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The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the
federal government of the United States The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct ...
tasked with advancing
national security National security, or national defence (national defense in American English), is the security and Defence (military), defence of a sovereign state, including its Citizenship, citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of ...
through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and conducting
covert operation A covert operation or undercover operation is a military or police operation involving a covert agent or troops acting under an assumed cover to conceal the identity of the party responsible. US law Under US law, the Central Intelligence A ...
s. The agency is headquartered in the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia, and is sometimes metonymously called "Langley". A major member of the
United States Intelligence Community The United States Intelligence Community (IC) is a group of separate US federal government, U.S. federal government intelligence agencies and subordinate organizations that work to conduct Intelligence assessment, intelligence activities which ...
(IC), the CIA has reported to the
director of national intelligence The director of national intelligence (DNI) is a Cabinet of the United States#Current Cabinet and Cabinet-rank officials, cabinet-level Federal government of the United States, United States government intelligence and security official. The p ...
since 2004, and is focused on providing intelligence for the president and the Cabinet. The CIA is headed by a director and is divided into various directorates, including a Directorate of Analysis and Directorate of Operations. Unlike the
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
(FBI), the CIA has no law enforcement function and focuses on intelligence gathering overseas, with only limited domestic intelligence collection. The CIA is responsible for coordinating all
human intelligence Human intelligence is the Intellect, intellectual capability of humans, which is marked by complex Cognition, cognitive feats and high levels of motivation and self-awareness. Using their intelligence, humans are able to learning, learn, Concept ...
(HUMINT) activities in the IC. It has been instrumental in establishing intelligence services in many countries, and has provided support to many foreign organizations. The CIA exerts foreign political influence through its paramilitary operations units, including its Special Activities Center. It has also provided support to several foreign political groups and governments, including planning, coordinating, training and carrying out torture, and technical support. It was involved in many regime changes and carrying out terrorist attacks and planned assassinations of foreign leaders. During
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, U.S. intelligence and covert operations had been undertaken by the
Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the first intelligence agency of the United States, formed during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines ...
(OSS). The office was abolished in 1945 by President
Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. As the 34th vice president in 1945, he assumed the presidency upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt that year. Subsequen ...
, who created the Central Intelligence Group in 1946. Amid the intensifying
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
, the National Security Act of 1947 established the CIA, headed by a director of central intelligence (DCI). The Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 exempted the agency from most Congressional oversight, and during the 1950s, it became a major instrument of U.S. foreign policy. The CIA employed psychological operations against communist regimes, and backed coups to advance American interests. Major CIA-backed operations include the 1953 coup in Iran, the 1954 coup in Guatemala, the
Bay of Pigs Invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called or after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front ...
of
Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
in 1961, and the 1973 coup in Chile. In 1975, the Church Committee of the U.S. Senate revealed illegal operations such as MKUltra and CHAOS, after which greater oversight was imposed. In the 1980s, the CIA supported the Afghan mujahideen and Nicaraguan Contras, and since the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
in 2001 has played a role in the Global War on Terrorism. The agency has been the subject of numerous controversies, including its use of political assassinations,
torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including corporal punishment, punishment, forced confession, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimid ...
, domestic wiretapping,
propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...
, mind control techniques, and drug trafficking, among others.


Purpose

When the CIA was created, its purpose was to create a clearinghouse for foreign policy intelligence and analysis, collecting, analyzing, evaluating, and disseminating foreign intelligence, and carrying out covert operations. As of 2013, the CIA had five priorities: *
Counterterrorism Counterterrorism (alternatively spelled: counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, relates to the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, businesses, and Intelligence agency, intelligence ...
* Nonproliferation of
weapons of mass destruction A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a Biological agent, biological, chemical weapon, chemical, Radiological weapon, radiological, nuclear weapon, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill or significantly harm many people or cause great dam ...
* Indications and warnings for senior policymakers *
Counterintelligence Counterintelligence (counter-intelligence) or counterespionage (counter-espionage) is any activity aimed at protecting an agency's Intelligence agency, intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering informati ...
* Cyber intelligence


Organizational structure

The CIA has an executive office and five major directorates: * The Directorate of Digital Innovation * The Directorate of Analysis * The Directorate of Operations * The Directorate of Support * The Directorate of Science and Technology


Executive Office

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) is appointed by the president with Senate confirmation and reports directly to the
director of national intelligence The director of national intelligence (DNI) is a Cabinet of the United States#Current Cabinet and Cabinet-rank officials, cabinet-level Federal government of the United States, United States government intelligence and security official. The p ...
(DNI); in practice, the CIA director interfaces with the DNI,
Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
, and the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...
, while the deputy director (DD/CIA) is the internal executive of the CIA and the chief operating officer (COO/CIA), known as executive director until 2017, leads the day-to-day work as the third-highest post of the CIA. The deputy director is formally appointed by the director without
Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
confirmation, but as the president's opinion plays a great role in the decision, the deputy director is generally considered a political position, making the chief operating officer the most senior non-political position for CIA career officers. The Executive Office also supports the U.S. military, including the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, by providing it with information it gathers, receiving information from
military intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis List of intelligence gathering disciplines, approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist Commanding officer, commanders in decision making pr ...
organizations, and cooperating with field activities. The associate deputy director of the CIA is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the agency. Each branch of the agency has its own director. The Office of Military Affairs (OMA), subordinate to the associate deputy director, manages the relationship between the CIA and the Unified Combatant Commands, who produce and deliver regional and operational intelligence and consume national intelligence produced by the CIA.


Directorate of Analysis

The Directorate of Analysis, through much of its history known as the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), is tasked with helping "the President and other policymakers make informed decisions about our country's national security" by looking "at all the available information on an issue and organiz ngit for policymakers". The directorate has four regional analytic groups, six groups for transnational issues, and three that focus on policy, collection, and staff support. There are regional analytical offices covering the
Near East The Near East () is a transcontinental region around the Eastern Mediterranean encompassing the historical Fertile Crescent, the Levant, Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and coastal areas of the Arabian Peninsula. The term was invented in the 20th ...
and
South Asia South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and Ethnicity, ethnic-Culture, cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's populatio ...
,
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
, and Europe; and the
Asia–Pacific The Asia–Pacific (APAC) also Known as Indo-Pacific is the region of the world adjoining the western Pacific Ocean. The region's precise boundaries vary depending on context, but countries and territories in Australasia, East Asia, and Southea ...
,
Latin America Latin America is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish language, Spanish and Portuguese language, Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geogr ...
, and
Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
.


Directorate of Operations

The Directorate of Operations is responsible for collecting foreign intelligence (mainly from clandestine HUMINT sources), and for covert action. The name reflects its role as the coordinator of human intelligence activities between other elements of the wider U.S. intelligence community with their HUMINT operations. This directorate was created in an attempt to end years of rivalry over influence, philosophy, and budget between the
United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD, or DOD) is an United States federal executive departments, executive department of the federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government charged with coordinating and superv ...
(DOD) and the CIA. In spite of this, the Department of Defense announced in 2012 its intention to organize its own global clandestine intelligence service, the Defense Clandestine Service (DCS), under the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Contrary to some public and
media Media may refer to: Communication * Means of communication, tools and channels used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Interactive media, media that is inter ...
misunderstanding, DCS is not a "new"
intelligence agency An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, Intelligence analysis, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy obj ...
but rather a consolidation, expansion and realignment of existing Defense
HUMINT Human intelligence (HUMINT, pronounced ) is intelligence-gathering by means of human sources and interpersonal communication. It is distinct from more technical intelligence-gathering disciplines, such as signals intelligence (SIGINT), imager ...
activities, which have been carried out by DIA for decades under various names, most recently as the Defense Human Intelligence Service. This Directorate is known to be organized by geographic regions and issues, but its precise organization is classified.


Directorate of Science & Technology

The Directorate of Science & Technology was established to research, create, and manage technical collection disciplines and equipment. Many of its innovations were transferred to other intelligence organizations, or, as they became more overt, to the military services. The development of the U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, for instance, was done in cooperation with the
United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...
. The U-2's original mission was clandestine imagery intelligence over denied areas such as the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
.


Directorate of Support

The Directorate of Support has organizational and administrative functions to significant units including: * The Office of Security * The Office of Communications * The Office of Information Technology


Directorate of Digital Innovation

The Directorate of Digital Innovation (DDI) focuses on accelerating innovation across the Agency's mission activities. It is the Agency's newest directorate. The Langley, Virginia-based office's mission is to streamline and integrate digital and cybersecurity capabilities into the CIA's espionage, counterintelligence, all-source analysis, open-source intelligence collection, and covert action operations. It provides operations personnel with tools and techniques to use in cyber operations. It works with
information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...
infrastructure and practices cyber tradecraft. This means retrofitting the CIA for
cyberwarfare Cyberwarfare is the use of cyberattack, cyber attacks against an enemy State (polity), state, causing comparable harm to actual warfare and/or disrupting vital computer systems. Some intended outcomes could be espionage, sabotage, propaganda, ...
. DDI officers help accelerate the integration of innovative methods and tools to enhance the CIA's cyber and digital capabilities on a global scale and ultimately help safeguard the United States. They also apply technical expertise to exploit clandestine and publicly available information (also known as open-source data) using specialized methodologies and digital tools to plan, initiate and support the technical and human-based operations of the CIA. Before the establishment of the new digital directorate, offensive cyber operations were undertaken by the CIA's Information Operations Center. Little is known about how the office specifically functions or if it deploys offensive cyber capabilities. The directorate had been covertly operating since approximately March 2015 but formally began operations on October 1, 2015. According to classified budget documents, the CIA's computer network operations budget for fiscal year 2013 was $685.4 million. The NSA's budget was roughly $1 billion at the time. Rep.
Adam Schiff Adam Bennett Schiff (born June 22, 1960) is an American lawyer, author, and politician serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, junior United States Senate, United States senator from California, a seat he has held since 2024. A m ...
, the California Democrat who served as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, endorsed the reorganization. "The director has challenged his workforce, the rest of the intelligence community, and the nation to consider how we conduct the business of intelligence in a world that is profoundly different from 1947 when the CIA was founded," Schiff said.


Office of Congressional Affairs

The Office of Congressional Affairs (OCA) serves as the liaison between the CIA and the
US Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...
. The OCA states that it aims to ensure that Congress is fully and currently informed of intelligence activities. The office is the CIA's primary interface with Congressional oversight committees, leadership, and members. It is responsible for all matters pertaining to congressional interaction and oversight of US intelligence activities. It claims that it aims to: * ensure that Congress is kept informed of intelligence issues and activities by providing timely briefings and notifications * facilitate prompt and complete responses to congressional requests for information and inquiries * maintain a record of the Agency's interaction with Congress * track legislation that could affect the Agency * educate Agency personnel about their responsibility to keep Congress fully and currently informed


Training

The CIA established its first training facility, the Office of Training and Education, in 1950. Following the end of the
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
, the CIA's training budget was slashed, which had a negative effect on
employee retention Employee retention is the ability of an organization to retain its employees and ensure sustainability. Employee retention can be represented by a simple statistic (for example, a retention rate of 80% usually indicates that an organization kept 8 ...
. In response, Director of Central Intelligence
George Tenet George John Tenet (born January 5, 1953) is an American intelligence official and academic who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Pr ...
established CIA University in 2002. CIA University holds between 200 and 300 courses each year, training both new hires and experienced intelligence officers, as well as CIA support staff. The facility works in partnership with the National Intelligence University, and includes the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis, the Directorate of Analysis' component of the university. For later stage training of student operations officers, there is at least one classified training area at Camp Peary, near
Williamsburg, Virginia Williamsburg is an Independent city (United States), independent city in Virginia, United States. It had a population of 15,425 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located on the Virginia Peninsula, Williamsburg is in the northern par ...
. Students are selected, and their progress evaluated, in ways derived from the OSS, published as the book ''Assessment of Men, Selection of Personnel for the Office of Strategic Services''. Additional mission training is conducted at Harvey Point,
North Carolina North Carolina ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, South Carolina to the south, Georgia (U.S. stat ...
. The primary training facility for the Office of Communications is Warrenton Training Center, located near
Warrenton, Virginia Warrenton is a town in Fauquier County, Virginia, United States. It is the county seat. The population was 10,057 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, an increase from 9,611 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census and 6,670 at ...
. The facility was established in 1951 and has been used by the CIA since at least 1955.


