Introduction
“Truth to power”: it is a stirring phrase, but what does it mean? It certainly does not mean that US intelligence believes itself to possess the Truth with a capital T, but the phrase grows out of the initial mandate given by President Harry Truman: “to accomplish the evaluation and dissemination of strategic intelligence” and to do so independent of the principal policy agencies. This mandate created a built-in and deliberate tension between intelligence and policy—sometimes friendly and constructive, other times conflictual. The Office of National Estimates, set up in the immediate aftermath of World War II, produced some highly regarded national intelligence estimates but acquired a reputation for “Olympian detachment” that led in the 1970s to its replacement by a National Intelligence Council composed of around a dozen national intelligence officers led by a chairman or chairwoman.