Page 61 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 61 of 237

On the face of it, the law appeared simply to give the CIA the task of correlating, evaluating and coordinating the
collection of intelligence. How, then, could the CIA mount an invasion of 1,400 men at the Bay of Pigs, complete
with its own air force and navy? How could it topple foreign governments, as it has done and was attempting to
do at the Bay of Pigs?

The answer lies in the "other functions" which the CIA may perform under the 1947 Act, at the discretion of the
National Security Council.

Almost from its inception, the agency has engaged in special operations -- clandestine activities, sometimes on a
military scale. In 1948, after the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, James Forrestal, as the first Secretary of
Defense, became alarmed at signs that the Communists might win the Italian elections. In an effort to influence
the elections to the advantage of the United States, he started a campaign among his wealthy Wall Street
colleagues to raise enough money to run a private clandestine operation. But Allen Dulles felt the problem could
not be handled effectively in private hands. He urged strongly that the government establish a covert organization
to conduct a variety of special operations.

Because there was no specific provision for covert political operations spelled out in the 1947 Act, the National
Security Council -- in the wake of the events in Czechoslovakia and Italy -- issued a paper in the summer of 1948
authorizing special operations. There were two important guidelines: that the operations be secret and that they be
plausibly deniable by the government.

A decision was reached to create an organization within the CIA to conduct secret political operations. Frank G.
Wisner, an ex-OSS man, was brought in from the State Department to head it, with a cover title of his own
invention. He became Assistant Director of the Office of Policy Coordination.

Under this innocuous title, the United States was now fully in the business of covert political operations. (A
separate Office of Special Operations conducted secret actions aimed solely at gathering intelligence.) This
machinery was in the CIA but the agency shared control of it with the State Department and the Pentagon. On
January 4, 1951, the CIA merged the two offices and created a new Plans Division, which has had sole control
over secret operations of all types since that date.

It is doubtful that many of the lawmakers who voted for the 1947 Act could have envisioned the scale on which
the CIA would engage in operational activities all over the world.

President Truman later maintained that he had no idea that this was going to happen. In a syndicated newspaper
article, date-lined December 21, 1963, he wrote:

"For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has
become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government ...

"I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak- and-dagger
operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment that I think we have experienced are in part attributable
to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is
being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue -- and a subject for cold war enemy
propaganda." [1]

It was under President Truman, however, that the CIA began conducting special operations.