Budget

Details of the overall United States intelligence budget are classified. Under the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, the Director of Central Intelligence is the only federal government employee who can spend "un-vouchered" government money. The government showed its 1997 budget was $26.6 billion for the fiscal year. The government has disclosed a total figure for all non-military intelligence spending since 2007; the fiscal 2013 figure is $52.6 billion. According to the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, the CIA's fiscal 2013 budget is $14.7 billion, 28% of the total and almost 50% more than the budget of the National Security Agency. CIA's
HUMINT Human intelligence (HUMINT, pronounced ) is intelligence-gathering by means of human sources and interpersonal communication. It is distinct from more technical intelligence-gathering disciplines, such as signals intelligence (SIGINT), imager ...
budget is $2.3 billion, the SIGINT budget is $1.7 billion, and spending for security and logistics of CIA missions is $2.5 billion. "Covert action programs," including a variety of activities such as the CIA's drone fleet and anti-
Iranian nuclear program The nuclear program of Iran is one of the most scrutinized nuclear programs in the world. The military capabilities of the program are possible through its mass enrichment activities in facilities such as Natanz and Arak. In June 2025, t ...
activities, accounts for $2.6 billion. There were numerous previous attempts to obtain general information about the budget. As a result, reports revealed that CIA's annual budget in Fiscal Year 1963 was $550 million (inflation-adjusted US$ billion in ), and the overall intelligence budget in FY 1997 was US$26.6 billion (inflation-adjusted US$ billion in ). There have been accidental disclosures; for instance,
Mary Margaret Graham Mary Margaret Graham was the United States Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection (2005–2008). Background Education Graham is a graduate of Marywood College in Scranton, Pennsylvania and obtained a master's degree in Russian ...
, a former CIA official and deputy director of national intelligence for collection in 2005, said that the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion, and in 1994 Congress accidentally published a budget of $43.4 billion (in 2012 dollars) in 1994 for the non-military National Intelligence Program, including $4.8 billion for the CIA. After the Marshall Plan was approved, appropriating $13.7 billion over five years, 5% of those funds or $685 million were secretly made available to the CIA. A portion of the enormous M-fund, established by the U.S. government during the post-war period for reconstruction of Japan, was secretly steered to the CIA.


Relationship with other intelligence agencies


Foreign intelligence services

The role and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, MI6 in the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) in
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
, the
Directorate-General for External Security The Directorate-General for External Security (, , DGSE) is France's foreign intelligence agency, equivalent to the British MI6 and the American CIA, established on 27 November 1943. The DGSE safeguards French national security through intelli ...
(DGSE) in
France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
, the Foreign Intelligence Service in
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
, the Ministry of State Security (MSS) in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
, the
Inter-Services Intelligence The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is the premier Pakistani Intelligence community, intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant t ...
(ISI) in
Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
, the General Intelligence Service in
Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
,
Mossad The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations (), popularly known as Mossad ( , ), is the national intelligence agency of the Israel, State of Israel. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community, along with M ...
in
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
, and the National Intelligence Service (NIS) in
South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...
. The CIA was instrumental in the establishment of intelligence services in several U.S. allied countries, including Germany's BND and Greece's EYP (then known as KYP). The closest links of the U.S. intelligence community to other foreign intelligence agencies are to Anglophone countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Special communications signals that intelligence-related messages can be shared with these four countries. An indication of the United States' close operational cooperation is the creation of a new message distribution label within the main U.S. military communications network. Previously, the marking of NOFORN (i.e., No Foreign Nationals) required the originator to specify which, if any, non-U.S. countries could receive the information. A new handling caveat, USA/AUS/CAN/GBR/NZL '' Five Eyes'', used primarily on intelligence messages, indicates that the material can be shared with Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The task of the division called "" of the German ' is keeping contact to the CIA office in
Wiesbaden Wiesbaden (; ) is the capital of the German state of Hesse, and the second-largest Hessian city after Frankfurt am Main. With around 283,000 inhabitants, it is List of cities in Germany by population, Germany's 24th-largest city. Wiesbaden form ...
.


History


Immediate predecessors

During
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, U.S. intelligence and covert operations were undertaken by the
Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the first intelligence agency of the United States, formed during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines ...
(OSS). Many future CIA officers, including four directors of central intelligence, served in the OSS. On September 20, 1945, shortly after the end of World War II, Truman signed an
executive order In the United States, an executive order is a directive by the president of the United States that manages operations of the federal government. The legal or constitutional basis for executive orders has multiple sources. Article Two of the ...
dissolving the OSS. By October 1945 its functions had been divided between the Departments of State and War. The division lasted only a few months. The first public mention of the "Central Intelligence Agency" appeared on a command-restructuring proposal presented by Jim Forrestal and Arthur Radford to the U.S. Senate Military Affairs Committee at the end of 1945. Army Intelligence agent Colonel Sidney Mashbir and Commander Ellis Zacharias worked together for four months at the direction of Fleet Admiral Joseph Ernest King, and prepared the first draft and implementing directives for the creation of what would become the Central Intelligence Agency. Despite opposition from the military establishment, the
State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...
, and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
(FBI), Truman established the National Intelligence Authority in January 1946. Its operational extension was known as the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), which was the direct predecessor of the CIA.


Creation

The Central Intelligence Agency was created on July 26, 1947, when President Truman signed the National Security Act into law. A major impetus for the creation of the agency was growing tensions with the USSR following the end of
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. Lawrence Houston, head counsel of the SSU, CIG, and, later CIA, was principal draftsman of the National Security Act of 1947, which dissolved the NIA and the CIG, and established both the
National Security Council A national security council (NSC) is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security. An NSC is often headed by a n ...
and the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1949, Houston helped to draft the Central Intelligence Agency Act (), which authorized the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures, and exempted it from most limitations on the use of federal funds. The act also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its "organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed," and created the program "PL-110" to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" who fell outside normal immigration procedures. At the outset of the
Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...
, the CIA still only had a few thousand employees, around one thousand of whom worked in analysis. Intelligence primarily came from the Office of Reports and Estimates, which drew its reports from a daily take of State Department telegrams, military dispatches, and other public documents. The CIA still lacked its intelligence-gathering abilities. On August 21, 1950, shortly after, Truman announced
Walter Bedell Smith General (United States), General Walter Bedell "Beetle" Smith (5 October 1895 – 9 August 1961) was a senior officer (armed forces), officer of the United States Army who served as General Dwight D. Eisenhower's chief of staff at Allied Forc ...
as the new Director of the CIA. The change in leadership took place shortly after the start of the
Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...
in
South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...
, as the lack of a clear warning to the President and NSC about the imminent North Korean invasion was seen as a grave failure of intelligence. The CIA had different demands placed on it by the various bodies overseeing it. Truman wanted a centralized group to organize the information that reached him. The Department of Defense wanted military intelligence and covert action, and the State Department wanted to create global political change favorable to the US. Thus the two areas of responsibility for the CIA were covert action and covert intelligence. One of the main targets for intelligence gathering was the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, which had also been a priority of the CIA's predecessors. U.S. Air Force General Hoyt Vandenberg, the CIG's second director, created the Office of Special Operations (OSO) and the Office of Reports and Estimates (ORE). Initially, the OSO was tasked with spying and subversion overseas with a budget of $15 million (equivalent to $ million in ), the largesse of a small number of patrons in Congress. Vandenberg's goals were much like the ones set out by his predecessor: finding out "everything about the Soviet forces in Eastern and Central Europe – their movements, their capabilities, and their intentions." On June 18, 1948, the
National Security Council A national security council (NSC) is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security. An NSC is often headed by a n ...
issued Directive 10/2 calling for covert action against the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, and granting the authority to carry out covert operations against "hostile foreign states or groups" that could, if needed, be denied by the U.S. government. To this end, the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was created inside the CIA. The OPC was unique; Frank Wisner, the head of the OPC, answered not to the CIA Director, but to the secretaries of defense, state, and the NSC. The OPC's actions were a secret even from the head of the CIA. Most CIA stations had two station chiefs, one working for the OSO, and one working for the OPC. The agency was unable to provide sufficient intelligence about the Soviet takeovers of
Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...
and
Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...
, the Soviet blockade of Berlin, or the Soviet atomic bomb project. In particular, the agency failed to predict the Chinese entry into the Korean War with 300,000 troops. The famous double agent Kim Philby was the British liaison to American Central Intelligence. Through him, the CIA coordinated hundreds of airdrops inside the iron curtain, all compromised by Philby. Arlington Hall, the nerve center of CIA cryptanalysis, was compromised by
Bill Weisband William Weisband, Sr. (August 28, 1908 – May 14, 1967) was a Ukrainian-American Codebreaking, cryptanalyst and NKVD agent (code name 'LINK'), best known for his role in revealing U.S. decryptions of Soviet Union, Soviet diplomatic and intelli ...
, a Russian translator and Soviet spy. However, the CIA was successful in influencing the 1948 Italian election in favor of the Christian Democrats. The $200 million Exchange Stabilization Fund (equivalent to $ billion in ), earmarked for the reconstruction of Europe, was used to pay wealthy Americans of Italian heritage. Cash was then distributed to
Catholic Action Catholic Action is a movement of Catholic laity, lay people within the Catholic Church which advocates for increased Catholic influence on society. Catholic Action groups were especially active in the nineteenth century in historically Catholic cou ...
, the Vatican's political arm, and directly to Italian politicians. This tactic of using its large fund to purchase elections was frequently repeated in the subsequent years.


Korean War

At the beginning of the
Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was an armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula fought between North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea; DPRK) and South Korea (Republic of Korea; ROK) and their allies. North Korea was s ...
, CIA officer Hans Tofte claimed to have turned a thousand
North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...
n expatriates into a guerrilla force tasked with infiltration, guerrilla warfare, and pilot rescue. In 1952 the CIA sent 1,500 more expatriate agents north.
Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...
station chief Albert Haney would openly celebrate the capabilities of those agents and the information they sent. In September 1952 Haney was replaced by John Limond Hart, a Europe veteran with a vivid memory for bitter experiences of misinformation. Hart was suspicious of the parade of successes reported by Tofte and Haney and launched an investigation which determined that the entirety of the information supplied by the Korean sources was false or misleading. After the war, internal reviews by the CIA corroborated Hart's findings. The CIA's station in
Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...
had 200 officers, but not a single speaker of Korean. Hart reported to Washington that Seoul station could not be salvaged. Loftus Becker, deputy director of intelligence, was sent personally to tell Hart that the CIA had to keep the station open to save face. Becker returned to Washington, D.C., pronouncing the situation to be "hopeless". He then resigned. Air Force Colonel James Kallis stated that CIA director Allen Dulles continued to praise the CIA's Korean force, despite knowing that they were under enemy control. When China entered the war in 1950, the CIA attempted a number of subversive operations in the country, all of which failed due to the presence of double agents. Millions of dollars were spent in these efforts. These included a team of young CIA officers airdropped into China who were ambushed, and CIA funds being used to set up a global heroin empire in Burma's Golden Triangle following a betrayal by another double agent.


