# Founding of the CIA (1947)

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Founding of the CIA (1947)," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-founding-1947/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's account of the CIA's creation under the National Security Act of 1947 — built with British MI6 help after a chaotic 1945-47 interregnum, and opposed by J. Edgar Hoover until Truman falsely promised him the new agency would be part of the FBI.*

- **Statute:** National Security Act of 1947
- **Built with help from:** British MI6

The **founding of the CIA (1947)** is [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s account of how the agency came to be. From 1945 to early 1947, he says, the U.S. was *"just winging it,"* with [MI6](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mi6) the preeminent Western service; Truman's advisers, fearing a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, had British MI6 officers come to New York to help Americans design a *"central intelligence agency."*[1][2] It was created under the National Security Act of 1947, which also created the National Security Council — the United States had no formal intelligence organization at all until that Act's passage.[3] J. Edgar Hoover — director of the FBI since the Coolidge administration, and no friend of Bill Donovan, founder of the CIA's OSS predecessor — believed the FBI could do the job itself and lobbied Capitol Hill against the bill, nearly blocking its passage.[4][5][3] Truman summoned Hoover to the Oval Office and falsely promised the CIA would be a component of the FBI, so Hoover would head both; Hoover dropped his objection and *"never forgave Truman for lying to him."* Kiriakou has put the same betrayal more bluntly elsewhere: Truman *"fooled"* Hoover, and the CIA and FBI have been at war ever since.[6][7][5][8][9] Once the bill passed, Hoover — realizing he'd been duped — ordered that there be no cooperation between the FBI and CIA, a rift Kiriakou says persisted throughout his own career.[8] The MI6 officers were met by Bill Donovan, Prescott Bush and *"a handful of other swells"* from Wall Street and the OSS.[10] Truman himself later soured on his creation, publishing an op-ed — see [Truman's CIA op-ed](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/truman-cia-op-ed) — calling the agency a "damn fool mistake" that should be disbanded.

There was no congressional committee overseeing CIA activities until 1975 — Kiriakou says that from 1947 until then *"the CIA did literally anything it wanted to do,"* citing the CIA's covert manipulation of the 1948 Italian elections within months of its creation as an early example.[11] Before the 1993 Equal Employment Opportunity Act, CIA recruitment could be done informally and secretly — a professor could simply tell a promising student *"CIA, you want in"*; afterward, prospective officers had to apply openly through the agency's website, until the CIA's recent creation of a Scholar-in-Residence program.[12] The agency that grew from that founding has itself grown enormously: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, created decades later to sit above the CIA, started with 15 employees and has since grown to about 12,000.[13] Kiriakou has also been planning a book with a friend — a former U.S. deputy attorney general — on a history of CIA analytic failures, arguing that from the agency's 1947 founding through the 9/11 attacks, the CIA missed every major world event, from the Berlin Airlift and the Iranian coup to the Suez Crisis and the Bay of Pigs.[14]

Kiriakou also recalls the agency's response to September 11, 2001, when CIA police ordered headquarters evacuated and threatened arrests for employees who didn't move; it took him four hours just to get out of the parking lot.[15]

## See also

- [Operation Gladio](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/operation-gladio)
- [Abolish the CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abolish-the-cia)

## Sources

1. John Kiriakou Unleashed: The Real CIA History, Sexpionage, Black Ops & More (2026-05-08), at 15:26. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ZPb1UuC7k&t=926s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-08-jay-dyer-real-cia-history/
2. John Kiriakou Unleashed: The Real CIA History, Sexpionage, Black Ops & More (2026-05-08), at 15:56. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ZPb1UuC7k&t=956s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-08-jay-dyer-real-cia-history/
3. Why Abolishing The CIA Won't Change Anything (2025-01-25), at 3:08. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_GA5Wj3-94&t=188s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-01-25-kim-iversen-why-abolishing-the-cia-won-t-change-anything/
4. Spelunking the Deep State with John Kiriakou (2023-01-11), at 18:54. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is0yrElNSFA&t=1134s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-11-real-progressives/
5. Spelunking the Deep State with John Kiriakou (2023-01-11), at 19:56. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is0yrElNSFA&t=1196s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-11-real-progressives/
6. John Kiriakou Unleashed: The Real CIA History, Sexpionage, Black Ops & More (2026-05-08), at 16:28. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ZPb1UuC7k&t=988s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-08-jay-dyer-real-cia-history/
7. John Kiriakou Unleashed: The Real CIA History, Sexpionage, Black Ops & More (2026-05-08), at 17:00. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ZPb1UuC7k&t=1020s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-08-jay-dyer-real-cia-history/
8. Future of War: AI, Drones & the Cyprus Conflict (2026-05-31), at 16:45. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjuGkLG7ByY&t=1005s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-31-lazaros-sideras/
9. Why Abolishing The CIA Won't Change Anything (2025-01-25), at 3:39. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_GA5Wj3-94&t=219s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-01-25-kim-iversen-why-abolishing-the-cia-won-t-change-anything/
10. John Kiriakou Unleashed: The Real CIA History, Sexpionage, Black Ops & More (2026-05-08), at 17:31. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34ZPb1UuC7k&t=1051s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-08-jay-dyer-real-cia-history/
11. Spelunking the Deep State with John Kiriakou (2023-01-11), at 21:01. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is0yrElNSFA&t=1261s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-11-real-progressives/
12. "All My Stories Have a Bad Ending for the Good Guy" - John (2025-09-25), at 04:12. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s41zksLari8&t=252s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-25-joe-mkhitaryan/
13. In Confidence: A Private Conversation with John Kiriakou (2026-01-13), at 58:33. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VuKrdCf-ds&t=3513s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-13-covertaction-magazine/
14. John Kiriakou — CIA Whistleblower — Episode 83 — The Georg (2024-09-03), at 11:29. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfbf9gSVdJM&t=689s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-09-03-george-peyrouton/
15. Ex-CIA Whistleblower Reveals: How Australia Gets Classifie (2025-04-12), at 1:23:51. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qxbw5cWqL9c&t=5031s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-04-12-the-clear-signal-with-stev/

---

From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-founding-1947/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt