The Foundation of the CIA

In early 1946 President Harry S. Truman marked the creation of the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) with a bizarre ritual at the White House. Truman presented his trusted officials, Chief of Staff William D. Leahy and the inaugural CIG director Sidney W. Souers, with black hats, cloaks, and wooden daggers before designating the men “personal snooper and director of centralized snooping” (p. 91). So began, with this incongruous ritual, the serious business of peacetime centralized intelligence in the United States. Richard E. Schroeder's book charts the origins and early years of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with particular focus on U.S. intelligence in World War II and the emerging Cold War prior to the Korean conflict. Schroeder provides an engaging narrative that describes the trials and tribulations of U.S. foreign policy through the lens of key officials, including William J. Donovan, Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, Allen Dulles, and Frank Wisner—figures who did so much to shape U.S. intelligence in their own time and in the years beyond

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