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 haVirgi