United States President Dwight Eisenhower requested the report in July 1954 at the height of the Cold War and following coups in Iran and Guatemala.
The report compares with other contemporary Cold War documents such as George Kennan's "X" article in Foreign Affairs, which recommended a policy of "containment" rather than direct confrontation with the Soviet Union, and NSC 68, the secret policy document produced in 1950, which recommended a similarly restrained policy of “gradual coercion.” Doolittle wrote with an abandon-all-principles approach that conveyed the national fear that the United States faced the prospect of annihilation at the hands of the Soviet Union: “It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost,” Doolittle wrote.
“There are no rules in such a game… If the United States is to survive, long standing concepts of ‘fair play’ must be reconsidered.”[1] Doolittle’s forceful policy and language reflected the fear that motivated American citizens and policymakers in the wake of Soviet Communism.
President Harry S. Truman viewed the CIA as an intelligence gathering organization that should have limited power and that should not be used to overthrow foreign governments.
The Czechoslovakian "constitutional coup" of 1948 sparked fears that any communist presence in government or civic society posed an imminent threat.
These events severely jolted American confidence and led Eisenhower to commission a report on how the CIA should respond.
[3] Doolittle was a heroic figure as a result of the air raid he led on the Japanese home islands after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Doolittle’s honorable service record and wide range of experience beyond simple operations were notable factors that led Dwight Eisenhower to entrust him with the report.
Further, he was waiting for the results of an “overall appraisal” of US intelligence as part of the Second Hoover Commission’s study of the executive branch from his close friend General Mark Clark.
Doolittle also urged intensified training of those already in the agency, and policies to assure that personnel would only be assigned to duties and locations for which they were highly qualified.
The Doolittle Report found that cooperation and communication between the CIA and armed services was inadequate and needed to be improved.
[3] He asserted that the combination of the brothers could be potentially problematic as they might attempt to implement ideas and policies without consulting proper administration officials.
He said the CIA had “ballooned into a vast and sprawling organization manned by a large number of people, some of whom were of doubtful confidence.”[2] After the meeting, Eisenhower sent a letter to Allen Dulles urging that he implement Doolittle’s recommendations.
“I consider these [covert] operations as essential to our national security in these days when International Communism is aggressively pressing its world-wide subversion programme,” he wrote.
One result was the 1954 Berlin Tunnel project, which was designed to dig underground passageways to tap into Soviet telecommunications lines.
[2] At the end of 1954, in another reaction to the Doolittle Report’s recommendation of intensified technological forms of intelligence, Eisenhower gave Dulles permission to build the U-2 spy plane to photograph the Soviet Union.