On this day 68 years ago, the Central Intelligence Agency’s Current Intelligence Bulletin contained financial concerns from around the globe, including Agency comments on the arrest of an Associated Press reporter, inflation in Korea, and India’s position in the United Nations.

Even for students of the history of the Intelligence Community (IC), Robert Blum is all but forgotten except as a bureaucrat, a professor, and the head of a philanthropic foundation with ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. In reality, he was a counterintelligence chief who worked for several agencies, built large pieces of the United States’ foreign economic policies, had the Director of Central Intelligence fired, and redesigned a significant portion of the IC, including its mechanisms for covert action and propaganda.

Declassified Central Intelligence Agency documents describe the Agency’s agreement to work with a Senator’s plan to use a 1952 Congressional investigation into Soviet war crimes for propaganda purposes. While it may have worked in the short run, documents indicate that both Agency and State Department personnel believe it may have backfired, and led to charges the U.S. was using biological weapons in Korea.