From OSS to CIA ongoing clash with military intelligence

For all those supporters of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s war, many admire the exploits of the OSS in Europe. While historians for the allied legions adopt the account that circumstances dictated the creation and use of the British, Special Operations Executive, which Churchill proclaimed, to ‘set Europe aflame’; the precedent left a heritage of intervention that few ever warned about the nature of counter-offensive missions. Gathering intelligence on adversaries is valid and even necessary to defend your country. However, to establish contingents of lethal assassins is a fundamental departure from intelligence procurement. During World War II the American version of clandestine operations put into motion a competing and dangerous rival to the traditional role of military intelligence.

This development is examined in The Evolution of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

“America’s entrance into World War II created an immediate need for intelligence to support the warfighter. While the Army and the Navy maintained their own intelligence capabilities, none were prepared to provide the kind of support needed. To bolster this effort, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was created in June 1942, under the recently established Joint Chiefs of Staff to succeed the Coordinator of Information. William Donovan remained in charge of the reorganized unit. In addition to assuming the analytical role of its predecessor, the OSS was chartered to carry out clandestine operations against the Axis powers on a worldwide scale. It was not, however, readily accepted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), who remained skeptical of the value of OSS activities, and the new unit faced strong competition from the FBI and the Army’s intelligence organization.”

“Source Statement—Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk recalled the 1941 state of the U.S.’s intelligence effort in testimony before a Senate subcommittee: ‘When I was assigned to G-2 in 1941, well over a year after the war had started in Europe, I was asked to take charge of a new section that had been organized to cover everything from Afghanistan right through southern Asia, southeast Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. Because we had no intelligence organization that had been giving attention to that area up to that time, the materials available to me when I reported for duty consisted of a tourist handbook on India and Ceylon, a 1924 military attache’s report from London on the Indian Army, and a drawer full of clippings from the New York Times that had gathered since World War One. That was literally the resources of the G-2 on that vast part of the world a year after the war in Europe started.’”

Since the resources and priories of the military were not focused on procuring accurate and worldwide reach to gather intelligence, it is understandable that the immediacy of wartime needs, FDR would want to by-pass the Army and Navy. Most know of the successful efforts of breaking the Japanese codes at the decryption center Station HYPO run by Capt. Joseph Rochefort, which proved so crucial at the battle of Midway. Such signal efforts became the stable of the NSA, which nominally is under the command authority of the United States Department of Defense. In accordance with Department of Defense Directive 5100.20, dated December 23, 1971, the Director of the NSA must always be a commissioned officer of the military services.

Contrast these functions with the post WWII establishment of the CIA.

“In 1946, President Harry S. Truman, recognizing the need for a coordinated postwar intelligence establishment, created by executive order a Central Intelligence Group and a National Intelligence Authority, both of which recruited key former members of the OSS. As in the days of the OSS, there were problems of distrust and rivalry between the new civilian agencies and the military intelligence services and the FBI.

“In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, which created the National Security Council (NSC) and, under its direction, the CIA. Given extensive power to conduct foreign intelligence operations, the CIA was charged with advising the NSC on intelligence matters, correlating and evaluating the intelligence activities of other government agencies, and carrying out other intelligence activities as the NSC might require. Although it did not end rivalries with the military services and the FBI, the law established the CIA as the country’s preeminent intelligence service.”

This maturation that placed the CIA as the go to intelligence source has allowed the apocalyptic ontogeny of the shadow government. Now anyone, who scrutinize the actual involvements that the CIA has fostered, must readily acknowledge that collective intelligence has not been the primary function of The Agency. A Timeline of CIA Atrocities by Steve Kangas provides a partial list of covert intrusions into the affairs of foreign nations.

Folks, these surreptitious operations require plausible deniability to protect the elitist “Skull and Bone” culture that masterminded the original purpose of this rogue fifth column. Yet the ultimate treason committed by these unaccountable traitors direct their lethal wares domestically. Violating their charter, the stench from any objective inquiry into CIA drug trafficking that has taken such a sever toll on our own citizens and their complicit involvement in the JFK assassination, are evidence that Langley’s machinery of subversion seeks to control the actual directions of the U.S. government.

No person foresees JFK Wished He Could Splinter The CIA ‘Into A Thousand Pieces And Scatter It Into The Winds’. Yet it could be possible to separate the functions the Central Intelligence Agency has historically persuaded. The clear line breached stems from allowing the CIA to conduct their own hidden wars. While the military has their own sordid record of failed and misguided policy endeavors, the waging of military conflicts should never be place under the auspices of a civilian mercenaries.

From the CIA’s own site, the First CIA-Military Command Relationship Agreement.

“After CIA’s founding in September 1947, the National Security Council (NSC) gave the Agency responsibility for conducting covert action, clandestine collection, and paramilitary activities ‘in times of peace.’ CIA’s covert capabilities included propaganda and economic warfare, sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures, and subversion against hostile states through assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas, and liberation groups.

“The NSC specifically stated that ‘Such operations shall not include armed conflict by recognized military forces . . . or cover and deception for military operations.” Although the NSC ordered CIA to place its paramilitary activities under theater commanders in combat areas, it made no mention of subordinating the Agency to the JCS in wartime as had been done with the OSS during World War II. Nor did the NSC and JCS resolve the question of when and how a theater of war would be formally designated for purposes of operational control.’”

The CIA has conducted its own interventionism in foreign operations that are well beyond the authority of Congress. Be that as it may, in an age where Congress has abdicated its power to declare war; the unbridled agency is an authoritarian syndicate of subterfuge and betrayal.

The military needs to be in command of any foreign adventurism. As lacking in traditional American foreign policy as this standard violates, armed services academy trained officers are a far better chain of command structure than careerist bureaucrats or power hungry politicians.

As disturbing as these circumstances are, the trend is even worse. ‘We Can’t Spy . . . If We Can’t Buy!’: The Privatization of Intelligence and the Limits of Outsourcing ‘Inherently Governmental Functions’ adds another layer of corruption that stems from handing out security clearances as bags of candy on Halloween.

“Though it lags behind the privatization of military services, the privatization of intelligence has expanded dramatically with the growth in intelligence activities following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. In a report published three days after those attacks, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence encouraged a ‘symbiotic relationship between the Intelligence Community and the private sector.’ In addition to dollars spent—dominated by large items such as spy satellites—this has seen an important increase in the proportion of personnel working on contract. More than 70 per cent of the Pentagon’s Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) unit is staffed by contractors, known as ‘green badgers,’ who also represent the majority of personnel in the DIA, the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, and the National Counterterrorism Center. At the CIA’s station in Islamabad contractors reportedly outnumber government employees three to one.”

Disclosing “Top Secret” confidential items taint military personnel as well as government agencies. Names such as Jonathan Pollard, John Walker, Jr., Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames haunt anyone deeply concerned about authentic national security.

What is often missed with all the trumped up hysteria about Russian infiltration in the 2016 presidential election is that the CIA pioneered the techniques of gaming election results and overthrowing obstinate regimes.

Real intelligence starts with securing our defenses, not maintaining or expanding a caustic empire. Loyal American citizens do not pledge allegiance to the CIA. Gen. William “Wild Bill” Donovan is rolling in his grave if he could see what his OSS has morphed into as the Central Intelligence Agency.

James Hall, a.k.a. SARTRE, is the publisher of BATR.org, where this was originally published.

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