1953 Iranian coup d'état

In 1951,
Mohammad Mosaddegh Mohammad Mosaddegh (, ; 16 June 1882 – 5 March 1967) was an Iranian politician, author, and lawyer who served as the 30th Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, elected by the 1950 Iranian legislative election, 16th Majlis. He was a membe ...
, a member of the National Front, was elected Iranian prime-minister. As prime minister, he nationalized the Anglo-Persian Oil Company which his predecessor had supported. The nationalization of the British-funded Iranian oil industry, including the largest oil refinery in the world, was disastrous for Mosaddegh. A British naval embargo closed the British oil facilities, which Iran had no skilled workers to operate. In 1952, Mosaddegh resisted the royal refusal to approve his Minister of War and resigned in protest. The National Front took to the streets in protest. Fearing a loss of control, the military pulled its troops back five days later, and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi gave in to Mosaddegh's demands. Mosaddegh quickly replaced military leaders loyal to the Shah with those loyal to him, giving him personal control over the military. Given six months of emergency powers, Mosaddegh unilaterally passed legislation. When that six months expired, his powers were extended for another year. In 1953, Mossadegh dismissed parliament and assumed dictatorial powers. This power grab triggered the Shah to exercise his constitutional right to dismiss Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh launched a military coup, and the Shah fled the country. Under CIA Director Allen Dulles, Operation Ajax was put into motion. Its goal was to overthrow Mossadegh with military support from General Fazlollah Zahedi and install a pro-western regime headed by the Shah of Iran. Kermit Roosevelt Jr. oversaw the operation in Iran. On August 16, a CIA paid mob led by Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (17 May 1900 or 24 September 19023 June 1989) was an Iranian revolutionary, politician, political theorist, and religious leader. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the main leader of the Iranian ...
would spark what a U.S. embassy officer called "an almost spontaneous revolution" but Mosaddegh was protected by his new inner military circle, and the CIA had been unable to gain influence within the Iranian military. Their chosen man, former General Fazlollah Zahedi, had no troops to call on. After the failure of the first coup, Roosevelt paid demonstrators to pose as communists and deface public symbols associated with the Shah. This August 19 incident helped foster public support of the Shah and led gangs of citizens on a spree of violence intent on destroying Mossadegh. An attack on his house forced Mossadegh to flee. He surrendered the next day, and his coup came to an end.


1954 Guatemalan coup d'état

The return of the Shah to power, and the impression that an effective CIA had been able to guide that nation to friendly and stable relations with the West, triggered planning for Operation PBSuccess, a plan to overthrow
Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...
n President Jacobo Arbenz. The plan was exposed in major newspapers before it happened after a CIA agent left plans for the coup in his
Guatemala City Guatemala City (, also known colloquially by the nickname Guate), is the Capital city, national capital and largest city of the Guatemala, Republic of Guatemala. It is also the Municipalities of Guatemala, municipal capital of the Guatemala Depa ...
hotel room. The Guatemalan Revolution of 1944–54 overthrew the U.S. backed dictator Jorge Ubico and brought a democratically elected government to power. The government began an ambitious
agrarian reform Land reform (also known as agrarian reform) involves the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership, land use, and land transfers. The reforms may be initiated by governments, by interested groups, or by revolution. Lan ...
program which sought to grant land to millions of landless peasants. The program threatened the land holdings of the United Fruit Company, who lobbied for a coup by portraying these reforms as communist. On June 18, 1954, Carlos Castillo Armas led 480 CIA-trained men across the border from
Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, ...
into Guatemala. The weapons had also come from the CIA. The CIA mounted a psychological campaign to convince the Guatemalan people and government that Armas's victory was a ''fait accompli''. Its largest aspect was a radio broadcast entitled "The Voice of Liberation" which announced that Guatemalan exiles led by Castillo Armas were shortly about to liberate the country. On June 25, a CIA plane bombed Guatemala City, destroying the government's main oil reserves. Árbenz ordered the army to distribute weapons to local peasants and workers. The army refused, forcing Jacobo Árbenz's resignation on June 27, 1954. Árbenz handed over power to Colonel Carlos Enrique Diaz. The CIA then orchestrated a series of power transfers that ended with the confirmation of Castillo Armas as president in July 1954. Armas was the first in a series of military dictators that would rule the country, leading to the brutal Guatemalan Civil War from 1960 to 1996, in which some 200,000 people were killed, mostly by the U.S.-backed military.


Syria

In 1949, Colonel Adib Shishakli rose to power in Syria in a CIA-backed coup. Four years later, he would be overthrown by the military, Ba'athists, and
communists Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, d ...
. The CIA and MI6 started funding right-wing members of the military but suffered a huge setback in the aftermath of the
Suez Crisis The Suez Crisis, also known as the Second Arab–Israeli War, the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded on 29 October, having done so w ...
. CIA Agent Rocky Stone, who had played a minor role in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, was working at the
Damascus Damascus ( , ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, largest city of Syria. It is the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. Kno ...
embassy as a diplomat but was the station chief. Syrian officers on the CIA dole quickly appeared on television stating that they had received money from "corrupt and sinister Americans" "in an attempt to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria." Syrian forces surrounded the embassy and rousted Agent Stone, who confessed and subsequently made history as the first American diplomat expelled from an Arab nation. This strengthened ties between Syria and Egypt, helping establish the
United Arab Republic The United Arab Republic (UAR; ) was a sovereign state in the Middle East from 1958 to 1971. It was initially a short-lived political union between Republic of Egypt (1953–1958), Egypt (including Occupation of the Gaza Strip by the United Ara ...
, and poisoning the well for the US for the foreseeable future.


Indonesia

The United States was suspicious of
Sukarno Sukarno (6 June 1901 – 21 June 1970) was an Indonesian statesman, orator, revolutionary, and nationalist who was the first president of Indonesia, serving from 1945 to 1967. Sukarno was the leader of the Indonesian struggle for independenc ...
,
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
's president, because of his declaration of neutrality in the Cold War. After Sukarno hosted the Bandung Conference, promoting the
Non-Aligned Movement The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is a forum of 121 countries that Non-belligerent, are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. It was founded with the view to advancing interests of developing countries in the context of Cold W ...
, the Eisenhower White House responded with NSC 5518 authorizing "all feasible covert means" to move Indonesia into the Western sphere. The U.S. had no clear policy on Indonesia. Eisenhower sent his special assistant for security operations, F. M. Dearborn Jr., to Jakarta. His report that there was high instability, and that the US lacked stable allies, reinforced the domino theory. Indonesia suffered from what he described as "subversion by democracy". The CIA decided to attempt another military coup in Indonesia, where the Indonesian military was trained by the US, had a strong professional relationship with the US military, had a pro-American officer corps that strongly supported their government, and a strong belief in civilian control of the military, instilled partly by its close association with the US military. On September 25, 1957, Eisenhower ordered the CIA to start a revolution in Indonesia with the goal of regime change. Three days later, ''Blitz'', a Soviet-controlled weekly in India, reported that the US was plotting to overthrow Sukarno. The story was picked up by the media in Indonesia. One of the first parts of the operation was an 11,500-ton US Navy
ship A ship is a large watercraft, vessel that travels the world's oceans and other Waterway, navigable waterways, carrying cargo or passengers, or in support of specialized missions, such as defense, research and fishing. Ships are generally disti ...
landing at
Sumatra Sumatra () is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the list of islands by area, sixth-largest island in the world at 482,286.55 km2 (182,812 mi. ...
, delivering weapons for as many as 8,000 potential revolutionaries. In support of the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Indonesia- Permesta Movement, formed by dissident military commanders in Central Sumatera and North Sulawesi with the aim of overthrowing the Sukarno regime, a B-26 piloted by CIA agent Allen Lawrence Pope attacked Indonesian military targets in April and May 1958. The CIA described the airstrikes to the President as attacks by "dissident planes." Pope's B-26 was shot down over Ambon, Indonesia on May 18, 1958, and he bailed out. When he was captured, the Indonesian military found his personnel records, after-action reports, and his membership card for the officer's club at Clark Field. On March 9, Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, and brother of DCI Allen Dulles made a public statement calling for a revolt against communist despotism under Sukarno. Three days later, the CIA reported to the White House that the Indonesian Army's actions against the CIA-supported revolution were suppressing communism. After Indonesia, Eisenhower displayed mistrust of both the CIA and its director, Allen Dulles. Dulles too displayed mistrust of the CIA itself. Abbot Smith, a CIA analyst who later became chief of the Office of National Estimates, said, "We had constructed for ourselves a picture of the USSR, and whatever happened had to be made to fit into this picture. Intelligence estimators can hardly commit a more abominable sin." On December 16, Eisenhower received a report from his intelligence board of consultants that said the agency was "incapable of making objective appraisals of its own intelligence information as well as its own operations."


Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Congo became independent from
Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...
in 1960. The United States feared that its new prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was susceptible to Soviet influence, so the CIA supported Joseph Mobutu in organizing a coup that deposed Lumumba on September 14, 1960. Lumumba was assassinated by his Congolese and Belgian enemies in 1961, with CIA acquiescence. The CIA continued to back the Mobutu regime throughout the Cold War, despite its corruption, mismanagement, and human rights abuses.


1960 U-2 incident

After the bomber gap came the missile gap. Eisenhower wanted to use the U-2 to disprove the Missile Gap, but he had banned U-2 overflights of the USSR after meeting Secretary Khrushchev at
Camp David Camp David is a country retreat for the president of the United States. It lies in the wooded hills of Catoctin Mountain Park, in Frederick County, Maryland, near the towns of Thurmont, Maryland, Thurmont and Emmitsburg, Maryland, Emmitsburg, a ...
. Another reason the President objected to the use of the U-2 was that, in the nuclear age, the intelligence he needed most was on their intentions, without which, the US would face a paralysis of intelligence. He was particularly worried that U-2 flights could be seen as preparations for first-strike attacks. He had high hopes for an upcoming meeting with Khrushchev in Paris. Eisenhower finally gave in to CIA pressure to authorize a 16-day window for flights, which was extended an additional six days because of poor weather. On May 1, 1960, the
Soviet Air Forces The Soviet Air Forces (, VVS SSSR; literally "Military Air Forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics"; initialism VVS, sometimes referred to as the "Red Air Force") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Sovie ...
shot down a U-2 flying over Soviet territory. To Eisenhower, the ensuing coverup destroyed his perceived honesty and his hope of leaving a legacy of thawing relations with Khrushchev. Eisenhower later said that the U-2 coverup was the greatest regret of his presidency.


