/specialCollection/DCI/Intell & Miscellaneous Papers FOIA/Misc-008.pdf

Roscoe Henry Hillenkoetter
(1 May 1947–7 October 1950)
A veteran intelligence officer, DCI Roscoe Hillenkoetter oversaw the transition of the presidentially
authorized Central Intelligence Group to the legislatively created CIA. Like Souers and Vandenberg,
however, he was a reluctant nominee. He was serving as naval attaché in Paris, his third stint in
France, a job that put him at the heart of intelligence collection there (see Document 1952-12-02c for
Hillenkoetter’s discussion of his role). Against his wishes, he was ordered to return to Washington and
succeed Vandenberg. At the time, he was a brand-new flag officer, having received his first star only a
few months earlier.
Hillenkoetter was highly regarded by many for his knowledge of and experience in intelligence. A St.
Louis native who had graduated with distinction from the US Naval Academy, he had served as
assistant naval attaché in Madrid and Lisbon and as naval attaché in Vichy France. In 1942, after
recovering from wounds suffered during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he was assigned to the
staff of Admiral Chester Nimitz as officer in charge of intelligence for the Pacific area. In that capacity,
he set up a Joint Intelligence Committee Pacific Ocean Area (JICPOA), a wartime intelligence network
that anticipated by almost half a century today’s joint commands. Admiral William Leahy, Hillenkoetter’s
boss in Vichy France, once observed that no man in the country had a better grasp of the mechanics of
foreign intelligence.15 Hillenkoetter had been one of the candidates to become DCI when the post was
created in 1946, but, as noted earlier, Sidney Souers was given the job because of his familiarity with
the background and substance of the presidential directive. In 1947, however, Leahy used his clout as
chairman of the National Intelligence Authority to ensure that Hillkenkoetter succeeded Vandenberg as
DCI.
As DCI, Hillenkoetter inherited the solid work of Souers and Vandenberg, but his legacy also included
bickering within the CIG and festering resentment from the service chiefs and, as a consequence, a
growing conviction that a collective intelligence body such as the CIG was unworkable. The chiefs
considered the DCI to be their equal, if not subordinate, and were annoyed by Vandenberg’s insistence
that the DCI be the executive agent of the Secretaries of State, War, and the Navy.16 Unfortunately,
“Hilly” had neither Vandenberg’s forceful personality nor his seniority in a town that placed a high
premium on both,17 and he was reluctant to make his job more difficult by antagonizing the chiefs.
Within two months of taking office, for example, he volunteered to relinquish the authority of the DCI to
act as executive agent of the Intelligence Advisory Board (IAB) that had been wrested from the service
chiefs by Vandenberg—“to create better feeling” among the IAB agencies.18 He was similarly compliant
when the NSC, in creating the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) to carry out covert operations, set up
an operating framework that placed OPC clearly outside the effective control of the DCI. His successor,
Walter Bedell Smith, quickly demonstrated that he would not tolerate such an arrangement.
The bureaucratic challenges to his role as DCI and to the standing of the new CIA were not
Hillenkoetter’s only headaches. In April 1948, a violent riot in Bogota, Colombia, forced the visiting US
15 “Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter,” Current Biography, January 1950, p. 25. Darling devotes several chapters to Hillenkoetter’s role
in CIG/CIA.
16 Darling, Introduction to Chapter VI.
17 Unlike Vandenberg, a scratch golfer, Hillenkoetter shot in the low nineties. His chief recreation was reading history. In
Document 1952-12-02b, he notes that reading the history of OSS and its “trials and troubles” helped him when he was DCI.
(Current Biography, p.25)
18 Darling, p. 201.