Return to Truman’s CIA, author Melvin Goodman says

President Harry Truman established the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.

By 1963, he no longer recognized it.

In a Washington Post op-ed piece, Truman argued the agency had strayed well beyond its intended role.

“I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peace-time cloak-and-dagger operations,” Truman wrote.

Truman was writing in context of the failed Bay of Pigs operation in 1961 under President John Kennedy, said Melvin Goodman, a former CIA analyst who speaks in Kansas City on Tuesday.

“Truman had one idea for the CIA, as the intelligence arm of the presidency, providing objective intelligence information,” he said.

Goodman, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., served as division chief at the Office of Soviet Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency, from 1976 to 1986.

His latest book, “National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism,” was released last year.

“I think Truman was right in principle,” Goodman said. “I have argued that we go back to the original mission of the CIA.”

But he’s not optimistic the American people will insist on it.

“The American public is sound asleep regarding the CIA,” Goodman said. “The CIA report (regarding agency interrogation practices) should be released to the public, as it talks about abuses done in its name during the global war on terror.”

Goodman speaks at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the National Archives at Kansas City, 400 W. Pershing Road.

The program is being presented in partnership with the Truman Library and the Truman Center for Governmental Affairs at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

The program is free. To make a reservation, call 816-268-8010 or email kansascity.educate@nara.gov.

Sci-fi

The center of the science fiction universe this month will be Lawrence, Kan.

The annual Campbell Conference, held in Lawrence since 1978, runs June 13 through 15.

The conference will include a Friday banquet during which the John W. Campbell and Theodore Sturgeon memorial awards for novel and short fiction will be announced. Other events are scheduled Saturday and Sunday.

Those wishing to attend the banquet should register by Wednesday using this address: deptsec.ku.edu/~devclass/cssf/.

For more conference information, go to www.sfcenter.ku.edu/campbell-conference.htm.

To reach Brian Burnes, call 816-234-4120 or send email to bburnes@kcstar.com.

This story was originally published May 30, 2014 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Return to Truman’s CIA, author Melvin Goodman says."