Dominican Republic

In the
Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean. It shares a Maritime boundary, maritime border with Puerto Rico to the east and ...
, the authoritarian regime of Generalissimo
Rafael Trujillo Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina ( ; ; 24 October 1891 – 30 May 1961), nicknamed ''El Jefe'' (; "the boss"), was a Dominican military officer and dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic from August 1930 until Rafael Trujillo#Assassination, ...
lasted more than three decades, and enjoyed considerable U.S support, as Trujillo was very anti-communist and opposed the new communist regime in Cuba led by Castro. Early on though, Trujillo acted more independently from the U.S, prioritizing Dominican interests over just doing the will of Washington, especially on a domestic aspect, compared to other more submissive regimes, like Somoza in Nicaragua. Then, the United States severed diplomatic relations with the nation in August 1960, after a failed plot against Venezuelan President Rόmulo Betancourt earlier that year was uncovered to be personally funded and orchestrated by the Trujillo regime's foreign agents. This proved o be a big liability for the U.S, undermining its diplomatic credibility and standing with other nations since it could expose the country's hypocrisy on their agenda of expanding and preserving democracy across the world. The CIA's Special Group armed Dominican dissidents to assassinate Trujillo, but President Kennedy paused the plan when he came into power, and resorted to negotiating with the regime. Kennedy allowed the distribution of four additional machine guns, and Trujillo was later assassinated in a conspiracy by army officers funded by the CIA on May 30, 1961. In the aftermath, Robert Kennedy wrote that the CIA had succeeded where it had failed many times in the past, but in the face of that success, it was caught flatfooted, having failed to plan what to do next. Because of this, the country plunged into chaos, as the remnants of the regime tried desperately to hold on to power, with Ramfis Trujillo, the son of the dictator, returning to the country from Paris to try and restore the old order. This, however, would eventually fail, as a military rebellion on November 19, 1961 foiled a planned coup attempt by the Trujillo brothers (codenamed ''Operaciόn Luz Verde''), and forced the family to flee the country to Spain, marking the end of the 31 year long regime and leaving Joaquín Balaguer, a close friend and top politician of the old regime, as the sole man in power. The United States, for its part, would keep a close eye on the D.R under the pretext of 'preventing another Cuba'. In 1963, Juan Bosch, an intellectual and key opponent to the Trujillo regime, ascended to the presidency. Bosch wasn't exactly left-leaning, but he certainly wasn't in good terms with the U.S either. Bosch had little to no support in the military, still full of Trujillistas and conservative hardliners, since he wanted to put a check on its power and put it under civilian control, and the liberal 1963 constitution Bosch implemented was the last straw for the military and the Dominican oligarchy, as they immediately started plotting against Bosch. The CIA, at odds with president Kennedy and acting semi-independently, at the very least, knew about the situation and the upcoming coup against Bosch, and maybe even helped orchestrate it without Kennedy's direct approval. Nevertheless, Bosch was overthrown in a military coup on September 25h, 1963, barely seven months into his presidency. Kennedy condemned the coup, and refused to recognize the new military triumvirate, but after he was assassinated in November, the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, recognized the new junta and allied itself with it. On April 24, 1965, many elements of the military, particularly soldiers and young officers, launched a counter-coup against the military triumvirate, in what was known as the April Revolution, which would later turn into a wider civil war, which the junta, already increasingly unpopular, was losing quickly, much to the panic of the CIA and the White House. Generals still loyal to the triumvirate, called loyalists, quickly losing ground and on the verge of collapse, went to the U.S and asked for military assistance, and Lyndon B. Johnson, certain that the rebels, called the constitutionalists, were actually communists, sent 42,000 troops to invade the DR on April 28, under the pretext of protecting foreign lives, but actually intervening to keep their influence in the D.R present and prevent a revolutionary victory, which could undermine D.C's business and political interests. The CIA heavily facilitated the intervention with intelligence and arming pro-loyalist factions. The constitutionalists fought the U.S invasion fiercely, but by summer, the U.S had prevented the full victory of the constitutionalists, but they also failed to crush the rebellion outright, making the war a bloody stalemate, as a political settlement was reached, which ended in elections held the next year, in 1966, which Balaguer won, becoming president for the next 12 years and an important political figure in the country for the remainder of the century.


Bay of Pigs

The CIA welcomed
Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (13 August 1926 – 25 November 2016) was a Cuban politician and revolutionary who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and President of Cuba, president ...
on his visit to Washington, D.C., and gave him a face-to-face briefing. The CIA hoped that Castro would bring about a friendly democratic government and planned to support his government with money and guns. By December 11, 1959, however, a memo reached the DCI's desk recommending Castro's "elimination." Dulles replaced the word "elimination" with "removal," and set the scheme into action. By mid-August 1960, Dick Bissell sought, with the full backing of the CIA, to hire the
Mafia "Mafia", as an informal or general term, is often used to describe criminal organizations that bear a strong similarity to the Sicilian Mafia, original Mafia in Sicily, to the Italian-American Mafia, or to other Organized crime in Italy, organiz ...
to assassinate Castro. The
Bay of Pigs Invasion The Bay of Pigs Invasion (, sometimes called or after the Playa Girón) was a failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April 1961 by the United States of America and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front ...
was a failed military invasion of
Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
undertaken by the CIA-sponsored paramilitary group Brigade 2506 on April 17, 1961. A counter-revolutionary military, trained and funded by the CIA, Brigade 2506 fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF) and intended to overthrow Castro's increasingly communist government. Launched from
Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...
, the invading force was defeated within three days by the
Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (; FAR) are the military forces of Cuba. They include Cuban Revolutionary Army, Revolutionary Army, Cuban Revolutionary Navy, Revolutionary Navy, Cuban Revolutionary Air and Air Defense Force, Revolutionary A ...
, under Castro's direct command. US President Dwight D. Eisenhower was concerned at the direction Castro's government was taking, and in March 1960, Eisenhower allocated $13.1 million to the CIA to plan his overthrow. The CIA proceeded to organize the operation with the aid of various Cuban counter-revolutionary forces, training Brigade 2506 in Guatemala. Over 1,400 paramilitaries set out for Cuba by boat on April 13 for a marine invasion. Two days later on April 15, eight CIA-supplied B-26 bombers attacked Cuban airfields. On the night of April 16, the land invasion began in the Bay of Pigs, but by April 20, the invaders finally surrendered. The failed invasion strengthened the position of Castro's leadership as well as his ties with the USSR. This led eventually to the events of the
Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis () in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of Nuclear weapons d ...
of 1962. The invasion was a major embarrassment for US foreign policy. The Taylor Board was commissioned to determine what went wrong in Cuba. The Board came to the same conclusion that the Jan '61 President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities had concluded, and many other reviews prior, and to come, that Covert Action had to be completely isolated from intelligence and analysis. The Inspector General of the CIA investigated the Bay of Pigs. He concluded that there was a need to improve the organization and management of the CIA drastically.


Cuba: Terrorism and sabotage

After the failure of the attempted invasion at the Bay of Pigs, the CIA proposed Operation Mongoose, a program of
sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization (warfare), demoralization, destabilization, divide and rule, division, social disruption, disrupti ...
and terrorist attacks against civilian and military targets in Cuba, with the stated intent to bring down the Cuban administration and institute a new government. It also sought to force the Cuban government to introduce intrusive civil measures and divert resources to protect its citizens from the attacks. It was authorized by President Kennedy in November 1961. The operation saw the CIA engage in an extensive campaign of terrorist attacks against civilians and economic targets, killing significant numbers of civilians, and carry out covert operations against the Cuban government. The CIA established a base for the operation, with the cryptonym JMWAVE, at a disused naval facility on the
University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private university, private research university in Coral Gables, Florida, United States. , the university enrolled 19,852 students in two colleges and ten schools across over ...
campus. The operation was so extensive that it housed the largest number of CIA officers outside of Langley, eventually numbering some four hundred. It was a major employer in Florida, with several thousand agents in clandestine pay of the agency. The terrorist activities carried out by agents armed, organized and funded by the CIA were a further source of tension between the U.S. and Cuban governments. They were a major factor contributing to the
Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
decision to place missiles in Cuba, leading to the
Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis () in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of Nuclear weapons d ...
. The attacks continued through 1965. Though the level of terrorist activity directed by the CIA lessened in the second half of the 1960s, in 1969 the CIA was directed to intensify its operations against Cuba. Exile terrorists were still in the employ of the CIA in the mid-1970s, including Luis Posada Carriles. He remained on the CIA's payroll until mid-1976, and is widely believed to be responsible for the October 1976 Cubana 455 flight bombing, killing 73 people – the deadliest instance of airline terrorism in the western hemisphere prior to the attacks of September 2001 in New York. Despite the damage done and civilians killed in the CIA's terrorist attacks, by the measure of its stated objective the project was a complete failure.


Brazil

The CIA and the United States government were involved in the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état. The coup occurred from March 31 to April 1, which resulted in the Brazilian Armed Forces ousting President
João Goulart João Belchior Marques Goulart (; 1 March 1919 – 6 December 1976), commonly known as Jango, was a Brazilian politician who served as the president of Brazil from 1961 until a military coup d'état deposed him in 1964. He was considered the ...
. The United States saw Goulart as a left-wing threat in Latin America. Secret cables written by the US Ambassador to Brazil, Lincoln Gordon, confirmed that the CIA was involved in covert action in Brazil. The CIA encouraged "pro-democracy street rallies" in Brazil, for instance, to create dissent against Goulart.


Tibet

The CIA Tibetan program consisted of political plots,
propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...
distribution,
paramilitary A paramilitary is a military that is not a part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the use of the term "paramilitary" as far back as 1934. Overview Though a paramilitary is, by definiti ...
operations, and intelligence gathering based on U.S. commitments made to the
Dalai Lama The Dalai Lama (, ; ) is the head of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. The term is part of the full title "Holiness Knowing Everything Vajradhara Dalai Lama" (圣 识一切 瓦齐尔达喇 达赖 喇嘛) given by Altan Khan, the first Shu ...
in 1951 and 1956.


Indochina and the Vietnam War (1954–1975)

The OSS Patti mission arrived in
Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...
near the end of
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
and had significant interaction with the leaders of many Vietnamese factions, including
Ho Chi Minh (born ; 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), colloquially known as Uncle Ho () among other aliases and sobriquets, was a Vietnamese revolutionary and politician who served as the founder and first President of Vietnam, president of the ...
. During the period of U.S. combat involvement in the Vietnam War, there was considerable argument about progress among the Department of Defense under
Robert McNamara Robert Strange McNamara (; June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American businessman and government official who served as the eighth United States secretary of defense from 1961 to 1968 under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson ...
, the CIA, and, to some extent, the intelligence staff of Military Assistance Command Vietnam. Sometime between 1959 and 1961, the CIA started Project Tiger, a program of dropping
South Vietnam South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam (RVN; , VNCH), was a country in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975. It first garnered Diplomatic recognition, international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam within the ...
agents into
North Vietnam North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; ; VNDCCH), was a country in Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1976, with sovereignty fully recognized in 1954 Geneva Conference, 1954. A member of the communist Eastern Bloc, it o ...
to gather intelligence. These were failures; the Deputy Chief for Project Tiger, Captain Do Van Tien, admitted that he was an agent for
Hanoi Hanoi ( ; ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Vietnam, second-most populous city of Vietnam. The name "Hanoi" translates to "inside the river" (Hanoi is bordered by the Red River (Asia), Red and Black River (Asia), Black Riv ...
. In the face of the failure of Project Tiger,
the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The building was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As ...
wanted CIA paramilitary forces to participate in their Op Plan 64A. This resulted in the CIA's foreign paramilitaries being put under the command of the DOD, a move seen as a slippery slope inside the CIA, a slide from covert action towards militarization. The antiwar movement rapidly expanded across the United States during the Johnson presidency. Johnson wanted CIA Director Richard Helms to substantiate Johnson's hunch that Moscow and Beijing were financing and influencing the American antiwar movement. Thus, in the fall of 1967, the CIA launched a domestic surveillance program code-named Chaos that would linger for a total of seven years. Police departments across the country cooperated in tandem with the agency, amassing a "computer index of 300,000 names of American people and organizations, and extensive files on 7,200 citizens." Helms hatched a "Special Operations Group" in which " levenCIA officers grew long hair, learned the jargon of the New Left, and went off to infiltrate peace groups in the United States and Europe." A CIA analyst's assessment of Vietnam was that the U.S. was "becoming progressively divorced from reality... ndproceeding with far more courage than wisdom". From 1968 to 1972, the CIA's Phoenix Program involved the killing, without trial, of between twenty and forty thousand South Vietnamese civilians suspected to be members of what Americans called the "Infrastructure" – the non-military administrative and political components of the Communists' organizational structure. Thousands were tortured prior to being killed, by such methods as the repeated application of electroconvulsive machines, and the drilling of a dowel through the ear canal into the brain until the person died.


