Creating the Secret State: The Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943-1947 (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Intelligence activities have been an integral part of American history..." (more)
Key Phrases: postwar intelligence organization, departmental intelligence agencies, postwar intelligence system, State Department, United States, Central Intelligence Agency (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

World War II forced the United States to recognize the need for more sophisticated intelligence gathering as the war progressed. The energy of William "Wild Bill" Donovan, who oversaw the creation of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, led ultimately to the creation in 1947 of the Central Intelligence Agency. Rudgers worked as an intelligence analyst with the CIA for 14 years. Here he offers an impressive history of the complex negotiations among the various branches of both the military and the government that took place between 1943 and 1947 as it became increasingly apparent that the United States would need an agency that could operate quietly yet effectively in ferreting out the world's espionage secrets beyond what the FBI or the military could do. Previous histories have often focused on the vivid character of Donovan. This outstanding piece of scholarship, based on solid, primary research, takes a broader approach. It should be considered essential reading for anyone interested in gaining an understanding of the political, historical, and theoretical background to the establishment of the CIA. Highly recommended.DEdward Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

While much has been disclosed about the CIA's cloak-and-dagger activities during the Cold War, relatively little is known about the real origins of this secret organization. David Rudgers, a 22-year CIA veteran, has written the first complete account of its creation, revealing how the idea of "centralized intelligence" developed within the government and debunking the myth that former OSS chief William J. Donovan was the prime mover behind the agency's founding.

Creating the Secret State locates the CIA's origins in governmentwide efforts to reorganize national security during the transition from World War II to the Cold War. Rudgers maintains that the creation of the CIA was not merely the brainchild of "Wild Bill" Donovan. Rather, it was the culmination of years of negotiation among numerous policy makers such as James Forrestal and Dean Acheson, each with strong opinions regarding the agency's mission and methods. He shows that Congress, State and Justice Departments, Joint Chiefs, and even the Bureau of the Budget all had a hand in the establishment of this "secret state" that operates nearly invisibly outside the American political process.

Based almost entirely on archival and other primary sources, Rudgers's book describes in detail how the CIA evolved from its original purpose--as a watchdog to guard against a "nuclear Pearl Harbor"--to the role of clandestine warriors countering Soviet subversion, eventually engaging in more forms of intelligence gathering and covert operations than any of its counterparts. It suggests how the agency became a different organization than it might have been without the Communist threat and also shows how it both overexaggerated the dangers of the Cold War and failed to predict its ending.

Rudgers has written an accurate and balanced account that brings America's undercover army in from the cold and out from under the cult of personality. An indispensable resource for future studies of the CIA, Creating the Secret State tells the inside story of why and how the agency was called into existence as it stimulates thinking about its future relevance in a rapidly changing world.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 244 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Kansas (June 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0700610243
• ISBN-13: 978-0700610242
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,544,525 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep Insider-Doctoral History, Relevant Today, October 13, 2000

By	Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This is an admirable and unusual work, of doctoral-level quality in its sources and methods, while also reflecting the professional intelligence career status of the author. It complements Amy Zegart's broader book, Flawed By Design, in an excellent manner. This book, focusing as it does on the CIA alone, and on internal sources not readily available to Zegart, fills a major gap in our understanding of the CIA's origins. The author excels at demonstrating both the actual as opposed to the mythical origins of the agency, and pays particular heed to the role of the Bureau of the Budget and that Bureau's biases and intentions. At the end of it all, the author notes that the agency was moving in controversial directions within four years of its birth, quickly disturbing Harry Truman, who is quoted as saying, twenty-years after the fact (in 1963), "For some time I have been distributed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational arm and at times a policy-making arm of Government....I never had any thought when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak-and-dagger operations." The author himself goes on to conclude that "the nature of the new threats and the revolution in information acquisition and dissemination have thrown traditional ways of intelligence organization, collection, evaluation, and distribution into question. ... CIA has entered the second half-century of its existence striving to avoid the fate of its OSS parent. In the process, it is groping for new missions and purposes while blighted by the legacy of its past derelictions, and while operating amid a rapidly changing global environment and technological revolution that are rendering its sources, methods, organizations, and mystique obsolete." I would hasten to add, as my own book documents, that we will always have hidden evil in the world and will always needs spies and secret methods to some extent, but this book, combining academic rigor with insider access, must surely give the most intelligent of our policy, legislative, and intelligence managers pause, for it very carefully documents the possibility that 75% of what we are doing today with secret sources and methods need not and should not be done. This book has much to offer those who would learn from history.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Intentions, December 15, 2006

By	Retired Reader (New Mexico) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a well balanced, well documented, and definitive book on the beginnings of the current U.S. intelligence system. It also provides an interesting smaller window on the development of the entire post WWII U.S. National Security Establishment. For all its merits, this book is not for the general reader because it deals with a very small and specialized slice of modern American history. A more general and equally important book, "Flawed by Design" by Amy Zugert (Amazon.com) would be a better choice for individuals who don't wish to deal with the impressive amount of detail that this book provides. Nonetheless this book is indispensable to any anyone wishing to understand the process by which the current U.S. Intelligence System and specifically the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created.

As the author makes clear, the intelligence system that was established was very much the product of the disinterest that senior policy makers and the U.S. Congress had in intelligence matters in the wake of WWII. Excepting for intelligence professionals and some far seeing bureaucrats there were no strong constituencies or lobbying groups who cared about a national intelligence system. The author demonstrates that the CIA in particular was very much a creature of good and bad compromises that were imposed by the legitimate concerns of the military intelligence establishments, the FBI and State Department. Reading this book one is impressed with intelligence and dedication of the military and civilians who ultimately still ended up creating the dysfunctional intelligence system that we have today.

In the course of recounting this story, the author quotes an all but forgotten bureaucrat of the immediate post war era, named John Ohly, who, after reviewing the proposals for a CIA, pointed out that there was a lack, "of an intelligence concept which has been carefully thought out and which serves as a clear guide to the various collection and sources and which permits and requires the establishment of priorities as to areas and subjects." This reviewer knows of no more succinct statement on what is presently wrong with the U.S. Intelligence System.