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18
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Atomic Energy Commission.md
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@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
---
created: 2025-03-05
updated: 2026-10-05
updated: 2026-10-09
title: Atomic Energy Commission
aliases:
- Atomic Energy Commission
@ -84,15 +84,20 @@ In April 1955 [[Richard Bissell]] and Colonel [[Osmund Ritland]] of the [[Air Fo
The minutes of a conference on "aerial phenomena" held at 1300 on February 16, 1949 in room P-162 of the [[Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory]], classified Secret and later declassified on December 9, 1975, list among those present, from the [[Fourth Army]], the [[Armed Forces Special Weapons Project]], the [[University of New Mexico]] (Dr. [[Lincoln LaPaz]]), the FBI (Mr. Maxwell), the University of California ([[Norris Bradbury]], Dr. Holloway, Mr. Hoyt, Dr. Manley, [[Frederick Reines]] and [[Edward Teller]]) and "USAEC, SFOO: Mr. Morgan." Dr. LaPaz described the December 12, 1948 Starvation Peak fireball as of constant intensity and horizontal path, about two seconds in duration and of a green hue not observed in meteor falls, and said of the observed paths: "I defy you to find anywhere among meteorists, examples of conventional meteorites that move over long horizontal paths." Captain Neef of the Fourth Army stated that the Air Force's Project Sign "is now project Grudge, which includes the phenomena in New Mexico," and Teller said that from what LaPaz said, "it certainly sounds like everything else but meteors."[^13]
### Wilhelm Reich and the Argonne laboratory
The FBI's New York office recorded that in August 1949 [[Wilhelm Reich]]'s associate Washington telephoned that he had been detained for questioning at the Commission's [[Argonne National Laboratory|Argonne laboratory]] after a visit to Oak Ridge; on 24 August Reich telephoned the laboratory and was told by an officer that he could not say whether Washington was there. [[Myron Sharaf]] told the FBI's New York office on October 11, 1949 that Washington had "swindled them out of some money," that Reich feared the Russians might obtain the information, and that Mayer, security officer of the Argonne laboratory, had advised Reich to report to the FBI; Sharaf said that orgone energy "might serve as some defense to rays of radio-active material or atomic energy."[^14] A security official of the Commission in New York told the Bureau that Reich had approached the Commission in New York on several occasions and had presented his experiments to the Commission in Washington, which told him they were outside its scope; in the Bureau's words, the scientists of the Commission were of the opinion that Reich was mentally unsound in his scientific experiments.[^14] A Bureau memorandum of March 25, 1954 describes the Institute's work as discredited by the Commission and the FDA.[^15] On October 7, 1955 Assistant Director L. B. Nichols wrote that on February 23, 1954 he had told Reich's attorney Asa Richardson that the Bureau had no current interest in Reich and that he might check with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Atomic Energy Commission.[^16]
### Seats on the intelligence advisory bodies
The Central Intelligence Agency's history of the Directors of Central Intelligence records that the commission was represented on the Intelligence Advisory Committee chaired by the Director, alongside the FBI and the military and State Department intelligence chiefs, and on its successor the United States Intelligence Board, on which Donald R. Cotter represented the commission in 1972 when the Board met under Director [[Richard Helms]].[^14]
The Central Intelligence Agency's history of the Directors of Central Intelligence records that the commission was represented on the Intelligence Advisory Committee chaired by the Director, alongside the FBI and the military and State Department intelligence chiefs, and on its successor the United States Intelligence Board, on which Donald R. Cotter represented the commission in 1972 when the Board met under Director [[Richard Helms]].[^17]
### The commission's grants in the psi files
The CIA's STARGATE collection includes the 1972 paper by [[Stuart J. Freedman]] and [[John F. Clauser]], "Experimental Test of Local Hidden-Variable Theories," whose acknowledgements state that the work was "supported by U.S. Atomic Energy Commission," and the 1979 [[Stanford Research Institute|SRI]] biography of [[Edwin C. May]], who joined the Grill Flame remote perturbation work, lists among his publications the 1969 "Proposal to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for Procurement of a Computer Implemented Nuclear Data Acquisition and Control System," [[Crocker Nuclear Laboratory]] Report UCD-112.[^15]
The CIA's STARGATE collection includes the 1972 paper by [[Stuart J. Freedman]] and [[John F. Clauser]], "Experimental Test of Local Hidden-Variable Theories," whose acknowledgements state that the work was "supported by U.S. Atomic Energy Commission," and the 1979 [[Stanford Research Institute|SRI]] biography of [[Edwin C. May]], who joined the Grill Flame remote perturbation work, lists among his publications the 1969 "Proposal to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for Procurement of a Computer Implemented Nuclear Data Acquisition and Control System," [[Crocker Nuclear Laboratory]] Report UCD-112.[^18]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Atomic Energy Act of 1946, Public Law 585, 60 Stat. 755, approved August 1, 1946, sections 2(a), 10(b) and 15, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-60/pdf/STATUTE-60-Pg755.pdf.
[^2]: Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, Public Law 93-438, 88 Stat. 1233, October 11, 1974, section 101, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-88/pdf/STATUTE-88-Pg1233.pdf.
[^3]: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, *A Short History of Nuclear Regulation* (NUREG/BR-0533), introduction, https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/brochures/br0533/ (archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/2022/https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/brochures/br0533/).
@ -106,5 +111,8 @@ The CIA's STARGATE collection includes the 1972 paper by [[Stuart J. Freedman]]
[^11]: John Fialka, "Helms Says He Can't Recall LBJ Talk on Israeli A-Bomb," *The Washington Star*, March 2, 1978, CIA-RDP88-01315R000400060012-2, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88-01315r000400060012-2; "Ex-CIA Aide Says Johnson Quashed Israel A-Bomb Data," *The Washington Post*, March 2, 1978, CIA-RDP88-01315R000400060010-4, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp88-01315r000400060010-4. Duckett is the sole source for the CIA's view of the diversion question.
[^12]: Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, *The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974* (CIA History Staff, 1992), chapter 2, "Developing the U-2," pp. 56 to 57, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB434/docs/U2%20-%20Chapter%202.pdf.
[^13]: Minutes, "Conference on Aerial Phenomena," Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, February 16, 1949, transcribed at https://ufologie.patrickgross.org/bb/caop16feb1949-01.htm (pages 01, 02, 03, 05 and 18).
[^14]: Douglas F. Garthoff, *Directors of Central Intelligence as Leaders of the U.S. Intelligence Community, 1946-2005* (Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2007), chapter 1 and the 1972 United States Intelligence Board photograph caption, https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/159886efc8ff17ac93a5ffc027d9a6a0/dci_leaders.pdf.
[^15]: Freedman and Clauser, "Experimental Test of Local Hidden-Variable Theories," Physical Review Letters (1972), CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080052-7, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00787r000200080052-7; Proposed Grill Flame Protocol, Task II, SRI 9-4186, May 8, 1979, biography and publications of Edwin C. May, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300080001-0, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r001300080001-0.
[^14]: FBI New York letter to the Director, NY 62-10139, Sharaf interview of October 11, 1949, Wilhelm Reich FBI file, Part 2 (PDF pages 10 to 13), https://archive.org/details/WilhelmReichFBI.
[^15]: M. A. Jones to Mr. Nichols, March 25, 1954, same file, Part 2 (PDF pages 44 to 46).
[^16]: L. B. Nichols to Mr. Tolson, office memorandum of October 7, 1955, same file, Part 2 (PDF page 109).
[^17]: Douglas F. Garthoff, *Directors of Central Intelligence as Leaders of the U.S. Intelligence Community, 1946-2005* (Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2007), chapter 1 and the 1972 United States Intelligence Board photograph caption, https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/159886efc8ff17ac93a5ffc027d9a6a0/dci_leaders.pdf.
[^18]: Freedman and Clauser, "Experimental Test of Local Hidden-Variable Theories," Physical Review Letters (1972), CIA-RDP96-00787R000200080052-7, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00787r000200080052-7; Proposed Grill Flame Protocol, Task II, SRI 9-4186, May 8, 1979, biography and publications of Edwin C. May, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300080001-0, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r001300080001-0.

56
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/CIAA.md
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@ -9,10 +9,10 @@ tags:
- Intelligence
- Rockefeller
- PsychologicalWarfare
summary: "Roosevelt's wartime Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, headed by Nelson Rockefeller, which served as the first official US government propaganda operation and built the economic, media, and political infrastructure for postwar American hegemony in Latin America."
summary: "Roosevelt's wartime Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, headed by Nelson Rockefeller, the first official US government propaganda operation, which built economic, media and political infrastructure in Latin America."
location: Washington, DC
created: 2026-06-05
updated: 2026-06-05
updated: 2026-10-09
---
The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA) was a wartime US government agency created on August 16, 1940, by order of the [[Council of National Defense]] and placed under the direction of [[Nelson Rockefeller]]. Its official mandate was to promote hemispheric solidarity and counter Axis influence in [[Latin America]]; in practice it functioned as the first official US propaganda operation, a vehicle for expanding American corporate dominance in the hemisphere, and a testing ground for the psychological warfare and covert operations techniques that would be institutionalized in the postwar [[CIA]].[^1]
@ -53,35 +53,37 @@ Hollywood studios were pressured to deny films to theaters showing German or Ita
The CIAA's Publications and Information Division, run by [[Francis Jamieson]] (a [[Pulitzer Prize]]-winning reporter and future Rockefeller campaign manager), produced the magazine *En Guardia* (registered with the US Postal Office on April 8, 1941, with the first issue in summer 1941 and the third issue circulating in October). Circulation reached 750,000 copies per issue by peak production, distributed free to politicians, journalists, and business executives. Propaganda posters and editorial cartoons were produced through contractors coordinated by Jamieson's New York office; these materials are documented in NARA Record Group 229, series "Propaganda Materials, 1941-1945" (NAID 540082) and "Status of Projects Reports, 1942-1945" (NAID 2067594).[^15]
The CIAA was one of the heaviest users of the [[Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service]]. On March 5, 1942 Nelson Rockefeller wrote to FCC chairman [[James L. Fly]] to thank the commission for the "invaluable aid" the service supplied to his organization. On July 29, 1942 he reported that the CIAA daily news roundup on Latin American affairs included 400 to 500 words a day drawn from the Kingsville transcripts.[^16] On July 7, 1942 [[Goodwin Watson]] wrote to Rockefeller about an offer the CIAA had made to the service's analyst John W. Gardner, and proposed that officials of the two offices settle the matter together.[^17] On January 2, 1943 [[Robert D. Leigh]] wrote to Rockefeller suggesting that the CIAA set up a system like the service's for releasing information about Latin America.[^17]
### Aviation and Infrastructure
The CIAA funded and coordinated displacement of Axis-affiliated airlines from South American routes and integrated Latin American air forces into a US-led hemispheric defense system. The Panair do Brazil operations in northeastern Brazil (a Pan American subsidiary) received War Department financing to build airfields beginning in June 1941; the Natal airbase was built in 1942. CIAA-funded airfields and trans-Andean highways served the immediate war effort while creating the infrastructure for postwar corporate penetration of the interior.[^16]
The CIAA funded and coordinated displacement of Axis-affiliated airlines from South American routes and integrated Latin American air forces into a US-led hemispheric defense system. The Panair do Brazil operations in northeastern Brazil (a Pan American subsidiary) received War Department financing to build airfields beginning in June 1941; the Natal airbase was built in 1942. CIAA-funded airfields and trans-Andean highways served the immediate war effort while creating the infrastructure for postwar corporate penetration of the interior.[^18]
The trans-Andean highway to [[Pucallpa]], Peru, funded by the CIAA, passed within fifteen miles of the [[Ganso Azul]] oil field, the Amazon basin's only proven petroleum source at the time. This highway also enabled the [[Summer Institute of Linguistics]] to establish its Amazonian base at [[Yarinacocha]] adjacent to the road.[^17]
The trans-Andean highway to [[Pucallpa]], Peru, funded by the CIAA, passed within fifteen miles of the [[Ganso Azul]] oil field, the Amazon basin's only proven petroleum source at the time. This highway also enabled the [[Summer Institute of Linguistics]] to establish its Amazonian base at [[Yarinacocha]] adjacent to the road.[^19]
Record Group 229 at NARA includes a [[Department of Transportation]] series totaling 129 linear feet, documenting CIAA aviation, ocean shipping, railway, and highway programs across the hemisphere.[^18]
Record Group 229 at NARA includes a [[Department of Transportation]] series totaling 129 linear feet, documenting CIAA aviation, ocean shipping, railway, and highway programs across the hemisphere.[^20]
### Rubber Program and the Amazon
The CIAA was assigned the task of reviving Amazon rubber production after Japanese forces overran British Far East plantations in 1942, eliminating 92 percent of the US rubber supply. The US and Brazil entered a formal rubber agreement in March 1942 under which the US committed a $5 million fund to improve raw rubber production in the Amazon and guaranteed purchase of all Brazilian exportable rubber through 1946 at fixed prices. The US paid the Brazilian government $100 for each worker delivered to the Amazon as a "rubber soldier."[^19]
The CIAA was assigned the task of reviving Amazon rubber production after Japanese forces overran British Far East plantations in 1942, eliminating 92 percent of the US rubber supply. The US and Brazil entered a formal rubber agreement in March 1942 under which the US committed a $5 million fund to improve raw rubber production in the Amazon and guaranteed purchase of all Brazilian exportable rubber through 1946 at fixed prices. The US paid the Brazilian government $100 for each worker delivered to the Amazon as a "rubber soldier."[^21]
