Allen Dulles Quotes

The CIA did not have a long tradition. It was created after WWII when the OSS was are espionage organization had been disbanded In the early days of the Cold War, the CIA went rogue and engaged in covert activities without the knowledge and approval of the President and his cabinet. General Maxwell Taylor conducted a thorough investigation and the agency was brought under control. There hav been several more incidents since then and every few years there have been additional scandals of unauthorized operations which were harmful to American interests and values. In a democracy it is always hard to control a secret organization. Actually, at the beginning of WWII, we had almost no espionage capability and President Roosevelt had a series of friends who provided him with intelligence until William Donavan had time to establish the OSS which did such a wonderful job.

At the time the USSR was our ally. Neither the military or the state department focused in gaining intelligence on any ally and J. Edgar Hoover had for years focused on intelligence about communists in the United States but not in Russia and the rest of the world. These other agencies treated Souers with disdain or ignored him, but this memo showed the importance of Truman’s idea of having an independent intelligence agency to inform the President.

Bill Casey had an individual ideology of the world and being a strong administrator imposed that on most of intelligence analyses that the agency did during his tenure.

Both President Truman and Genera MacArthur, in command in Korea, received this report and several confirmation reports in the subsequent days. On October 30, 1950, 100,000 Chinese troops attacked across the border almost driving MacArthur’s forces into the sea. The Chinese then pushed Allied forces all the way back to the 38th parallel—the divide between North and South Korea. This is yet another stunning example of the major international security events where the Central Intelligence Agency was in the dark and misadvised the administration. See {634967} for another quotation on this Central Intelligence Agency weakness.

Powell, after being assured that the intelligence about the Iraq WMD showing that they were about to deploy a nuclear weapon and they had poison gas was absolutely true, was the major spokesperson to the UN and much of the United States justifying the Iraq War. It was all untrue, and Powell’s credibility which had been exceptional was hurt very badly. He soon resigned.

This quotation comes as a major surprise to most people who perceive modern CIA as the MAJOR U.S. spying and covert action organization. It is a marvelous case study of agency “mission creep”.

Hunt was being questioned about his forgery of a State Department cable linking the Kennedy administration to the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam:

Helms had very bad experience even in hinting at unfavorable news about the Vietnam War. See {634520}. He didn’t even send copies to his own executives, the White House Chief of Staff or the other White House staff like the National Security Advisor who would normally receive copies of top secret memos.

This was one of the great blunders of the Central Intelligence Agency in American History. As the Central Intelligence Agency was writing this report the Russians were landing missile components in Cuba. Within days the Cuban Missile Crisis would erupt. The Central Intelligence Agency also missed the Communist Takeover in China, the fall of the Berlin wall, the implosion of the Soviet Union, the Hungarian Revolution, the Iran Revolution, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and the Arab Spring just to list a few of the most dramatic events about which they failed to have any information in advance. At the same time they claimed that there were nuclear weapons in Iraq leading to the Iraq war and claimed the Soviets were on a track to have a better military and stronger economy—see {635791}.

Kellis was the first of the Central Intelligence Agency whistle blowers. The President acted promptly on the letter and appointed General Jimmy Doolittle to conduct an investigation which confirmed the Kellis letter.

Sichel resigned in protest over these operations. See {634963} for an official corroboration of the CIA Korean fiasco.

There has always been friction between the military intelligence services and the CIA. The main friction was that the CIA was not very forthcoming to military intelligence with the details of their secret intelligence whereas the Israeli’s shared with all the U. S. Intelligence Agencies.

Ford was then a member of Congress. This was known as the “Domino Theory” and was the strategic reason that sending troops to Vietnam was in America’s vital Interest. However, the Domino Theory was incorrect. Vietnam did fall to the Communists, and yet NONE of the countries became communist. Actually, they became even more democratic.

even though in this case the objective The State Department, the Defense Department and most important President Kennedy had decided to get rid of Diem. Most of the Central Intelligence Agency thought that this was a very unwise policy, because Diem was a known risk, and the people who would replace him and their talents and policies were unknown. The negatives of Diem—the facts that he, a Christian, was persecuting the majority Buddhists, was totally corrupt, and not a very good leader was less distressful to the CIA than to the President and the other agencies as the intelligence agency frequently not only tolerated “offensive” allies, but actually employed them including war criminals. Another importance of this quotation is that it shows that it was by no means certain that the CIA would always follow the orders of the President and the government policy makers. Colby, who was not the agency director at that time but was the head of the South East Bureau, was one high level official who argued that the policies should always be followed even if they were unwise or foolish. Another importance of this quotation is that it illustrate a common error that administrations are frequently forced to make: making a policy decision to eliminate a problem while not having much of an idea of what the alternative or consequence would be when the policy is implemented. The Syrian Civil War in 2013 was a good example. The Government side appeared to have used Chemical Warfare on Civilians and public opinion demanded that we do something. However, having a no-fly zone or any of the alternatives to prevent (punish) the government for the Chemical Warfare would strengthen the rebel side which was made up of numerous factions—some of which were known Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and jihadists. If the balance of power were tipped toward the rebels, the consequence for the American national interests were unknown—just as the consequence of ousting Diem was unknown and turned out to also be bad and was probably worse.

The CIA intelligence had been shared with key world leaders to gain support for the George W, Bush administration invasion of Iraq. Blix was bothered by the fact that although the intelligence was so certain why were not any of the locations known. The answer, of course, was that there was no such development and the intelligence was faulty, but at the time, only he seemed to be bothered by this point. See also {588115}.

See {637464} for the trigger for the FBI to write this report. It was the report that verified that the CIA had hired the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro which President Johnson had heard but the CIA never revealed it to Johnson or the Warren Commission investigations JFK’s assassination. The full document was kept secret and was not yet declassified in 2014 when this quotation was entered in the collection.

CIA Director Webster had cleaned up the agency, but morale was terrible and there were few human agents left in key spots around the globe. However, since CNN and the other news organizations of the world have been equipped with modern digital technology it is quite common that they get information before the CIA does and often obtain information that the CIA never did get. In this instance, Bush turned to the Defense Department instead of the CIA and ordered a full scale invasion to arrest President Noriega who was running illicit drugs into the United States and felt that because he had once been a CIA informant, he would be immune.