What is the origin of the CIA and how has it effected American society?.

            

             "The United States has carried on foreign intelligence activities since the days of George Washington, but only since World War II have they been coordinated on a government wide basis."1 Even before the devastating attack at Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was concerned about American intelligence deficiencies. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked New York lawyer William J. Donovan to draft a plan for an intelligence service. In June of 1942, the Office of Strategic Services was established in order to collect and analyze strategic information required by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to conduct special operations that were not assigned to other agencies. During the World War II, the Office of Strategic Service (OSS) supplied policymakers with essential facts and intelligence estimates, and the office often played an important role in directly aiding military campaigns. The OSS never received complete jurisdiction over all foreign intelligence activities. Since the early 1930"s the FBI had been responsible for intelligence work in Latin America, and the military services protected their areas of responsibility.

             In October 1945, the OSS was abolished, and its functions were transferred to the State and War Departments. The need for a postwar centralized intelligence system still remained a problem. Eleven months earlier, Donovan, at the time a major general had submitted to President Roosevelt a proposal that called for the separation of the OSS from the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the new organization having direct Presidential supervision. Donovan proposed an "organization which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies.