CIA Cold War Records: THE CIA UNDER HARRY TRUMAN
CIA Cold War Records: THE CIA UNDER HARRY TRUMAN
Edited by Michael Warner
CIA History Staff; Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1994
CIA Cold War Records: THE CIA UNDER HARRY TRUMAN
Book Cover, Front Material, and Table of Contents [806KB; 9 pages]
CIA Cold War Records: THE CIA UNDER HARRY TRUMAN (divided by chapter)
Foreword [113KB; 2 pages]
Preface [177KB; 17 pages]
Sources and Declassification [170KB; 2 pages]
Acronyms and Abbreviations [95KB; 2 pages]
Persons Mentioned [576KB; 7 pages]
Chronology [535KB; 7 pages]
Part I: From OSS to CIA [2.82MB; 118 pages]
Part II: The CIA Under DCI Hillenkoetter [6.14MB; 200 pages]
Part III: The Smith Years [2.70MB; 130 pages]
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From the Preface
Emerging from World War II as the world's strongest power, the United States was hardly equipped institutionally or temperamentally for world leadership. In the autumn of 1945 many Americans, in and out of government, were not at all eager to wield their nation’s power to bring about some new global order. Indeed, many—perhaps most—Americans thought that victory over the Axis powers would in itself ensure peace and stability. In any event, Americans remained confident that the United States would always have enough time and resources to beat back any foreign threat before it could imperil our shores.
America’s wartime leaders, however, knew from experience that the nation could never return to its prewar isolation. President Truman bore the full weight of this knowledge within weeks of the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In July 1945, as he discussed the future of Europe with Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Clement Attlee at Potsdam, Truman secretly authorized the use of atomic bombs on Japanese cities. The unexpectedly rapid defeat of Japan and the growing tensions between the United States and the USSR over occupation policies in Germany and Eastern Europe persuaded many observers that the wartime Grand Alliance of America, Britain, and Russia was breaking up, and that the United States might soon confront serious new dangers in the postwar world.
In responding to this challenge, the Truman administration in 1946 and 1947 created a new peacetime foreign intelligence organization that was not part of any department or military service. The early history of that new body, which became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), offers a window on the Truman administration’s foreign policy—a window that this volume seeks to open a little wider. By describing American plans and actions in founding and managing the nation’s new central intelligence service, this volume should help scholars to identify the key decisions that animated the CIA, and to fit them into the context of the Cold War’s first years.
