Baptism by fire : CIA analysis of the Korean war - a collection of previously released and recently declassified intelligence documents

The Korean War erupted less than three years after President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, establishing the Central Intelligence Agency. Before North Korean forces invaded the South on 25 June 1950, the CIA had only a few officers in Korea, and none reported to the Agency’s analytic arm, the Office of Research and Estimates (ORE). Analytical production relating to Korea reflected the generally low priority given the region by the Truman Administration’s State Department and the military services. Indeed, most ORE current intelligence products, such as the Daily Summary, Weekly Summary, and Review of the World Situation, contained information derived from State Department and military reporting, usually supplemented with open source media material from domestic and foreign sources. New information or unique CIA contributions only rarely entered the mix. The Daily Summary, for example, which was intended primarily for President Truman, consisted of a highly selective digest of all dispatches and reports received on any given day from government sources. From 1947 on, in response to customer demands, the Daily began to include CIA interpretive comments, although they were not extensive. All members of the National Security Council, plus principal officers in the State Department and Pentagon, received the Daily, as they did the later Weekly Summary. The Review of the World Situation, which first appeared one week before the founding of the CIA, differed from the summaries as it was somewhere between current intelligence — published uncoordinated each month and brought up to date as of publication — and estimative intelligence. Written primarily for the NSC, the Review did not initially circulate beyond that small group. Truman did not attend NSC meetings until after the North Korean invasion, and he favored the smaller Daily and Weekly Summary, so it is doubtful the Review routinely came to his attention. By May 1948, however, copies of the Review did reach a minimum of 24 military and government offices, including the White House. Wider distribution, however, did not necessarily indicate the Review or the summaries had a wider readership or that government and military decision makers responded to the intelligence they contained by changing policies or formulating new courses of action.