Drastic Actions Short of War: The Origins and Application of CIA’s Covert Paramilitary Function in the Early Cold War

This paper describes the origins of the covert paramilitary function in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the challenges to the effectiveness of paramilitary operations during the Cold War’s first decade. This capability did not develop by design or initiative on the Agency’s part but was assigned to it. The thirty-month gap between the dissolution of CIA’s wartime predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, and the assignment of the paramilitary function to CIA in mid-1948, as well as other self-inflicted causes, may help explain why CIA’s paramilitary activities in the 1950s never were as effective as policy makers and Agency operations officers expected.