The Cold War & Development of the CIA

The end of the Cold War came with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union. This was an occasion for some rejoicing in the West as well as some reflection about what it might mean. It was also a time for recollection and reassessment of the different problems encountered over the forty year period of the Cold War, and one of the events that occupied much of this reassessment was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which many see as the closest the world came to open conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, and perhaps the closest the world came to nuclear war. The period was one of considerable tension, and the United States was at the time still awash in fear of possible nuclear attack, seen in the number of people building fall-out shelters in their basements or backyards. There was also a scientific race under way between the Soviets and the U.S. and had been at least since the launching of Sputnik; it was that event which showed the West that it had to hurry in order to prevent the Soviets from taking over space and raining missiles down on their enemies. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a case in which the President of the United States took a direct stand against an action by the Soviets, the action of sending missiles to Cuba. President Kennedy invoked the Monroe Doctrine and told the Soviets to keep their hands off the nations of this hemisphere, and ultimately the Soviets did back down. Ever since that tim

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ied unsuccessfully to centralize intelligence functions within the government through an analytical section known as Research and Analysis. When the OSS disbanded after the war, the State Department absorbed many of its functions. The agency was reconstituted at Donovan's urging with the creation of the Central Intelligence Group and a year later the Central Intelligence Agency. The agency was established by the National Security Act of 1947, with the new agency absorbing the institutional values of the OSS. Before and after Pearl Harbor, the idea of a centralized intelligence agency had been opposed by many in the War Department who saw it as an infringement on their turf, and it was now considered important that the new CIA be independent and not tied to the interests of the military. The Defense Intelligence Agency would be created in 1961 to focus more on tactical questions, and it did indeed reflect the biases of a military that constantly sought bigger budgets. The concept of a centralized intelligence agency, one bringing together all the available information on a subject and analyzing it objectively, is embodied in the Directorate of Intelligence, which with 3,000 employees is the smallest of the CIA's directorates.

Category: Government - T