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

Secretary of State, the widely respected George C. Marshall, to take cover and led to charges that CIA
had failed to warn of the potential for trouble. Hillenkoetter and the Agency were publicly exonerated
during the resulting Congressional hearings, but, as Document 1950-08-03 illustrates, that vindication
did not erase public perception of a CIA intelligence failure. The Bogotazo, as it came to be called, also
reflected ongoing tension with the State Department. It was followed by the testing of a Soviet nuclear
weapon well before the timeframe in which CIA analysts had predicted and, later still, by what many
perceived as twin failures of intelligence in the Koreas—the invasion of South Korea by the North and
the entry of China into the conflict. Recent scholarship suggests that the record of CIA’s analytic
performance does not sustain allegations of failure,19 but at the time the charges added to perceptions
that Hillenkoetter was in over his head and gave opponents of CIA even more ammunition in their
bureaucratic struggle.
In January 1948, in part at Hillenkoetter’s suggestion, the National Security Council created the
Intelligence Survey Group to study and assess changes in the US intelligence system since the end of
the war and the passage of the National Security Act. Mathias Correa,20 William H. Jackson,21 and OSS
notable Allen Dulles were asked to conduct the review. Because the service intelligence bodies refused
to cooperate, they ended up focusing primarily on CIA.22 The report, delivered to the NSC a year later,
was scathing across the board. Intelligence estimates, personnel management, and internal
organization all came in for criticism. Hillenkoetter was able to rebut many of the assertions in the
report, but he could overcome neither the overall impression of institutional inadequacy nor the
perceptions of a lack of leadership at the top of the US Intelligence Community.
Hillenkoetter himself was not persuaded of the impartiality of the review. As he recalled, Jackson and
Correa spent little time at CIA, and the man characterized as the real inspector was “personally
incompatible and obnoxious to very many of the CIA people, including myself.” Hillenkoetter also
developed such an intense dislike of Jackson that, after Walter Bedell Smith was tapped to succeed
him, he refused Smith’s request to appoint Jackson DDCI so that he could get up to speed before
Smith’s arrival. There has also been speculation that Dulles, whose name had been bandied about in
discussions of a civilian director for CIA,23 may have had an ulterior motive in highlighting
Hillenkoetter’s lack of leadership.24
Hillenkoetter was on the defensive for almost all of his tenure,25 and, after the delivery of the Dulles-
Jackson-Correa report, it was clear that he could not continue as DCI. Nevertheless, he lingered in
office for another year and a half, in large part because President Truman disliked Secretary of State
Lewis Johnson and refused to accept anyone he nominated for the job. With the outbreak of Korean
War, however, Hillenkoetter asked to return to the navy, and in October 1950 he was given a command
of Cruiser Division 1, Cruiser-Destroyer Force, Pacific Fleet. He left the Agency in the hands of General
Walter Bedell Smith—a man who was his opposite in seniority, influence, and demeanor.
19 See HCD release, Baptism by Fire: CIA Analysis of the Korean War.
20 Correa, a former New York District Attorney, had worked in OSS counterintelligence in Italy before becoming an aide to
Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal dealing with intelligence reform in 1945.
21 William H. Jackson, a New York lawyer and banker, had been the Assistant Military Attaché for Air in London and Chief of
the Secret Intelligence Branch, G-2, European Theater, in World War II. He became DDCI in 1950.
22 Darling, Introduction to Chapter VIII.
23 Darling, p. 194.
24 See Document 1952-12-02b for Hillenkoetter’s recollection of setting the inquiry in motion.
25 See Document 1950-08-03, for his point-by-point rebuttal, sent to President Truman, of charges raised in a New York
Herald-Tribune article.