same ships who by reason of a infectiontly acquired would've show no symptoms and therefore, they could not of been readily identified if they were passing through a quarantine station. >> a brief look at one of our many programs available in its entirety on our website, c-span.org/history. american history tv, exploring our nation's past every weekend on c-span3. is a formeroeder c.i.a. officer and author of the foundation of the cia, harry truman, the missouri gang, and the origins of the cold war. he talks about the history of u.s. intelligence gatherings through world war ii and details how and why president truman established the cia in 1947. he tells the story of a missouri gang who were instrumental in the creation of the cia. the international spy museum

recorded this event in november of 2017. >> we are fortunate to have an old friend with us, richard schroeder, a former officer with the cia clandestine service. he began his career under the 1972. after two years in the army as an intelligence officer for the army stuff in washington, the u.s. military command in vietnam. he consults on national security and teaches that georgetown. he is a founding advisory board member here at the international spy museum. he is the author of a new book, the foundation of the cia, harry truman, the missouri gang, and

the origins of the cold war. you are not here to listen to me talk. rick, come on up. [applause] you for coming out when you could be over at the christmas market across the street. been a ciaid, i have officer for running on to 50 years now. for the last 20 years, i have taught intelligence courses at georgetown school of foreign service. in teaching at georgetown, i have discovered, as well as from participating with the museum, i discovered there is a great interest in the cia and in the general subject of national intelligence, it also, unfortunately, considerable

misunderstanding, suspicion, and even outright hostility about national intelligence. one of the reasons i wrote this primer to try to explain, not to specialist audiences or knowledgeable people like yourselves or my colleagues, but to the general public what it is that an intelligence community does and the kinds of functions and capabilities we have but also the kinds of challenges we have. was, younted to do will forgive me for reading from georgetownlasses at run 2.5 hours long so i am used to speaking extemporaneously for 2.5 hours. i know that none of you wants that. let me just read this.

book about howe the modern u.s. intelligence establishment was created, but also to highlight major intelligence functions by focusing on important themes, episodes, and lessons. i will talk about lessons but i want to emphasize these are not necessarily lessons that we haveed, or that we remembered. it is also about the man, -- the men, because the missouri gang were all men who conceived and implement it a vision of a national intelligence service against heavy and in the face of widespread opposition and multiple near-death experiences.

as harry truman said, the only thing new in the world's history that you don't know -- in the world is history that you don't know. as yogi berra said, it is deja vu all over again. that theme of repeatedly having to relearn the same lessons over and over again runs from the early days of the oss write down down toresent -- right the present. some of the experiences of early cia officers were seen very familiar to our colleagues today. because i am a historian myself, let me step back a step and remind you that every advanced ciae undertakes what deputy historian mike warner described as secret state activity. to understand or influence

foreign entities. there we have technology in action. as tony mendez, another member of the board, has pointed out, sooner or later, technology will always let you down. remember that. ciaughout our history, the has -- the u.s. has repeatedly conducted impressive intelligence during wartime, but then forgot or abandoned the discipline in peacetime. that is a theme that dates back all the way to the revolution. anybody who served in the 1990's will remember the cold war peace dividend. remember that? we defeated the soviet union, there was not going to be anymore history, and we would have this wonderful piece

dividend, andace it was euphemistically called the intelligence wide path. 25% in budgets and personnel during the 1990's just in time for 9/11. was formed with a great respect for intelligence and george washington can be considered the first director of national intelligence. but the u.s. was slow to join of the greater game because it is based on a book by rudyard kipling, which he wrote in 1901 about afghanistan. we were a little late to this great game.

in fact, the first permanent u.s. intelligence agency was the office of naval intelligence in 1882 and it was created in response to the growing power and reach of the super weapons of the day, which were battleships. foreigners,hat foreign powers, could credibly project power in a way that would really threaten the united states. in the 1880's, the u.s. navy was the 12th largest in the world, even smaller than brazil. in 1945, you will notice quite a number of u.s. naval officers in our story. what war i showed the u.s. great horns we were in intelligence, and that is a direct quote from a

