. Hes happy to be out of there and back on the deck of a battleship. Here we have beetle smith, characteristically glum, here we have frank wisner who also plays a role in my book, he was the director of covert action which at that time was divided from espionage, the office of policy koord. It was hillenkoetter who went to bat for him. Here you have walter fulseimer a distinguished senior officer, he was the head of congressional affairs. Here we have larry houston, another missourian who was the general counsel of this oss and then the cia. Hillenkoetter returned to obscurity and was never heard of again until february of 1960 when he wrote an astonishing letter to the new york times. Now, what could he possibly have been writing about . He was then for some reason that ive never been able to figure out a member of a private fringe group called the National Investigative committee on aerial phenomenon. Its called nicap. He complained in that letter in 1960 about u. S. Government efforts to conceal the existence of ufos. Where that came from, i have no idea. This led to an internal cia debate about whether to tell him about the u2. Houston and senior members like dulles, alan dulles, said, gee, maybe we ought to tell him that there isnt this secret airplane. They decided not to do it, but it became spectacularly public two months later on the first of may, 1960, when gary powers was shot down over russia. So hillenkoetter was only half wrong. Hes forgotten as the first director of the cia, however, hes now hillenkoetter is now a cult figure in the ufo community. Who knew . If you google hillenkoetter the first thing that pops up is always conspiracy stuff about ufos. Hillenkoetter along with curtis lame. Everybody remembers who curtis lame was, Strategic Air command, bomb them back to the stone age. Both hillenkoetter and lame were supposedly honored with a gerald ford Aircraft Carrier size space shift, allegedly launched by the u. S. Government in 1988 at the end of the reagan administration. Here is the jerry ford, over there is a picture of the jerry ford and thats the size of the u. S. S. S. Hillenkoetter. Almost as soon as the oss is abolished he began pestering his first director of Central Intelligence, sydney sauers, with the demand where is my newspaper . Almost 20 years later even after a very public denunciation of how the cia had strayed under dci alan dulles truman also wrote below his official portrait at cia headquarters that the cia is a necessity to the president of the United States from one who knows. Thats the first president ial portrait in the cia headquarters and thats the inscription. So thats basically the foer i wanted to tell you folks tonight. I left a lot out because i clearly would enjoy it if you read the book, i think you will find it interesting. A lot of the pictures are from the book. I would just leave you with a couple of thoughts, one is harry truman, the only thing new in the world is history you dont know and thats actually not a made up quote. Its from merrill millers plain speaking so its a direct quote from truman. Then again day gentleman video all over again, thats yoga berra, of course, never let the National Interest stand in the way of protecting your rice bowl, thats sort of the way washington works, right . You know . And sometimes your worst enemies are your brothers. Thats anthony scaramucci, the mooch this very year. So, you know, the intrigues that went on here in the United States, the painful lessons that the oss learned overseas, that we have to keep learning over and over again. If you have any questions about that i would be delighted to answer them. I can read you some more of these laws. I think thats enough for right now. Thank you all very much. So any questions . Okay. Hold on. We have a mic. Oh, you have a microphone. You spoke of admiral hillenkoetter in the most glowing terms i have ever heard. In a positive light, which is kind of odd considering that all the literature that even the cia puts out today they dont talk very positively about him. And you mentioned that there is a lack of documentation on his early involvement. It seems to me there is a lack of documentation, period, from the time that the oss was disbanded up until the cia was founded and do you have any reason why theres so little documentation . Well, lets see. In terms of why theres not more documentation, first of all, in the early years both of the oss and the cia, the people involved and congress and the government in general felt that the stuff ought to be secret. In fact, there is another excellent book, man by the name of David Barrett called the cia and congress that really goes into great depth about the creation. Hillenkoetter himself wasnt involved in the creation, he was off happily being a naval attache during that period. You may find this hard to believe, but government records are not always well organized and theyre not perfect. I spent many, many frustrating days in the National Archives going back over the u. S. Navy attache reports to try to get something about hillenkoetters experiences in europe. The frustrating thing about hillenkoetter is if you look at books, histories, the way washingtonians do by turning immediately to the index and looking for your name, well, i did that with hillenkoetter, i would look at histories and turn to the index and try to find hillenkoetter and be lucky to find a phrase let alone a sentence. There really wasnt very much. He kept an official diary when he was director of the cia, but theres very little in that he never wrote anything himself except in the 1930 and 40s when he was a military attache and the National Archives has the original paper with his original ink signature on it, but thats it. He only had one child who died apparently unmarried and he just sort of disappeared. Leahy, on the other hand, kept a diary every kay of his life and immediately after the war leahys diaries were published. Truman, of course, had a lot of stuff written about him. Everybody writes about donovan. Nobody writes much about sydney sauers. Sauers, however, except for a couple interviews, cia interviews which were originally classifi classified, sauers was a very interesting guy because he had a very sharp tongue. So some of his more unvarnished opinions are very interesting but its a very small body of work even on him. And if you go to the Truman Library and sauers remained a good friend of trumans until the end of his life, if you want to see the sauers papers theyre one linear foot of paper. So the only one who wrote very much was leahy and delivered, of course, but clifford waited until the 1980s to write his memoires. So youre sort of left sort of scrambling. These people are very opaque and its very frustrating to see how little you really can find out about them. And thats why i think hes underappreciated. At the time when he was confirmed as director of the cia in the fall of 1947, it was a unanimous vote in the senate to reconfirm him. So they actually they actually held him in very high regard. As i said, he was there in a very, very difficult period and a lot of crap happened while he was dci and he got blamed for a lot of it. You know, the soviets detonated an atomic bomb and it took us about a month to figure out they had done it. China fell to mt. St. Tom and of course the korean war started. But at that point the cia was not the welloiled machine and the vast Global Organization that we have today, it was just a very small group of people who were scrambling to try to put together its kind of like the expression when you are up to your butt in alligators its hard to remember that your mission was to save the world for democracy. Also a lot of things that the oss had tried and failed at during the Second World War, people like frank wisner tried again in the early 1950s and they failed again. So two weeks ago john prodos was here talking about his book the ghost of langley and it was an unending litany of failures and screw ups or malice or incompetence and what id like to remind you is that these folks were all honorable patriotic people who were trying the best they could under very difficult circumstances. But not everybody had the same vision of what the best was and j. Edgar hoovers vision was very different from, say, hillenkoetters vision. Rick, i wanted to actually ask you a question that related back to johns talk, john prodos talk and it was very much about the notes and it plays into his question about the notes and the documentation that youve been talking about. John referenced truman notes that were like someone wore a big hat and what did that mean . He really said the notes were very just kind of conversational, the early notes, unless i misunderstood. He was talking about documentation from the truman years and that this Early Foundation period that were, you know maybe im making this up, but i thought very lackadaisical, not conveying any substance. Well, you know, its kind of interesting because truman and sauers both are very human people and truman is notorious for having written a nasty letter to a music critic who was mean to his daughter, you know, said nasty things about her and how margaret, and how he was going to punch him in the face or kick him in the whatever. So truman would form very strong opinions very quickly and he had enemies, one of who was alan dulles. The reason he didnt like dulles was because dulles was a senior political adviser to john dewy, the governor of new york, who was running against truman in 1948 and dulles thought that when dewy beat truman, and it was clear that that was going to happen, i mean, even the Chicago Tribune knew that dewy was going to beat truman, dulles was going to become the director of the cia. Well, didnt happen. Truman not only had strong opinions, but he was subject to forgetfulness and in 1964, for example, he wrote a letter to the Washington Post and he said, oh, the cia has gone terribly wrong. Theyve strayed off into overthrowing governments and all this covert action stuff. Well, that had all happened under dulles and he didnt like dulles. Truman forgot that in 1947 when he created the cia, he did so specifically so that it could do things like covert actions on behalf of democratic parties in the italian election of 1947. So, you know, truman was not an opponent of a lot of these things going on, he just sort of changed his public position on it. Sauers also had very strong opinions, he didnt like dulles, either, and, in fact, when it came to Hoyt Vandenberg who was only director for about a year, vandenberg didnt want the job, its sauers who was trying to leave the job, said to vandenberg, well, look, i know you dont want to be director of Central Intelligence, you want to be chief of staff of the air force when they create an air force, but theyre not going to make you chief of staff of the air force just because youre handsome. You have to go and do something first. So, you know, these are the kind of stories that you get from, bless his heart, old harry, but a lot of that stuff was originally the sauers material was originally classified and those early histories of all the maneuvering was classified as well. And they were