The rubber program was administered through a network of agencies: the [[Rubber Reserve Company]] (incorporated June 28, 1940, as an RFC subsidiary), which controlled stockpiling and disposal; the [[Rubber Development Corporation]], which managed Amazon operations and was financed through special funds established under the Washington Accords governing Brazil's wartime cooperation; the Brazilian [[SEMTA]] (Serviço Especial de Mobilização de Trabalhadores para a Amazônia), which recruited labor; [[SAVA]] for labor placement; the [[Banco de Credito da Borracha]] for production financing; and the [[SESP]] health and sanitation service.[^20]
The rubber program was administered through a network of agencies: the [[Rubber Reserve Company]] (incorporated June 28, 1940, as an RFC subsidiary), which controlled stockpiling and disposal; the [[Rubber Development Corporation]], which managed Amazon operations and was financed through special funds established under the Washington Accords governing Brazil's wartime cooperation; the Brazilian [[SEMTA]] (Serviço Especial de Mobilização de Trabalhadores para a Amazônia), which recruited labor; [[SAVA]] for labor placement; the [[Banco de Credito da Borracha]] for production financing; and the [[SESP]] health and sanitation service.[^22]
Between 1943 and 1945 approximately 60,000 people were recruited to work as rubber tappers in the Amazon interior. The results were catastrophic for the workers: roughly one-third died within the first year of the program, a ratio that climbed toward one-half before the war ended. Survivors were indentured to seringal operators through permanent debts inherited across generations. CIAA-administered health and sanitation programs for rubber workers, documented in NARA Record Group 229, included the Servicio Especial de Saude Publica, with quarterly reports from 1944 and 1946-1950, and architectural and engineering plans for water supply, drainage, and sewer systems from 1937-1951.[^21]
Between 1943 and 1945 approximately 60,000 people were recruited to work as rubber tappers in the Amazon interior. The results were catastrophic for the workers: roughly one-third died within the first year of the program, a ratio that climbed toward one-half before the war ended. Survivors were indentured to seringal operators through permanent debts inherited across generations. CIAA-administered health and sanitation programs for rubber workers, documented in NARA Record Group 229, included the Servicio Especial de Saude Publica, with quarterly reports from 1944 and 1946-1950, and architectural and engineering plans for water supply, drainage, and sewer systems from 1937-1951.[^23]
The CIAA also oversaw the [[Metals Reserve Company]] (incorporated June 28, 1940, as an RFC subsidiary), which procured approximately 50 kinds of strategic metals and minerals from 51 countries; Bolivia's tin and tungsten, Chile's copper and nitrates, Colombia's platinum and mercury, and Venezuela's oil were among the primary Latin American targets of preclusive buying. By January 1941 the CIAA had been assigned the specific task of assembling data on Axis purchases of strategic materials in Latin America to support preclusive buying recommendations.[^22]
The CIAA also oversaw the [[Metals Reserve Company]] (incorporated June 28, 1940, as an RFC subsidiary), which procured approximately 50 kinds of strategic metals and minerals from 51 countries; Bolivia's tin and tungsten, Chile's copper and nitrates, Colombia's platinum and mercury, and Venezuela's oil were among the primary Latin American targets of preclusive buying. By January 1941 the CIAA had been assigned the specific task of assembling data on Axis purchases of strategic materials in Latin America to support preclusive buying recommendations.[^24]
### Health and Sanitation Programs
Beginning in spring 1942 the CIAA developed a major health and sanitation program for Latin America, operating through the [[Institute of Inter-American Affairs]] (IIAA), incorporated as a US government corporation in 1942. The IIAA established joint US-Latin American "Servicios" organizations across the hemisphere, each representing cooperative programs in public health, sanitation, agriculture, and education. Coordinating committee records for Brazil and Peru, covering 1941-1946, are held in Record Group 229; they include architectural and engineering plans for 660 health and sanitation infrastructure projects across the hemisphere.[^23]
Beginning in spring 1942 the CIAA developed a major health and sanitation program for Latin America, operating through the [[Institute of Inter-American Affairs]] (IIAA), incorporated as a US government corporation in 1942. The IIAA established joint US-Latin American "Servicios" organizations across the hemisphere, each representing cooperative programs in public health, sanitation, agriculture, and education. Coordinating committee records for Brazil and Peru, covering 1941-1946, are held in Record Group 229; they include architectural and engineering plans for 660 health and sanitation infrastructure projects across the hemisphere.[^25]
### Dissolution and Succession
Rockefeller was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs at the State Department's general reorganization on December 20, 1944, when the position was formally created. He served under both Roosevelt and Truman through 1945.[^24]
Rockefeller was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs at the State Department's general reorganization on December 20, 1944, when the position was formally created. He served under both Roosevelt and Truman through 1945.[^26]
After Rockefeller's departure, Wallace Harrison became director of the renamed Office of Inter-American Affairs under Executive Order 9532 (March 23, 1945). Executive Order 9608 (August 31, 1945) transferred OIAA informational activities to the State Department after the end of the war. Executive Order 9710 (April 10, 1946, effective May 20, 1946), signed by President [[Harry S. Truman]], abolished the office entirely; the Secretary of State received control over five subsidiary corporations: the Institute of Inter-American Affairs, the [[Inter-American Educational Foundation]], the [[Institute of Inter-American Transportation]], the [[Inter-American Navigation Corporation]], and [[Prencin-radio]], along with all records, property, funds, and remaining personnel.[^25]
After Rockefeller's departure, Wallace Harrison became director of the renamed Office of Inter-American Affairs under Executive Order 9532 (March 23, 1945). Executive Order 9608 (August 31, 1945) transferred OIAA informational activities to the State Department after the end of the war. Executive Order 9710 (April 10, 1946, effective May 20, 1946), signed by President [[Harry S. Truman]], abolished the office entirely; the Secretary of State received control over five subsidiary corporations: the Institute of Inter-American Affairs, the [[Inter-American Educational Foundation]], the [[Institute of Inter-American Transportation]], the [[Inter-American Navigation Corporation]], and [[Prencin-radio]], along with all records, property, funds, and remaining personnel.[^27]
The CIAA's personnel, techniques, and institutional relationships migrated into the State Department, the new CIA, and Rockefeller's private instruments, the [[IBEC]] and [[AIA]]. The FBI's Special Intelligence Service transferred its Latin American networks, communications systems, and personnel to the CIA during the same period. The CIAA's methods, particularly press control, radio operations, controlled newsprint, and the use of private business executives for public policy, became templates for CIA covert operations in the subsequent decade.[^26]
The CIAA's personnel, techniques, and institutional relationships migrated into the State Department, the new CIA, and Rockefeller's private instruments, the [[IBEC]] and [[AIA]]. The FBI's Special Intelligence Service transferred its Latin American networks, communications systems, and personnel to the CIA during the same period. The CIAA's methods, particularly press control, radio operations, controlled newsprint, and the use of private business executives for public policy, became templates for CIA covert operations in the subsequent decade.[^28]
### Archival Holdings
@ -96,7 +98,7 @@ Records of the Office of Inter-American Affairs are held at NARA as Record Group
- Division of Agriculture (1 linear foot)
- Department of Special Services (1 linear foot)
Audiovisual materials include 45 reels of motion picture film documenting Latin American activities and dignitaries' visits (1940-1945), 24 sound recordings of Spanish and English radio broadcasts (1941-1947), 3,386 still photographs including the Rockefeller Collection, 79 posters and drawings (1941-1945), 55 maps of South American locations, and 660 architectural and engineering plans for health and sanitation infrastructure. Records of subsidiary corporations and minutes of their meetings cover 1942-1949.[^27]
Audiovisual materials include 45 reels of motion picture film documenting Latin American activities and dignitaries' visits (1940-1945), 24 sound recordings of Spanish and English radio broadcasts (1941-1947), 3,386 still photographs including the Rockefeller Collection, 79 posters and drawings (1941-1945), 55 maps of South American locations, and 660 architectural and engineering plans for health and sanitation infrastructure. Records of subsidiary corporations and minutes of their meetings cover 1942-1949.[^29]
### Footnotes
@ -115,15 +117,17 @@ Audiovisual materials include 45 reels of motion picture film documenting Latin
[^13]: Proclaimed List, July 1941, 1,800 firms: TIME, "War Front: Blacklist"; FRUS 1941 Vol. VI, Document 313 (history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1941v06/d313). Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8 ("Nelson's Grand Alliance").
[^14]: *Saludos Amigos* premiere Rio de Janeiro August 24, 1942; US release February 6, 1943; Disney goodwill tour facilitated by CIAA: Dale Adams, "Saludos Amigos: Hollywood and FDR's Good Neighbor Policy," *Quarterly Review of Film and Video* 24, no. 3 (2007); Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8.
[^15]: *En Guardia* registered April 8, 1941; first issue summer 1941; circulation 750,000: research paper, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, scholarworks.utrgv.edu/art_fac/3/. NARA RG 229, "Propaganda Materials, 1941-1945" (NAID 540082); "Status of Projects Reports, 1942-1945" (NAID 2067594): NARA blog, text-message.blogs.archives.gov, September 26, 2017. Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8 and Ch. 13 ("The Junta Regroups").
[^16]: Panair do Brazil airfield agreement June 1941; Natal airbase 1942: The Pan Am Historical Foundation, panam.org. Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8 ("The Secret War for the Skies").
[^17]: Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8 ("Wings over the Amazon").
[^18]: NARA RG 229 Department of Transportation series, 129 linear feet: archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/229.html.
[^19]: US-Brazil rubber agreement, March 1942; $5 million fund; $100 per worker; guaranteed purchase through 1946: Americas Quarterly, "The Amazon's Greatest Generation?"; Quintus Curtius, "Brazil's Rubber Soldiers."
[^20]: Rubber Reserve Company incorporated June 28, 1940 as RFC subsidiary: Jesse H. Jones, *Fifty Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC* (Macmillan, 1951), pp. 406-415. Rubber Development Corporation, SEMTA, Washington Accords: ResearchGate, "Os Soldados da Borracha." FRUS 1943, Vol. V, Document 627 (September 9, 1943, McAshan to Ambassador Caffery): history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943v05/d627. Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8 and Ch. 12.
[^21]: 60,000 rubber workers recruited 1943-1945; mortality estimates: Americas Quarterly, "The Amazon's Greatest Generation?"; Quintus Curtius, "Brazil's Rubber Soldiers." SESP records and health infrastructure plans: NARA RG 229; "History of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs," 1947. Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8 and Ch. 12.
[^22]: Metals Reserve Company incorporated June 28, 1940 as RFC subsidiary (alongside Rubber Reserve Company and Defense Plant Corporation, all created the same day): Jesse H. Jones, *Fifty Billion Dollars*, pp. 389-405. Preclusive buying data assembly by January 1941: "History of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs," 1947. Strategic materials by country: Foreign Affairs, "Our Economic Warfare," April 1942.
[^23]: Institute of Inter-American Affairs incorporated 1942: NARA, "Records of the Office of Inter-American Affairs." Servicios programs and 660 infrastructure plans: NARA RG 229; "History of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs," 1947. Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8.
[^24]: Rockefeller appointed Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs, entry on duty December 20, 1944: State Department Historical Office, "List of Assistant Secretaries of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs," history.state.gov; Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8 and Ch. 12-13.
[^25]: Executive Order 9532, March 23, 1945; Executive Order 9608, August 31, 1945; Executive Order 9710, April 10, 1946, effective May 20, 1946; five subsidiary corporations transferred to Secretary of State: American Presidency Project.
[^26]: Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8, Ch. 12-13. SIS networks transferred to CIA at CIA's founding in 1947: CIA, "The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency," cia.gov/stories/story/the-office-of-strategic-services-americas-first-intelligence-agency/.
[^27]: NARA RG 229 full description: archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/229.html; "History of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs," 1947.
[^16]: Joseph E. Roop, "Foreign Broadcast Information Service. History. Part I: 1941-1947" (CIA, approved April 1969), pp. 158-159, on the letters of March 5, 1942 and July 29, 1942. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis, 1941-1945," note 24, gives the July 29, 1942 letter with the Kingsville passage. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol45no5/html/v45i5a04p.htm.
[^17]: Roop, Part I, pp. 218-219, on Watson's letter of July 7, 1942, and pp. 101-102, on Leigh's letter of January 2, 1943. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^18]: Panair do Brazil airfield agreement June 1941; Natal airbase 1942: The Pan Am Historical Foundation, panam.org. Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8 ("The Secret War for the Skies").
[^19]: Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8 ("Wings over the Amazon").
[^20]: NARA RG 229 Department of Transportation series, 129 linear feet: archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/229.html.
[^21]: US-Brazil rubber agreement, March 1942; $5 million fund; $100 per worker; guaranteed purchase through 1946: Americas Quarterly, "The Amazon's Greatest Generation?"; Quintus Curtius, "Brazil's Rubber Soldiers."
[^22]: Rubber Reserve Company incorporated June 28, 1940 as RFC subsidiary: Jesse H. Jones, *Fifty Billion Dollars: My Thirteen Years with the RFC* (Macmillan, 1951), pp. 406-415. Rubber Development Corporation, SEMTA, Washington Accords: ResearchGate, "Os Soldados da Borracha." FRUS 1943, Vol. V, Document 627 (September 9, 1943, McAshan to Ambassador Caffery): history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1943v05/d627. Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8 and Ch. 12.
