Lieutenant General Walter Bedell "Beetle" Smith (5 October 1895 - August 1961) was a senior U.S. Army general who served as General Dwight D. Eisenhower's chief- of-staff at Allied Forces Headquarters during the Tunisia Campaign and the Allied invasion of Italy in 1943.

Beginning in the next year, he was General Eisenhower's chief-of-staff at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in Western Europe from 1944 through 1945. During World War I he was commissioned as an officer in 1917, and he was wounded in the Aisne-Marne Offensive in 1918.

In 1942 he became the Secretary to the Combined Chiefs of Staff. His duties involved taking part in discussions of war plans at the highest level, and Smith often briefed President Franklin D. Roosevelt on strategic matters.

Smith became chief of staff to Eisenhower at Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) in September 1942. He

acquired a reputation as Eisenhower's "hatchet man" for his brusque and demanding manner. However, he was also capable of representing Eisenhower in sensitive missions requiring diplomatic skill. Smith was involved in negotiating the Armistice between Italy and Allied armed forces, which he signed on behalf of Eisenhower.

In 1944, he became the Chief of Staff of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), again under Eisenhower. In this position, Smith also negotiated successfully for food and fuel aid to be sent through German lines for the starving and cold Dutch civilian population in The Netherlands, and he opened discussions for the peaceful and complete German capitulation to the Canadian Army in Holland.

In May 1945, Smith met with the representatives of the German High Command to negotiate the surrender of the German Armed Forces, and he signed the surrender document on behalf of General Eisenhower. After World War II, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1946 to 1948.

Then in 1950, Smith became the Director of Central Intelligence, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other intelligence agencies in the U.S. Smith reorganized the CIA, redefined its structure and its mission, and he gave it a new sense of purpose. He made the CIA the arm of government primarily responsible for covert operations. He left the CIA in 1953 to become the Under Secretary of State.

After retiring as the Under Secretary of State in 1954, Smith continued to serve the Eisenhower Administration in various posts for several years, until his retirement and his death in 1961.

				Bernard Montgomery explains his plan for taking the Sicilian city of Messina to Walter Bedell Smith, George Patton and Harold Alexander, July 25, 1943.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, General Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander, Admiral Sir Andrew B. Cunningham, and (top row): Mr. Harold Macmillan, Major General W. Bedell Smith, and unidentified British officers.		American generals: seated left to right - William Simpson, George S. Patton Jr., Carl Spaatz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Courtney H. Hodges, Leonard T. Gerow; stand - Ralph F. Sterley, Hoyt S. Vandenberg Walter Bedell Smith, Otto P. Weyland, Richard E. Nyugent.		Bedell Smith briefing President Truman
Senior Allied commanders at Rheims shortly after the German surrender. Present are (left to right): Major General Ivan Susloparov, Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan, Lieutenant General Bedell Smith, Captain Kay Summersby (obscured), Captain Harry C. Butcher, General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower, Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder		Smith had to conduct another set of surrender negotiations, that of the German armed forces, in May 1945. Smith met with the representatives of the German Armed Forces high command, Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Colonel General Alfred Jodl.		Portrait by William F. Draper, 1958
Smith as the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, 1946–48