Roscoe Hillenkoetter

Roscoe Hillenkoetter
Born	May 8, 1897 St. Louis, Missouri
Died	June 18, 1982 (Age 85) New York City
Relatives	Jane C. Hillenkoetter
Director of Central Intelligence In office May 1, 1947 - October 7, 1950 Employer CIA Succeeded by Walter Bedell Smith During his leadership, the CIA was empowered to undertake "propaganda; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition, and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world'. It had already exceeded this mandate.

Rear-Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was the head of the Central Intelligence Group (later the CIA).

Operation Gladio

Full article: Operation Gladio

With top secret document NSC 4-A, Hillenkoetter allowed the CIA to take a range of covert actions to prevent a communist victory in 1947 the Italian elections. A year later another directive, the notorious NSC 10/2 was passed which authorised the CIA to carry out covert actions anywhere in the world. Covert action was defined as activities "which are conducted or sponsored by this government against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorised persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them", and specifically included "propaganda; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition, and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world." Hillenkoetter’s successor, Walter Bedell Smith, claimed that by 1951 the CIA covert ops had already "far exceeded" even this broad definition.

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