distinguished office of naval intelligence officer named john allen gaeta. there he is right there. u.s. army code breakers in the byrican black chamber, led herbert yardley, did impressive work. after the world war -- the first world war, this experience was allowed to go to waste after the war until we faced the global threats of the 1930's. by then, only a few practitioners remained, along with a good number of enthusiastic amateurs. i am going to briefly discuss a number of these characters, many of the members of the missouri gang. for more detail, you will have to read my book or ask me

questions after the presentation. here we have truman in the middle. we have his military chief of lahey, weiral william sellers, the second dci who is not from missouri. on the others, we have the first director of the cia. young white house lawyer, also from missouri. and we have larry houston, general counsel of the oss and cia, also from missouri. a good number of these people were, in fact, from missouri. the reason they were called the missouri gang was not a compliment. truman,s city, harry

during the first ward war, led a unit,eer unit, artillery that served on the western front. he later gained the ambivalent support of the pendergast machine. basically ran the democratic machine in kansas city. first as county executive and mayor of kansas city, and then as senator. --dergast in kansas city this is a presentation of kansas city. you can see the dance halls. he was originally called, after he joined the senate, the senator from pendergast. senator from illinois could have been called the senator from richard a daily, something

like that -- richard daley, something like that. in st. louis, roscoe hill and cotter, the son of a german-american mail carrier earned his commission at annapolis. he had an outstanding annapolis record and served aboard ships and a staff officer for senior commanders. he taught romance languages at annapolis but excelled as a paris.ttache in sours worked his way up the mississippi river from new orleans through memphis to st. louis, making a fortune getting to know fellow , who will show up

later in my story, and serving as a naval intelligence reservist. of all the men involved in cia, besides his extensive fleet experience, had the most actual intelligence experience. left the fewest footprints or records. i have to tell you it was very difficult to find out much about the guy, even though he was first director of the cia and had a distinguished career. i will say something which is against my interest, but if you cia's studies on intelligence, march 2016 edition, which is available free about, i wrote an article

is military education, which the time from when he entered the navy, served in france, and was theer pearl harbor intelligence chief in the pacific in 1942 in 1943. -- and 1943. he had a wide-ranging experience for a fairly middle grade naval officer. he served in france during very pivotal turbulent years from the mid-1930's until early 1941. the spanish civil war, in which nazi germany and the soviet union used the war to practice wargames.

two years later, the germans turned those practices on against poland and western europe. it was a time of aggressive nazi expansionism. he was there the first year of the european war and witnessed the fall of france. he was in paris when the germans marched in. he exercised and demonstrated all the collection, reporting, analytic and operational skills of a classic field officer. here we have a picture of him courtesy -- here we have a 1920re of him from his academy yearbook. example ofd of an the world he was an. -- he was in.

he demonstrated analytical and observational skills as a classic field officer and in this case, what he did, he took probe of western germany, the rhineland, just before the germans sealed it off in 1938. coe are the german labor rps boys building fortifications and the advanced mechanized equipment that the germans were using. he would drive around and because he spoke native german, along with spanish and french, he would pick up hitchhiking gis, german soldiers, and he would offer them cigarettes and say, by the way, i am an american, tell me what you guys are up to.

and he got remarkable reports on fortifications, airfields, and various kind of military facilities they were building. this was also a period with austria and the occupation of occupation of czechoslovakia where there were repeated war scares in western europe. the picture on the right -- the picture on the left is of people fleeing from paris, not during the actual war but because they got panicked in the late 30's. under formererved chief of nato -- chief of naval

lakey.ons, william -- william lahey. lahey asilliam --assador to occupy france that is his military staff and embassy staff when he is presenting his credentials. let's see, the second from the -- the guy next to him, the third from the right is douglas macarthur the second, who was not douglas macarthur's son but his nephew. he was a senior state department officer. he was in france on june 14 when

pariszis marched in to and the ambassador decided to leave him in the military attache in paris so they could debrief and try to elicit information from the german governor of paris. that is the general, who happened to himself to be a military attache, german military attache in warsaw. , i understand what attaches do. you are here to get information. ask me anything you want. how are you going to invade england? and he said, don't worry, we have got it all worked out. in six weeks, the war will be over.