[^23]: 60,000 rubber workers recruited 1943-1945; mortality estimates: Americas Quarterly, "The Amazon's Greatest Generation?"; Quintus Curtius, "Brazil's Rubber Soldiers." SESP records and health infrastructure plans: NARA RG 229; "History of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs," 1947. Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8 and Ch. 12.
[^24]: Metals Reserve Company incorporated June 28, 1940 as RFC subsidiary (alongside Rubber Reserve Company and Defense Plant Corporation, all created the same day): Jesse H. Jones, *Fifty Billion Dollars*, pp. 389-405. Preclusive buying data assembly by January 1941: "History of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs," 1947. Strategic materials by country: Foreign Affairs, "Our Economic Warfare," April 1942.
[^25]: Institute of Inter-American Affairs incorporated 1942: NARA, "Records of the Office of Inter-American Affairs." Servicios programs and 660 infrastructure plans: NARA RG 229; "History of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs," 1947. Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8.
[^26]: Rockefeller appointed Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs, entry on duty December 20, 1944: State Department Historical Office, "List of Assistant Secretaries of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs," history.state.gov; Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8 and Ch. 12-13.
[^27]: Executive Order 9532, March 23, 1945; Executive Order 9608, August 31, 1945; Executive Order 9710, April 10, 1946, effective May 20, 1946; five subsidiary corporations transferred to Secretary of State: American Presidency Project.
[^28]: Colby and Dennett, Ch. 8, Ch. 12-13. SIS networks transferred to CIA at CIA's founding in 1947: CIA, "The Office of Strategic Services: America's First Intelligence Agency," cia.gov/stories/story/the-office-of-strategic-services-americas-first-intelligence-agency/.
[^29]: NARA RG 229 full description: archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/229.html; "History of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs," 1947.

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Central Intelligence Agency.md
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@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ aliases:
- Central Intelligence Agency
- CIA
created: 2025-07-22
updated: 2026-10-08
updated: 2026-10-09
tags:
- Organization
- Intelligence
@ -117,6 +117,14 @@ CIA Inspector General [[Fred Hitz]] testified before the [[House Permanent Selec
Multiple CIA officials were indicted during the Iran-Contra investigation. Clarridge was indicted on seven counts of perjury. Fernández was indicted on four counts. [[Alan Fiers]] pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress. All were pardoned by former CIA director [[George H.W. Bush]].[^20]
### Foreign Broadcast Information Service
The [[Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service]] became a unit of the agency in 1947. The [[War Department]] had sponsored the service from January 2, 1946, and the [[Director of Central Intelligence]] assumed control of it on July 31, 1946, before the [[National Security Act of 1947]] replaced the [[Central Intelligence Group]] with the agency.[^24] The administrative history of the service's record group lists the successor as "Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Central Intelligence Agency, 1947-."[^25] The service's 1969 history says it came to the agency "almost mature, trained and disciplined, and ready to plunge immediately into the tasks outlined for it."[^26]
Within the agency the service sat under the [[Assistant Director for Operations]]. In January 1947 the Assistant Director presented a propaganda analysis program to the PRC, approving the proposed program but excluding "interpretative analysis" from its scope, and the requested staff was twelve at $61,000 a year. [[Lawrence K. White]] was announced as deputy chief of the service on January 9, 1947.[^27]
The service's functions were folded into the [[Open Source Center]] in November 2005. The release announcing the center said the Director of the CIA would administer it on behalf of the DNI.[^28]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
@ -142,3 +150,8 @@ Multiple CIA officials were indicted during the Iran-Contra investigation. Clarr
[^21]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 5: "God, Fatherland and Freedom"
[^22]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Epilogue: "The damage that has been done"
[^23]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 13: "The wrong kind of friends"
[^24]: Joseph E. Roop, "Foreign Broadcast Information Service. History. Part I: 1941-1947" (Central Intelligence Agency, approved for release April 1969), pp. 279, 299-300 and 303. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^25]: National Archives and Records Administration, Guide to Federal Records, Record Group 262, administrative history. https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/262.html.
[^26]: Roop, Part I, p. 2. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^27]: Roop, Part II (CIA Directorate of Intelligence, August 1970), pp. 2 and 151-152. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06741690.
[^28]: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, "ODNI Announces Establishment of Open Source Center," News Release No. 6-05, November 8, 2005. https://irp.fas.org/news/2005/11/odni110805.html.

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Federal Bureau of Investigation.md
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@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
---
created: 2025-07-22
updated: 2026-10-05
updated: 2026-10-09
title: Federal Bureau of Investigation
aliases:
- FBI
@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ relations:
- type: member_of
with: "[[Department of Justice]]"
role: "investigative component"
fn: 14
fn: 25
- type: investigated
with: "[[Fred Crisman]]"
start: 1947-08
@ -50,7 +50,19 @@ relations:
start: 2006
end: 2007
role: "West Palm Beach FBI squad, case agents and supervisor"
fn: 25
- type: investigated
with: "[[Wilhelm Reich]]"
start: 1941-05
end: 1957
role: "bufile 100-14601"
fn: 14
- type: informant_for
with: "[[Alvin Johnson]]"
reverse: true
start: 1930
role: "met regularly with FBI officials to report on the New School faculty, by his own acknowledgment in private letters; sole source"
fn: 20
---
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the principal federal criminal investigative agency of the [[United States]] and a component of the [[Department of Justice]]. Its files bear on several clusters of this vault: the 1947 flying disc inquiries, the army parapsychology program, the Contra drug cases, the [[Operation C-Chase]] prosecution of [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] and the Palm Beach investigation of [[Jeffrey Epstein]].
@ -97,9 +109,19 @@ Senate subcommittee staff recorded that the FBI and Customs possessed informatio
The Kerry-Brown report on BCCI concluded that Operation C-Chase "arose as a Treasury Department investigation brought by Customs and IRS agents only, without the involvement of the FBI," and that "the failure to bring the FBI into the case may have contributed to the lack of follow through" on what Customs agent [[Robert Mazur]] called "literally hundreds of important leads." The report added that "there does not appear to have been anything sinister" in the Justice Department's pause on the Tampa grand jury.[^13]
### Wilhelm Reich
On May 7, 1941 Assistant Director [[Edward A. Tamm]] wrote that "it appears that this man is a potentially dangerous threat to the internal security" of [[Wilhelm Reich]], sponsor of an applicant for a visa; [[R. P. Kramer]] replied on May 8 that a custodial detention card had been prepared but not approved.[^14] [[J. Edgar Hoover]]'s letter of January 31, 1942 to the New York office lists Reich tentatively in Group B, "Individuals believed to be somewhat less dangerous but whose activities should be restricted," with the evidence marked "Not satisfactory to substantiate the charges"; on July 16, 1943 the Attorney General wrote that the danger classifications "serve no useful purpose."[^14] On October 7, 1955 [[Louis B. Nichols]] recorded that on February 23, 1954 he had told Reich's attorney that "we had no current interest in Dr. Reich."[^15] The Bureau's memorandum of February 14, 1957 states that Reich and his staff had in 1956 and January 1957 contacted the Boston, Augusta and Washington offices, in its word "ostensibly" to offer information on espionage.[^16] On February 25, 1957 Washington Field Office agents interviewed Reich at the Alban Towers Apartments, where he was living under the alias "Roner"; the report records that when "flying saucers" were mentioned and he was asked whether his knowledge of them prompted his contacting the Bureau, he "replied in the affirmative but once again could not be specific," and that he retained a sealed envelope he had asked the agents to deliver to Hoover.[^17] After Reich's death on November 3, 1957 the chief medical officer of Lewisburg penitentiary sent the Bureau his stomach contents, writing that "his family fears that he may have been poisoned"; the Bureau laboratory reported on January 2, 1958 that formaldehyde was detected and that no other commonly poisonous materials were detected in the tests made.[^18] The Boston airtel of March 12, 1957 is captioned "William Steig, William Moise, Assaulting of Federal Officer, Conspiracy"; records found do not establish whether this Steig is the cartoonist.[^19]
### Faculty reporting at the New School, 1930s to 1950s
[[Peter M. Rutkoff]] and [[William B. Scott]] write that after 1947 [[Alvin Johnson]], president of the [[New School for Social Research]], acknowledged in his private letters "that he had been meeting regularly with FBI officials since the 1930s to report on the faculty."[^20] The same history quotes [[Sidney Hook]] that Johnson "wanted to get rid of a Communist Party member" but "delegated it to [[Clara Mayer]]."[^20] It states that a [[Rockefeller Foundation]] memorandum "indicated that Johnson had also monitored files of 'enemy aliens' in the early 1940s for the federal district attorney," and its endnote cites a memorandum of January 27, 1942, in the Rockefeller Foundation Archives' "Hans Eisler File."[^21] In early 1942, at a meeting Johnson requested, he and [[Hans Staudinger]] testified before a State Department panel of representatives from the FBI, the Visa Division, Naval Intelligence and the Army, and Johnson had to defend himself against charges of heading a "Communist outfit."[^22] The same history reports that in the early 1950s the school's administration received "inquiries from congressional and Senate committees, the FBI, and numerous individuals."[^23]
Johnson's memoir records that after the United States entered the war he was appointed to an enemy alien hearing board, writing: "Case after case came before us, well prepared in advance by the FBI. After we had studied the record and had heard the FBI investigators, we would hear the accused."[^24]
### Epstein, 2006 to 2008
The Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility reported that in early 2006 a West Palm Beach FBI special agent told Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Marie Villafana that the Palm Beach Police had approached the FBI because the state attorney's office was considering not charging the case or allowing a misdemeanor plea. Villafana and two FBI case agents developed a federal case. The FBI planned to arrest Epstein after a May 15, 2007, indictment date and to hold a press conference, and wanted to arrest him in the [[U.S. Virgin Islands]] while he judged a beauty pageant. After the U.S. Attorney's Office managers in [[Miami]] declined to approve the indictment, the squad supervisor was "not happy," and the case agent recalled the supervisor as "extremely upset." At a meeting with Villafana and her managers the FBI insisted that Epstein register for life as a sex offender. After Epstein rejected the proposal, the squad supervisor "yelled at" First Assistant U.S. Attorney [[Jeffrey Sloman]]. The report found no misconduct by Department attorneys and concluded that U.S. Attorney [[Alexander Acosta]] exercised poor judgment in resolving the case through a non-prosecution agreement.[^14]
The Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility reported that in early 2006 a West Palm Beach FBI special agent told Assistant U.S. Attorney Ann Marie Villafana that the Palm Beach Police had approached the FBI because the state attorney's office was considering not charging the case or allowing a misdemeanor plea. Villafana and two FBI case agents developed a federal case. The FBI planned to arrest Epstein after a May 15, 2007, indictment date and to hold a press conference, and wanted to arrest him in the [[U.S. Virgin Islands]] while he judged a beauty pageant. After the U.S. Attorney's Office managers in [[Miami]] declined to approve the indictment, the squad supervisor was "not happy," and the case agent recalled the supervisor as "extremely upset." At a meeting with Villafana and her managers the FBI insisted that Epstein register for life as a sex offender. After Epstein rejected the proposal, the squad supervisor "yelled at" First Assistant U.S. Attorney [[Jeffrey Sloman]]. The report found no misconduct by Department attorneys and concluded that U.S. Attorney [[Alexander Acosta]] exercised poor judgment in resolving the case through a non-prosecution agreement.[^25]
### Footnotes
@ -116,4 +138,15 @@ The Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility reported that in ea
[^11]: U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, *Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy*, S. Prt. 100-165 (December 1988), https://archive.org/details/Kerry-Report-Drugs-Contras
[^12]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, *The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy* (December 1997), Chapter XI, section D, https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9712/ch11p1.htm
[^13]: U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, *The BCCI Affair*, report by Senators John Kerry and Hank Brown (December 1992), section on Operation C-Chase, https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003
[^14]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility, *Investigation into the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida's Resolution of Its 2006-2008 Federal Criminal Investigation of Jeffrey Epstein* (November 2020), Parts III and IV, copy at https://archive.org/details/epsteindocs ; executive summary at https://www.justice.gov/opr/page/file/1336471/dl
[^14]: Tamm memorandum of May 7, 1941 and Kramer memorandum of May 8, 1941 (Part 1, PDF pages 16 and 17); Hoover to SAC New York, January 31, 1942 (Part 1, PDF pages 54 and 55); Attorney General memorandum of July 16, 1943, same file, Part 1.
[^15]: Nichols to Tolson, October 7, 1955, same file, Part 2 (PDF page 109).
[^16]: M. A. Jones to L. B. Nichols, February 14, 1957, same file, Part 2 (PDF pages 123 and 124).
[^17]: SAC, Washington Field Office, memorandum to the Director, file 100-1849, Wilhelm Reich FBI file, Part 2 (PDF pages 129 and 130), https://archive.org/details/WilhelmReichFBI.
[^18]: Witkin to the Director, December 9, 1957, with autopsy report of November 26, 1957 and FBI Laboratory report of January 2, 1958, same file, Part 6 (PDF pages 21 to 24).
