Given the lure and stature the CIA enjoys
today, readers may easily think that the process promulgated in creating the
spying structure had been smooth or problem-free. After all, why the fuzz as
the country needed a professional spy agency like no other and similar to similar
agencies in the rest of the world? But the story about the CIA creation is
radically different from this perceived wisdom for reasons Reynolds
specifically outlines in this exceptional 500-plus pages. Indeed, it makes a
lot of sense to grasp the hard knocks of the birth that marked the preliminaries
of what is now the solid institution without which the U.S. cannot be imagined.
For beginners in intelligence history, Reynolds's
story makes sense only when knowing that before World War II, the U.S. did not
have a permanent spy institution for a century and a half of its existence.
Strange as it seems now, since its inception, the country's founding fathers
have opposed the spying principle. The Puritans' bent on starting the City upon
a Hill morphed into distancing their polity from disgraceful and cheap
practices of the old world, a situation that U.S. elites and insiders of the establishment
throughout U.S. history could not easily untangle until the advent of WWII.
In contrast, with WWII and the U.S. general
mood dramatically changing in favour of less isolationism and more involvement
in world affairs, the U.S. granted permission to eavesdrop on enemies'
communication traffic. All these and more, Reynolds elaborates, showing
politicians' extreme caution and suspicion of this change in state policy,
precisely the bias, against spying as the backbone underlying state policy for
accessing information. In licensing a spying agency, a free hand could have
spurred undesired consequences and turned the promise of the City upon a Hill
into yet another corrupt and degenerate polity of the old world.
With this background in mind, we understand the
difficulties, the hesitations, and the half-hearted beginnings of what will
become during and particularly after WWII, the U.S. intelligence taking an
industrial scale. We read that even when he favoured founding a body that could
provide answers and offer policymakers an advantage when negotiating with representatives
of foreign governments, President Roosevelt had always resisted replicating
British or European intelligence structures.
With the ongoing war in Europe, particularly
after the fall of France in June 1940 and certainly, before the attack on Pearl
Harbor in December 1941, FDR authorized Colonel Willian J. Donovan to form what
was for him more or less an amateur spy body, compared to the British MI6 and in
parallel to already existing institutions such as Military Intelligence
Division (MID), Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and of course the FBI. A key
preoccupation for FDR is the management of the massive traffic, literally the
tons of sensitive information reaching his office. The administration is
ideally carried out through coordination between the already existing
structures. In addition to the coordination task, the Colonel has in mind an
additional task dear to his heart, the planning and executing undercover
operations.
In June 1941, Roosevelts signed the order to
create the Coordinator of Information COI amidst opposition and resistance from
the FBI and other intelligence bodies (those of the Army and the Navy). Like
with all novel experiences, the established bureaucracies did not welcome the
newborn arrival for fear it would dwarf their work as COI was placed directly under
the White House. The intrigues in the hierarchy will oblige Roosevelt to transform
the new baby into OSS (Office of Strategic Service) under the authority of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff. Put in charge of the budding institution, Donovan had to
work twice as hard as other intelligence organizations to prove to his superiors
the usefulness of the new establishment. One must remember that the new
establishment was functioning amidst competing and the ever-suspicious Military,
Navy, and FBI. Because they could break codes about Japanese diplomatic and
military traffic, the Navy and the Army saw little utility in Donovan's body.
Besides, they wanted to protect their code-breaking enterprises. This explains
how they were mortally obsessed with safekeeping, a substantial advantage over
the enemy, thanks to their code-breaking. Hence why they resisted full
cooperation with Denovan's agency.
Donovan's tours in Britain gave him the
incentive to founding an American equivalent to the deeply entrenched British
intelligence services. Ever eager to actively participate in the war, Donovan's
early mission as head of the COI had been in China and India after Pearl Harbor
and the Japanese invasion of the far east. His collaboration with the British
helped enlist American and local sabotage operations behind enemy lines. His
real contribution as head of OSS, for which decision-makers in Washington were
thrilled, comes in the context of the landing in Normandy, the liberation of
France, and the arrangement of German army defection in northern Italy in the
early months of 1945.
Still, with FDR's death in April 1945 and the
end of hostilities in the European war theatre, Donovan and his structure fell
out of favour. Again, the fall was not for lack of pertinent reasons. While the
new administration seized on the key role of intelligence in shortening the
length of the war and with recommendations from the Navy and Army, it still
wanted to restructure OSS by distributing its staff among the Navy, Army, and
the State Department. President Truman found out that a real restructuring has
to begin with relieving Donovan from his duties while awarding him for the
achievements that have given an edge to the Allies' war efforts.
For precision's sake, Reynolds specifies that
Truman bore no ill feelings against Donovan or OSS. That policy can be
explained only by the old American bias against intelligence which reemerged
after the victory in WWII. Truman was afraid that the exceptional success of intelligence
could propagate to make the U.S., just like other European democracies, drift
in peaceful times toward dictatorship because intelligence could not control
its ambitions.
Reynolds' writing in this book is
conversational, and as such, it is engaging. His chit-chat style delves into
what initially looks like secondary bits or extended biographies, all for exploring
pertinent backgrounds. The reading of Need to Know flies because its
author is careful about providing the right environment. The extensive endnotes
and bibliography entries at the end underline the author's passion, who wanted
to translate how a central intelligence structure has never been systematic or
planned from the start. Quite the contrary, if anything, Reynolds' narrative illustrates
that the process that was promulgated in 1947 to what had become the CIA has
been through trial-and-error, accommodating how policymakers variedly (some
slowly; others quickly) registered American victory not only against the axis
forces but also against America's Allies in 1945. Marshalling the mindset to
seize on that exceptional victory had to end in a central intelligence agency in
which COI and OSS serve as excellent precursors.
Université d’Adrar (Algeria)