which shows something. back to theed pacific fleet in november 1941 just-in-time to have his captain killed and his battleship west virginia sunk out from under him during the surprise japanese attack on december 7. this is west virginia and the captain was killed. senior surviving officer on the ship. those of you who know the museum well, the spy museum well may flag.ize the image of the the museum has an excellent calledhich they show ground troop. it is a terrific video.

unfortunately, it is not running these days because of the james bond villains special exhibit. it basically talks about the importance of intelligence and how critical it is to national success or failure. that is the final image of that video. that happens to be the flag from hillenkoetter's ship. it is kind of fitting that the spy museum which show an image that dates back to the early director of the cia. after brief sea duty, oflenkoetter became chief the small understaffed, disorganized, and overwhelmed intelligence center. this is another one of those things that will happen over and

over again. hillenkoetter took over this intelligence center in the chaos immediately after pearl harbor. he did not have enough staff. he did not have the proper kinds of people. he did not have the skills he needed. as yogi berra said, it will be deja vu all over again, to the point when he becomes director of the cia. wasbrilliant predecessor kicked aside by washington rivals trying to shift blame for pearl harbor on to this gifted japanese linguist and cryptographer. again, another lesson. when something goes wrong, it is never your fault. blame somebody else. ideally, blame somebody who is not guilty. my editorial comment. mid-1942, hillenkoetter and

his intelligence center pacific found themselves in similar beleaguered crisis to the central intelligence group int hillenkoetter inherited mid 1947 from dci's directors of central intelligence. later, he willrs find himself in a similar pickle. meanwhile, stepping back to mid-1941, the improvisational and devious president franklin roosevelt had been trying to run what passed as strategic national intelligence out of his desk drawer. there was not any structure at all.

picked of 1941, he ambition -- ambitious and aggressive republican new york lawyer and world war i hero william donovan to be his coordinator of information over the bitter and unrelenting opposition of the fbi and military and naval intelligence. this is donovan's favorite picture of himself. it shows him as a world war i hero and congressional medal of honor winner. there he is as director and here photographerial showing -- you have got the lincoln memorial here. 23rd street. the potomac river. there is the original headquarters of the oss and cia.

this is now the kennedy center. theme of fraternal hostility runs through the whole story, and is repeated during the late 1940's and 1950's when the foundation of the cia, or for that matter, is repeated in 2005 with the creation of the director of national intelligence. if you remember the law that took place when the dni was established in 2005. if intelligence is all about understanding, and i think it is, the most important function is research and analysis, collating, evaluating, and weighing fragmentary, ambiguous, and contradictory and often

deliberately misleading information. it is not just that we don't have the whole picture. it is that our adversaries are sometimes actively trying to mislead us. if you don't believe that happens today, look at the cover of the washington post tomorrow morning -- or maybe today. challenges are shared by historians, journalists, and intelligence officers, and i am both an historian and intelligence officer so i can tell you these are major challenges. two of these intelligence officers were ivy league , who essentially invented the discipline of national strategic analysis.

in the cia's analytic college -- and the cia's analytic college today is named for sherman kent. this is true still today. almost unique in putting scholars and analysis at the center of the intelligence process. still thrown into a global war, donovan naturally followed the british model of espionage, which the oss called secret action,ence and covert which the british called and we called, special operations. covert action ranges from influence operations, propaganda, sabotage, all the way to rallying indigenous resistance and supporting

military operations. here we have a couple of examples of that. this is the first time we see women in the picture, by the way. dynamo -- donovan encouraged the enabling of technology and sky gear. middle is ain the jet berg team about two parachute into occupied france. on the far side, you have virginia hall. the picture of the third one is the portrait of virginia hall, which hangs in the cia today. donovan awarding her the distinguished service medal. how we got here is thanks to world war ii, the united states

emerged as the only unwounded global superpower. wasy other great nation grievously crippled by the second world war but we came through remarkably unscathed. thanks to donovan, during the war, the u.s. created a unique intelligence framework. by unique, i mean, they combined espionage and direct action, covert operations and things of that sort, but also analysis. the only other service in the world that does not is the german -- and the reason they do is because they were created by the cia and followed the oss and cia model. harry truman, who unlike

