The National Security Act, SIGINT, and the Origins of an Intelligence Diarchy
Résumé
This article examines the impact of the National Security Act of 1947 on signals intelligence (SIGINT)’s organization and activities in the early Cold War. Although mostly a blind spot, the study of how the legislation relates to SIGINT serves to underscore the influence that the armed services exerted on the design and operation of the Intelligence Community (IC). SIGINT activities were impeded by the flaws of the legislation, which failed to unify the armed forces and created instead a decentralized national security apparatus. Although SIGINT was eventually centralized within the Department of Defense, it was to remain outside the Central Intelligence Agency’s purview, thus turning the nascent IC into a diarchy led by both the director of central intelligence and the secretary of defense.