Louis Joseph Fortier

Louis Joseph Fortier (6 April 1892 – 6 November 1974) was an American army general. He was a decorated United States Army soldier and war hero and veteran of World War I, World War II, the Cold War, and the Korean War, and was also one of the architects of the modern United States intelligence community, being present for the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency. He also helped create the Joint Forces Staff College and the ROTC program at Auburn University.

Life In 1913, Fortier graduated from Tulane University with a Bachelor of Engineering in Civil Engineering, and became a registered professional engineer.

On 8 August 1917, after passing the examinations for the Regular Army, Fortier was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army Field Artillery.

The Balkans were eventually overrun, and Fortier was ordered back to the United States and to the War Department General Staff as Head of the Western European Division of the G-2.

In this capacity at CIG, and at the direction of the National Intelligence Authority (NIA), Fortier led the Fortier Board (also known as the Fortier Committee or the "Fortier Panel), which was a six-man team responsible for analyzing the legitimacy of a plan presented by John Magruder for and about the future of the Strategic Services Unit (SSU), and whether its duties should mostly be absorbed into the CIG. The findings of the Fortier Board are still largely censored in CIA documents, but the result was that roughly a year later, Magruder's plan was largely implemented by the NIA.

From 1949 to 1950, and the beginning of the Korean War, Fortier was deployed to Japan and Korea, where he served on General Douglas MacArthur's staff as the Director of Theater Intelligence.

Fortier retired as a Brigadier General in 1950.

In his retirement, he was the commander in chief of the Military Order of the World Wars (MOWW) and the president of the District of Columbia chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution. While at MOWW, Fortier lobied on Capitol Hill to help defeat the plan by Robert McNamara to merge the Army Reserves and the National Guard.