Secret Funding Quotes
In 1927 Astor with other wealthy Americans (including Kermit Roosevelt, Marshall Field III, David Bruce and Winthrop Aldrich) founded their own private espionage agency, ROOM, which was utilized heavily by FDR:
Harmon was one of the nation’s experts on Intelligence. She pointed out that the CIA spent a relatively small portion of its budget on spies, intelligence and analysis relative to the larger proportion that went to their paramilitary covert operations. Since its inception, the CIA professionals have always preferred the glamour, adventure, and machismo of covert operations as opposed to the relative drudgery of intelligence gathering and analysis. This many believe explains the many major intelligence blunders the CIA has made such as missing the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the development of nuclear bombs in several countries and the totally mistaken analysis in the Bay of Pigs and The trigger for the Iraq War.
In an ironic precursor to the Iran-Contra scandal to come a decade later:
