The Secret Government (continued)
Chapter Two
Aftermath: Politics
The 1947 National Security Act did not
come about as a result of the Roswell crashes. The Act was
already in the process of being passed at the time although the
events in New Mexico may have had some bearing upon it. What
the Act did, in essence, was establish the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), working under a Director of Central Intelligence
(DCI), and reporting directly to the President, in this case
Truman. Truman also established the National Security Council
(NSC) through the same Act as well as separating off the Army
and the Air Force into two forces, with each military force,
the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, having their own
Secretary at the previously named War Department. In future
this aggressive moniker would be dropped in favour of the
friendlier sounding but still lethal Department of Defense
(DoD).
The real kick in this otherwise seemingly
cosmetic and/or practical redefinition of the interests of
National Security for the United States, in the post-war world
- then and now, the greatest power on the planet -
came as an almost incidental addition to the paragraph
outlining the duties to be carried out by the newly created
CIA. They would: Perform, for the benefit of the existing
intelligence agencies, such additional services of common
concern as the National Security Council determines can be more
efficiently accomplished centrally.
And:
Perform such other functions and duties
related to intelligence affecting the national security as the
National Security Council may from time to time direct. [1]
This, in effect, gave carte blanche to
both the NSC and the CIA to act in whichever way they saw fit.
This gaping loophole in the legislation was picked up by the
1976 Senate Church Committee Report on Foreign and Military
Intelligence. Under the chairmanship of Senator Frank Church,
the Committee noted that:
The National Security Act of 1947 is no
longer an adequate framework for the conduct of America's
intelligence activities. The 1947 Act, preoccupied as it was
with the question of military unification, failed to provide an
adequate statement of the broad policy and purposes to be
served by America's intelligence effort. The Committee found
that the 1947 Act constitutes a vague and open-ended statement
of authority for the President through the National Security
Council. Neither espionage, covert action, nor paramilitary
warfare is explicitly authorized by the 1947 Act. Nonetheless,
these have come to be major activities conducted by the Central
Intelligence Agency, operating at the direction of the
President through the National Security Council. [2]
However, recognizing that a problem
exists, not least one of accountability, and being able to do
something to remedy the situation are two quite separate
matters. Truman's creation of the CIA not only caused problems
for the Church Committee but he himself, later in life, came to
regret giving birth to the Agency. At the time of the Bay of
Pigs fiasco, like Dr. Frankenstein, he realized that the
monster he had conjured up was out of control. He told
columnist Merle Miller that:
I think it was a mistake. And if I'd known
what was going to happen, I never would have done it. I needed
. . . the President needed at that time a central organization
that would bring all the various intelligence reports we were
getting in those days, and there must have been a dozen of
them, maybe more, bring them all into one organization so that
the President would get one report on what was going on in
various parts of the world.
Now that made sense, and that's why I went
ahead and set up what they called the Central Intelligence
Agency.
But it got out of hand. The fella . . .
the one who was in the White House after me [President
Eisenhower] never paid any attention to it, and it got out of
hand. Why, they've got an organization over there in Virginia
[the CIA] now that is practically the equal of the Pentagon in
many ways. And I think I've told you, one Pentagon is one too
many. [3]
Acting as a conduit for intelligence
information for the President, under the direction of the NSC,
was the explicit function of the CIA. However, with the advent
of the Cold War this role was rapidly expanded, essentially
under the provision of the loophole in the 1947 Act as outlined
above. As journalists David Wise and Thomas B.
Ross note in their book, 'The Invisible
Government':
Although the machinery was not established
until 1948, one small hint of what was to come was tucked away
in a memorandum which Allen Dulles [later DCI] submitted to
Congress back in 1947. It said the CIA should “have
exclusive jurisdiction to carry out secret intelligence
operations.” [4]
In other words, the CIA was going to carry
out the US Government's dirty work: Covert operations,
psychological warfare, political assassinations, and further -
money-laundering, arms trafficking, drug-running and wholesale
murder. [5] [6] [7]
The 1949 Central Intelligence Act
contained the following clause: . . . the Agency [CIA] shall be
exempted from the provisions of sections 1 and 2, chapter 795
of the Act of August 28, 1935 . . . and the provision of any
other laws which require the publication or disclosure of the
organization, functions, names, official titles, salaries or
numbers of personnel employed by the Agency . . . [8]
Effectively this allowed the DCI and any
other agent of the CIA to refuse to answer questions before a
Congressional oversight committee under the proviso of
'National Security'. Since any Congressional oversight there
was became entirely reliant on the CIA or anyone else telling
them what they needed to know, then if they did not need to
know it they could hardly ask questions about it. This section
of the Act gave the Agency a relatively free hand to conduct
whatever illegal or extra-legal activities they, or the NSC, so
desired. It also enabled them to offer their ultimate boss, the
President, the get-out-of-jail-free card of 'Presidential
deniability'. If the President was unaware of any such activity
then he could hardly be held to blame for it. Ronald Reagan
used this to great effect during the Iran-Contra affair.
While the CIA had been let off the leash,
President Truman had an even more frightening card to play. In
the dying days of his presidency, Truman signed into being the
National Security Agency. The President already knew that,
despite his desire to continue, neither his family, staff, nor
indeed the country wanted him to remain as President [9].
Whether his creation of the NSA was in order to continue his
legacy or merely to rein in the CIA, or for whatever other
reason, is unclear. However, as author James Bamford puts it:
At 12:01 on the morning of November 4,
1952, a new federal agency was born. Unlike other such
bureaucratic births, however, this one arrived in silence. No
news coverage, no congressional debate, no press announcement,
not even the whisper of a rumor. Nor could any mention of the
new organization be found in the Government Organization Manual
or the Federal Register or the Congressional Record. Equally
invisible were the new agency's director, its numerous
buildings, and its ten thousand employees.
Eleven days earlier, on October 24,
President Harry S. Truman scratched his signature on the bottom
of a seven-page presidential memorandum addressed to Secretary
of State Dean G. Acheson and Secretary of Defense Robert A.
Lovett. Classified top secret and stamped with a code word that
was itself classified, the order directed the establishment of
an agency to be known as the National Security Agency. It was
the birth certificate for America's newest and most secret
agency, so secret in fact that only a handful in the government
would be permitted to know of its existence. Even the date set
for its birth was most likely designed for maximum secrecy:
should any hint of its creation leak out, it would surely be
swallowed up in the other news of the day - the presidential
election of 1952. [10]
The NSA is still the most secret
agency within the entire National Security set-up.
Bamford goes on to quote New York Times
journalist Harrison E. Salisbury who wrote in Penthouse in
November 1980 that: “not one American in 10,000 has even
heard its name.” [11]
The memorandum signed by Truman was
specific and Top Secret. Fifty years on it remains classified
and does not appear in published Executive Orders of the
President, even in those that concern National Security and
have since been declassified. President Carter issued an
Executive Order in 1978, relating to declassification of
documents covering National Security. It read:
1-401. Except as permitted in Section
1-402, at the time of original classification each original
classification authority shall set a date or event for
automatic declassification no more than six years later.
1-402. Only officials with Top Secret
classification authority and agency heads listed in Section 1-2
may classify information for more than six years from the date
of the original classification. This authority shall be used
sparingly. In such cases, a declassification date or event, or
a date for review, shall be set. This date or event shall be as
early as national security permits and shall be no more than
twenty years after the original classification . . .[12]
While this might appear to supersede
Truman's previous Executive Order, clearly this was not the
case. Truman's Order presumably precluded even its own later
publication.
The nominal head of the NSA is the
Secretary of Defense, one of those listed in the
above-mentioned Section 1-2 as being able to retain a
classification on any information release, but it is also
possible that the Director of the NSA's security classification
surpasses even that of the Secretary's. Whatever the reason,
Truman's NSA remains as mired in mystery today as it was at its
inception.
Part of the reason for this may lie in
Truman's original decision to exclude the NSA from all laws
passed in the United States that do not specifically cite the
NSA as being subject to that law. The resulting agency,
therefore, lies beyond any means of oversight by Congress. It
may even lie beyond the capacity of a President to control.
Aftermath: Secrecy
The events of July 1947 necessitated the
creation of a new agency to deal with this particular
situation. That agency was named Majestic- or MJ-12. Its
existence only came to light with the leaking of information to
movie producer Jaime Shandera. A 35mm roll of film was posted
anonymously to him which, when developed, revealed a Top Secret
briefing document prepared for the incoming President, Dwight
D. Eisenhower [13] [14].
The twelve members of the committee are
named and, while the authenticity of the document has been
disputed, Stanton Friedman remains convinced it is genuine. He
spends 30 pages of his book 'Top Secret/Majic' [15]
authenticating the information.
Quite where MJ-12 sits in the US
Intelligence hierarchy is unclear but Friedman offers this
suggestion: continue reading
