Office of Policy Coordination

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The Office of Policy Coordination was the body responsible for covert action in the early years of the CIA.

It was initially known as the Office of Special Projects, a body established under NSC directive 10/2 of 18 June 1948, empowered to conduct "any covert activities" related to "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anticommunist elements in threatened countries of the free world."[1]

The Office was headed by Frank Wisner from 1 September 1948.[2]

Notes

  1. Quoted in Hugh Wilford, How the CIA Played America, Harvard University Press, 2008, p.27.
  2. Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, Penguin, 2007, p.36.