General Records of the Department of State: Supplementary Documents from the Foreign Relation Series Relating to the U.S. Intelligence Community (Record Group 59)

These records consist mainly of letters, memoranda, minutes of meetings, and reports pertaining to the emergence of the U.S. intelligence establishment and its influence on American foreign policy.

Size: 1 linear foot, 4 linear inches (about 2400 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: Documents created by U.S. government officials in the course of their official duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Jennifer Wilborn (2008) as part of the Truman Library Internship Program.
Supervising Archivists: Randy Sowell and David Clark.

The Office of the Historian in the Department of State is responsible for the publication of the Foreign Relations of the United States series, an official compilation of documents relating to U.S. foreign policy.

On October 24, 1997, the State Department released the 419 documents that make up this collection. These documents were supplements to the Foreign Relations volume entitled Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, which covered the 1945-1950 period.

These materials from the General Records of the Department of State (Record Group 59) consist mainly of letters, memoranda, minutes of meetings, reports, charts, telegrams, general orders, and directives documenting the emergence of the U.S. intelligence establishment and its influence on American foreign policy. The documents were collected by the State Department’s Office of the Historian to serve as a supplement to a volume in the Foreign Relations of the United States series relating to the U.S. intelligence community.

The collection is arranged according to a numerical system established by the Office of the Historian; this arrangement is also roughly chronological. The collection begins with a number of documents on intelligence-related developments in the immediate postwar period. Among the issues covered are the dissolution of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the transfer of its functions to other agencies; the conflicting concepts and plans of the Bureau of the Budget, the Department of State, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the armed services concerning a postwar intelligence system; the gradual emergence of leadership by the armed services on the issue; the deadlock between the Department of State and the military; and the eventual breaking of the impasse leading to the issuance of the President’s letter of January 22, 1946, which established the National Intelligence Authority (NIA) and the Central Intelligence Group (CIG).

Also documented in the collection are the administrations of three Directors of Central Intelligence (Rear Admiral Sidney W. Souers, Lieutenant General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, and Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter); the Department of State’s attempts to create an intelligence organization in 1945-1947; the transition from the Strategic Services Unit (SSU) to the Office of Special Operations of the Central Intelligence Group; the development of the intelligence provisions of the 1947 National Security Act; and the history of National Security Council (NSC) decisions dealing with covert psychological warfare, which began the “secret operations” (as distinct from “secret intelligence”) functions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

It is important to recognize the distinct character of the collection, which documents the planning and establishment of national intelligence coordination and national intelligence policies, but does not include documentation of the planning and implementation of specific intelligence operations or the impact of intelligence appraisals upon particular foreign affairs policymaking or negotiations. Although the collection addresses geographical areas such as Asia, Latin America, and the USSR, the intelligence reports, estimates, and analyses dealing with specific regions, countries, or issues are not included.

Further information about the CIA and the NSC may be found at the Truman Library in the papers of Harry S. Truman (President’s Secretary’s Files and National Security Council Files).