Thread by @Holden_Culotta

President Trump just exposed Arthur Schlesinger’s full 15-page memo calling for JFK to break up the CIA in 1961.

Schlesinger called the CIA a rogue “state within a state.”

“No one knows how many potential problems … are being created by CIA clandestine operations.”

🧵THREAD

Schlesinger: “The contemporary CIA possesses many of the characteristics of a state within a state.”

“There is no doctrine governing our conduct of clandestine operations.”

Schlesinger slammed the idea that the CIA should “fight fire with fire” to defeat communism.

“If fighting fire with fire means contracting the freedoms traditionally enjoyed by Americans in order to give more freedom to the CIA, no one seriously wishes to do that.”

Schlesinger: “CIA operations have not been held effectively subordinate to US foreign policy.”

“In short, no one knows how many potential problems for US foreign policy — and how much potential friction with friendly states — are being created at this moment by CIA clandestine intelligence operations.”

In practice, Schlesinger told JFK, the State Department had become a “rubber stamp” for CIA clandestine operations.

“The concept of ‘contingency planning’ has legitimized the concrete preparation of operations still presumably in a hypothetical stage.”

“If a group is assembled and revved up on a contingency basis, then the failure to carry the project through (it is argued) will invite the disappointment and alienation of the group.”

“CIA has effectively ‘made’ policy in many parts of the world.”

“A number of governments still in power know that they have been targets of CIA attempts at overthrow — not a state of mind calculated to stimulate friendly feelings toward” the US.

Schlesinger recalled Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas C. Mann’s reaction to the botched Bay of Pigs invasion:

“I would never have favored initiating this operation, but, since it has gone as far as it has, I do not think we can risk calling it off.”

Schlesinger proposed that JFK de-couple the CIA’s clandestine operations from its research and analysis work.

“If intelligence is too closely connected with operations, then those committed to a particular operation will tend to select out the intelligence which validates the operation.”

In conclusion, Schlesinger proposed “a drastic overhaul of the State Department” to rein in CIA clandestine operations.

“The State Department would be granted general clearance authority over all clandestine activity.”

Schlesinger also proposed splitting the CIA into two agencies, one for clandestine and paramilitary activities and another for information collection and analysis.

One month after JFK’s assassination, former President Harry Truman echoed Schlesinger’s fears outlined in this 1961 memo.

“There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position.”

Truman wrote that he set up the CIA to streamline information-gathering.

“At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department.”

But between his presidency and JFK’s, Truman witnessed a change in the CIA.

“For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment.”

“It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.”

“I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations.”

Truman called for the termination of the CIA’s “operational duties” and the restoration of the agency to its “original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President.”