roosevelt, was organized, systematic, history minded, and fact oriented. finally, the war left us facing the nuclear cold war against an aggressive expansionist soviet union and gave us harry truman's missouri gang to create a new national security framework, including among other things, the cia. here we have practically the first time truman and roosevelt ever met each other, and that was just after truman had been named roosevelt's vice presidential running mate in 1944. everybody knew roosevelt was essentially mortally ill, and was not going to survive the fourth term. as ao truman was chosen

compromised running mate for roosevelt because unlike wendell wilkie, he was not a northeastern liberal and unlike byrne, he was not a segregationist. he was a solid midwestern new dealer. by the way, he is only two years younger than roosevelt. he is 60 in that picture and roosevelt is 62. the next picture, april 12, 1945, he is being sworn in. and thehillenkoetter u.s. navy after pearl harbor, timen in april 1945 had no to find his footing before being pushed onto the global stage to face winston churchill and

joseph stalin. he is also facing the decision to deploy the atomic bomb against japan. 1945 and as you know, the next month, he decided to drop the atomic bombs. since casablanca summit in 1943, europe was seen as the central focus for the global war and the division of postwar europe had already been decided just before roosevelt died. there was not any question anymore that the russians were going to get all of eastern europe. middle, was the germany and run oss

many oss officers were shipped into the far east where the war was still going on. in the picture on the right, you right,les, and on his another future director of the cia richard helms. inthe end of the war september 1945, the u.s. stood as the only nuclear superpower globaloss was almost a strategic,h broad, and tactical intelligence functions and capabilities. here you have all the oss officers in western europe and north africa and there you have them all in southeast asia. this is the end of 1944, early

1945. you notice there is no presence in latin america. ,nd that's another reason because of all the rivalries, the fbi exercised exclusive over activities in latin america, and the oss never got in there. unfortunately, the oss was also a temporary wartime agency, which by law had to be immediately disbanded at the end of the war. ofit was within three weeks the formal japanese surrender at tokyo bay. so three weeks after the japanese surrendered, the oss was abolished. basically, this whole and most of the 13,000 of 14,000 members of the oss were suddenly out of jobs.

,lmost immediately thereafter almost the entire active duty army and navy were also abolished. we went from 16 million men in the army and navy down to less than one million. without a doubt, that was the world's greatest peace dividend. vastly more than what happened after the fall of the berlin wall. however, the war, along with the truman doctrine and the marshall plan, and also the demobilization of the american military transformed the western world, because all those soldiers came home, they all get bill,e it -- get the g.i.

they all get married and start having babies, they all bought houses under g.i. loans, they college, and the boom the united states enjoyed in the united states -- enjoyed in the 1950's and 1960's is largely due to demobilization. the marshall plan and the truman doctrine also managed to stabilize and rebuild western europe. as the soviet union consolidated its hold on eastern europe, truman, who considered donovan a self promoter, ignored his calls for a peacetime strategic and simplye service wiped out the oss. now, there is a considerable controversy about that, whether it is just sort of wrongheadedness on truman's part , the point was as a temporary organization, the oss could not continue. it had to be dissolved.

and so it was. but truman was painfully aware 's fragmentation, disorganization, and interservice rivalries had contributed to pearl harbor, and he wanted to create a new postwar military and national intelligence structure. so he did. -- he did veryy consciously want to get something in place to kind of prepare the united states for the postwar world. to do so, he turned to the military ambassador and former chief of staff, and missouri and as to aifford, as well business friend of his secretary of the navy, james forrest that's sydni sours.

might have been an and underestimated president, but sours wasn't even more improbable intelligence manager. hillencouter or s, he had no experience. he had run grocery stores, it banks, and insurance companies before the war. he frankly admitted that he got his position as deputy chief of the office of naval intelligence thanks to his friendship with l, because he was bored and loan sum, as local naval intelligence chief in charleston, south carolina, in and san puerto rico -- juan, puerto rico. his primary claim to fame in charleston was debriefing the

first german u-boat crew captured off the united states. there is sours, there is a british navy officers and two german u-boat the owc another naval intelligence officer. that is basically what sours did. he was a navy commander, he got --moted to rare admiral rear admiral, and wound up as of navalief intelligence, and was brought in to create the new national intelligence structure because he understood the military position on how the new postwar organization should be created. next two years were like the world's most convoluted with scheming, intriguing, backstabbing and

