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TOP SECRET PRESIDENTIAL NUCLEAR

RAdm Souers/Capt Cronley 24 Dec 1945

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Dear Jim:

The information herein, with which Lieutenant Colonel Ashton is familiar, is to be shared only with General Gehlen, General White, and Dunwiddie. It is to be hoped he will be Captain Dunwiddie by the time you get this. If his commission has not come through, let me know immediately.

This concerns the establishment of the Directorate of Central Intelligence and its operations in the near future.

Until the OSS’s arrangement with General Gehlen provided the names of Soviet intelligence officers seeking to breach the secrecy of the Manhattan Project, and the names of Manhattan Project personnel who were in fact engaged in treasonous espionage on behalf of the USSR, it was J. Edgar Hoover’s often announced position that the FBI had been completely successful in maintaining the secrets of the Manhattan Project.

TOP SECRET PRESIDENTIAL NUCLEAR

TOP SECRET PRESIDENTIAL NUCLEAR

RAdm Souers/Capt Cronley 24 Dec 1945

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Hoover maintained this position, even after being given the aforementioned intelligence, up and until President Truman informed Marshal Stalin in Potsdam on July 18, 1945, that we possessed the atomic bomb, and from Stalin’s reaction concluded he was telling Stalin something Stalin already knew.

Faced with the undeniable proof that the USSR had penetrated the Manhattan Project, Director Hoover said that what he had really meant to say was that of course the FBI had known all along of Soviet spies in the Manhattan Project, but that so far he had been unable to develop sufficient evidence that would stand up in court to arrest and indict the spies and traitors. He assured the President at that time that he would order the FBI to redouble its efforts to obtain such evidence.

TOP SECRET PRESIDENTIAL NUCLEAR

TOP SECRET PRESIDENTIAL NUCLEAR

RAdm Souers/Capt Cronley 24 Dec 1945

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The President had taken me into his confidence about this even before Potsdam, and when he asked what I thought should be done, I recommended that he turn the investigation of Soviet espionage in the Manhattan Project over to General Donovan and the OSS. He replied that to do so would be tantamount to authorizing an “SS-like” secret police force in the United States, and he was absolutely unwilling to do anything like that. Furthermore, the President said, he had already decided to abolish the OSS.

There the situation lay dormant, until the President decided he had been too hasty in shutting down the OSS and had come to the conclusion that there was a great need for an organization with both covert and clandestine capabilities and answerable only to the chief executive.

TOP SECRET PRESIDENTIAL NUCLEAR

TOP SECRET PRESIDENTIAL NUCLEAR

RAdm Souers/Capt Cronley 24 Dec 1945

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