NSC 10/2: covert action authorized (1948)

NSC 10/2 is only two pages long. It is where the United States government first said in writing that it would run secret operations in peacetime, defined what they were, and gave the job to the CIA. Its definition of covert operations was carried over almost word for word into the directive that replaced it in 1954^1,5.

Where it came from

The The National Security Act of 1947 created the CIA without mentioning covert action. In December 1947 the National Security Council issued NSC 4-A, which gave the agency covert psychological operations, and the first big test was the Italian election of April 1948⁶. That did not satisfy George Kennan's Policy Planning Staff at the State Department. On 4 May 1948 Kennan put a paper titled "The inauguration of organized political warfare" to the NSC's consultants².

That memorandum set out the theory behind NSC 10/2. Political warfare, it argued, was "the logical application of Clausewitz's doctrine in time of peace." It ran from open alliances and economic aid through "black" propaganda to "encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states"². The Kremlin was already waging it. The United States, the paper complained, could not afford to "scramble into impromptu covert operations" each time a crisis came². Kennan wanted the State Department to direct such work.

The final directive was a compromise. The NSC approved it at its 17 June 1948 meeting, and the text, dated 18 June, was circulated to members, according to the FRUS editors' note. It cancelled NSC 4-A¹.

What it says

The directive has six numbered paragraphs. The first cites "the vicious covert activities of the USSR" and its satellites and concludes that American overt activities "must be supplemented by covert operations"¹.

The CIA was already charged with espionage and counter-espionage. Citing Section 102(d)(5) of the National Security Act, the Council judged it better not to create a new agency, and to put the new work inside the CIA "under the over-all control" of the Director of Central Intelligence¹. The directive created an Office of Special Projects. Its chief would be nominated by the Secretary of State and approved by the NSC. He would report to the Director, but the office was to "operate independently of other components" of the agency¹. Representatives of the Secretaries of State and Defense were to make sure the operations matched American policy. Disputes would go to the NSC. In wartime, or when the President directed, the Joint Chiefs and theater commanders would take control¹.

Paragraph 5 is the one most often quoted. It defines covert operations by two tests: the government's hand must not be evident, and if exposed the government must be able to "plausibly disclaim any responsibility." It then lists what they include: propaganda, economic warfare, "preventive direct action" including sabotage and demolition, subversion, help to "underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups," and support of anti-communist groups in threatened countries. It excludes regular military combat, espionage and military deception¹.

How it worked in practice

The arrangement was fragile from the start. At a meeting in the NSC executive secretary's office on 6 August 1948, Kennan insisted that political warfare was "essentially an instrument of foreign policy." Director of Central Intelligence Roscoe Hillenkoetter agreed, provided the State Department accepted political responsibility for it³. A CIA general order of 27 August announced that the renamed Office of Policy Coordination would start work on 1 September 1948, with Frank Wisner as its head⁴.

For two years the OPC answered more to State and Defense than to the Director. In October 1950 Walter Bedell Smith, the new Director, took control of it. In August 1952 it was merged with the espionage side to form the Directorate of Plans⁶. Records of the Directorate's 1953 operation in Iran, Operation Ajax (TPAJAX), show the same office structure at work: Wisner was by then Deputy Director for Plans⁷.

On 15 March 1954 NSC 10/2 was formally superseded by NSC 5412. The new directive repeated its preamble almost word for word and kept the same definition of covert operations⁵. Later investigations of the agency, including the The Doolittle Report (1954), worked within that framework.

Release

The full text appeared in the 1996 Foreign Relations volume on the founding of the intelligence establishment, with the Policy Planning Staff papers that led to it and the August 1948 understanding on how it would be carried out^1,2,3. The FRUS editors note that it had also been reproduced in the CIA's own documentary collection on the agency under Truman¹.