text: History\n Original sign with seal from the CIA's first building on E Street in Washington, DCThe Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947 with the National Security Act of 1947 signed by President Harry S. Truman, and is the descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which was dissolved in October 1945. In 1944, William J. Donovan (a.k.a. Wild Bill Donovan), the OSS's creator, proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt creating a new espionage organization directly supervised by the President: "which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies."\n\nDespite strong opposition from the military establishment, the State Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group in January 1946. Later, under the National Security Act of 1947 (effective September 18, 1947), the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency were established. Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was appointed as the first Director of Central Intelligence.\n\nIn the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency, many disposed Nazi operational agents were recruited as U.S. secret agents; they were induced financially and promised exemption from criminal prosecution and trial for war crimes committed during World War II, their recruitment was under aegis of Operation Paperclip.\n\nThe now declassified National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1948 (NSC 10/2) provided the operating instructions for the CIA:\n\n    Plan and conduct covert operations which are conducted or sponsored by this government against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorised persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them. Covert action shall include 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 anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.[2]     \n\nIn 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act (a.k.a. Public Law 110) was passed, permitting the agency's using confidential, fiscal, and administrative procedures, and exempting it from most of the usual limitations on the use of federal funds. The act also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its "organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed." It also created the program "PL-110", to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" who fall outside normal immigration procedures, as well as giving those persons cover stories and economic support.[3] By 1949, the West German intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst, under Reinhard Gehlen, was under the CIA's control.\n\nIn 1950, the CIA organized the Pacific Corporation, the first of many CIA private enterprises. Director Hillenkoetter approved Project BLUEBIRD, the CIA's first structured, behavioral control program. In 1951, the Columbia Broadcasting System began co-operating with the CIA; President Truman created the Office of Current Intelligence; Project BLUEBIRD was renamed Project ARTICHOKE.\n\nDuring the first years of its existence, other branches of government did not exercise much control over the Central Intelligence Agency; justified by the desire to match and defeat KGB actions throughout the globe, a task many believed could be accomplished