"People have asked about this business we euphemistically call `special operations', that is the military services providing support to the clandestine activities of the government, usually clandestine activities that are at least nominally under the control of the CIA."
"When I was assigned to the Air Force Headquarters in 1955, the Chief of Staff General Thomas D. White directed me to create an office `to provide the military support of the clandestine operations of the CIA' in accordance with the provisions of the National Security Council Directive #5412 of March 15, 1954, and to operate as the Pentagon `Focal Point Office for the CIA.' . . . As Mr. Dulles told me later, `I want a focal point. I want an office that's cleared to do what we have to have done; an office that knows us very, very well and then an office that has access to a system in the Pentagon. But the system will not be aware of what initiated the request--they'll think it came from the Secretary of Defense. They won't realize it came from the Director of Central Intelligence.'"
"To really understand CIA, you have to remember that perhaps its best cover story is that it's an intelligence organization. It doesn't do much intelligence. Intelligence is gathered by other assets throughout the Government, also. The Agency has quite a bit; but that isn't why they were created. Covert operations is their big money deal."
"There is no law, there is no structure, for covert operations. The Government didn't confront that in 1947 when they wrote the law. There has been no revision of the law to accommodate that. . . . The single primary character of the CIA is Mr. Dulles. There's no question about it, it was his agency. Nobody else has left any mark like his. But you need to see that background to understand what the passage of the National Security Act really meant in 1947. What it says in law is what creates many of these controversies about intelligence today. Because there still is no law that says that the CIA is an intelligence organization--it says that it is a coordinating agency. There is no law that says it is a covert operations agency."
"These activities don't take place within the CIA alone. And it's important to see the CIA that way. The CIA is always merged with the rest of the government that's taking part in these actions. Because this was true over such a long period of time, there were people who were very familiar with and well-trained for these operations. Every time a covert activity came up, they were involved again. This is the Secret Team. They can carry out these activities."