32. Memorandum From Secretary of Defense Marshall to Director of Central Intelligence Smith1
SUBJECT
- Present Status of United States Intelligence
In the overall planning for our national security, an adequate and timely intelligence capability is felt to be a first priority consideration. In order to prevent strategic and tactical surprise we would wish to have:
- (a)
- A 7- to 10-day warning of the imminence of hostilities, during which period our defense systems could be alerted and forces deployed or positioned as required.
- (b)
- Provide additional warnings at least 12 to 48 hours prior to the initiation of hostilities which will indicate the location of bases on which atomic attacks are mounted and which will report the approximate time of launching of these attacks.
The foregoing provisions are obviously beyond our capabilities and possibly for a long time to come. However, they do provide a clear-cut target toward which your agency and the Department of Defense should point their intelligence efforts.
Satisfaction of these requirements necessitates detailed, comprehensive and continuing knowledge of the disposition, organization and state of readiness of the Soviet Armed Forces and the supporting economy. The current basis of estimates concerning the Soviet armed forces seems dangerously inadequate.
Because of the extraordinary security program of the Soviet Union virtually no intelligence contribution to these requirements is available through normal channels available to Service intelligence agencies.
In view of the basic requirement to prevent strategic and tactical surprise, our limited capability to meet this requirement and the potential for improvement of this capability through operations by the Central Intelligence Agency within the USSR and the satellites, particularly in the covert and defector fields, the Department of Defense is prepared to place support of CIA operations in these fields in Priority One.
[Page 57]In view of the foregoing, a statement of your foreseeable quantitative and qualitative requirements in as much detail as possible is requested in order to enable the Department of Defense to arrange for this support.
With special reference to the matter of military equipment it is further requested that your requirements in this field be forwarded as soon as possible and separately from the more general requirements in support of the broader intelligence programs.