The Quest for Cryptologic Centralization and the Establishment of NSA: 1940 - 1952

Chapter 2. The Military Services and the Joint Operating Plan, 1946–1949

Immediately following World War II, American policy makers looked for ways to achieve major reductions in the military budget. Despite the spectacular successes achieved by the Army and Navy COMINT organizations during the war, they quickly became prime candidates for reorganization and for major reductions in their resources. As the Pearl Harbor investigations continued, interest in intelligence matters also increased dramatically. For the first time, U.S. intelligence operations came under outside scrutiny. By 1946 service COMINT officials found that they were no longer able to act as free agents in making many of the basic decisions affecting their COMINT operations. ...