Abuses of CIA authority, 1970s

Conditions worsened in the mid-1970s, around the time of
Watergate The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon. The scandal began in 1972 and ultimately led to Nixon's resignation in 1974, in August of that year. It revol ...
. A dominant feature of political life during that period were the attempts of Congress to assert oversight of the U.S. presidency and the executive branch of the U.S. government. Revelations about past CIA activities, such as assassinations and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders (most notably Fidel Castro and Rafael Trujillo) and illegal domestic spying on U.S. citizens, provided the opportunities to increase Congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence operations. In 1971, the NSA and CIA were engaged in domestic spying; the DOD was eavesdropping on
Henry Kissinger Henry Alfred Kissinger (May 27, 1923 – November 29, 2023) was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 56th United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and the 7th National Security Advisor (United States), natio ...
. The White House and Camp David were wired for sound. Nixon and Kissinger were eavesdropping on their aides, as well as reporters. Famously, Nixon's Plumbers had in their number many former CIA officers, including Howard Hunt, Jim McCord, and Eugenio Martinez. On July 7, 1971, John Ehrlichman, Nixon's domestic policy chief, told DCI Cushman, Nixon's hatchet-man in the CIA, to let Cushman "know that untwas, in fact, doing some things for the President... you should consider he has pretty much ''carte blanche''". Hastening the CIA's fall from grace was the burglary of the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic Party by former CIA officers, and President
Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...
's subsequent attempt to use the CIA to impede the FBI's investigation of the burglary. In the famous "smoking gun" recording that led to President Nixon's resignation, Nixon ordered his chief of staff,
H. R. Haldeman Harry Robbins "Bob" Haldeman (October 27, 1926 – November 12, 1993) was an American political aide and businessman, best known for his service as White House Chief of Staff to President Richard Nixon and his consequent involvement in the Water ...
, to tell the CIA that further investigation of Watergate would ''"open the whole can of worms about the Bay of Pigs"''. In this way Nixon and Haldeman ensured that the CIA's No. 1 and No. 2 ranking officials, Richard Helms and Vernon Walters, communicated to FBI Director L. Patrick Gray that the FBI should not follow the money trail from the burglars to the
Committee to Re-elect the President A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly or other form of organization. A committee may not itself be considered to be a form of assembly or a decision-making body. Usually, an assembly o ...
, as it would uncover CIA informants in Mexico. The FBI initially agreed to this due to a long-standing agreement between the FBI and CIA not to uncover each other's sources of information, though within a couple of weeks the FBI resumed its investigation. Nonetheless, when the smoking gun tapes were made public, damage to the public's perception of CIA's top officials, and thus to the CIA as a whole, could not be avoided. On November 13, 1972, after Nixon's landslide re-election, Nixon told Kissinger " intendto ruin the Foreign Service. I mean ruin it – the old Foreign Service – and to build a new one." He had similar designs for the CIA and intended to replace Helms with James Schlesinger. Nixon had promised that Helms could stay on until his 60th birthday, the mandatory retirement age. On February 2, Nixon broke that promise, carrying through with his intention to "remove the deadwood" from the CIA. "Get rid of the clowns" was his order to the incoming CI. Kissinger had been running the CIA since the beginning of Nixon's presidency, but Nixon impressed on Schlesinger that he must appear to Congress to be in charge, averting their suspicion of Kissinger's involvement. Nixon also hoped that Schlesinger could push through broader changes in the intelligence community that he had been working towards for years, the creation of a Director of National Intelligence, and spinning off the covert action part of the CIA into a separate organ. Before Helms would leave office, he would destroy every tape he had secretly made of meetings in his office, and many of the papers on Project MKUltra. In Schlesinger's 17-week tenure, in his assertion to President Nixon that it was "imperative to cut back on 'the prominence of CIA operations' around the world," the director fired more than 1,500 employees. As Watergate threw the spotlight on the CIA, Schlesinger, who had been kept in the dark about the CIA's involvement, decided he needed to know what skeletons were in the closet This became the Family Jewels. It included information linking the CIA to the assassination of foreign leaders, the illegal surveillance of some 7,000 U.S. citizens involved in the antiwar movement (
Operation CHAOS Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) domestic espionage project targeting American citizens operating from 1967 to 1974, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson and expanded under President Richard Nixon ...
), its experiments on U.S. and Canadian citizens without their knowledge, secretly giving them LSD (among other things) and observing the results. This prompted Congress to create the Church Committee in the Senate, and the Pike Committee in the House. President
Gerald Ford Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913December 26, 2006) was the 38th president of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, Ford assumed the p ...
created the Rockefeller Commission, and issued an executive order prohibiting the assassination of foreign leaders. DCI Colby leaked the papers to the press, later he stated that he believed that providing Congress with this information was the correct thing to do, and ultimately in the CIA's interests. In December 1974 the ''
New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' reported that the CIA had collected intelligence files on at least 10,000 Americans and engaged in dozens of other illegal activities beginning in the 1950s, including break-ins, wiretapping and mail inspections, in violation of its 1947 charter which prohibited it from taking action on American soil and against US citizens.


Congressional investigations

Acting Attorney General Laurence Silberman learned of the existence of the Family Jewels and issued a subpoena for them, prompting eight congressional investigations on the domestic spying activities of the CIA. Bill Colby's short tenure as DCI would end with the Halloween Massacre. His replacement was
George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushBefore the outcome of the 2000 United States presidential election, he was usually referred to simply as "George Bush" but became more commonly known as "George H. W. Bush", "Bush Senior," "Bush 41," and even "Bush th ...
. At the time, the DOD had control of 80% of the intelligence budget. Communication and coordination between the CIA and the DOD would suffer greatly under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The CIA's budget for hiring clandestine officers had been squeezed out by the paramilitary operations in Southeast Asia, and the government's poor popularity further strained hiring. This left the agency bloated with middle management, and anemic in younger officers. With employee training taking five years, the agency's only hope would be on the trickle of new officers coming to fruition years in the future. The CIA would see another setback as communists would take Angola. William J. Casey, a member of Ford's Intelligence Advisory Board, obtained Bush's approval to allow a team from outside the CIA to produce Soviet military estimates as a "Team B". The "B" team was composed of hawks. Their estimates were the highest that could be justified, and they painted a picture of a growing Soviet military when the Soviet military was indeed shrinking. Many of their reports found their way to the press.


Chad

Chad's neighbor
Libya Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...
was a major source of weaponry to communist rebel forces. The CIA seized the opportunity to arm and finance Chad's Prime Minister, Hissène Habré, after he created a breakaway government in western
Sudan Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the east, Eritrea and Ethiopi ...
.


Afghanistan

In
Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
, the CIA funneled several billion dollars' worth of weapons, including
FIM-92 Stinger The FIM-92 Stinger is an American man-portable air-defense system (MANPADS) that operates as an infrared homing surface-to-air missile (SAM). It can be adapted to fire from a wide variety of ground vehicles, and from helicopters and drones as th ...
surface-to-air missiles A surface-to-air missile (SAM), also known as a ground-to-air missile (GTAM) or surface-to-air guided weapon (SAGW), is a missile designed to be launched from the ground or the sea to destroy aircraft or other missiles. It is one type of anti-a ...
, to
Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
i
Inter-Services Intelligence The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is the premier Pakistani Intelligence community, intelligence agency of Pakistan. It is responsible for gathering, processing, and analyzing any information from around the world that is deemed relevant t ...
(ISI)—which funneled them to tens of thousands of Afghan mujahideen resistance fighters in order to fight the Soviets and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War. In total, the CIA sent approximately 2,300 Stingers to Afghanistan, creating a substantial
black market A black market is a Secrecy, clandestine Market (economics), market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality, or is not compliant with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the set of goods and services who ...
for the weapons throughout the Middle East, Central Asia, and even parts of Africa that persisted well into the 1990s. Perhaps 100 Stingers were acquired by Iran. The CIA later operated a program to recover the Stingers through cash buybacks.


Nicaragua

Under President
Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (October 1, 1924December 29, 2024) was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party ...
, the CIA was conducting covertly funded support for the Contras in their war against the Sandinistas. In March 1981, Reagan told
Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
that the CIA would protect
El Salvador El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is S ...
by preventing the Sandinistas from shipping arms to communist rebels in El Salvador. The CIA also began arming and training the Contras in
Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, ...
in hopes that they could depose the Sandinistas in
Nicaragua Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the geographically largest Sovereign state, country in Central America, comprising . With a population of 7,142,529 as of 2024, it is the third-most populous country in Central America aft ...
. The CIA was involved in the
Iran–Contra affair The Iran–Contra affair (; ), also referred to as the Iran–Contra scandal, the Iran Initiative, or simply Iran–Contra, was a political scandal in the United States that centered on arms trafficking to Iran between 1981 and 1986, facilitat ...
arms smuggling scandal. Repercussions from the scandal included the creation of the Intelligence Authorization Act in 1991. It defined covert operations as secret missions in geopolitical areas where the U.S. is neither openly nor apparently engaged. This also required an authorizing chain of command, including an official, presidential finding report and the informing of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, which, in emergencies, requires only "timely notification." Critics have alleged that the CIA was also involved in Contra cocaine trafficking.


Lebanon

The CIA's prime source in Lebanon was Bashir Gemayel, a member of the Christian Maronite sect. The uprising against the Maronite minority blindsided the CIA.
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
invaded Lebanon, and, along with the CIA, propped up Gemayel. This secured Gemayel's assurance that Americans would be protected in Lebanon. Thirteen days later he was assassinated. Imad Mughniyah, a
Hezbollah Hezbollah ( ; , , ) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. I ...
assassin, targeted Americans in retaliation for the Israeli invasion, the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and the US Marines of the Multi-National Force for their role in opposing the
PLO The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; ) is a Palestinian nationalist coalition that is internationally recognized as the official representative of the Palestinian people in both the occupied Palestinian territories and the diaspora. ...
in Lebanon. On April 18, 1983, a 2,000 lb car bomb exploded in the lobby of the American embassy in
Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...
, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans and 7 CIA officers, including Robert Ames, one of the CIA's Middle East experts. America's fortunes in Lebanon suffered more as America's poorly directed retaliation for the bombing was interpreted by many as support for the Maronite minority. On October 23, 1983, two bombs ( 1983 Beirut Bombing) were set off in Beirut, including a 10-ton bomb at a US military barracks that killed 242 people. The embassy bombing killed Ken Haas, the CIA's Station Chief in
Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...
. Bill Buckley was sent in to replace him. Eighteen days after the US Marines left Lebanon, Buckley was kidnapped. On March 7, 1984, Jeremy Levin, CNN's Bureau Chief in Beirut, was kidnapped. Twelve more Americans were captured in Beirut during the
Reagan Administration Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following his landslide victory over ...
. Manucher Ghorbanifar, a former Savak agent, was an information seller, and was discredited over his record of misinformation. He reached out to the agency offering a back channel to Iran, suggesting a trade of missiles that would be lucrative to the intermediaries.


Pakistan

It has been alleged by such authors as Ahmed Rashid that the CIA and ISI have been waging a clandestine war.


India–Pakistan geopolitical tensions

On May 11, 1998, CIA Director George Tenet and his agency were taken aback by India's second nuclear test. The test prompted concerns from its nuclear-capable adversary,
Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...
, and, "remade the balance of power in the world." The nuclear test was
New Delhi New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Parliament ...
's calculated response to Pakistan previously testing new missiles in its expanding arsenal. This series of events subsequently revealed the CIA's "failure of espionage, a failure to read photographs, a failure to comprehend reports, a failure to think, and a failure to see."


