Harry Truman's Letter to the Washington Post regarding the CIA after the JFK assassination.
On December 22, 1963, following JFK Assassination Ex-President Harry Truman wrote a letter to the Washington Post about his misgivings regarding his creation of the CIA.
This letter was *not* delivered as a speech.
As a service to people who would rather listen
to the letter read out loud, AI was used in this video to synthetically render Truman’s voice.
The Washington Post
December 22, 1963 - page A11
Harry Truman Writes:
Limit CIA Role To Intelligence
By Harry S Truman
Copyright, 1963, by Harry S Truman
INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.
I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.
Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.
But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.
Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department "treatment" or interpretations.
I wanted and needed the information in its "natural raw" state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.
Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being “upset."
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. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.
I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.
With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee imperialism," "exploitive capitalism," "war-mongering," "monopolists," in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.
I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.
But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.
We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.
-
58:13
Man in America
12 hours agoErasing Our God Gene: Is THIS Big Pharma's Dark Agenda? w/ Tom Renz
53.5K45 -
1:30:46
Glenn Greenwald
10 hours agoBeirut Bombing: Is There Any Limit On Civilian Deaths? Interview With Harvard Grad Alleging Campus Antisemitism | SYSTEM UPDATE #343
89.8K166 -
4:51:46
Nerdrotic
12 hours agoRings of Power HATES Tolkien, Agatha FLOPS, The Penguin ROCKS - Friday Night Tights #321 YellowFlash
142K47 -
1:29:19
Roseanne Barr
8 hours agoNicole Shanahan Is BASED AF | The Roseanne Barr Podcast #67
76K100 -
3:12:47
I_Came_With_Fire_Podcast
8 hours agoLive Fire (No Exercise)
38.1K11 -
1:31:58
Flyover Conservatives
1 day agoTrump Train Triumphs over Biden-Harris Lawfare! - Joeylynn Mesaros; Weak Men and the Threat to Our Nation’s Security - Chris Rodack | FOC Show
46.1K11 -
1:26:59
Hathor Studios
19 hours agoCode 12 — The Movie
57.6K28 -
1:15:59
JoBlo Originals
7 hours agoFriday Night Flicks!
41.2K -
4:30:52
Tundra Gaming Live
10 hours agoThe Worlds Worst Horror Streamer Has Heart Attack Playing Phasmophobia
37.9K5 -
1:07:00
Havoc
11 hours agoFeds on a Rampage | Stuck Off the Realness Ep. 15
41.2K7