[^19]: Boston airtel of March 12, 1957, Wilhelm Reich FBI file, Part 6, https://archive.org/details/WilhelmReichFBI.
[^20]: Peter Rutkoff and William Scott, New School: A History of the New School for Social Research (New York: Free Press, 1986), p. 226. Sole source for the FBI reporting.
[^21]: Rutkoff and Scott, New School, p. 226 and note 22, p. 296: "Johnson to Urban (December 9, 1948), JPYU; memorandum (January 27, 1942), Hans Eisler File, Rockefeller Foundation Archives." The note names no author for the memorandum. Sole source for the enemy alien monitoring.
[^22]: Rutkoff and Scott, New School, p. 135.
[^23]: Rutkoff and Scott, New School, p. 228.
[^24]: Alvin Johnson, Pioneer's Progress (Viking Press, 1952; University of Nebraska Press, 1960), p. 370.
[^25]: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility, *Investigation into the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida's Resolution of Its 2006-2008 Federal Criminal Investigation of Jeffrey Epstein* (November 2020), Parts III and IV, copy at https://archive.org/details/epsteindocs ; executive summary at https://www.justice.gov/opr/page/file/1336471/dl

329
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service.md Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,329 @@
---
category: "Intelligence & Government"
tags:
- Organization
- FBIS
- ForeignBroadcast
- Monitoring
- PropagandaAnalysis
- PsychologicalWarfare
- FCC
- CIA
- ColdWar
- OpenSourceIntelligence
- Congress
- DiesCommittee
- CoxCommittee
- NewSchool
- RockefellerFoundation
aliases:
- Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service
- Foreign Broadcast Information Service
- Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service
- Foreign Broadcast Information Branch
- Federal Broadcast Intelligence Service
- FBIS
- FBMS
- FBIB
summary: "The Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service was the United States government's radio monitoring and analysis service, created inside the Federal Communications Commission in 1941 and whose expertise was carried into the Open Source Center in 2005."
start: 1941-02-26
location: "Washington, D.C."
created: 2026-10-09
updated: 2026-10-09
relations:
- type: head_of
with: "[[Lloyd Free]]"
reverse: true
role: "Director"
start: 1941-06-16
end: 1942-04
fn: 20
- type: head_of
with: "[[Robert D. Leigh]]"
reverse: true
role: "Director"
start: 1942-07
end: 1944-07
fn: 22
- type: head_of
with: "[[Charles S. Hyneman]]"
reverse: true
role: "Director"
start: 1944-07-27
end: 1945-08-07
fn: 55
- type: head_of
with: "[[Russell M. Shepherd]]"
reverse: true
role: "Director, fourth director of the service"
start: 1945-08-07
end: 1947-09-29
fn: 76
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Harold N. Graves Jr.]]"
reverse: true
role: "Senior Administrative Officer; acting director in 1942"
start: 1941-03
end: 1943-12
fn: 51
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Goodwin Watson]]"
reverse: true
role: "Head of the Analysis Section, later Analysis Division"
start: 1941-11-17
end: 1943-11
fn: 23
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Hans Speier]]"
reverse: true
role: "Senior Political Analyst and head of the Central European Section; acting chief analyst after Watson's departure"
start: 1942-03
end: 1944-05-22
fn: 28
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Nathan Leites]]"
reverse: true
role: "Analyst; sent to London with Watson in September 1942"
start: 1942-09
fn: 26
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Alexander L. George]]"
reverse: true
role: "Analyst in the Central European Section"
fn: 31
- type: employed_by
with: "[[William E. Dodd Jr.]]"
reverse: true
role: "Editor, hired December 1941"
start: 1941-12
end: 1943-11
fn: 36
- type: investigated
with: "[[House Un-American Activities Committee]]"
reverse: true
role: "Named Goodwin Watson, Frederick L. Schuman and William E. Dodd Jr. in 1941 and 1943 attacks"
start: 1941-11-18
end: 1943-04-21
fn: 35
- type: investigated
with: "[[Cox Committee]]"
reverse: true
role: "Special House committee to investigate the Federal Communications Commission"
start: 1943-01
end: 1945-01-02
fn: 45
- type: owned
with: "[[Federal Communications Commission]]"
reverse: true
role: "Parent agency of the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service and Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service"
start: 1941-02-26
end: 1945-12-30
fn: 4
- type: owned
with: "[[Central Intelligence Group]]"
reverse: true
role: "Sponsoring agency after the War Department"
start: 1946-07-31
end: 1947-09
fn: 66
- type: owned
with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency]]"
reverse: true
role: "Component of the agency, under the Assistant Director for Operations"
start: 1947
fn: 67
---
The Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service (FBIS) was the United States government's service for monitoring, translating and analyzing foreign radio broadcasts. It began as the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service inside the [[Federal Communications Commission]] (FCC) in 1941, passed to the [[War Department]] at the end of 1945, came under the [[Central Intelligence Group]] in 1946 and the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] in 1947, and in November 2005 was named as the base of expertise for the [[Open Source Center]].[^1]
### Creation in the Federal Communications Commission
The proposal for a government monitoring service reached the [[Defense Communications Board]] in January 1941. The [[Princeton Listening Center]] had been running since November 1939, and the [[State Department]] official [[Breckinridge Long]], the Board's State Department representative, introduced the resolution calling on the FCC to establish a monitoring service.[^2] [[Helena Huntington Smith]] wrote in *Collier's* in January 1943 that the service's "godfather was Breckinridge Long of the State Department," who took the idea to FCC chairman [[James L. Fly]]. Stephen C. Mercado, who serves in the Directorate of Science and Technology, uses the same word for Long and quotes his letter of September 10, 1941 congratulating Fly.[^3] The FCC's annual report for fiscal 1941 states that the service was created in cooperation with the Defense Communications Board.[^4]
On February 25, 1941 [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] allotted $150,000 from his emergency fund, and the money was transferred the next day, so that the birth date of the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service (FBMS) was February 26, 1941.[^5] Daniel Bessner's dissertation on [[Hans Speier]] dates the origin to a late 1940 meeting between Roosevelt and [[Henry L. Stimson]], then Secretary of War, at which Stimson suggested a unit to monitor foreign propaganda aimed at the United States.[^6] A 1969 CIA history of the service has the idea raised in an informal late 1940 discussion between the Secretary of State and Roosevelt.[^7] The FCC's Radio Intelligence Division had been running the National Defense Activities that recorded foreign broadcasts, and the FCC was "the only group staffed and equipped" for the monitoring work.[^8]
The service began in an old garage at 316 F Street Northeast in Washington, and in April 1942 moved to 1424 K Street NW, where four floors were assigned to it.[^9]
[[Robert D. Leigh]], who took over as director on July 15, 1942, recommended renaming the service the Broadcast Intelligence Service, on the reasoning that the name was "less unwieldy and more accurately reflected the duties of the organization." The FCC insisted on keeping the word "foreign," and on July 26, 1942 the FBMS became the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service.[^10] An FCC order of July 28, 1942 is recorded for the same change.[^11] The name was raised again in 1945. In a memorandum for the FCC of March 2, 1945, [[Charles S. Hyneman]] proposed a change to end confusion with the FBI, which reported trouble from misdirected mail, and suggested International Broadcast Intelligence Service, Broadcast Intelligence Service, Foreign Broadcast Reporting Service and Broadcast Reporting Service, explaining that "intelligence" and "reporting" described its operations better than "monitoring." The service's newsletter, *On the Beam*, reported on April 9, 1945 that the FCC had approved the change to Foreign Broadcast Reporting Service. The next month the newsletter announced that the FCC had reversed itself, and the new name was never formally adopted.[^12]
### Princeton and the Rockefeller Foundation
The Princeton Listening Center was the most visible American monitoring effort before the government service existed. [[Harold N. Graves Jr.]], who had directed it, wrote in 1941 that "The Center was established in November 1939 by the School of Public and International Affairs of Princeton University, to study international broadcasting in wartime."[^13] The center's finding aid states that the project was financed by the [[Rockefeller Foundation]], was conceived by the Princeton professor [[John B. Whitton]], and was administered by Graves with a committee that included [[Hadley Cantril]], William S. Carpenter, [[Harwood L. Childs]], O. W. Riegel and the engineer Brunson S. McCutchen, with quarters in a house on Alexander Street. It records the center's transcripts from November 1939 through May 1941, "until the operations of the Center were taken over by the Federal Communications Commission," and says the center continued its work until June 1941.[^14] Mercado likewise gives the center's funding as coming from the Rockefeller Foundation and its absorption by the service as occurring in June.[^15] Bessner's dissertation states that the service "had absorbed the Rockefeller-funded Princeton Listening Center, whose director, Harold Graves, became the FBIS's Senior Administrative Officer."[^16] Graves was hired to help organize the service as "the young man who had been acting as director of the Princeton Listening Post since its inception." Staff who had worked at Princeton and joined the new service included [[Jerome S. Bruner]], [[Bennett Ferrell Ellington]], [[Arthur Mathieu]] and [[Arthur Cantor]].[^17]
The Rockefeller connection was also a public relations problem. A [[Baltimore Sun]] article described the service as a joint project of the FCC, Princeton and the Rockefeller Foundation, and as the "brain child" of Whitton. Graves wrote a memo for [[Lloyd Free]] on July 9, 1941 about his "embarrassment" at inaccuracies in the article, among them the "dragging in" of the Princeton Listening Post and the joint-project claim. On September 8, 1941 a syndicated column by [[Eleanor Ragsdale]] said the service was "inaugurated and pushed through by Chairman Fly of FCC."[^18]
On July 29, 1942 [[Nelson Rockefeller]], the [[Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs]], wrote to FCC chairman James L. Fly that his office had "been able thus far to make good use of the material provided by teletype from the Kingsville Field Bureau," and asked for a larger volume of verbatim transcripts for hemispheric propaganda work.[^19]
### Directors and the Analysis Division
Free, editor of the [[Public Opinion Quarterly]] and a Princeton man, assumed office as director on June 16, 1941. He established contacts with the [[BBC]] very soon after taking office, with the idea of attaching a staff to the BBC, and in December 1941 he was still in London when the Pearl Harbor attack came.[^20] Harold Graves and Tom Grandin took over the Washington office on December 7, 1941.[^21] Free resigned in April 1942 to accept an Army commission, and he was military attaché at the United States Embassy in Switzerland for most of the war years.[^22]
Leigh, for fourteen years president of [[Bennington College]], took over on July 15, 1942, with Graves as acting director in the intervening months. He was paid $1,000 more than the $8,000 Free had received, and the appropriation bill had to be amended to legalize the salary.[^22]
The Analysis Division was the service's research core. In November 1941 [[Goodwin Watson]] of [[Columbia University]] entered on duty to head the Analysis Section, which Free and Graves had recruited him to lead.[^23] The section became the Analysis Division in 1942.[^24] In March 1942 the table of organization of the Analysis Division called for 37 analysts, assistants and trainees, with 17 of the positions filled, and the planned table was never reached.[^25] In September 1942 Watson and [[Nathan Leites]] went to London to set up an analysis operation working with the [[Office of War Information]], and a two-man staff remained there through the war.[^26] The division's German Section began the weekly *Central European Radio Analysis* in January 1943, and the *Radio Report on the Far East* first appeared on August 24, 1942.[^27]
### Hans Speier and the Central European Section
Hans Speier reached the service through the research project he ran with [[Ernst Kris]] at the [[New School for Social Research]]. Speier sent the project's first report a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Free and Watson read his work "with the greatest of interest." In February 1942 Watson offered him a post as Senior Political Analyst and head of the Central European Section, and the Analysis Division was the "heart" of the service.[^28] Graves had written to Speier and Kris on December 23, 1941 about their reports and encouraged them to send more, and Free wrote to Speier on January 31, 1942.[^29] The Civil Service Commission informed Speier on May 26, 1942, two months after he entered the division, that he had been rated eligible for the post of Senior Political Analyst.[^30]
Speier brought colleagues into the division, including [[Alexander L. George]], Leites and the psychologist Henry Kellermann.[^31] Watson praised Speier's "extraordinarily good job of analysis," and wrote that he knew "nobody in the United States whom I would willingly trade for him."[^31] Watson left under pressure from opponents of the New Deal, after which Speier became acting chief analyst with thirty people under him.[^32] Speier moved from the service to the Office of War Information on May 22, 1944, under [[Wallace Carroll]].[^33]
On October 29, 1943 Speier wrote a memorandum predicting much of Hitler's speech for the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch. Seventeen of twenty-five predictions were correct. Speier gave the memo to an OWI contact, [[Mark Abrams]], who brought it to the attention of Representative [[Joseph Martin]] and Senator [[Alexander Wiley]], and they used most of its content in a radio broadcast.[^34]
### The Dies Committee and the 1943 Rider
The first congressional attack came from [[Martin Dies]], chairman of the [[House Un-American Activities Committee]]. On November 18, 1941, the day after Watson entered on duty, Dies wrote to James L. Fly expressing "deep concern" over the selection of a man who had written in favor of the Soviet Union, and naming thirteen organizations he called communist fronts.[^35] Fly replied that Watson belonged to only one of them, Consumers Union. The House passed an appropriation bill with a rider denying salary to the named employees, including [[Frederick L. Schuman]] and [[William E. Dodd Jr.]], who had been hired as an editor in December 1941. The Senate Appropriations Committee deleted the rider, and Watson testified before that committee on February 4, 1942.[^36]
In a House speech on February 1, 1943, Dies listed 39 "communists" holding government posts, with Dodd, Watson and Schuman at the head of the list. A new rider was attached to a House Post Office and Treasury appropriations bill.[^37] Dies accused the employees of "un-American beliefs."[^38] Mercado writes that Dies may have been provoked by FBIS reports that his statements were being praised in Nazi Germany, and that Vice President [[Henry A. Wallace]] had said Dies's statements "might as well come from Goebbels himself as far as their practical effect is concerned."[^39] A special subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee under Congressman [[John H. Kerr]] took testimony in executive session from the three men. Its report of April 21, 1943 found three employees guilty of "subversive activity" and "unfit" for government service: Dodd, Watson and the Interior Department official [[Robert Morss Lovett]].[^40] The subcommittee was later accused of having prepared its final report before the men were called to testify.[^40]
The House approved the rider a second time. The Senate rejected it four times before accepting it, 48 to 32. The President signed the appropriation bill while denouncing the rider and declaring it unconstitutional.[^41] The rider became Section 304 of the Urgent Deficiency Appropriation Act of 1943, which halted pay for the three men after November 15, 1943 unless the President reappointed them with the advice and consent of the Senate.[^42]
In [[United States v. Lovett]], decided June 3, 1946, the Supreme Court held Section 304 unconstitutional. Justice Black wrote that "legislative trials and punishments were too dangerous to liberty to exist in the nation of free men they envisioned." He continued: "And so they proscribed bills of attainder. Section 304 is one."[^43] The judgment ran for Lovett, Watson and Dodd.