Poland, 1980–1989

Unlike the
Carter administration Jimmy Carter's tenure as the List of presidents of the United States, 39th president of the United States began with Inauguration of Jimmy Carter, his inauguration on January 20, 1977, and ended on January 20, 1981. Carter, a Democratic Party ...
, the
Reagan administration Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following his landslide victory over ...
supported the
Solidarity Solidarity or solidarism is an awareness of shared interests, objectives, standards, and sympathies creating a psychological sense of unity of groups or classes. True solidarity means moving beyond individual identities and single issue politics ...
movement in
Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
, andbased on CIA intelligencewaged a public relations campaign to deter what the Carter administration felt was "an imminent move by large Soviet military forces into Poland." Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, a senior officer on the Polish General Staff, was secretly sending reports to the CIA. The CIA transferred around $2 million yearly in cash to Solidarity, which suggests that $10 million total is a reasonable estimate for the five-year total. There were no direct links between the CIA and ''Solidarność'', and all money was channeled through third parties. CIA officers were barred from meeting Solidarity leaders, and the CIA's contacts with ''Solidarność'' activists were weaker than those of the
AFL–CIO The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) is a national trade union center that is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 61 national and international unions, together r ...
, which raised 300 thousand dollars from its members, which were used to provide material and cash directly to Solidarity, with no control of Solidarity's use of it. The U.S. Congress authorized the National Endowment for Democracy to promote democracy, and the NED allocated $10 million to Solidarity. When the Polish government launched a crackdown in December 1981, Solidarity was not alerted. Explanations for this vary; some believe the CIA was caught off guard, while others suggest that American policymakers viewed an internal crackdown as preferable to an "inevitable Soviet intervention." CIA support for Solidarity included money, equipment and training, which was coordinated by Special Operations CIA division. Henry Hyde, U.S. House intelligence committee member, said that the U.S. provided "supplies and technical assistance in terms of clandestine newspapers, broadcasting, propaganda, money, organizational help and advice". Michael Reisman of Yale Law School named operations in Poland as one of the CIA's
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
covert operations. Initial funds for covert actions by the CIA were $2 million, but authorization was soon increased and by 1985 the CIA had successfully infiltrated Poland. Rainer Thiel, in ''Nested Games of External Democracy Promotion: The United States and the Polish Liberalization 1980–1989'', mentions how covert operations by the CIA, and spy games, among others, allowed the U.S. to proceed with successful regime change.


Operation Gladio

During the
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
, the CIA and
NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...
were involved in
Operation Gladio Operation Gladio was the codename for clandestine " stay-behind" operations of armed resistance that were organized by the Western Union (WU; founded in 1948), and subsequently by NATO (formed in 1949) and by the CIA (established in 1947), in ...
. As part of Operation Gladio, the CIA supported the Italian government, and allegedly supported
neo-fascist organizations Neo-fascism is a Aftermath of World War II, post-World War II Far-right politics, far-right ideology which includes significant elements of fascism. Neo-fascism usually includes ultranationalism, ultraconservatism, racial supremacy, right-win ...
such as National Vanguard, New Order and the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari during the Years of Lead in Italy. In
Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...
, Gladio was called
Counter-Guerrilla Counter-Guerrilla () is a Turkish branch of Operation Gladio, a clandestine stay-behind Anti-communism, anti-communist initiative backed by the United States as an expression of the Truman Doctrine. The founding goal of the operation was to erect ...
. CIA efforts strengthened the Pan-Turkist movement through the founding member of the Counter-Guerrilla; Alparslan Türkeş. Other far-right individuals employed by the CIA as part of Counter-Guerilla included Ruzi Nazar, a former SS officer and Pan-Turkist.


Operation Desert Storm

During the
Iran–Iraq War The Iran–Iraq War, also known as the First Gulf War, was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. Active hostilities began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for nearly eight years, unti ...
, the CIA had backed both sides. The CIA had maintained a network of spies in Iran, but in 1989 a CIA mistake compromised every agent they had in there, and the CIA had no agents in Iraq. In the weeks before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the CIA downplayed the military buildup. During the war, CIA estimates of Iraqi abilities and intentions flip-flopped and were rarely accurate. In one particular case, the DOD had asked the CIA to identify military targets to bomb. One target the CIA identified was an underground shelter. The CIA did not know that it was a civilian bomb shelter. In a rare instance, the CIA correctly determined that the coalition forces efforts were coming up short in their efforts to destroy SCUD missiles. Congress took away the CIA's role in interpreting spy-satellite photos, putting the CIA's satellite intelligence operations under the auspices of the military. The CIA created its office of military affairs, which operated as "second-echelon support for the Pentagon. .. answering ... questions from military men ike'how wide is this road?


Fall of the Soviet Union

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
's announcement of the unilateral reduction of 500,000 Soviet troops took the CIA by surprise. Moreover, Doug MacEachin, the CIA's Chief of Soviet analysis, said that even if the CIA had told the President, the NSC, and Congress about the cuts beforehand, it would have been ignored. "We never would have been able to publish it." All the CIA numbers on the Soviet Union's economy were wrong. Too often the CIA relied on inexperienced people supposedly deemed experts. Bob Gates had preceded Doug MacEachin as Chief of Soviet analysis, and he had never visited the Soviet Union. Few officers, even those stationed in the country, spoke the language of the people on whom they spied. And the CIA could not send agents to respond to developing situations. The CIA analysis of Russia during the Cold War was either driven by ideology, or by politics. William J. Crowe, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted that the CIA "talked about the Soviet Union as if they weren't reading the newspapers, much less developed clandestine intelligence." On January 25, 1993, Mir Qazi opened fire at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, killing two officers and wounding three others. On February 26, Al-Qaeda terrorists led by Ramzi Yousef bombed the parking garage below the North Tower of the World Trade Center in
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, killing six people and injuring 1,402 others. During the
Bosnian War The Bosnian War ( / Рат у Босни и Херцеговини) was an international armed conflict that took place in Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. Following several earlier violent incid ...
, the CIA ignored signs within and without of the Srebrenica massacre. On July 13, 1995, when the press report about the massacre came out, the CIA received pictures from a spy satellite of prisoners guarded by men with guns in Srebrenica. The CIA had no agents on the ground to verify the report. Two weeks after news reports of the slaughter, the CIA sent a U-2 to photograph it. A week later the CIA completed its report on the matter. The final report came to the Oval Office on August 4, 1995. In short, it took three weeks for the agency to confirm that one of the largest mass murders in Europe since the Second World War had occurred. Another CIA mistake which occurred in the Balkans during the Clinton presidency was the NATO bombing of Serbia. To force
Slobodan Milošević Slobodan Milošević ( sr-Cyrl, Слободан Милошевић, ; 20 August 1941 – 11 March 2006) was a Yugoslav and Serbian politician who was the President of Serbia between 1989 and 1997 and President of the Federal Republic of Yugos ...
to withdraw his troops from Kosovo, the CIA had been invited to provide military targets for bombings, wherein the agency's analysts used tourist maps to determine the location. However, the agency incorrectly provided the coordinates of the Chinese Embassy as a target resulting in its bombing. The CIA had misread the target as Slobodan Milosevic's military depot. In
Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...
, the CIA produced the Murphy Memo, based on audio recordings made by
covert listening device A covert listening device, more commonly known as a bug or a wire, is usually a combination of a miniature radio transmitter with a microphone. The use of bugs, called bugging, or wiretapping is a common technique in surveillance, espionage and ...
s planted by Guatemalan intelligence in the bedroom of Ambassador Marilyn McAfee. In the recording, Ambassador McAfee verbally entreated "Murphy." The CIA circulated a memo in the highest Washington circles accusing Ambassador McAfee of having an extramarital lesbian affair with her secretary, Carol Murphy. There was no affair. Ambassador McAfee was calling to Murphy, her poodle. Harold James Nicholson would burn several serving officers and three years of trainees before he was caught spying for Russia. In 1997 the House would pen another report, which said that CIA officers know little about the language or politics of the people they spy on; the conclusion was that the CIA lacked the "depth, breadth, and expertise to monitor political, military, and economic developments worldwide." Russ Travers said in the CIA in-house journal that in five years "intelligence failure is inevitable". In 1997 the CIA's new director
George Tenet George John Tenet (born January 5, 1953) is an American intelligence official and academic who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Pr ...
would promise a new working agency by 2002. The CIA's surprise at India's detonation of an atom bomb was a failure at almost every level. After the 1998 embassy bombings by Al Qaeda, the CIA offered two targets to be hit in retaliation. One of them was the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, where traces of chemical weapon precursors had been detected. In the aftermath, it was concluded that "the decision to target al Shifa continues a tradition of operating on inadequate intelligence about Sudan." It triggered the CIA to make "substantial and sweeping changes" to prevent "a catastrophic systemic intelligence failure."


Aldrich Ames

Between 1985 and 1986, the CIA lost every spy it had in Eastern Europe. The details of the investigation into the cause were obscured from the new Director, and the investigation had little success and has been widely criticized. On February 21, 1994, FBI agents pulled
Aldrich Ames Aldrich Hazen Ames (; born May 26, 1941) is an American former Central Intelligence Agency, CIA counterintelligence officer who was convicted of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia in 1994. He is serving a life sentence, without th ...
out of his Jaguar. In the investigation that ensued, the CIA discovered that many of the sources for its most important analyses of the USSR were based on Soviet disinformation fed to the CIA by controlled agents. On top of that, it was discovered that, in some cases, the CIA suspected at the time that the sources were compromised, but the information was sent up the chain as genuine.


Osama bin Laden

Agency files show that it is believed
Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden (10 March 19572 May 2011) was a militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, Bin Laden participated in the Afghan ''mujahideen'' against the Soviet Union, and support ...
was funding the Afghan rebels against the USSR in the 1980s. In 1991, bin Laden returned to his native
Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...
protesting the presence of troops, and Operation Desert Storm. He was expelled from the country. In 1996, the CIA created a team to hunt bin Laden. They were trading information with the Sudanese until, on the word of a source that would later be found to be a fabricator, the CIA closed its Sudan station later that year. In 1998, bin Laden would declare war on America, and, on August 7, strike in Tanzania and Nairobi. On October 12, 2000, Al Qaeda bombed the USS ''Cole''. In the first days of George W. Bush's presidency, Al Qaeda threats were ubiquitous in daily presidential CIA briefings, but it may have become a case of false alarm. The agency's predictions were dire but carried little weight, and the focus of the president and his defense staff were elsewhere. The CIA arranged the arrests of suspected Al Qaeda members through cooperation with foreign agencies, but the CIA could not definitively say what effect these arrests have had, and it could not gain hard intelligence from those captured. The President had asked the CIA if Al Qaeda could plan attacks in the US. On August 6, Bush received a daily briefing with the headline, not based on current, solid intelligence, "Al Qaeda determined to strike inside the US." The US had been hunting bin Laden since 1996 and had had several opportunities, but neither Clinton, nor Bush had wanted to risk taking an active role in a murky assassination plot, and the perfect opportunity had never materialized for a DCI that would have given him the reassurances he needed to take the plunge. That day, Richard A. Clarke sent National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice warning of the risks, and decrying the inaction of the CIA.