published internally in the cia and they were only declassified literally decades later. Okay. Sir, question . Hi. How quickly did the cia establish relationships with other intelligence agencies around the world . Because i know that mi6 was a model for cia originally as it was set up and there was close links between oss and the uk during the Second World War, but were those relationships between cia and other International Agencies established . Did that take a long time or was that quite quick . Well, Christopher Andrew who is one of the great military intelligence historians has said that the american establishment intelligence establishment, the oss, was the greatest covert action that the british ever accomplished because remember i said that roosevelt ran Foreign Policy out of his hip pocket. One of the things he did before we entered the Second World War was he dispatched personal friends around the world to sort of report to him on what was going on, rather than relying upon the state department that was actually supposed to be International Affairs and reporting, he would dispatch people and one of the people he dispatched was donovan and the British Intelligence chief in washington sent a note to london and said, hey, donovan is coming to london, give him the vip treatment. He met the king, you know, churchill, greeted him, they had all of this red carpet rolled out and one of the results of that was donovan came back and immediately started working with roosevelt to try to get lindhlys the 50 destroyers that england needed to protect their convoys and things of that sort. Zue so the british actually sort of won over donovan and the oss was kind of created on the british model and it used british techniques and the british trained the first wave of oss officers. So that was the closest relationship really from the very beginning. Now, in the far east, for example, in places like thailand, which were occupied by the japanese, the Thai Government had been left in place by the japanese and they were basically running a sort of an undercover government and were helping the oss in thailand. In fact, the thai police would drive oss officers around the country in thai police cars. So they were protecting them as much more much more ambiguous in places like france where you had the loyalists fighting against the communists fighting against the democrats and there wasnt really a stable government there. China was the same way with the nationalists and the war lords and the communists. Yugoslavia, the same. You had royalists versus communists. The other Intelligence Service that really we worked with very, very closely from the beginning was the one we invented and thats the west German Federal Intelligence Service, which started off as the Galen Organization which had been the nazi Intelligence Organization for the eastern army. Now, there was the Army Fighting against the soviet union and after the war galen volunteered his organization to the u. S. Army and when the cia was created in 1947 the cia basically took over the Galen Organization and it became the federal Intelligence Service and the relationship with them is still very close. So, you know, from the very beginning working with Indigenous Peoples or local either resistance or governments has always been a part of the way the oss worked. And incidentally, im detecting that youre from the empire there, that was a cause of great conflict between us and the brits and particularly in Southeast Asia. The military command there was called the south asian feac. Southeast asian command. It was commanded by lord louie montbat and the oss called the Southeast Asia command saving europes asiatic colonies which is why the oss worked much more closely with ho chi minh and the viet minh than they did with either the british or the french, because not only did the oss recognize, but all of those captive people recognized that all the brits and the french wanted to do was to come back in and take over their empires once the japanese were pushed out. Sir . Just a quick question, if you could elaborate also on perhaps singapore and hong kong regarding what you are discussing when it comes to western powers trying to recolonize these territories after the japanese vacated. Im just curious to see where singapore and hong kong and all the key posts play a role in the greater scheme of things. Well, actually i mentioned a boat in the book but not in a good way because the japanese after the surprise attack on pearl harbor, Douglas Mcarthur basically had a day warning to prepare before the japanese moved against the philippines and hong kong and singapore and unaccountably he didnt do anything. He left his bombers on the ground where the japanese destroyed them and the japanese just sort of swept right through there. Mcarthur would never let the oss into his operational area. Thats why they could only operate in thailand, endo china, burma and then china. So the areas of singapore and hong kong was sort of off limits to the oss. You know, they were relatively small colonial outposts and it didnt it didnt really play a big geopolitical role. Im not a fan of either dulles or mcarthur, by the way. Sorry. Anything else . Maam . So my memory is kind of vague, but if i remember correctly after japan was occupied i think there was an organization by the name of cic that was responsible for intelligence in japan and later on it was absorbed to cia. So is this mostly military personnel who were responsible for intelligence in japan after the war . After the oss was abolished, september of 1945, there was still a very