Other staff were drawn into the same attacks. [[Peter Rhodes]], [[Audrey Menefee]] and Speier were attacked on the House floor. Fly wrote to [[J. Edgar Hoover]] on April 28, 1942 that one informant had described the New York school where Speier taught as a "refuge for exiled European communists," and a counter-report called it "a nest of pro-Nazi activities."[^44]
### The Cox Committee
The most serious confrontation with Congress came from [[Eugene Cox]], a Georgia congressman who had been an enthusiastic supporter of the FCC. The FCC referred a case about an Atlanta radio station's representation to the Justice Department and urged prosecution of Cox, and Cox retaliated by seeking an investigation of the FCC. In early 1943 the House named him chairman of a special committee, and he appointed [[Eugene Garey]], a New York lawyer, as chief investigator.[^45]
The committee requisitioned the FBIS personnel files. Leigh reported, in his January 1945 article in [[Harper's Magazine]], that the truck took away "three-fourths of FBIS personnel files," which had no duplicates, and held them for more than a year.[^46] Ten FBIS employees were subpoenaed at 8:00 a.m. after working all night, and Leigh called the questioning that followed "Star Chamber testimony."[^46]
The committee found one actual irregularity at FBIS, a night clerical shift in which a sick employee drew pay while coworkers marked her present. It publicized that case and also charged that FBIS was "masquerading" as a war agency, that it used "intelligence" in its name to misrepresent its operations, and that it was no more than a "glorified news gathering agency."[^47] Counsel for the committee also charged that Leigh changed the name of the service to "dignify its activities."[^48]
The Washington Post ran a series of sixteen editorials critical of the committee. An FCC member who usually opposed Fly's views and was sympathetic to Cox agreed to petition the Speaker to dismiss him as chairman, and Cox resigned after an emotional speech. [[Clarence F. Lea]] of California took over the committee, fired Garey, and promised the FCC a fair hearing.[^49]
FBIS officials testified in May 1944. Leigh made the principal statement, [[Stewart Hensley]] described the wire service, [[Ellis G. Porter]] described the publications, and Harold N. Graves Jr., who had left FBIS and was a naval officer by then, described the Analysis Division. The Lea committee's final report of January 2, 1945 cleared FBIS of wrongdoing and stated that it was rendering an efficient and worthwhile service. Two members, [[Louis E. Miller]] of Missouri and [[Richard B. Wigglesworth]] of Massachusetts, filed a dissenting minority report expressing "grave doubt" as to the value of FBIS materials. In his own minority report Wigglesworth, a member of the Appropriations Committee, charged that Fly and Leigh had violated the law by soliciting aid in congressional appropriations for the FCC, and stated that it was "but fair to assume" that the select committee's inquiry was "largely responsible" for a two-million-dollar cut in the FCC's appropriation for fiscal 1945.[^50] The majority report, quoted in *On the Beam* on February 3, 1945, stated that "Obviously the United States could not conduct an intelligent program for counteracting enemy propaganda without a reasonably accurate knowledge of that propaganda."[^51]
### Budget Cuts and Leigh's Departure
The budget was the next weapon. A newsletter by Leigh on February 15, 1944 reported that the House Appropriations Committee would eliminate 30 percent of the service's budget from July onward, and noted that the committee had given no reason. Leigh wrote that "[t]he obvious conclusion is that the proposed cut relates to the opposition on the part of Representative Cox to FCC for reasons well known and [to] the Dodd-Watson case." Leigh resigned that summer.[^52] The House Appropriations Committee recommended a cut of 25 percent for each FCC department. The Senate Appropriations Committee, under Senator [[Kenneth McKellar]], demanded proof of the service's value, and then recommended a cut of $500,000 that both houses approved.[^53]
Leigh wrote in *Harper's* that no congressional statement gave the real reason for the cut, and that Fly was ruled out of order when he tried to state it to the Senate Appropriations Committee. He quoted a member of Congress, speaking privately: "Surely it was a punitive cut. Larry Fly has been defiant of Congress for a long time. He has been openly defiant. Now his chickens have come home to roost." The CIA's history of the service describes the cut as made to punish Fly and the FCC for defiance of Congress and for Fly's request that the Department of Justice prosecute Cox.[^54] Hyneman became director on July 27, 1944 and served until August 7, 1945, when [[Russell M. Shepherd]] became the fourth director.[^55]
In the second half of 1944 the service abandoned most of its analytical work. A liaison study of April 1944 found that State, War, the Foreign Economic Administration and the [[Office of Strategic Services]] were reluctant to give up the analytical publications but would drop them and keep the Daily Report if they had to choose, and the Special Reports Section of six analysts in the OWI office was abolished on December 31, 1944. Only the Far East Division under Audrey Menefee kept analytical work. Certain quarters protested in November 1944; Hyneman answered that State should set up a Russian analysis team to use the service's materials and recommended that it obtain the retiring Soviet expert Charles Prince. On January 17, 1945 [[Geroid T. Robinson]] of the OSS wrote to Hyneman to express regret that the analytical work had been discontinued, and added that he hoped the Daily Report would carry more Soviet radio material.[^56] The Soviet Embassy in Washington had asked for copies of the Daily Report as early as November 11, 1942, with State Department approval, and in London the service received the daily Soviet communique directly from TASS.[^57]
### War Department Custody, 1945 to 1946
A draft executive order survives among the service's files, undated and bearing the name of [[Harry S. Truman]], to transfer its functions to the State Department and to the Interim Research and Intelligence Service. The draft was apparently prepared by Shepherd and perhaps by State Department representatives, and it was never approved by the Secretary of State.[^58]
On September 19, 1945 the House Appropriations Committee voted to rescind part of the National Defense Activities appropriation. On 26 September the FCC announced that FBIS would go out of existence within thirty days, and sent thirty-day notices to employees. On 1 December a conference committee reported a compromise rescinding half the remaining money, $465,000, which both houses approved on 3 December. FBIS operations came to a close on December 10, 1945.[^59]
Mercado writes that the last Daily Report appeared on December 4, 1945, and that the FCC terminated the service the following day.[^60] The FCC's annual report for fiscal 1946 says FBIS was "discontinued as a Commission activity on December 30, 1945."[^61]
The War Department then stepped in. On December 13, 1945 Shepherd told the FCC that the War Department had requested an executive order transferring FBIS to the Military Intelligence Division effective January 1, 1946. On 21 December Secretary of War [[Robert P. Patterson]] wrote to [[Paul Porter]], chairman of the FCC, asking that FBIS personnel transfer on 31 December. Porter accepted on 27 December, and the service resumed on January 2, 1946 under War Department sponsorship. Shepherd asked that operations continue until the transfer, and only token operations followed, with little monitoring and no publications. No document authorizing continued operations has been found, although "permission may have been given orally."[^62]
### Central Intelligence Group and the Name
In January 1946 President Harry S. Truman created the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) by executive order. In February [[Hoyt Vandenberg]], then Assistant Chief of Staff for G-2, gave [[Sidney W. Souers]] a memorandum proposing that the CIG choose the agency to direct the service, and a committee of five, drawn from the CIG and the remaining Intelligence Advisory Board members, was formed to study it.[^63][^64]
The ad hoc committee recommended that FBIS remain with the War Department, but that its operating organization be liquidated and rebuilt, because its publications circulated too widely and its personnel had not been screened for security. The War Department refused, arguing that operating a monitoring service was properly a CIG function, and proposed that the State Department take it over. State declined, and a State memorandum signed by [[William L. Langer]] on May 27, 1946 accepted CIG sponsorship.[^65]
The Director of Central Intelligence "assumed control" of FBIS on July 31, 1946, and personnel were transferred to the CIG on 3 November.[^66] NARA gives August 5, 1946 as the date of transfer to the CIG, and November 1, 1946 as the date its agency was abolished, with "Foreign Broadcast Information Service, CIG, November-December, 1946" as the successor.[^67]
The name shifted during this period. A March 1946 CIG memorandum still uses the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service name.[^68] Shepherd's notice of October 31, 1946 announcing the personnel transfer of 3 November stated that the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service would immediately become the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, with publications and letterheads changed accordingly.[^69] On December 31, 1946 [[Edwin L. Sibert]], in charge of the CIG Office of Operations, informed the staff that the name had been changed to the Foreign Broadcast Information Branch, and in a wire of January 2, 1947 designated Shepherd Chief, FBIB.[^70] By May and June 1947 CIG papers refer to the branch by that name. Colonel [[Lawrence K. White]], acting chief of the branch, met with Lloyd Stratton of the Associated Press in May 1947.[^71] A 1970 CIA history places a notice of July 28, 1947 telling field bureaus that they would no longer bear the "confusing name" of the branch, but would retain the name Foreign Broadcast Information Service, and that offices outside Washington were to camouflage their connection with CIG.[^72] A footnote in Mercado's article dates the name Foreign Broadcast Information Service to 1967.[^73]
### Central Intelligence Agency, 1947 onward
The [[National Security Act of 1947]] transformed the CIG into the CIA, and the successor is recorded as "Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Central Intelligence Agency, 1947-."[^67] The service came to the agency "almost mature, trained and disciplined, and ready to plunge immediately into the tasks outlined for it."[^74]
Within the agency the service sat under the Assistant Director for Operations, Sibert. Shepherd proposed in a memorandum of November 5, 1946 that the service take up propaganda analysis, estimating 35 employees at $150,000 a year. The Assistant Director presented a scaled-down project to the PRC on January 6, 1947, approving Shepherd's program but making clear that FBIS would not take over "interpretative analysis." The reduced request was for a staff of twelve at $61,000 a year. White was announced as deputy chief of FBIS on January 9, 1947. A Special Reports Division was approved on February 13, 1947 on an experimental basis, began work on March 28, 1947 and issued its first Survey of Soviet Radio Broadcasts on April 15, 1947. The early years of analysis under the CIA are described as "stormy."[^75] Shepherd resigned on September 29, 1947, and Colonel White became chief.[^76]
The service also had a working relationship with the BBC monitoring service. In June 1946 Shepherd spent three weeks in London with BBC officials, and met [[Malcolm Frost]], then chief of the BBC Monitoring Service, who proposed that the American service begin paying its share of the monitoring cost, perhaps $250,000 a year, or supply the BBC with enough material from its own monitoring to balance the books.[^77] The BBC service then employed 385 persons at a cost of $650,000 a year. After further negotiation, Frost informed the service on October 15, 1947 that the BBC had obtained authority and funds to sign an agreement.[^78]
After 1957 the service "had come of age as an established CIA unit." On March 23, 1961 the Directorate of Intelligence and the Assistant Director for Operations instructed FBIS to accept responsibility for propaganda indications, and that FBIS and the BBC together monitored broadcasts from 90 countries in 1961, a figure that rose to 115 by the spring of 1963.[^79]
### Daily Report and Records
The Daily Report, the service's translation series, first appeared on November 18, 1941.[^80] Ellis G. Porter, a former newspaper editor, joined the staff in January 1942 to direct its publication.[^81] A Daily Report of the Far Eastern Section dated January 3, 1946 is in Record Group 262, Entry 25, Box 1, and the first issue of the new Daily Report was published that month.[^82]
The wartime records are held in [[Record Group 262]], including the daily reports of foreign radio broadcasts for 1941 to 1945, daily reports of the Far Eastern, Latin American and European sections for 1941 to 1946, the weekly reviews, the *Radio Reports on the Far East* for 1942 to 1945, and program schedules for 1942 to 1947. The Foreign Broadcast Information Branch records for 1947 and 1948 are in Record Group 263, Records of the Central Intelligence Agency.[^83]
### Open Source Center, 2005
On November 8, 2005 [[John D. Negroponte]], the Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of the CIA, [[Porter J. Goss]], announced the establishment of the Open Source Center. The release said the center would be "[b]ased at the CIA" and would "build on the established expertise of the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which has provided the U.S. Government a broad range of highly valued products and services since 1941." Negroponte called the center "the centerpiece of my response to the WMD Commission's recommendations." The CIA Director administers the center on behalf of the DNI, and [[Douglas J. Naquin]], a senior CIA manager, was named as its director.[^1]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, "ODNI Announces Establishment of Open Source Center," News Release No. 6-05, November 8, 2005. https://irp.fas.org/news/2005/11/odni110805.html.
[^2]: Joseph E. Roop, "Foreign Broadcast Information Service. History. Part I: 1941-1947" (Central Intelligence Agency, approved for release April 1969), pp. 2-6, on the Princeton Listening Center's launch in November 1939, the Defense Communications Board resolution, and the request to the President. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^3]: Helena Huntington Smith, "It Pays to Listen," *Collier's*, January 30, 1943, pp. 43-44, which states "Its godfather was Breckinridge Long of the State Department, who foresaw that we might one day be cut off from accustomed sources of news in foreign countries. He took it up with Chairman Fly of the FCC." https://archive.org/details/colliers111janspri_201908. Stephen C. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis, 1941-1945," Studies in Intelligence 45, no. 5 (2001), on Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, "godfather" of FBIS, and his letter of September 10, 1941 to FCC chairman James L. Fly. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/.
[^4]: Federal Communications Commission, Seventh Annual Report, fiscal year 1941, section on the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, "created February 26, 1941, by the Federal Communications Commission in cooperation with the Defense Communications Board." https://archive.org/details/fcc_DOC-308657A1.
[^5]: Roop, Part I, p. 9, on the President's allotment of $150,000 on February 25, 1941, its transfer the next day, the "birth date" of the service on February 26, 1941. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^6]: Daniel Morris Bessner, "The Night Watchman: Hans Speier and the Making of the American National Security State" (PhD dissertation, Duke University, 2013), p. 132, which describes "a late 1940 meeting between Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson and FDR" and the allocation of $150,000 on February 25, 1941. Stimson was Secretary of War from July 1940; Roop (note 7) gives the Secretary of State without naming him. Sole source for the Stimson meeting. https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/19152946-8fbb-4b9b-9da0-faca0979e718.
[^7]: Roop, Part I, pp. 5-6, quoting the account that "Toward the end of 1940 the Secretary of State, in an informal discussion with President Roosevelt, suggested that a government unit should be established to monitor and analyze propaganda beamed to the United States." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^8]: Roop, Part I, p. 9, on the FCC's Radio Intelligence Division and its National Defense Activities, quoting the FCC as "the only group staffed and equipped" for the monitoring work. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^9]: Roop, Part I, p. 9, on the service's beginnings "in an old garage at 316 F Street Northeast," and p. 49, "In April a move was made to 1424 K St., N.W., where four floors were assigned to FBMS." Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," photograph caption, "FBIS headquarters from 1942-1947 at 1424 K Street, NW, in Washington." https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/.
[^10]: Roop, Part I, pp. 49-50, on Leigh taking over "on 15 July 1942," his recommendation of the name Broadcast Intelligence Service, the phrase "less unwieldy and more accurately reflected the duties of the organization," the FCC's insistence on "foreign," and the change of July 26, 1942. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^11]: National Archives and Records Administration, Guide to Federal Records, "Records of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service," Record Group 262, administrative history, which gives "FCC order, July 28, 1942." https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/262.html. The same guide's history line reads "Federal Broadcast Intelligence Service, 1942," which is an apparent typographical error.
[^12]: Roop, Part I, p. 259, on Hyneman's memorandum for the FCC of March 2, 1945 proposing alternative names to avoid confusion with the FBI, the preference for Foreign Broadcast Reporting Service, the report in *On the Beam* of April 9, 1945, and, on p. 260, the reversal and the statement that the new name was "never formally adopted." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^13]: Harold N. Graves Jr., *War on the Short Wave* (Foreign Policy Association, Headline Books No. 30, 1941), Acknowledgments.
[^14]: Princeton University Library, "Princeton Listening Center Records, 1939-1941" (AC015), finding aid, Scope and Contents and Biographical / Historical notes. https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/AC015 (EAD at https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/AC015.xml). The finding aid states that the project "was financed by the Rockefeller Foundation," that the center "continued its work successfully until June, 1941," and that its published book was *Propaganda by Short Wave*, edited by Harwood L. Childs and John B. Whitton (Princeton University Press, 1942).
[^15]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on the Princeton Listening Center's launch in November 1939 with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, and on its absorption by FBIS in June. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/.
[^16]: Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 133, on the absorption of the Princeton Listening Center and Graves's post as Senior Administrative Officer. https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/19152946-8fbb-4b9b-9da0-faca0979e718.
[^17]: Roop, Part I, p. 10, describing Graves as "the young man who had been acting as director of the Princeton Listening Post since its inception" and naming the Princeton staff; Roop, Part I, pp. 93-95, on the Baltimore Sun article, Graves's memo of July 9, 1941 about his "embarrassment," the "dragging in" of the Princeton Listening Post, the "brain child" description, and the Eleanor Ragsdale column of September 8, 1941. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^18]: Roop, Part I, pp. 93-95. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^19]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," note 24: Nelson A. Rockefeller to James L. Fly, July 29, 1942, National Archives, RG 262, Entry 68, Box 22, quoted as "We have been able thus far to make good use of the material provided by teletype from the Kingsville Field Bureau of the Monitoring Service of your Commission." https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/.
[^20]: Roop, Part I, p. 10, on Free's editorship of the *Public Opinion Quarterly*, and "Mr. Free assumed office as Director on 16 June 1941" (p. 11); p. 35, on Free's contacts with BBC officials "very soon after he assumed office with the idea of attaching a staff to BBC." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^21]: Roop, Part I, pp. 36-37, quoting "With Lloyd Free still in London, Harold Graves and Tom Grandin took over at 316 F St. on 7 December 1941." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^22]: Roop, Part I, pp. 48-50, on Free's resignation in April 1942 "to accept a commission in the Army," his service as military attache in the United States Embassy in Switzerland, the appointment of Leigh of Bennington College, the $1,000 difference from Free's $8,000 salary and the appropriation bill provision, and Graves as Acting Director until Leigh took over on July 15, 1942. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^23]: Roop, Part I, p. 189, on Free and Graves's recruitment of Goodwin Watson of Columbia University, who "entered upon duty 17 November 1941." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^24]: Roop, Part I, p. 50, on the Analysis Section becoming the Analysis Division. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^25]: Roop, Part I, p. 57, "In March 1942 the table of organization of the Analysis Division called for 37 analysts, assistants, and trainees, but with only 17 of the positions filled," and p. 58, "the planned table of organization was never reached." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^26]: Roop, Part I, p. 46, that Watson and Leites "were sent to London in September 1942" to set up analysis, and that "a two-man analysis staff remained" through the war. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^27]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on the Central European Radio Analysis, begun January 1943 by the German Section, and the Radio Report on the Far East, first published August 24, 1942 (RG 262, Entry 34, Box 1). https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/.
[^28]: Bessner, "The Night Watchman," pp. 132-133, on Speier's report sent "a week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor," Free and Watson's reading of his work "with the greatest of interest," the February 1942 offer, and the Analysis Division as the "heart" of the service. Sole source for the offer and its date.
[^29]: Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 132, note 51, citing Harold Graves to Hans Speier and Ernst Kris, December 23, 1941, and Lloyd Free to Hans Speier, January 31, 1942, RG 262, Entry 2, Box 66. https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/19152946-8fbb-4b9b-9da0-faca0979e718.
[^30]: Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 134, which places the letter of May 26, 1942 two months after Speier entered the Analysis Division and quotes it as stating that, "as a result of investigation," he had "been rated eligible on suitability for the position of Senior Political Analyst" (note 59: United States Civil Service Commission to Hans Speier, May 26, 1942, Speier Papers, Box 2, Folder 5). https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/19152946-8fbb-4b9b-9da0-faca0979e718.
[^31]: Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 135, on Speier's colleagues George, Leites and Henry Kellermann and on Watson's praise, with the quoted phrases "extraordinarily good job of analysis" and "nobody in the United States whom I would willingly trade for him" (note 62). Sole source for these quotations.
[^32]: Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 138, on Watson leaving "under pressure from enemies of the New Deal" and Speier becoming acting chief analyst, overseeing thirty people. Sole source for the sequence.
[^33]: Bessner, "The Night Watchman," p. 145, on Speier's transfer on "May 22, 1944" from the Analysis Division to the Office of War Information, with Wallace Carroll as his immediate superior.
[^34]: Bessner, "The Night Watchman," pp. 136-137, on the memorandum of October 29, 1943, the seventeen of twenty-five predictions, Mark Abrams, Representative Joseph Martin and Senator Alexander Wiley. Sole source for these claims.
[^35]: Roop, Part I, p. 189, on Dies's letter to Fly of November 18, 1941, which expressed "deep concern" and named thirteen organizations. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^36]: Roop, Part I, pp. 190-191, on Fly's reply that Watson "belonged to only one of the 13 organizations Dies named," the Senate Appropriations Committee's deletion of the rider, Dodd's hiring as an editor in December 1941, and Watson's testimony of February 4, 1942. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. Roop and Mercado spell the analyst's surname "Schumann"; Bessner writes "Schuman."
[^37]: Roop, Part I, pp. 191-192, on Dies's House speech of February 1, 1943, listing 39 "communists," and the rider attached to the House Post Office and Treasury appropriations bill. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^38]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on Congressman Dies accusing three FBIS employees, among dozens of civil servants, of "un-American beliefs." https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/.
[^39]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," quoting Vice President Henry Wallace on Dies. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/.
[^40]: Roop, Part I, pp. 192-193, on the subcommittee under Congressman Kerr, which started hearings on April 2, 1943 and reported on 21 April, the findings of "subversive activity" and "unfit," the three named men, and the statement that the subcommittee "was later accused of having its final report prepared before the men were called to testify." Roop states that the subcommittee was named by the Un-American Activities Committee; *United States v. Lovett*, 328 U.S. 303 (1946), describes a special subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, appointed under a House resolution, whose report is H. Rep. No. 448, 78th Cong., 1st Sess. The Monthly Catalog lists H. Rept. 448 (May 14, 1943, pursuant to H. Res. 105, "submitted by Mr. Kerr") on Watson, Dodd and Lovett; a February 1943 newspaper report names Kerr, a North Carolina Democrat, as chairman of the subcommittee. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/328/303.
[^41]: Roop, Part I, p. 193, on the Senate's four rejections, its approval of the rider by 48 to 32, and the President's signature while denouncing the rider and declaring it unconstitutional.
[^42]: Urgent Deficiency Appropriation Act of 1943, section 304, 57 Stat. 431, 450, as quoted in *United States v. Lovett*, 328 U.S. 303 (1946). Roop, Part I, p. 193, note, gives the effective cutoff as November 21, 1943, where the statute as quoted gives 15 November. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/328/303.
[^43]: *United States v. Lovett*, 328 U.S. 303 (1946), argued May 3-6, 1946, decided June 3, 1946, opinion of Justice Black. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/328/303. Mercado's article gives the middle name as "Morse."
[^44]: Roop, Part I, pp. 194-195, on the attacks on Rhodes, Menefee and Speier; Fly's letter to J. Edgar Hoover of April 28, 1942, and the two informant reports, one calling the New York school a "refuge for exiled European communists" and the other calling it "a nest of pro-Nazi activities." Sole source for the informant reports is Roop's account of the FBIS file.
[^45]: Roop, Part I, p. 196, on Cox, the Atlanta station case, the FCC's referral to the Justice Department, the House's naming of Cox as chairman in early 1943, and the appointment of Eugene Garey as investigator.
[^46]: Roop, Part I, p. 197, on the removal of "three-fourths of FBIS personnel files," the subpoena of ten employees at 8:00 a.m., and "Star Chamber testimony," citing Leigh's article "Politicians vs. Bureaucrats" (subtitle "The case of FCC Chairman Fly and Congressman Cox"), *Harper's Magazine*, January 1945. https://harpers.org/archive/1945/01/politicians-vs-bureaucrats. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^47]: Roop, Part I, p. 198, on the single irregularity found at FBIS and the list of charges, including "masquerading," "intelligence" and "glorified news gathering agency." Mercado renders the last phrase as "glorified news agency."
[^48]: Roop, Part I, p. 50, on the Cox counsel's charge that Leigh changed the name of the service to "dignify its activities," make it sound more like a war agency, and influence Congress to grant appropriations."
[^49]: Roop, Part I, pp. 198-199, on the Washington Post's sixteen editorials, the FCC member who "agreed to petition the Speaker of the House to dismiss Cox as chairman," Cox's resignation after an emotional speech, Lea's succession, and Garey's dismissal. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947. Louis E. Miller (R-Mo.) and Richard B. Wigglesworth (R-Mass.) are the minority members named in *Broadcasting*, January 8, 1945. Full names: Clarence Frederick Lea (D-Calif.), Louis Ebenezer Miller (R-Mo.), Richard Bowditch Wigglesworth (R-Mass.) and Kenneth Douglas McKellar (D-Tenn.), per the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress as reproduced in the unitedstates/congress-legislators dataset.