Al-Qaeda and the Global War on Terrorism

In January 1996, the CIA created an experimental "virtual station," the Bin Laden Issue Station, under the Counterterrorist Center, to track bin Laden's developing activities. Al-Fadl, who defected to the CIA in spring 1996, began to provide the Station with a new image of the Al Qaeda leader: he was not only a terrorist financier but a terrorist organizer as well. FBI Special Agent Dan Coleman (who together with his partner Jack Cloonan had been "seconded" to the bin Laden Station) called him Qaeda's "
Rosetta Stone The Rosetta Stone is a stele of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a Rosetta Stone decree, decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of ancient Egypt, Egypt, on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts ...
". In 1999, CIA chief George Tenet launched a plan to deal with al-Qaeda. The Counterterrorist Center, its new chief, Cofer Black, and the center's bin Laden unit were the plan's developers and executors. Once it was prepared, Tenet assigned CIA intelligence chief Charles E. Allen to set up a "Qaeda cell" to oversee its tactical execution. In 2000, the CIA and
USAF The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...
jointly ran a series of flights over Afghanistan with a small remote-controlled reconnaissance drone, the
Predator Predation is a biological interaction in which one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common List of feeding behaviours, feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation ...
; they obtained probable photos of bin Laden. Cofer Black and others became advocates of arming the Predator with missiles to try to assassinate bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders.


September 11 attacks and its aftermath

On September 11, 2001, 19 Al-Qaeda members hijacked four passenger jets within the
Northeastern United States The Northeastern United States (also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast) is List of regions of the United States, census regions United States Census Bureau. Located on the East Coast of the United States, ...
in a series of coordinated terrorist attacks. Two planes crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in
New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...
, the third into
the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense, in Arlington County, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The building was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As ...
in
Arlington County, Virginia Arlington County, or simply Arlington, is a County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Virginia. The county is located in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from Washington, D.C., the nati ...
, and the fourth inadvertently into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The attacks cost the lives of 2,996 people (including the 19 hijackers), caused the destruction of the Twin Towers, and damaged the western side of the Pentagon. Soon after 9/11, ''The New York Times'' released a story stating that the CIA's New York field office was destroyed in the wake of the attacks. According to unnamed CIA sources, while
first responder A first responder is a person with specialized training who is among the first to arrive and provide assistance or incident resolution at the scene of an emergency. First responders typically include Law enforcement, law enforcement officers (co ...
s, military personnel and
volunteers Volunteering is an elective and freely chosen act of an individual or group giving their time and labor, often for community service. Many volunteers are specifically trained in the areas they work, such as medicine, education, or emergenc ...
were conducting rescue efforts at the World Trade Center site, a special CIA team was searching the rubble for both digital and paper copies of classified documents. This was done according to well-rehearsed document recovery procedures put in place after the Iranian takeover of the United States Embassy in Tehran in 1979. While the CIA insists that those who conducted the attacks on 9/11 were not aware that the agency was operating at 7 World Trade Center under the guise of another (unidentified) federal agency, this center was the headquarters for many notable criminal terrorism investigations. Though the New York field offices' main responsibilities were to monitor and recruit foreign officials stationed at the United Nations, the field office also handled the investigations of the August 1998 bombings of United States Embassies in East Africa and the October 2000 bombing of the USS ''Cole''. Despite the fact that the 9/11 attacks may have damaged the CIA's New York branch, and they had to loan office space from the US Mission to the United Nations and other federal agencies, there was an upside for the CIA. In the months immediately following 9/11, there was a huge increase in the number of applications for CIA positions. According to CIA representatives that spoke with ''The New York Times'', pre-9/11 the agency received approximately 500 to 600 applications a week, in the months following 9/11 the agency received that number daily. The intelligence community as a whole, and especially the CIA, were involved in presidential planning immediately after the 9/11 attacks. In his address to the nation at 8:30pm on September 11, 2001, George W. Bush mentioned the intelligence community: "The search is underway for those who are behind these evil acts, I've directed the full resource of our ''intelligence'' and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and bring them to justice." The involvement of the CIA in the newly coined "War on Terror" was further increased on September 15, 2001. During a meeting at Camp David George W. Bush agreed to adopt a plan proposed by CIA director George Tenet. This plan consisted of conducting a covert war in which CIA paramilitary officers would cooperate with anti-Taliban guerrillas inside Afghanistan. They would later be joined by small special operations forces teams which would call in precision airstrikes on Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. This plan was codified on September 16, 2001, with Bush's signature of an official Memorandum of Notification that allowed the plan to proceed. On November 25–27, 2001, Taliban prisoners revolted at the Qala Jangi prison west of Mazar-e-Sharif. Though several days of struggle occurred between the Taliban prisoners and the Northern Alliance members present, the prisoners gained the upper hand and obtained North Alliance weapons. At some point during this period Johnny "Mike" Spann, a CIA officer sent to question the prisoners, was beaten to death. He became the first American to die in combat in the war in Afghanistan. After 9/11, the CIA came under criticism for not having done enough to prevent the attacks. Tenet rejected the criticism, citing the agency's planning efforts especially over the preceding two years. He also considered that the CIA's efforts had put the agency in a position to respond rapidly and effectively to the attacks, both in the "Afghan sanctuary" and in "ninety-two countries around the world". The new strategy was called the "Worldwide Attack Matrix".
Anwar al-Awlaki Anwar Nasser Abdulla al-Awlaki (; April 21 or 22, 1971September 30, 2011) was an American-Yemeni lecturer assassinated Drone strikes in Yemen, in Yemen in 2011 by a U.S. government drone strike ordered by President Barack Obama. Al-Awlaki was th ...
, a Yemeni American U.S. citizen and al-Qaeda member, was killed on September 30, 2011, by a CIA drone strike in Yemen. Al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, a noncombatant and U.S. citizen, was also killed in a separate strike. Although approved by the Department of Justice, the strikes sparked discussion on the legality of killing American citizens without trial.


Failures in intelligence analysis

A major criticism is a failure to forestall the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
. The
9/11 Commission Report ''The 9/11 Commission Report'', officially the ''Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States'', is the official report into the events leading up to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It was prep ...
identified failures in the IC as a whole. One problem, for example, was the FBI failing to "connect the dots" by sharing information among its decentralized field offices. The report concluded that former DCI
George Tenet George John Tenet (born January 5, 1953) is an American intelligence official and academic who served as the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, as well as a Distinguished Professor in the Pr ...
failed to adequately prepare the agency to deal with the danger posed by
al-Qaeda , image = Flag of Jihad.svg , caption = Jihadist flag, Flag used by various al-Qaeda factions , founder = Osama bin Laden{{Assassinated, Killing of Osama bin Laden , leaders = {{Plainlist, * Osama bin Lad ...
prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The report was finished in June 2005 and was partially released to the public in an agreement with Congress, over the objections of current DCI General Michael Hayden. Hayden said its publication would "consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed." Tenet disagreed with the report's conclusions, citing his planning efforts vis-à-vis al-Qaeda, particularly from 1999. Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence, Carl W. Ford Jr. remarked, "As long as we rate intelligence more for its volume than its quality, we will continue to turn out the $40 billion pile of crap we have become famous for." He further stated, " he CIA isbroken. It's so broken that nobody wants to believe it."Tim Winer. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. New York: Doubleday, 2007.


Yugoslav wars

In 1989; Yugoslavia officially dissolved into six republics, with borders drawn along ethnic and historical lines:
Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes known as Bosnia-Herzegovina and informally as Bosnia, is a country in Southeast Europe. Situated on the Balkans, Balkan Peninsula, it borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to th ...
,
Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...
, Macedonia,
Montenegro , image_flag = Flag of Montenegro.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Montenegro.svg , coa_size = 80 , national_motto = , national_anthem = () , image_map = Europe-Mont ...
,
Serbia , image_flag = Flag of Serbia.svg , national_motto = , image_coat = Coat of arms of Serbia.svg , national_anthem = () , image_map = , map_caption = Location of Serbia (gree ...
, and
Slovenia Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...
. This quickly dissolved into ethnic tensions between
Serbs The Serbs ( sr-Cyr, Срби, Srbi, ) are a South Slavs, South Slavic ethnic group native to Southeastern Europe who share a common Serbian Cultural heritage, ancestry, Culture of Serbia, culture, History of Serbia, history, and Serbian lan ...
and other Balkan ethnicities. In 1991, the CIA predicted that tension in the region would evolve into a full blown Civil war. In 1992, the U.S. embargoed the trafficking of weapons into both Bosnia and Serbia in order to not prolong the war and the destruction of impacted communities. In May 1994, the CIA reported that the embargo had been ignored by countries such as Malaysia and Iran who moved weapons into Bosnia.


Iraq War

Seventy-two days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush told Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to update the US
plan A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with details of timing and resources, used to achieve an Goal, objective to do something. It is commonly understood as a modal logic, temporal set (mathematics), set of intended actions through wh ...
for an invasion of
Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...
, but not to tell anyone. Rumsfeld asked Bush if he could bring DCI Tenet into the loop, to which Bush agreed. The CIA had put eight of their best officers in Kurdish territory in Northern Iraq. By December 2002, the CIA had close to a dozen functional networks in Iraq and would penetrate Iraq's SSO, tap the encrypted communications of the Deputy Prime Minister, and recruit the bodyguard of Hussein's son as an agent. As time passed, the CIA would become more frantic about the possibility of their networks being compromised. To the CIA, the
invasion An invasion is a Offensive (military), military offensive of combatants of one geopolitics, geopolitical Legal entity, entity, usually in large numbers, entering territory (country subdivision), territory controlled by another similar entity, ...
had to occur before the end of February 2003 if their sources inside Hussein's government were to survive. The rollup would happen as predicted; 37 CIA sources recognized by their Thuraya satellite telephones provided for them by the CIA. The case
Colin Powell Colin Luther Powell ( ; – ) was an Americans, American diplomat, and army officer who was the 65th United States secretary of state from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African-American to hold the office. He was the 15th National Security ...
presented before the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
(purportedly proving an Iraqi WMD program) was inaccurate. DDCI John E. McLaughlin was part of a long discussion in the CIA about equivocation. McLaughlin, who would make, among others, the "slam dunk" presentation to the President, "felt that they had to dare to be wrong to be clearer in their judgments". The Al Qaeda connection, for instance, was from a single source, extracted through torture, and was later denied. The sole source for the allegations of Iraqi mobile weapons laboratories, code-named Curveball, was a known liar. A postmortem of the intelligence failures in the lead up to Iraq led by former DDCI Richard Kerr would conclude that the CIA had been a casualty of the Cold War, wiped out in a way "analogous to the effect of the meteor strikes on the dinosaurs." The opening days of the invasion of Iraq would see successes and defeats for the CIA. With its Iraq networks compromised, and its strategic and tactical information shallow, and often wrong, the intelligence side of the invasion itself would be a black eye for the agency. The CIA would see some success with its "Scorpion" paramilitary teams composed of CIA Special Activities Division paramilitary officers, along with friendly Iraqi partisans. CIA SAD officers would also help the US 10th Special Forces. The occupation of Iraq would be a low point in the history of the CIA. At the largest CIA station in the world, officers would rotate through 1–3-month tours. In Iraq, almost 500 transient officers would be trapped inside the
Green Zone The Green Zone () is the most common name for the International Zone of Baghdad. It is a area in the Karkh, Karkh district of central Baghdad, Iraq. It is the chief government precinct and the seat of the Iraqi government. History Pre-200 ...
while Iraq station chiefs would rotate with only a little less frequency.


