65. Memorandum From Arnold Miles to L.W. Hoelscher of the Bureau of the Budget0

SUBJECT

  • Recent developments in effort to set up interdepartmental intelligence coordinating machinery

Another meeting in the long series was held on December 271 to secure agreement among War, Navy and State on the form of central organization to be set up in intelligence. At the conclusion of the meeting, Patterson indicated his acceptance of the State Department’s plan provided the State Department was actually going to proceed to set up a central intelligence organization to carry out the responsibilities it was assuming under its plan. An officer of the State Department from one of the geographic offices was present acting as a secretary of the meeting, and he interpolated at that point that the question of whether State would have any central intelligence operation was still unsettled. That broke up the meeting.

Following that meeting, McCormack met with Smith to report on the apparent hopelessness of proceeding without further direction from the President.

[Page 160]

Subsequently, however, Patterson turned over the whole matter to Howard Peterson, the new Assistant Secretary of War, in a memo2 in which he said that he was willing to go along with State provided State,

(1)
Actually created central-machinery comparable to the responsibilities it was undertaking.
(2)
Included in its plans a Deputy to McCormack to head the State Department operation, in order that McCormack would be as free as possible to devote his time to interdepartmental problems.

The effort (in which we have been so concerned) to create an effective past-war government-wide intelligence program is thus seen even more clearly than before to depend upon the creation of an adequate and professional intelligence operation in the State Department.

The past gives the military little assurance that sometime in the future they will not be caught short again with a Secretary of State “washing his hands of it” unless they take steps to keep informed independently. Further, the reception now being given to the creation of central intelligence facilities in State by some of the old line people there does not give the War and Navy Departments much encouragement to believe that the State Department can grow up fast enough to assume its new role. They hesitate to pin their faith on State Department leadership in this field which they have come to see as one of the most vital in our peacetime Government. Their advocacy of a central agency (which would be largely staffed and influenced by the military) revolves around the belief that adequate Government intelligence must depend on the military agencies.

The people in State who are talking about dismembering the Research and Analysis operation inherited from OSS by “decentralizing” it to the various offices should understand that the alternative is a central agency under military domination with a full blown research and analysis operation reporting directly to the President.

  1. Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 51, Records of the Office of Management and Budget, Series 39.19, OSS Organization and Functions. No classification marking. Apparently drafted by Schwarzwalder, whose name is typed in parentheses after Miles’ name on the “from” line.
  2. Presumably a reference to the December 26 meeting of the Secretaries of State, War, and the Navy, see Document 61, or to a follow-up meeting on December 27, which can be inferred from Document 62, although no formal record has been found.
  3. Not found.