[^50]: "Lea Probe Demands Sweeping Law Change," *Broadcasting*, January 8, 1945, on the Miller and Wigglesworth minority reports and Wigglesworth's statements. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-BC/BC-1945/1945-01-08-BC.pdf.
[^51]: Roop, Part I, pp. 200-201, on the May 1944 testimony of Leigh, Hensley, Porter and Graves; the Lea report of January 2, 1945 ("an efficient and worthwhile service"); the Miller and Wigglesworth minority report ("grave doubt"); and the majority passage quoted in *On the Beam* of February 3, 1945, in the note on p. 201. The hearings are *Hearings of the Special House Committee Investigating the FCC* (GPO, 1944), three volumes, with FBIS testimony beginning in Volume III, page 3439. Roop, Part I, p. 189, records Graves's resignation by the end of 1943.
[^52]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on Leigh's newsletter of February 15, 1944: "The obvious conclusion is that the proposed cut relates to the opposition on the part of Representative Cox to FCC," the 30 percent figure, and Leigh's resignation "that summer." https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/.
[^53]: Roop, Part I, pp. 204-206, on the House Appropriations Committee's recommended cut of 25 percent for each FCC department, Senator McKellar's demand for proof, and the Senate Appropriations Committee's recommended cut of $500,000 that both houses approved. Mercado's figure of 30 percent is given at note 48.
[^54]: Roop, Part I, pp. 206-207, on the absence of any stated congressional reason for the cut, Fly's being ruled out of order, the statement that "it was a punitive cut, made to punish Fly and FCC for defiance of Congress and for Fly's effrontery in asking the Department of Justice to prosecute Eugene Cox, a member of Congress," and, in the note on p. 207, Leigh's quotation of a member of Congress speaking privately, from Leigh's *Harper's Magazine* article, January 1945. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^55]: Roop, Part I, pp. 241-244, "Charles S. Hyneman, who succeeded Leigh as FBIS director on 27 July 1944," and p. 260, "from 27 July 1944 to 7 August 1945," and Shepherd's appointment as the fourth FBIS Director. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^56]: Roop, Part I, pp. 256-257 (note on the liaison study of April 29, 1944; abolition of the Special Reports Section on December 31, 1944), p. 259 (Far East Division retained "the only analytical work done in FBIS"), and pp. 267-268 (the protest of November 1944, Hyneman's response, and Robinson's letter of January 17, 1945). https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^57]: Roop, Part I, p. 268, on the Soviet Embassy's request of November 11, 1942 and the TASS arrangement in London in 1943. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^58]: Roop, Part I, p. 275, note, on the undated executive order with the name of President Truman, transferring FBIS functions to the Interim Research and Intelligence Service, "prepared by Shepherd and perhaps some representatives from State," and "never approved by the Secretary of State." Job 54-27, Box 15, CIA Records Center.
[^59]: Roop, Part I, pp. 274-277, on the House Appropriations Committee's action of September 19, 1945, the FCC's news release of 26 September, the conference compromise of 1 December ($465,000) approved on 3 December, and the closing of operations on December 10, 1945.
[^60]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on the last Daily Report "on 4 December" and the FCC's termination "the following day." https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/.
[^61]: Federal Communications Commission, Twelfth Annual Report, fiscal year ended June 30, 1946, which states that FBIS "was discontinued as a Commission activity on December 30, 1945." https://archive.org/details/fcc_DOC-308665A1.
[^62]: Roop, Part I, pp. 278-280, on Shepherd's letter of December 13, 1945 to the FCC, the token operations that followed, Patterson's letter of 21 December, Porter's reply of 27 December, the resumption on January 2, 1946 under War Department sponsorship, and the note on p. 279 that "No documents authorizing continued operations have been found, but permission may have been given orally." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^63]: Roop, Part I, pp. 299-300, on the creation of the CIG by executive order in January 1946, the Vandenberg memorandum to Souers in February 1946, and the five-member committee. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^64]: Central Intelligence Group, "Survey of the Function of Monitoring Press and Propaganda Broadcasts of Foreign Powers," C.I.G. 1, memorandum by the Director of Central Intelligence, February 25, 1946, which states that FBIS functions were "taken over by the War Department on an interim basis on 30 December 1945." https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80R01731R003400110003-4. Ad hoc committee report, March 18, 1946: https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80R01731R003400110004-3.
[^65]: Roop, Part I, pp. 301-303, on the ad hoc committee's recommendations (March 18, 1946), the War Department's refusal, the State Department's reply, C.I.G. 1/1 (April 26, 1946), C.I.G. 1/2 (May 8, 1946, signed by James S. Lay), and the State memorandum signed by William L. Langer on May 27, 1946, enclosed with C.I.G. 1/3 (June 4, 1946).
[^66]: Roop, Part I, pp. 303-304, on the notice, signed for the Director of Central Intelligence by Col. John Dabney, that the Director had "assumed control" of FBIS on July 31, 1946, and on the personnel transfer to CIG on November 3, 1946, announced on 31 October. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^67]: National Archives and Records Administration, Guide to Federal Records, RG 262, administrative history: transfer to the Central Intelligence Group, "August 5, 1946"; "Abolished: November 1, 1946"; successors "Foreign Broadcast Information Service, CIG, November-December, 1946," "Foreign Broadcast Information Branch, CIG, January-September 1947," and "Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Central Intelligence Agency, 1947-." https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/262.html.
[^68]: CIG, "Background on Development of Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service," memorandum for the Chief, Information Branch, March 1946. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80R01731R003400110001-6.
[^69]: Roop, Part I, pp. 303-304, on the notice of October 31, 1946 that "the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service would immediately become the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), with all publications and letterheads changed accordingly." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^70]: Roop, Part I, p. 305 and note, on Sibert's statement of December 31, 1946 "informing that the name had been changed to the Foreign Broadcast Information Branch (FBIB)" and his wire of January 2, 1947 designating Russell Shepherd Chief, FBIB. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^71]: CIG, "'A' and 'X' Wire Services Furnished by Foreign Broadcast Information Branch," memorandum, June 10, 1947. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80R01731R003400110015-1. Also memorandum on the May 6, 1947 interview of Colonel L. K. White, Acting Chief, FBIB, with Lloyd Stratton of the Associated Press. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP80R01731R003400110022-3.
[^72]: Roop, Part II (CIA Directorate of Intelligence, August 1970), p. 102, on the notice that field bureaus would no longer bear "the confusing name of Foreign Broadcast Information Branch (FBIB)," and on the camouflage of their connection with CIG. The notice is dated July 28, 1947. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06741690.
[^73]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," note 4: "The initial monitoring service was renamed the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service in 1942 and evolved into the Foreign Broadcast Information Service in 1967." Roop, Part I, pp. 303-304 (the notice of October 31, 1946) and the 1947 CIG memoranda already use the later name. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/.
[^74]: Roop, Part I, p. 2, "FBIS took form during those six years before its adoption by the Central Intelligence Agency, and came to CIA almost mature, trained and disciplined, and ready to plunge immediately into the tasks outlined for it." https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^75]: Roop, Part II, pp. 151-152, on Shepherd's memorandum of November 5, 1946, the Assistant Director for Operations' presentation to the PRC on January 6, 1947, the 35-employee and $150,000 proposal, the reduced request of twelve staff at $61,000, the "stormy" early years, and the Special Reports Division (approved February 13, 1947, begun March 28, 1947, first Survey of Soviet Radio Broadcasts April 15, 1947); p. 2, on the announcement of Col. Lawrence K. White as Deputy Chief on January 9, 1947. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06741690.
[^76]: Roop, Part II, p. 56, "Shepherd resigned from FBIS on 29 September 1947," with Colonel White the new FBIS Chief. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06741690. Appointment of the fourth director: Roop, Part I, p. 260. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^77]: Roop, Part II, p. 51, on Shepherd's visit to London from June 24, 1946, his meeting with "Malcolm Frost, Chief of the BBC Monitoring Service," the $250,000 figure, and the BBC Monitoring Service's 385 employees and $650,000 cost. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06741690.
[^78]: Roop, Part II, pp. 54-56, on the Shepherd-Frost negotiations and the notice of October 15, 1947. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-06741690.
[^79]: Joseph E. Roop, "Foreign Broadcast Information Service History, Part III: 1957-1967" (CIA Directorate of Intelligence, May 1972), p. 2, "after 1957 FBIS had come of age as an established CIA unit"; p. 19, on the March 23, 1961 instruction to accept responsibility for propaganda indications; and pp. 4-5, "FBIS and the BBC were monitoring broadcasts from 90 countries in 1961. By the spring of 1963 this number had increased to 115." https://archive.org/details/CIADirectorateOfIntelligenceHistoricalSeriesForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart319571967.
[^80]: Roop, Part I, p. 25, on the mailing list for the Daily Report issued on November 18, 1941; Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," states that the service "published its first Daily Report of translations on 18 November 1941." https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/.
[^81]: Roop, Part I, p. 50, that Ellis G. Porter, "former editor of newspapers in Baltimore and Philadelphia," joined the staff in January 1942 "to direct publication of the Daily Report."
[^82]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," note 39: "FBIS, Daily Report, Foreign Radio Broadcasts, Far Eastern Section, 3 January 1946, NARA, RG 262, Entry 25, Box 1," and the text that the first issue of the new Daily Report was published in January 1946. https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/archives/vol-45-no-5/fbis-against-the-axis-1941-1945-u/.
[^83]: NARA, Guide to Federal Records, RG 262: "Daily reports of foreign radio broadcasts, 1941-45"; "Daily reports of the Far Eastern, Latin American, and European Sections, 1941-46"; "Weekly reviews of official foreign broadcasts, 1941-44"; "Radio reports on the Far East, 1942-45"; "Program schedules of foreign broadcasts, 1942-47"; and "Related Records: Records of the Foreign Broadcast Information Branch, 1947-48, in RG 263." https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/262.html.

27
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/National Reconnaissance Office.md
View file

@ -13,7 +13,7 @@ summary: "Joint Defense Department and CIA agency for reconnaissance satellites,
start: 1961-09-06
location: "Chantilly, Virginia"
created: 2026-09-24
updated: 2026-09-24
updated: 2026-10-09
relations:
- type: member_of
with: "[[Department of Defense]]"
@ -42,11 +42,11 @@ relations:
with: "[[David Grusch]]"
reverse: true
role: "NRO representative on the UAP Task Force"
fn: 6
fn: 11
- type: partner_of
with: "[[In-Q-Tel]]"
start: 2009
fn: 5
fn: 10
---
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) builds and operates the reconnaissance satellites of the [[United States]]. It was created without a statute: "acting CIA Director, Gen Charles Cabell established the National Reconnaissance Office by concurring with Deputy Secretary of Defense, Roswell Gilpatric's 6 September 1961 memorandum." [[Richard Bissell]] of the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] and [[Joseph V. Charyk]] of the [[United States Air Force|Air Force]] were its first co-directors.[^1]
@ -102,18 +102,27 @@ In September 1995 Senator [[Arlen Specter]], then chairman of the Senate committ
### The Future Imagery Architecture
[[Boeing]] won the Future Imagery Architecture satellite contract over [[Lockheed Martin]] on September 3, 1999. The program ran into "technical problems, leading to a major spacecraft redesign, resulting in delays and overruns." In May 2003 a joint task force of the [[Defense Science Board]] and the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board found it "significantly underfunded and technically flawed," and in 2005 the [[Director of National Intelligence]], [[John Negroponte]], ended it as originally constituted. The National Commission for the Review of the NRO, chaired by Senator [[Bob Kerrey]] and Representative [[Porter Goss]], had reported in November 2000 that the office was "supporting a growing number of users and missions with a budget that had not grown proportionately," and recommended that it "strike a more nuanced balance between openness and secrecy." Under the [[Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act]], signed on December 17, 2004, the director reports to the Director of National Intelligence as well as to the Secretary of Defense.[^1]
[[Boeing]] won the Future Imagery Architecture satellite contract over [[Lockheed Martin]] on September 3, 1999. The program ran into "technical problems, leading to a major spacecraft redesign, resulting in delays and overruns." In May 2003 a joint task force of the [[Defense Science Board]] and the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board found it "significantly underfunded and technically flawed," and in 2005 the [[Director of National Intelligence]], [[John Negroponte]], ended it as originally constituted. The National Commission for the Review of the NRO, co-chaired by Senator [[Bob Kerrey]] and Representative [[Porter Goss]], reported in November 2000, in the words of the NRO's official history, that the NRO was facing the challenge of "supporting a growing number of users and missions with a budget that had not grown proportionately," and, in the same history's words, recommended that the NRO "strike a more nuanced balance between openness and secrecy."[^1] The report itself stated that "The NRO has become a publicly acknowledged organization that openly announces many of its new program initiatives" and recommended a new Office of Space Reconnaissance with its own security compartment.[^5] Under the [[Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act]], signed on December 17, 2004, the director reports to the Director of National Intelligence as well as to the Secretary of Defense.[^1]
### National Commission for the Review of the NRO
Congress created the National Commission for the Review of the National Reconnaissance Office in Title VII of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, approved December 3, 1999 as Public Law 106-120. The conference report's joint explanatory statement says that neither the House bill nor the Senate amendment contained a similar provision and that the managers included it.[^6] The statute set the membership at eleven, with the NRO director serving ex officio, and required two co-chairs, one from each party, jointly agreed by the President and the congressional leaders.[^7] The co-chairs were Kerrey, then a senator from Nebraska and recently vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Goss, the Republican representative from Florida who chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.[^8] Kerrey wrote to NRO director Peter B. Teets on August 11, 2003: "I wrote the 1999 Congressional Act that authorized the creation of the National Commission for the Review of the National Reconnaissance Office. After President Clinton signed this into law, I asked Congressman Porter Goss to co-chair this effort with me."[^9] The report's appendix lists [[Joan Avalyn Dempsey]], the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Community Management, Keith R. Hall as NRO director, Martin C. Faga and [[Patrick M. Hughes]] among the members.[^8] The report, titled "The NRO at the Crossroads," is dated November 1, 2000 on its cover, the statutory deadline for the final report; Kerrey's 2003 letter gives the date of its release as November 15, 2000.[^8][^9] Its executive summary recommended establishing a new Office of Space Reconnaissance.[^5]
### Later Associations
[[In-Q-Tel]], the CIA's venture fund, lists the office as a partner from 2009.[^5] [[David Grusch]], an intelligence officer of the NRO and of the [[National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency]], served as the NRO's representative on the [[UAP Task Force]].[^6] He testified to a subcommittee of the [[House Committee on Oversight and Accountability|House Oversight Committee]] on July 26, 2023, that officials had told him of waived [[Special Access Programs|special access programs]] for the retrieval and reverse engineering of UAP that had not been disclosed to Congress.[^7]
[[In-Q-Tel]], the CIA's venture fund, lists the office as a partner from 2009.[^10] [[David Grusch]], an intelligence officer of the NRO and of the [[National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency]], served as the NRO's representative on the [[UAP Task Force]].[^11] He testified to a subcommittee of the [[House Committee on Oversight and Accountability|House Oversight Committee]] on July 26, 2023, that officials had told him of waived [[Special Access Programs|special access programs]] for the retrieval and reverse engineering of UAP that had not been disclosed to Congress.[^12]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Berkowitz, Bruce. *The National Reconnaissance Office at 50 Years: A Brief History.* Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance, National Reconnaissance Office, Chantilly, Virginia, September 2011, preface, pp. 20-21, 23-25, 28-29, Appendix A (pp. 36-41) and Appendix B (p. 43). Retrieved via the Wayback Machine snapshot of January 16, 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20260116035324/https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/history/csnr/programs/NRO_Brief_History.pdf
[^1]: Berkowitz, Bruce. *The National Reconnaissance Office at 50 Years: A Brief History.* Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance, National Reconnaissance Office, Chantilly, Virginia, September 2011, preface, pp. 20-21, 23-26, 28-29, Appendix A (pp. 36-41) and Appendix B (p. 43). Retrieved via the Wayback Machine snapshot of January 16, 2026. https://web.archive.org/web/20260116035324/https://www.nro.gov/Portals/65/documents/history/csnr/programs/NRO_Brief_History.pdf
[^2]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy.* Random House, 1991, chapter 2.
