The CIA Under Harry Truman

The History Staff is publishing this new collection of declassified documents in conjunction with the Intelligence History Symposium, "The Origin and Development of the CIA in the Administration of Harry S. Truman," which CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence is cosponsoring in March 1994 with the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and its Institute. This is the third volume in the CIA Cold War Records series that began with the 1992 publication of CIA Documents on the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, and continued with the publication in 1993 of Selected Estimates on the Soviet Union, 1950-1959. These three volumes of declassified documents ---and more will follow--- result from CIA's new commitment to greater openness, which former Director of Central Intelligence Robert M. Gates first announced in February 1992, and which Director R. James Woolsey has reaffirmed and expanded since taking office in February 1993. The Center for the Study of Intelligence, a focal point for internal CIA research and publication since 1975, established the Cold War Records Program in 1992. In that year the Center was reorganized to include the History Staff, first formed in 1951, and the new Historical Review Group, which has greatly extended the scope and accelerated the pace of the program to declassify historical records that former Director William J. Casey established in 1985. Dr. Michael Warner of the History Staff compiled and edited this collection of documents and all of its supporting material. A graduate of the University of Maryland, Dr. Warner took a history M.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1984 and received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago in 1990. Before joining the History Staff in August 1992, Dr. Warner served as an analyst in CIA's Directorate of Intelligence.