large military intelligence and Naval Intelligence. These dated back to the 1880s. The oss pretty much focused on strategic intelligence with their analysts, people like sherman kent, William Langer and they concentrated on preparing the battle space before the invasion of normandy, things like that. But the Army Counterintelligence corps was the one that was part of the big army, big green machine. When the oss left in 1945 everybody went home, the Army Counterintelligence corps in japan and the Army Counterintelligence corps in germany were basically what was left, and what they were doing in germany was basically denazification. They were going around trying to capture all of the exnazis, especially the war criminals. The same thing happened to a certain extent in japan, although mcarthur was not as aggressive in in sort of the defascisticing of japan as they were in germany. It was the counterintelligence corps that got galens organization, the exnazi Intelligence Organization in 1945. And they ran it until 1947 basically. Until the cia took over. And there was considerable question about whether or not the cia was going to take the german intel group because they were all you know, they had all been nazi army officers. That twoyear period was one where there were a lot of people scrambling around basically military intelligence people trying to do what they could, both in the far east and in europe, but the military was also shrinking. You know, they went from 16 million to half a million in basically a year. So they were they were outnumbered, outgunned, outmanned. Thats when a lot of things happened in western europe, how a lot of the exnazis wound up in latin america. You know, there was a there were various efforts to try to get jewish refugees out of the concentration camps and a lot of Eastern European displaced people who didnt want to go back to places like hungary or czechoslovakia or east germany once the communists took over. A lot of these people managed to get into these refugee channels who were nazis because everybody just got overwhelmed. There just werent enough people and enough records to track everybody down. So if john prodos wants to talk about how the cia helped nazis escape and wind up in latin america, in some cases it happened, but it was obviously not intentional and, you know, if you got 1,000 refugees together its just like what happened in europe in the last two years with hundreds of thousands of syrians and libbians and everybody else trying to escape, trying to get into europe and the problems that the Security Forces and the Police Forces have in differentiating who is a legitimate refugee and who is an isis sleeper, for example. So that was sort of what was going on. Who is an isis sleeper example. So that was sort of what was going on. Its not an easy time. Okay. Well, we thank you, rick. Thank you all very much. So much. First ladies, influence and image on American History tv examines the private lives and public roles of the nations first ladies through interviews with top historians. Tonight we look at Edith Roosevelt and helen taft. Edith roosevelt along with her husband theodore became the first president and first lady to travel abroad while in office when they made a trip to panama. And helen taft was the first first lady to ride with the president in the inaugural parade. Watch first ladies, influence and image, tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv on cspan 3. Every saturday night American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Why do you all know who lizzy borden is and raise your hand if you have ever heard of this murder, the gene harris murder trial before this class. The deepest cause where we will find the true meaning of the revolution was in this transformation that took place in the minds of the american people. So were going to talk about both of these sides of the story here, right . The tools, the techniques of slave owner power and were going to also talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by enslaved people. Watch history professors lead discussions with their students on topics ranging from the American Revolution to september 11th. z lectures in industry on cspan 3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv and lectures in history is available as a podcast. Find it where you listen to podcasts. The Senate Health committee holds a hearing tuesday to get an update on the Coronavirus Response and plans to reopen the u. S. Economy. Witnesses include White House Coronavirus Task Force Members dr. Steven hahn, dr. Anthony fauci and dr. Robert redfield. Live coverage begins at 10 00 eastern on cspan 3, online at cspan. Org or listen live on the free cspan radio app. Tracy walder is coauthor of the unexpected spy from the cia to the fbi my secret life taking down some of the worlds most notorious terrorists. Next she sits down for an interview in her time as a cia special Operations Officer in the aftermath of the september 11th terrorist attacks. She discusses leaving the cia to focus on chinese counterintelligence. The fbi spy museum recorded this event in february. Good evening, everyone and thank you for coming out on this gloomy washington, d. C. Evening to the International Spy museum. Im chris costa, the executive director of the International Spy museum. Im really excited to introduce this program with former cia Operations Officer, fbi special agent, now author tracy walder. Tracy joined the cia straight out of college and served as a staff Operations Officer at the Counterterrorism Center where she was responsible for tracking