[^3]: Berkowitz, *The National Reconnaissance Office at 50 Years,* pp. 20-21, citing Thomas, P., "Spy Unit's Spending Stuns Hill," *Washington Post,* August 9, 1994; Weiner, T., "Senators Angered Over Cost of Spy Agency's New Offices," *New York Times,* August 9, 1994; and Pincus, W., "CIA Told Hill of Project, Woolsey Says," *Washington Post,* August 11, 1994.
[^4]: Berkowitz, *The National Reconnaissance Office at 50 Years,* pp. 22-23, citing Weiner, T., "A Spy Agency Admits Accumulating $4 Billion in Secret Money," *New York Times,* May 16, 1996, and Morgan, D., and W. Pincus, "$1.6 Billion in NRO Kitty Helped Appropriators Fund Pet Projects," *Washington Post,* October 5, 1995.
[^5]: In-Q-Tel, "Our Milestones." https://www.iqt.org/about/our-milestones
[^6]: Elizondo, Luis. *Imminent.* William Morrow, 2024.
[^7]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs. *Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency,* hearing, July 26, 2023.
[^5]: The NRO at the Crossroads, Executive Summary, pp. 7 to 8 (Office of Space Reconnaissance; "publicly acknowledged organization") and pp. 41 to 42 (new security compartment). Archived copy as in the preceding note.
[^6]: U.S. House of Representatives, Conference Report 106-457 on H.R. 1555, November 5, 1999, joint explanatory statement, Title VII ("Neither the House bill nor the Senate amendment contained a similar provision"). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CRPT-106hrpt457/html/CRPT-106hrpt457.htm
[^7]: Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000, Public Law 106-120, approved December 3, 1999, Title VII, secs. 701 to 709. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-106publ120/pdf/PLAW-106publ120.pdf
[^8]: National Commission for the Review of the National Reconnaissance Office, The NRO at the Crossroads, November 1, 2000, cover page and Appendix G, "Commission Member Biographies," pp. 135 to 136. Archived copy: https://web.archive.org/web/2020id_/https://irp.fas.org/nro/commission/nro.pdf
[^9]: Bob Kerrey, letter to Peter B. Teets, August 11, 2003, NRO press release 2003-03. Sole source for Kerrey's statement that he wrote the Act and recruited Goss. https://web.archive.org/web/2id_/https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/news/press/2003/2003-03.pdf
[^10]: In-Q-Tel, "Our Milestones." https://www.iqt.org/about/our-milestones
[^11]: Elizondo, Luis. *Imminent.* William Morrow, 2024.
[^12]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Accountability, Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs. *Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency,* hearing, July 26, 2023.

21
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Office of Strategic Services.md
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@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
---
created: 2025-07-23
updated: 2026-05-15
updated: 2026-10-09
title: Office of Strategic Services
aliases:
- OSS
@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ tags:
- Donovan
description: The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the United States' wartime intelligence agency during World War II and the direct institutional precursor to the CIA.
category: "Intelligence & Government"
summary: "The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the U.S. wartime intelligence and covert operations agency (1942-1945) founded by General William Donovan on British Security Coordination templates, dissolved by Truman in 1945 and reconstituted as the CIA in 1947."
summary: "The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the U.S. wartime intelligence and covert operations agency (1942-1945) founded by William Donovan on British Security Coordination templates and dissolved by Truman in 1945."
start: 1942-06-13
end: 1945-10-01
location: "Washington, D.C."
@ -38,20 +38,31 @@ OSS operations ran through several branches: Research and Analysis (intelligence
Allen Dulles directed OSS operations in Switzerland from November 1942 through the war's end, developing a European intelligence network that became the foundation for the CIA's clandestine service. He subsequently became CIA Director from 1953 to 1961.[^1]
The agency drew heavily on the [[Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service]] for monitored Japanese broadcasts. In September 1941 [[Breckinridge Long]] wrote to FCC chairman [[James L. Fly]] that the service "has a counterpart in the organization of which Mr. Donovan is the head," and assumed that the information was "made instantly available to some of his people" in the [[William J. Donovan]] organization.[^3] On August 13, 1942 Dr. Charles B. Fah, acting chief of the Far Eastern Section, wrote to FBIS director [[Robert D. Leigh]] that the section "has found the various reports of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service of the Federal Communications Commission indispensable in our work."[^3] On November 16, 1942 [[William L. Langer]], director of the Research and Analysis Branch, wrote to Leigh that "Without the monitoring service of the Federal Communications Commission, our knowledge of current events in Japan would be meager."[^4] After the 1944 budget cut, Langer wrote on April 22, 1944 that recent developments had "led to a curtailment of the output of the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service."[^5] On January 17, 1945 [[Geroid T. Robinson]] of the agency wrote to [[Charles S. Hyneman]] to express regret that the service's analytical work had been discontinued, and added that he hoped the Daily Report would carry more Soviet radio material.[^6]
### The Truth Drug Program
The OSS established a "truth drug" committee under Dr. [[Winfred Overholser]], head of [[St. Elizabeth's Hospital]] in Washington, which tried and rejected [[mescaline]], several barbiturates, and scopolamine before settling in spring 1943 on [[marijuana|cannabis indica]] as the most promising substance. Testing ran in cooperation with the [[Manhattan Project]], which supplied the first dozen subjects; oral delivery failed and the committee found cigarettes the most effective vehicle. [[George Hunter White|George White]], an Army captain who had come to OSS from the [[Federal Bureau of Narcotics]], conducted the first field test on New York gangster [[August Del Gracio]] on May 27, 1943, then tested the technique on suspected Communist soldiers at camps outside [[Atlanta]], [[Memphis]], and [[New Orleans]]. The program seeded the CIA's postwar [[Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke|ARTICHOKE]] and [[Project MKUltra|MKULTRA]] work, which began by getting the old OSS files out and approaching the same George White.[^3]
The OSS established a "truth drug" committee under Dr. [[Winfred Overholser]], head of [[St. Elizabeth's Hospital]] in Washington, which tried and rejected [[mescaline]], several barbiturates, and scopolamine before settling in spring 1943 on [[marijuana|cannabis indica]] as the most promising substance. Testing ran in cooperation with the [[Manhattan Project]], which supplied the first dozen subjects; oral delivery failed and the committee found cigarettes the most effective vehicle. [[George Hunter White|George White]], an Army captain who had come to OSS from the [[Federal Bureau of Narcotics]], conducted the first field test on New York gangster [[August Del Gracio]] on May 27, 1943, then tested the technique on suspected Communist soldiers at camps outside [[Atlanta]], [[Memphis]], and [[New Orleans]]. The program seeded the CIA's postwar [[Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke|ARTICHOKE]] and [[Project MKUltra|MKULTRA]] work, which began by getting the old OSS files out and approaching the same George White.[^7]
### Weapons and Behavioral Science
[[Stanley Lovell]], a Boston industrialist and self-described "saucepan chemist," headed OSS Research and Development through Division 19 of [[James Conant]]'s National Defense Research Committee, producing devices such as the "Aunt Jemima" explosive disguised as pancake mix and the "Who? Me?" harassment substance, and pursuing several schemes to assassinate [[Adolf Hitler]]. Donovan also commissioned a psychoanalytic study of Hitler from psychoanalyst [[Walter Langer]], who predicted his suicide, and brought in [[Harvard University|Harvard]] psychologist [[Henry Murray]] to build an OSS recruit-assessment system in only fifteen days, a milestone as the first systematic American effort to evaluate personality to predict future behavior.[^3]
[[Stanley Lovell]], a Boston industrialist and self-described "saucepan chemist," headed OSS Research and Development through Division 19 of [[James Conant]]'s National Defense Research Committee, producing devices such as the "Aunt Jemima" explosive disguised as pancake mix and the "Who? Me?" harassment substance, and pursuing several schemes to assassinate [[Adolf Hitler]]. Donovan also commissioned a psychoanalytic study of Hitler from psychoanalyst [[Walter Langer]], who predicted his suicide, and brought in [[Harvard University|Harvard]] psychologist [[Henry Murray]] to build an OSS recruit-assessment system in only fifteen days, a milestone as the first systematic American effort to evaluate personality to predict future behavior.[^7]
### Dissolution and CIA Transition
Truman dissolved the OSS on October 1, 1945, distributing its functions to the State Department (Research and Analysis) and the War Department (Strategic Services Unit, which preserved the clandestine service infrastructure). The Central Intelligence Agency was created by the National Security Act of 1947, signed July 26, 1947, and formally established September 18, 1947. The institutional culture Donovan developed - including the use of academic, journalistic, and cultural figures as intelligence assets; the cultivation of foreign service networks; and the use of proprietary companies as operational covers - became standard CIA practice after the transition.[^1]
### Emigre Scholars
The Office of Strategic Services considered the [[New School for Social Research]] "the best collection of German, left-leaning intellectuals in the United States." Over two hundred students who had studied at the school's University in Exile worked for the government during the war, and New School scholars were involved in more than twenty-five government-associated projects routed through [[Rockefeller Foundation]] intermediaries.[^8]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Smith, Bradley F. *The Shadow Warriors: O.S.S. and the Origins of the C.I.A.* Basic Books, 1983. Troy, Thomas F. *Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency*. CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1981. "British Security Coordination: The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-45." Fromm International Publishing, 1998.
[^2]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
[^3]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*. Times Books, 1979, Chapter 1.
[^3]: Stephen C. Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis, 1941-1945," Studies in Intelligence 45, no. 5 (2001), on Long's letter of September 1941 and Fah's letter of August 13, 1942. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol45no5/html/v45i5a04p.htm.
[^4]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on Langer's letter to Leigh of November 16, 1942, National Archives, RG 262, Entry 68, Box 22. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol45no5/html/v45i5a04p.htm.
[^5]: Mercado, "FBIS Against the Axis," on Langer's letter to Leigh of April 22, 1944, National Archives, RG 262, Entry 68, Box 22. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol45no5/html/v45i5a04p.htm.
[^6]: Roop, Part I, pp. 267-268. https://archive.org/details/ForeignBroadcastInformationServiceHistoryPart11941-1947.
[^7]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*. Times Books, 1979, Chapter 1.
[^8]: Daniel Bessner, "The Night Watchman: Hans Speier and the Making of the American National Security State" (PhD diss., Duke University, 2013), pp. 137-138, citing Claus-Dieter Krohn, Intellectuals in Exile: Refugee Scholars and the New School for Social Research (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), pp. 139-149, 165-167. https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/232a76ac-f2d8-4827-99fe-50b3b109fa6c/content