Origin and Function

The CIA was created at the outset of the Cold War by Truman's National Security Act of 1947. That Act was a response to Yalta, and to the general pervasive fear that, after WW II, the greatest threat to world peace was the communists. The CIA was mostly formed out of the reorganized OSS (Office of Strategic Services) which coordinated espionage and intelligence activities against the Nazis. (However, anti-communism was an overarching concern for the new agency, which enlisted some of its old enemies against a previous ally: many former Nazis functionaries, such as Richard Gehlen, were enlisted into the CIA spy network in Eastern Europe.) The mission the CIA was expressly charged with was the centralization and coordination of all the data from the intelligence agencies of the government - namely, those associated with the branches of the military service; and after 1952, the National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Reconaissance Office, and the intelligence activities of the Atomic Energy Commission, State Department, ...