histrionics. most of them focused on the creation of the new national , ratherestablishment than the new national intelligence establishment, which was the cia. so everybody was occupied with fighting about whether they were going to have more aircraft carriers or more strategic bombers. the air force and the navy were fighting it out and in the meantime, clark clifford and leahy were trying to slip the new cia under the radar. they actually succeeded in doing that. agency and other military intelligence historians have concentrated on all of this inside the beltway maneuvering, so i am not going to do that. and i did not do very much of it in the book either. ncouter, out of the

washington sniping, had spent the war in the pacific in charge destroyers. here is the flagship and all the little baby destroyers next to it. after the war, he commanded the world's most famous battleship, uss missouri. immediately after the war on a celebrated cruise to greece and turkey. is when the communists were greece,ing both turkey, yugoslavia -- were actually threatening italy. by sending him and this battleship to the metal tyrrany mediterranean, truman was indirectly reminding people hey, we also have the atomic bomb.

he then returned to paris as a military attache. there he is on the far right as military attache. however, as you can see from the al, theren the med he is with a bunch of sailors who happened to have been born in missouri. sorts visiting st. louis, of on a vip welcome back, and one of those sailors was black. so he proved himself in an episode that i recount in the book, a civil rights trailblazer two years of 1946, before truman integrated the u.s. military. ck sailorught a bla

with him and insisted that he participate along with all the white sailors in all the festivities that took place. he was also amazingly a defender of the persecuted homosexual office of policy coordination manager by the name of caramel offie that joe mccarthy tried to smear. here he is, pioneering civil pioneering even in defending homosexuals. in france, he was awarded the french legion of honor and was promoted to rear admiral before being recalled to take over truman's central intelligence group. vandenberg had both been directors of central intelligence, but there wasn't a cia at that point. there was only a very, very

small central intelligence group. couter was the first commanded the cia, created in september 1947 under the national security act. interestingly enough, none of wanted the job createng to re-create or a national intelligence service in the face of highly skilled, organized, and aggressive soviet ies and endless domestic and international crises, some of which i detail in the book. ter's six hillencou

crises. here are the inventors of the hive five, as i understand from twitter today. we have harry truman watching the chief justice of the supreme outer, swearing-in hillenc and the man by the name of joseph l, who was the head of the national resources board. this was september 1947. there you have the national security council with -- let me point out a few people over here. here you have truman, here you ave secretary of state to -- secretary of state george marshall. sours'u have forrestal,

friend, and here you have sydney sours, who stayed with truman after his brief tour as director of central intelligence. and thed create the cia andonal security structure, he stayed on as executive secretary of the national security council, basically through the entire truman administration. there you have the whole bunch. however, in the face of hostility from his washington enemies, most of whom outranked him and one of whom, alan job,s, coveted his threecouter lasted eventful years before returning

to the fleet to fight another war. the final blow to his position was the corian war -- korean wa r, . to korea he went back as a commander of a cruiser squadron off correia, and that is his flagship, uss st. paul. you will notice that the turnover to beetle smith -- beadle smith, there is one of couterw pictures of hillen smiling. he is happy to be out of there and back on the deck of a battleship. here we have beadle smith, characteristically glom. who we have frank witmer, also plays a role in my book. he was the director of covert action, which at that time was

theded from espionage, office of policy coordination, carmel offie was actually itmer, but it was hillencouter who went to bat for him. we have this distinguished senior officer, head of congressional affairs. here we have larry houston, another missourian who was the general counsel of the oss and in the cia. outer returned to of security and was never heard of 1960, when february he wrote an astonishing letter to the new york times. now what could he possibly have been writing about? he was then for some reason that

i have never been able to figure out a member of a prominent fringe group called the national investigative committee on ap.ial phenomena, called nic he complained in that letter in 1960' about u.s. government efforts to conceal the existence of ufos. where that came from i had no idea. this led to an internal cia debate about whether to tell him about the u2. senior members, like dulles, alan dulles said tell hime we ought to that there is in fact this secret airplane. it, butided not to do it became spectacularly public two months later, when gary

powers was shot down over russia. couter was only half wrong. he is forgotten as the first director of the cia, but he is now a cold figure in the ufo figure in theult ufo community. who knew? if you google him, all the things that pop up our arepiracy stuff about-- conspiracies about ufos. lemay?remember bomb them back to the stone age? hillencouter and lemay were honored with a -- that launched at the end of the reagan

administration. here is jerry ford, and that is the size of the usss solarcouter, part of the warden space fleet that the united states launched in the late 1980's, supposedly. deny.neither confirm nor the last word about the cia should be left to its creator, harry truman. t as soon as the oss was abolished, he began sours with his demand, where's my newspaper? even with the public --unciation of how thi the cia had straight under alan dulles, truman wrote below his

official portrait at cia that the cia is a necessity to the president of the united states. from one who knows. that's the first presidential headquartershe cia , and that's the inscription. so that's basically the story i wanted to tell you folks tonight. because i a lot out, yourly would enjoy it if read the book. i think you'll find it interesting. a lot of the pictures are from the book. i would leave you with a couple of thoughts. , the onlyry truman's thing in the world's history you don't know, and that is not a made-up quote. it's from a perl miller's "plain speaking," so it is a direct quote from truman. and again -- deja vu all over

again, yogi berra. never let national interests stand in the way of protecting your rice ball -- that is the way washington works, right? and sometimes your worst enemies are your brothers. that is anthony scaramucci, the mooch, this very year. the intrigues that went on here in the united states, painful lessons that the oss learned overseas, that we have to keep learning over and over again. if you have any questions about that, i would be delighted to answer them. i can review some more of these -- read you some more of these, but i think that is enough for now. thank you very much. [applause] so, any questions?

sir? mic.ld on, we've got a >> you spoke of admiral hillencouter in the most glowing terms i have ever heard, so positively, which considering all the literature that even the cia puts out today, they don't talk very positively about him. you mentioned there is a lack of on his early involvement. it seems to be a lack of documentation period from the time when the oss was disbanded, up until the cia was founded. do you have any reason why there is so little documentation? let's see -- in terms of why there is not more documentation, first of all, in the early years, both at the oss and cia, congress, involved in

in the government in general felt that this stuff ought to be secret. there is an excellent book by a man by the name of david barrett called "the cia and congress," which goes really in depth into the creation. himself was not involved in the creation. he was off being a naval attache during the creation. you may find this hard to believe, but government records aren't always well organized and they are not perfect. spent many, many frustrating days in the national archives, going back over the u.s. navy attache reports to try to get uter'sing about hillenco experiences and europe.

the frustrating thing about him is if you look at books, history is the way washingtonians do, by turning immediately to the index and looking to your name, i did that with him. i would look at histories and turn to the index and try to er, and would be lucky to find a phrase, let alone a sentence. whenaptain official diary he was -- he kept an official diary when he was director of the cia, but there is very little in that. he never wrote anything himself except in the 1930's and 1940's, when he was a military attache, and the national archives has the original paper with his original ink signature on it, but that's it. he only had one child, who died apparently unmarried, and he

just sort of disappeared. the other hand, kept a diary every day of his life. immediately after the war, leahy's diaries were published. truman of course have a lot of stuff written about him. everybody writes about donovan. nobody writes much about sydney sours. however, sat for a couple of interviews, cia interviews, which were originally classified. sours was a very think i because guyad a -- very interesting because he had a very sharp tongue. some of his more unvarnished opinions are very interesting, but it is a very small body of work even on him. if you go to the truman library friendrs remained a good sen

hisruman's until the end of life, if you want to see the sours papers, they are one linear foot of paper. the only one who really wrote very much was leahy, and clifford of course, but clifford waited until the 1980's to write his memoirs. left sort ofrt of scrambling. these people are very opaque and it is very frustrating to see how little you really can find out about them. and that is why i think he's underappreciated. at the time, when he was ciairmed as director of the , in the fall of 1947, there was the unanimous vote in the senate

to reconfirm him. so they actually held him in very high regard. said, he was there in a very, very difficult period and a lot of crap happened while he was dci. and he got blamed for a lot of it. the soviets detonated an atomic bomb and it took us about a month to figure out they done it -- they had done it. , and ofll to mao zedong course, the korean war started. but at that point, the cia was not the level, the sheen, the -- the machine, the vast global organization we have today. it was a small group of people who were scrambling to try to put together -- it is like the expression, you know, when in're up to your butt

