Lucian Truscott - Central Intelligence Agency

Central Intelligence Agency

In 1951, Walter Bedell Smith, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), appointed Truscott as "Special Consultant to the United States Commissioner" in Frankfurt, Germany. However, this was simply a cover for his real assignment as senior Central Intelligence Agency representative in Germany. Truscott had been placed in charge of cloak-and-dagger operations in a vital part of Europe. This only came to light after declassification of a secret memorandum in 1994.

In 1953, President Eisenhower approved CIA Director Allen Dulles' recommendation that General Truscott be appointed the CIA's Deputy Director for Coordination. This appointment meant that Truscott was now controlling the agency's rapidly expanding network of agents world-wide. His responsibilities included facilitating the overthrow of governments in Iran and Guatemala. Truscott was involved in planning Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA mission to overthrow Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz. According to Harry Jeffers' biography, Truscott was instrumental in convincing Eisenhower to support PBSUCCESS with air power. However, another biography by William Heefner suggests that specifics of Truscott's involvement cannot be substantiated.

Truscott left the CIA in 1958. He wrote nothing about his service in the CIA in Command Missions, and there is nothing about his CIA activities in his papers at the George C. Marshall Library.

Read more about this topic:  Lucian Truscott

Famous quotes containing the words central, intelligence and/or agency:

    My solitaria
    Are the meditations of a central mind.
    I hear the motions of the spirit and the sound
    Of what is secret becomes, for me, a voice
    That is my own voice speaking in my ear.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil,
    The sovereign ghost. As such, the Socrates
    Of snails, musician of pears, principium
    And lex. Sed quæritur: is this same wig
    Of things, this nincompated pedagogue,
    Preceptor to the sea?
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    It is possible that the telephone has been responsible for more business inefficiency than any other agency except laudanum.... In the old days when you wanted to get in touch with a man you wrote a note, sprinkled it with sand, and gave it to a man on horseback. It probably was delivered within half an hour, depending on how big a lunch the horse had had. But in these busy days of rush-rush-rush, it is sometimes a week before you can catch your man on the telephone.
    Robert Benchley (1889–1945)