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Limit CIA Role To Intelligence – by President Harry Truman
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Washington Post
Posted: December 25th, 2016
https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/doc/1...
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. It was to operate as an arm of the President. 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. 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. 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.
Note: Written by former US President Harry Truman just one month after the assassination of John Kennedy, the full text of this Washington Post article is available for a small fee at the link given above. You can also find the text free of charge on this webpage. Do you think Truman had suspicions about CIA involvement in JFK's murder? Read a more in-depth article on this written by former CIA analyst Ray McGovern. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing intelligence agency corruption news articles from reliable major media sources.
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