It seems that a lot of the super secret
government organizations and procedures that are all the rage
nowadays saw their start shortly after the successful deployment of
the atomic bomb. The bomb was, well, the bomb-diggity and gave the US
a major upper hand in global diplomacy. At least, for a little while.
In an effort to ensure this advantage, the government established
several new forms of secrecy to keep the enemy always one step
behind. Three new measures that are immediately recognizable are as
follows:
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
In 1947, the National Security Act was
signed by President Truman. One of the things it established was the
National Security Council, an intelligence organization for
coordinating foreign and domestic policy in the Executive Branch. The
operational branch of this organization is the CIA.
National Security Agency (NSA)
Another executive order, at the behest
of the National Security Council, created the NSA on 1952 Nov 4. Its
existence was labeled as classified and not acknowledged for another
five years. (This was all the
book told me, so I did a little further digging to add some meat to
this paragraph.) Originally, the various pre-NSA organizations
had a messy chain of command. The Secretary of Defense, the Secretary
of State, and the Director of Central Intelligence were given the
task of of reorganizing these separate groups. The decision was made
to bring them together and make them directly subordinate to the
Secretary of Defense. It became official on 1952 Oct 24 with a
revision to NSCIB No. 9.
Classified information
Anyone that has ever worked for the US
government is probably aware of its information sensitivity scale.
This marks information from Confidential, Secret, or all the way up
to Top Secret (nowadays, there are even some in between). This came
to be via Executive Order 10501, signed by President Eisenhower on
1953 Nov 5.
Sources:
"The Bomb" - Sidney Lens
"The Early History of NSA" - George
F. Howe
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| Truman with Newsmen |
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