alligators, it is hard to remember that the mission was to save the world for democracy. and a lot of the things that the oss had tried and failed at during the second world war, people like frank widmer tried again in the early 1950's and failed again. ago, john provenance was here, talking about his book "the ghosts of langley," and it was an unending litany of , orures and screw ups mountainous incompetence. what i would like to remind you is that these folks were all honorable, patriotic people who were trying the best they could under very difficult circumstances. but not everybody had the same

vision of what the best ones. -- best was. j edgar hoover's vision was very different from, say, hillencoute r's vision. >> i wanted to ask you a question related back to john's talk. it was about the notes and it plays into the question about the notes and documentation you've been talking about. john referenced truman notes ,hat were somewhat like "someone wore a big hat." what did that mean? notes were very conversational, unless i understood. he was talking about documentation from the treatment years -- truman years and this early foundation period -- maybe i am making this up, but i thought very lackadaisical, not conveying any substance. >> you know, it is kind of

interesting because truman and sours both are very human people. notorious for having written a nasty letter to a music critic who was mean to his daughter, said nasty things about her, margaret, and how he was going to punch him in the face and kick him in the whatever. truman would form very strong opinions very quickly, and he --, one of whom was allen dulles. the reason he did not like ulles, he was a senior political adviser to john dewey, the governor of york, who was running against him in 1948. thought when do we

beat truman and it was clear that that was going to happen -- beat truman and it was clear that that was going to happen -- even the chicago tribune new it -- dulles was going to become the director of the cia. that didn't happen. had strongonly opinions, but he was subject to forgetfulness. in 1960 four, for example, he wrote a letter to the washington post and said oh, the cia has gone terribly wrong. they've strayed off into overthrowing government as all this covert action stuff. well, that had all happened es and he didn't like dulles. truman forgot in 1947, when he created the cia, he did so specifically so that it could do things like covert actions on

behalf of democratic parties in the italian election of 1947. so, you know, truman was not an goingnt of these things on. he just sort of changed his public position on it. sours also had very strong opinions. ,e didn't like dulles either and in fact, when it came to vandenberg, who was only director for about a year, vandenberg did not like the job and sours was trying to leave vandenberg,said to vanderburgh i know you want to be chief of staff of the air force, when they created air force. not going to make you chief of staff of the air force just because you are handsome. you have to go and do something

first. so these are the kinds of stories that you get from bless , but a lotoh, harry of that stuff was originally, aterial was originally classified, and the early history of all the maneuvering was classified as well. they were published in turtle he in the cia and only declassified literally decades later. internally in the cia and only declassified literally decades later. >> how quickly did the cia connections around the world, because i know mi -- but what about those

relationships established? did that take a long time or was that quite quick? christopher andrew, one of the great military intelligence said that thes american intelligence establishment, the oss, was the greatest covert action that the british ever accomplished. ranmber i said roosevelt foreign policy out of his pocket? one of the things he did before war,tered the second world he dispatched personal friends around the world to sort of report to him on what was going on, rather than relying on the state department, as he is actually supposed to do international affairs of reporting.

he would dispatch people. one of the people he dispatched was donovan. the british intelligence chief in washington sent a note to london and said hey donovan -- said hey, donovan is coming to london. give him the vip treatment. he met the king, churchill greeted him, they had all of and red carpet rolled out, one of the results of that was donovan came back and immediately started working with roosevelt to try to get 1950's's, the destroyers needed to protect their convoys. one oversh sort of donovan and the oss was kind of ,reative on the british model

and it used british techniques and the british trained the first wave of oss officers, so that was the closest relationship, really, from the very beginning. in the far east, for example, in places like thailand, which were , theied by the japanese left inernment had been place by the japanese and they were basically running a sort of and werer government in thailand.ss in fact, the thai police would drive oss officers around the country in thai police cars, so they were protecting them. it's much more ambiguous in places like france, where you

had the royalists fighting against the communists against the democrats, and there really wasn't a stable government there. yugoslavia was the same way, you have royalists versus communists . intelligence -- the beginning was the one we invented. german federalt intelligence service, which the gale ands organization, which had been the nazi intelligence organization for the eastern army. in other words, the army fighting against the soviet union. , -- volunteered

