Richards, Robert R. Alias "The Fox": The Wartime Recollections of Robert R.
Richards. Columbus, OH: Richards/Morgan, 1994.The materials included here cover the entire history of CIC -- from its formation in 1942 to its merger into the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps in 1962.
Richards, Robert R. Alias "The Fox": The Wartime Recollections of Robert R.
Richards. Columbus, OH: Richards/Morgan, 1994.
Chambers: CIC, 7th Army memoirs.
Ruffner, Kevin C. "CIC Records: A Valuable Tool for Researchers." Center for the Study of Intelligence Bulletin 11 (Summer 2000): 11-16. American Intelligence Journal 20, nos. 1 & 2 (Winter 2000-2001): 83-87.
"While the historical community has pressed for the declassification of records from the World War II-era Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the post-war CIA," the records of the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), "in fact, promise to shed even greater light on American intelligence activities than has been previously recognized.... While CIC concentrated on counterintelligence during World War II, it expanded into the positive collection of intelligence behind the Iron Curtain in the years after 1945.... Even into the 1950s, CIA and CIC were still trying to reconcile their intelligence missions overseas in order to avoid duplication and to coordinate the recruitment of assets....
"The CIC underwent a major expansion during the Korean War. The 1950s proved to be CIC's heyday; it enjoyed ample resources and attracted the best and brightest soldiers brought in by a draft-era Army. The expansion of military intelligence units throughout the world and their collection activities in the 1950s also resulted in growing numbers of CIC records -- a legacy of great importance to historians."
The CIC "documentary record is scattered throughout classified and declassified holdings in numerous agencies of the Federal Government. Two of the agencies, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Investigative Records Repository (IRR) of the US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), hold the bulk of the surviving CIC records. Researchers, however, should be aware that many CIC records remain in the possession of other US government agencies, primarily those in the Intelligence Community. Likewise, researchers should consider that other repositories of unofficial records, such as the U.S. Army Military History Institute, may contain information about the Counter Intelligence Corps."
Sayer,
Ian, and Douglas Botting. America's Secret Army: The Untold Story of
the Counter Intelligence Corps. New York: Franklin & Watts, 1989.
NameBase comments that "Sayer and Botting are experts on Nazi history. For this book they gained exclusive access to CIC archives and corresponded with dozens of former agents. Although well-written, the book tends to romanticize the history of CIC.... But as the only book available on the CIC 'big picture,' we take what we can get." According to Ruffner, "CIC Records: A Valuable Tool for Researchers," CSI Bulletin 11 (Summer 2000), this work is "[d]rawn primarily from the 1959 official CIC history"; however, "the authors added some material to the basic story (primarily on postwar CIC operations in Europe) as well as photographs."
While accepting the ambitiousness of the effort to write an institutional history, Naftali, I&NS 5.3, is not convinced that the authors have reached their goal. In particular, they "seem to have missed the implications for the CIC" of the multinational (including the British Field Security Service, MI6, and OSS' counter-espionage branch, X-2) context within which the organization plied its trade. Nor do they seem to understand the impact that Ultra had on CIC's operations. In general, the book is incomplete, a fault that is particularly telling with regard to the account of CIC's postwar activities.
Schwarzwalder,
John. We Caught Spies. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1946.
To Constantinides, the author, a CIC officer from North Africa to Germany, "has a tendency to make sweeping opinions and judgments based on his own experience and on what he was told. A number of these and some facts he gives have not held up with time."
U.S. Army. Counter
Intelligence Corps School. Counter Intelligence Corps History and Mission in World War II. Baltimore, MD: CIC School, CIC Center, [1951?]. [Available at: http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/cic.pdf]
Constantinides: This monograph "has all the faults of an official history.... It is general in its approach, dry, and devoid of accounts of operational activity.... It is, needless to say, heavy on organizational and line-of-command matters."
U.S. Army. Intelligence Center. The
History of the Counter Intelligence Corps.
30 vol. 1959.
According to Ruffner, "CIC Records...," CSI Bulletin 11 (Summer 2000), a declassified version of this originally classified work "is available to researchers at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at College Park, Maryland.... [I]t provides a detailed history of the CIC from World War I through the Korean War. The product of several authors and years of research through scattered intelligence records, the official CIC history is the most authoritative account of the CIC's wartime and peacetime activities."
Return to MI/CI Table of Contents
Return to WWII - U.S. Services Table of Contents
Return to MI - Army Table of Contents