2004, DNI takes over CIA top-level functions

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 created the office of the
Director of National Intelligence The director of national intelligence (DNI) is a Cabinet of the United States#Current Cabinet and Cabinet-rank officials, cabinet-level Federal government of the United States, United States government intelligence and security official. The p ...
(DNI), who took over some of the government and intelligence community (IC)-wide functions that had previously been the CIA's. The DNI manages the United States Intelligence Community and in so doing it manages the
intelligence cycle The intelligence cycle is an idealized model of how intelligence (information gathering), intelligence is processed in civilian and military intelligence agency, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement organizations. It is a closed path (gra ...
. Among the functions that moved to the DNI were the preparation of estimates reflecting the consolidated opinion of the 16 IC agencies, and preparation of briefings for the president. On July 30, 2008, President Bush issued Executive Order 13470 amending
Executive Order 12333 Executive Order 12333, signed on December 4, 1981 by U.S. president Ronald Reagan, was an executive order intended to extend powers and responsibilities of U.S. intelligence agencies and direct the leaders of U.S. federal agencies to co-operat ...
to strengthen the role of the DNI. Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community, serving as the president's principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the CIA. The DCI's title now is "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" (D/CIA), serving as head of the CIA. Currently, the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence. Before the establishment of the DNI, the CIA reported to the President, with informational briefings to congressional committees. The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the National Security Council, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, etc. All 16 Intelligence Community agencies are under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.


Operation Neptune Spear

On May 1, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that
Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden (10 March 19572 May 2011) was a militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, Bin Laden participated in the Afghan ''mujahideen'' against the Soviet Union, and support ...
was killed earlier that day by "a small team of Americans" operating in Abbottabad, Pakistan, during a CIA operation. The raid was executed from a CIA forward base in Afghanistan by elements of the U.S. Navy's Naval Special Warfare Development Group and CIA paramilitary operatives. The operation was a result of years of intelligence work that included the CIA's capture and
interrogation Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful informa ...
of Khalid Sheik Mohammad, which led to the identity of a courier of bin Laden's, the tracking of the courier to the compound by Special Activities Division paramilitary operatives and the establishing of a CIA safe house to provide critical tactical intelligence for the operation. The CIA ran a fake vaccination clinic in an attempt to locate
Osama bin Laden Osama bin Laden (10 March 19572 May 2011) was a militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, Bin Laden participated in the Afghan ''mujahideen'' against the Soviet Union, and support ...
. This may have negatively affected the campaign against polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In some rural areas, vaccination workers were banned by the Taliban or chased away by locals. There have been many deadly attacks by militants against vaccination workers in Pakistan. Efforts to eradicate polio have furthermore been disrupted by American drone strikes.


Syrian Civil War

Under the aegis of operation Timber Sycamore and other clandestine activities, CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops have trained and armed nearly 10,000 rebel fighters at a cost of $1 billion a year. The CIA has been sending weapons to anti-government rebels in Syria since at least 2012. These weapons have been reportedly falling into hands of extremists, such as
al-Nusra Front Al-Nusra Front or Jabhat al-Nusra or Jabhat Nusrat Ahl al-Sham, also known as Front for the Conquest of the Levant, and also later known as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham was a Salafi-jihadist organization that fought against Ba'athist Syria, Ba'athist ...
and ISIL. Around February 2017, the CIA was instructed to halt military aid to Syrian rebels (Free Syrian Army or FSA), which also included training, ammunition, guided missiles, and salaries. Sources believe that the aid freeze was related to concerns that weapons and funds will fall into the hands of ISIL. On April 6, 2017, Al-Jazeera reported that funding to the FSA was partially restored. Based on the information provided by two FSA sources, the new military operation room will receive its funds from the coalition "Friends of Syria." The coalition consists of members from the U.S., Turkey, Western Europe, and Gulf states, which previously supported the military operation known as MOM. It was reported in July 2017 that President
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
had ordered a "phasing out" of the CIA's support for anti- Assad rebels.


Reorganization

On 6 March 2015, the office of the D/CIA issued an unclassified edition of a statement by the director, titled 'Our Agency's Blueprint for the Future', as a press release for public consumption. The press release announced sweeping plans for the reorganization and reform of the CIA, which the director believes will bring the CIA more in line with the Agency doctrine called the 'Strategic Direction'. Among the principal changes disclosed include the establishment of a new directorate, the Directorate of Digital Innovation. Other changes which were announced include the formation of a Talent Development Center of Excellence, the enhancement and expansion of the CIA University and the creation of the office of the Chancellor to head the CIA University in order to consolidate and unify recruitment and training efforts. The National Clandestine Service (NCS) will be reverting to its original Directorate name, the Directorate of Operations. The Directorate of Intelligence is also being renamed; it will now be the Directorate of Analysis.


Drones

A new policy introduced by President Barack Obama removed the authority of the CIA to launch drone attacks and allowed these attacks only under Department of Defense command. This change was reversed by President Donald Trump, who authorized CIA drone strikes on suspected terrorists.


Encryption devices sold through front company

For decades until 2018, the CIA secretly owned
Crypto AG Crypto AG was a Swiss company specialising in communications and information security founded by Boris Hagelin in 1952. The company was secretly purchased in 1970 by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and West German Federal Intelligence Se ...
, a small Swiss company that made encryption devices, in association with West German intelligence. The company sold compromised encryption devices to over 120 countries, allowing Western intelligence to eavesdrop on communications that the users believed to be secure.


Open-source intelligence

Until the 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community, one of the "services of common concern" that the CIA provided was
open-source intelligence Open source intelligence (OSINT) is the collection and analysis of data gathered from open sources (overt sources and publicly available information) to produce actionable intelligence. OSINT is primarily used in national security, law enforceme ...
from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). FBIS, which had absorbed the Joint Publication Research Service, a military organization that translated documents, moved into the National Open Source Enterprise under the Director of National Intelligence. During the
Reagan administration Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following his landslide victory over ...
, Michael Sekora (assigned to the DIA), worked with agencies across the intelligence community, including the CIA, to develop and deploy a technology-based competitive strategy system called Project Socrates. Project Socrates was designed to utilize open-source intelligence gathering almost exclusively. The technology-focused Socrates system supported such programs as the Strategic Defense Initiative in addition to private sector projects. Increasingly, the CIA is a major consumer of social media intelligence. CIA launched a
Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
account in June 2014. CIA also launched its own .onion website to collect anonymous feedback.


Outsourcing and privatization

Many of the duties and functions of Intelligence Community activities, not the CIA alone, are being outsourced and privatized. Mike McConnell, former Director of National Intelligence, was about to publicize an investigation report of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies, as required by Congress. However, this report was then classified. Hillhouse speculates that this report includes requirements for the CIA to report: * different standards for government employees and contractors; * contractors providing similar services to government workers; * analysis of costs of contractors vs. employees; * an assessment of the appropriateness of outsourced activities; * an estimate of the number of contracts and contractors; * comparison of compensation for contractors and government employees; * attrition analysis of government employees; * descriptions of positions to be converted back to the employee model; * an evaluation of accountability mechanisms; * an evaluation of procedures for "conducting oversight of contractors to ensure identification and prosecution of criminal violations, financial waste, fraud, or other abuses committed by contractors or contract personnel"; and * an "identification of best practices of accountability mechanisms within service contracts." According to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock: Congress had required an outsourcing report by March 30, 2008: Part of the problem, according to author Tim Weiner, is that political appointees designated by recent presidential administrations have sometimes been under-qualified or over-zealous politically. Large purges have taken place in the upper echelons of the CIA, and when those talented individuals are pushed out the door, they have frequently gone on to found new independent intelligence companies which can suck up CIA talent. Another part of the contracting problem comes from Congressional restrictions on the number of employees within the IC. According to Hillhouse, this resulted in 70% of the de facto workforce of the CIA's National Clandestine Service being made up of contractors. "After years of contributing to the increasing reliance upon contractors, Congress is now providing a framework for the conversion of contractors into federal government employeesmore or less." The number of independent contractors hired by the Federal government across the intelligence community has skyrocketed. So, not only does the CIA have trouble hiring, but those hires will frequently leave their permanent employ for shorter term contract gigs which have much higher pay and allow for more career mobility. As with most government agencies, building equipment often is contracted. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), responsible for the development and operation of airborne and spaceborne sensors, long was a joint operation of the CIA and the United States Department of Defense. The NRO, then under DCI authority, contracted more of the design that had been their tradition, and to a contractor without extensive reconnaissance experience,
Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...
. The next-generation satellite Future Imagery Architecture project "how does heaven look," which missed objectives after $4 billion in cost overruns, was the result of this contract. Some of the cost problems associated with intelligence come from one agency, or even a group within an agency, not accepting the compartmented security practices for individual projects, requiring expensive duplication.


Controversies

The CIA has been the subject of numerous controversies. The agency ran an operation code-named "Chaos" that ran from 1967 to 1974 where they routinely performed surveillance on Americans who were a part of various peace groups protesting the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
. The operation was authorized by order of President Lyndon B. Johnson in October 1967 as the CIA gathered the information of 300,000 American people and organizations and extensive files on 7,200 citizens. The program was exposed by the Church Committee in 1975 as a part of the investigation into the
Watergate scandal The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the Presidency of Richard Nixon, administration of President Richard Nixon. The scandal began in 1972 and ultimately led to Resignation of Richard Nixon, Nix ...
. The CIA also conducted a secret program called MKUltra, which ran from the early 1950s to the 1970s and involved illegal human experimentation to develop mind-control techniques. Subjects were often unaware they were part of the experiments, which included the administration of psychoactive drugs like LSD and other methods of
psychological manipulation In psychology, manipulation is defined as an action designed to influence or control another person, usually in an underhanded or subtle manner which facilitates one's personal aims. Methods someone may use to manipulate another person may includ ...
. The program, exposed in the 1970s, led to widespread public outrage and calls for greater oversight of intelligence agencies. The CIA was also linked to the Iran-Contra Affair wherein missiles were sold to the Iranian government as an exchange for the release of hostages and the profits the agency made from selling the weapons at a marked-up price went towards assisting the ''contras'' in Nicaragua. Another source of controversy has been the CIA's role in Operation Condor, which was a United States-backed campaign of repression and state terrorism involving intelligence operations, CIA-backed coup d'états and assassinations against leaders in
South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...
from 1968 to 1989. By the Operation's end in 1989, up to 80,000 people had been killed. Similarly, the CIA was complicit in the actions of death squads in
El Salvador El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is S ...
and
Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, ...
. An additional controversy surrounds the Bush Administration's claim that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" in 2002, and again in 2003 as justification for invading the Middle Eastern country. The CIA went along with the claim despite contradicting the president in testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2002. They produced a national intelligence estimate claiming that if the Iraqi government was able to acquire "sufficient fissile material from abroad, it could make nuclear weapons within a year".


See also

* Abu Omar case * Blue sky memo * Church Committee * CIA's relationship with the United States Military * Classified information in the United States *
Enhanced interrogation techniques "Enhanced interrogation techniques" or "enhanced interrogation" was a program of systematic torture of detainees by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and various components of the U.S. Armed Forces at ...
*
Freedom of Information Act (United States) The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA ), , is the United States federal Freedom of information in the United States, freedom of information law that requires the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased or uncirculated information a ...
* Intellipedia * Kryptos * National Intelligence Board * Operation Peter Pan * Reagan Doctrine * Title 32 of the Code of Federal Regulations * U.S. Army and CIA interrogation manuals *
United States Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. United States federal executive departments, federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the Interior minister, interior, Home Secretary ...
*
United States Intelligence Community The United States Intelligence Community (IC) is a group of separate US federal government, U.S. federal government intelligence agencies and subordinate organizations that work to conduct Intelligence assessment, intelligence activities which ...
* Vault 7 * ''
The World Factbook ''The World Factbook'', also known as the ''CIA World Factbook'', is a Reference work, reference resource produced by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The off ...
'', published by the CIA


Notes


References

* * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links

*
Central Intelligence Collection
at the
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...
{{Authority control 1947 establishments in Virginia Anti-communist organizations in the United States Articles containing video clips Cold War in popular culture Government agencies established in 1947 Independent agencies of the United States government Intelligence analysis agencies McLean, Virginia Secret police United States intelligence agencies