ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Cold WarTraining Center One, a secret CIA guerrilla warfare training base at Ft. Benning, Georgia, in 1951, where some menbers of the Air Supply and ComminucationService (ARC) trained before going overseas. China had discovered that the newly created Central Intelligence Agency and the Air Force were collaborating ona new Cold War weapon, an ‘‘unconventional warfare’’ group whose connection to the CIA remains an official government secret. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS.California Congressman Richard M. Nixon, who definedthemselves as Cold War activists. Republicans accusedthe Democratic Party with compromising America’s postwarambitions, giving Russia advantage in Western Europe.The capture of Russian spy of Klaus Fuchs in Great Britain,and then American counterparts Ethel and Julius Rosenberg,convicted for selling atomic secrets to the SovietUnion, along with the Alger Hiss case, validated Republicanclaims for many. Further proof came with the Sovietdetonation of a nuclear device in 1949, and victory of MaoTse Tung in China.George Kennan again proved a useful guide for Trumanwith his Foreign Affairs article published July 1947under the pseudonym Mister X. In the X Article, titled ”TheSources of Soviet Conduct,“ Kennan warned that Russiaoperated on a mechanistic and fanatical faith that Americahad to meet wherever possible. The Soviet system, headvised, suffered from internal contradictions that woulddestroy it from within if given exposure. Truman and hissecretary of state, Dean Acheson, interpreted Kennan’sargument as ”containment“ and constructed the domestictools for its execution. That July, Truman presentedCongress with the National Security Act, which restructuredthe military establishment creating the Departmentof Defense, the National Security Council, and the CIA.Soon thereafter, he created loyalty policies aimed at rootingout Communists in the government.The preemptory steps were not enough to meet themyriad strategic and political crises of the Cold War;therefore the administration attempted to streamline America’sresponse even more with the creation of NationalSecurity Council Memorandum (NSC) 68. As the topsecretblueprint for fighting the Cold War, NSC 68 calledfor a massive increase in military appropriations, thecreation of the enormously more powerful hydrogen bomb,and levying taxes on the American public to pay for theprogram. Congress was reluctant to appropriate the sumsof money needed for the Cold War, so Truman needed adramatic event to shake them from their parochialism.That event came when North Korea, a Communist nation,crossed 38th parallel and invaded its democratic counterpartSouth Korea on June 24, 1950.The Korean conflict proved to be a double-edgedsword for Truman; it provided him the public mandate toinstitutionalize the Cold War, but it also laid the seeds forthe political undoing of the Democratic Party. The battleitself swung unevenly, with the North Koreans at firstadvancing southward, and then United Nations forces ledby General Douglass MacArthur recapturing ground. Theturning point in the conflict occurred when a ”volunteer“force from China crossed the river separating Korea andChina, and sent MacArthur’s forces into retreat. The Chineseattack threatened war, but Truman decided to quellto situation for the sake of American lives and globalpeace. His decision placed him at odds with MacArthur,which resulted in a war of words that ended with Trumanunceremoniously removing the general from his command.The Korean War, however, justified NSC 68 and astronger stance in East Asia. Aside from the decision tosupport the South Koreans financially and militarily, Trumanused it as a vehicle for funding the French colonial234 Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security