his organization to the u.s. army and when the cia was created in 1947, the cia itically took over and became the federal intelligence service. the relationship with them is still very close, so from the very beginning, with an digit is peoples or -- with indigenous governmentlocal resistance, that has always been a part of the way the oss works. detecting thei am empire there, that has been a great source of conflict between us and the brits. particularly in southeast asia, the military command there was -- let me south asian

see, southeast asia and command. command.ast asian called saving europe's asiatic colonies, which is why the oss works much more closely with ho chi minh and the vietminh than they did with the british or the french, because not only did the oss recognize, but all of those captive peoples recognized that all the brits and the french wanted to do was to come back in and take over their empires once the japanese were pushed out. so -- sir? >> a quick question, if you on perhapsrate also

singapore and hong kong, regarding what you are comes tog when it western powers trying to recall and eyes these territories, -- i am justanese interested to see where singapore and hong kong play a role in the greater scheme of things. mentioned them both before, but not the good way. japanese after the surprise , douglas pearl harbor macarthur basically had his day arning to prepare before the japanese moved against the philippines in hong kong and singapore. they left the bombers on the

ground, and the japanese are swept right through there. macarthur would never let the oss into his operational area. that is why they can only , indochina,hailand burma, and china. the areas of singapore and hong were relatively small, , and it didn'tts really play a big geopolitical role. i'm not a fan of either dollars ormcarthur -- dulles mcarthur, by the way. sorry. anything else? ma'am? so my memory is kind of vague, but if i remember correctly, after japan was

occupied, i think there was an organization by the name of cic that was responsible for intelligence in japan and later was absorbed to cia. ly militaryt personnel who are responsible for intelligence in japan after the war? after the oss was abolished, september 1945, there was still a very large military intelligence and naval intelligence. this -- the oss focused on strategic intelligence with their analysts, like sherman kent, and focused on

preparing the battle space before the invasion of normandy, things like that. but the army counterintelligence corps was the one that was part of the big army, the big green machine. in 1945,oss left everybody went home. counterintelligence and in sherman were basically the only ones left. what they were doing in germany trying to capture zis, the war na criminals. to aame thing happened certain extent into japan, but macarthur was not as aggressive.

defascicizing ofh japan. they ran until the cia took over, and it was considerable about whether or not the cia was going to take the german intel group, because they were all, you know, they had all been nazi army officers. was one-year period where there were a lot of people scrambling around, military intelligence people, trying to do what they could. both of them far east and in , but the military was

also shrinking. think they would from 16 million to half a million in basically a year. there were outnumbered, outgunned, out man. in western europe, how a lot of the x nazi's wound up in latin ,merica -- you know, there was there were various members to outto get a jewish refugee of the concentration camps and a lot of eastern european displaced people who did not want to go back to places like on bury or czechoslovakia or east germany once the communists took over. a lot of these people managed to get into the a-hady channels -- get into these refugee channels

who were nazis, because everyone got overwhelmed. there just weren't enough people and enough records to track everybody down. if you want to talk about how the cia helped not to escape and wind up in latin america, in some cases it happened, but it was obviously not intentional. if you have 1000 refugees together, it is like what happened in europe in the last two years, with hundreds of thousands of syrians and libyans and everybody else trying to and trying to get into europe, and the problems that the security forces and police is ain differentiating who legitimate refugee and who is in isis sleeper, for example.

that was sort of what was going on. it's not an easy time. well, we thank you. >> thank you also much. history tv on c-span3, exploring the people and events that a tell -- that tell the american story. coming up at 4:00 p.m. eastern, four films from the 1940's and showing how industries are that were negatively -- the restoration of indian lands self-government. watch american history tv, this weekend on c-span three.

>> american history tv is on social media. follow us on c-span history. >> next on american history tv, historian dan alpert talks about are we there yet?: the american automobile past, present, and driverless," in which he argues against driverless cars. >> tonight we are joined by historian and automated journalist dan albert. dan has spent a career writing and teaching about the history and culture of technology. his articles can be found in popular science and the journal for the history of behavioral sciences. he holds a phd in history, where he also taught in the college of engineering. dan also served as the curator of vehicle collections at the national museum of science