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In its first three years of existence, however, CIA, hampered by service rivalry, did not make much of a success of its main job. Instead, the first director, Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, concentrated on another CIA function: the collection of those kinds of intelligence which are not the special province of any other agency. Bureaucratically, this was the line of least resistance, but it was not the main job CIA was set up to do.
Though CIA officials do not admit it publicly, the agency was from the start engaged in a wide range of "covert activities": espionage, aid to resistance movements and perhaps sabotage. Armed with all the traditional devices of espionage and a few 20th century improvements, such as plastic explosives and microfilm which can be sealed under the stamp on an envelope, CIA agents spread across the world. Covert activities have a vast glamour, and emphasis on them is effective public-relations policy.
Cloak, Dagger & Files. In the last two or three years, CIA has got closer to its main function as a central evaluation agency, a mission where the information is hard to get and harder to evaluate, but where espionage is only one of many techniques. The mass-organization of modern military, economic and political systems means that every government has to give thousands of officers, engineers, businessmen, artisans and minor politicians access to thousands of facts that the government might like to cover up.
As a consequence, the modern intelligence agency resembles nothing so much as a research foundation. The modern intelligence officer's primary tools include newspapers, technical publications, broadcast transcripts, interrogation of returning travelers (known in CIA parlance as "debriefing"), and, above all, voluminous files.
To assemble from these sources innumerable single facts, and arrange them in meaningful relationships, requires several types of minds. The information-packed expert on Lower Slobbovian economic history has his place in such a setup, and so has the lawyer or the archaeologist who is trained to draw conclusions from incomplete and obscure evidence. The CIA has dozens more of both types than it has of spies, agents or cloak & dagger men.
Simple Criterion. CIA was still concentrating on establishing itself as an independent intelligence collection and research agency when the invasion of South Korea caught the U.S. Government by surprise. Called up to Capitol Hill to explain why there had been no advance warning, Admiral Hillenkoetter convinced most Congressmen that CIA was not at fault. Nobody asked a critical question which nevertheless hung over CIA's head. The question: Had CIA ever pulled all the intelligence services together and produced a national intelligence estimate on the North Korean threat? The answer: no.
Four months later Harry Truman appointed "Beedle" Smith to succeed Hillenkoetter. Assisted by Dulles and New York Investment Banker William Jackson (TIME, July 20), Smith revamped CIA from top to bottom. Items:
¶A Joint Watch Committee, including members from the military services, the State Department, the FBI and the Atomic Energy Commission, was set up to keep an eye on day-to-day indications of Communist attack anywhere in the world.