Central Intelligence Agency History Clandestine Operations

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the United States' foreign intelligence agency, responsible for obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the U.S. government. It also maintains a vast covert military apparatus, which during the Cold War was responsible for a number of clandestine campaigns against foreign governments, leaders, and citizens. Its headquarters is in Langley, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C.

1 History

The Agency, created in 1947 by President Harry S. Truman, is a descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II. The OSS was dissolved in October 1945 but William J. Donovan, the creator of the OSS, had submitted a proposal to President RooseveltFranklin Delano Roosevelt Order 32nd President Term of Office March 4, 1933 April 12, 1945 Predecessor Herbert Hoover Successor Harry S. Truman Date of Birth January 30, 1882 Place of Birth Hyde Park, New York Date of Death April 12, 1945 Place of Death W in 1944Events World War II January January 4 The Battle of Monte Cassino begins. January 5 Murder of Danish playwright Kaj Munck January 17 British forces, in Italy, cross the Garigliano River. January 20 The Royal Air Force drops 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin;. He called for a new organization having direct Presidential supervision, "which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies." Despite strong opposition from the military, the State Department, and the FBI, Truman established the Central Intelligence Group in January 1946Events January January 4 Theodore Schurch becomes the last person to be executed for offences committed under the Treachery Act of 1940 January 7 Allied recognize Austrian republic with 1937 borders the country is divided into four occupation zones Januar. Later under the National Security Act of 1947The National Security Act of 1947 signed July 26, 1947 by U. President Harry S. Truman realigned and reorganized the United States' armed forces, foreign policy, and intelligence community apparatus in the aftermath of World War II. It merged the United S (which became effective on September 18September 18 is the 261st day of the year (262nd in leap years). There are 104 days remaining. Events 96 Nerva elevated as Roman Emperor after Domitian was stabbed to death. 323 Constantine the Great decisively defeats Licinius in the Battle of Chrysopoli, 1947) the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency were established.

In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act was passed, permitting the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures and exempting it from many of the usual 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." The Central Intelligence Agency reports to U.S. Congressional committees but also answers to the President directly. The National Security Advisor is a permanent cabinet member responsible for briefing the President on pertinent information collected from all U.S. intelligence agencies including the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and others.

Some critics have charged that this violates the requirement in the U.S. Constitution that the federal budget be openly published.

In 1988, President George H. W. Bush became the first former head of the CIA to become President of the United States.

2 Clandestine operations

In 1996, the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a congressional report estimating that the clandestine service part of the intelligence community "easily" breaks "extremely serious laws" in countries around the world, 100 000 times every year. [1]

The activities of the CIA are largely undisclosed. It undoubtedly makes use of the surveillance satellites of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the signal interception capabilities of the NSA, including the Echelon system, and the surveillance aircraft of the various branches of the US armed forces. At one stage, the CIA even operated its own fleet of U-2 surveillance aircraft. The agency also employs a group of officers with paramilitary skills in its Special Activities Division. Micheal Spann, a CIA officer killed in November 2001 during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, was one such individual.

In 1951, the CIA led the Anglo-American Operation Ajax, which in 1953 successfully deposed Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister of Iran. In 1961, the CIA organized the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba. When this failed, the CIA orchestrated a variety of plans to oppose Fidel Castro's regime, collectively known as Operation Mongoose. Between 1962 and 1975, the CIA organized a Laotian army known as the Secret Army and ran a fleet of aircraft known as Air America to take part in the Secret War in Laos, part of the Vietnam War. During the early 1970s, the CIA conducted operations to prevent the election of Salvador Allende in Chile. When these operations failed, the CIA joined in the planning of the coup which would overthrow Allende. In the early 1980s, the CIA funded and armed the Contras in Nicaragua, forces opposed to the Sandinista government in that country, until the Boland Amendment forbade the agency from continuing their support. This support resulted in a World Court decision in the case Nicaragua v. United States ordering the United States to pay Nicaragua reparations. In 1993, with support of the US government, Colombia created the Search Block to locate and kill Pablo Escobar. There is evidence that the CIA may have colluded with the paramilitary death squad Los Pepes , that methodically killed 300 people, accused of being Escobar's hit men, relatives, lawyers and business associates. [2] [3]

Defectors such as Phillip Agee have alleged that such CIA covert action is extraordinarily widespread, extending to propaganda campaigns within countries allied to the United States. The agency has also been accused of participation in the illegal drug trade, notably in Laos, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua. It is known to have attempted assassinations of foreign leaders, most notably Fidel Castro, though since 1976 a Presidential order has banned such " executive actions", except during wartime.

On November 5, 2002, newspapers reported that Al-Qaeda operatives in a car traveling through Yemen had been killed by a missile launched from a CIA-controlled Predator drone (a high-altitude, remote-controlled aircraft).

3 Support for foreign dictators and warlords

The activities of the CIA have caused considerable political controversy both in the United States and in other countries, often nominally friendly to the United States, where the agency has operated (or been alleged to). For instance, the CIA has supported various dictators, including Augusto Pinochet (see references below), who have been friendly to perceived US geopolitical interests, sometimes over democratically elected governments.

Often cited as one of the American intelligence communities biggest blunders, is the CIA involvement in equipping and training Mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan, a radical Islamist group who would later form the core of the Al-Qaida network. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor under President Carter, writes about this quite openly in his book 'The Grand Chessboard'.

Urged on by American conservatives, especially including influential foreign policy analysts at the Heritage Foundation, the CIA facilitated the so-called Reagan Doctrine, channelling weapons and other support (in addition to the Mujahedeen and the Contras) to Jonas Savimbi's UNITA rebel movement in Angola, thus turning an otherwise low-profile African civil war into one of the larger battlegrounds of the Cold War.

4 Criticism for ineffectiveness

The agency has also been criticized for ineffectiveness as an intelligence gathering agency. These criticism included allowing a double agent, Aldrich Ames to gain high positions within the organization, and for focusing on finding informants with information of dubious value rather than on processing the vast amount of open source intelligence. In addition, the CIA has come under particular criticism for failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union and India's nuclear tests or to forestall the September 11, 2001 attacks.

5 Successful programs

Conversely, proponents of the CIA respond by stating that only the failures become known to the public, whereas the successes typically do not become known for decades in the future.

Some successes for the CIA include the U-2 and SR-71 programs, anti- Soviet operations in Afghanistan in the mid- 1980s, MKULTRA, and perhaps others which may not come to light for some time.

One very successful 1982 CIA operation was made public on February 2, 2004 by William Safire of the New York Times, and was detailed in the book At the Abyss, by Thomas C. Reed . The Soviets were constructing a trans- Siberian petroleum pipeline, and required computer software to run the pumps, turbines, and valves necessary to operate the pipeline. Rather than develop their own, they set out to steal the required technology from the United States. The operation was detected by the French DGSE, and the information was passed to Gus Weiss at the CIA. Weiss ran a coordinated operation to alter the software so that it would function properly during testing, but fail in production. The Soviets did indeed put the software into production, and the pipeline did fail. This resulted in the largest non-nuclear explosion ever, detected from space by NORAD's early warning sensors.

6 CIA Director

The head of the CIA is given the title Director of Central Intelligence (DCI); ODCI means Office of the Director of Central Intelligence. The DCI is not only the head of the CIA but also the leader of the entire U.S. intelligence community and the President's principal advisor on intelligence matters.

The current DCI is Porter Goss, who was nominated by President George W. Bush on 10 August, 2004 and was confirmed by the Senate on 21 September. Goss inherits the post previously held by John E. McLaughlin, who served as interim director after longtime director George Tenet resigned on 3 June, 2004 and left the post on 11 July. Goss previously served as head of the House Intelligence Committee as a representative from Florida.

7 CIA operations in Iraq

According to some sources [4] [5] [6] [7] the CIA appears to have supported the 1963 military coup in Iraq and the subsequent Saddam Hussein-led government up until the point of the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. US support was premised on the notion that Iraq was a key buffer state in relations with the Soviet Union. There are court records [8] indicating that the CIA gave military and monetary assistance to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. The CIA were also involved in the failed 1996 coup against Saddam Hussein (see Iyad Allawi).

In 2002 an unnamed source, quoted in the Washington Post, says that the CIA was authorized to undertake a covert operation, if necessary with help of the Special Forces, that could serve as a preparation for a full-scale military attack of Iraq. [9]

It became widely known that the basis of the second Gulf War in 2003 was erroneous intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons capability. The term " weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) was famous around the world and was frequently used to deride those who had initiated the invasion, notably George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

The questions of whether CIA intelligence could have prevented the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the unreliability of U.S. intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have been a focus of intense scrutiny in the U.S. in 2004 particularly in the context of the 9/11 Commission, the continuing armed resistance against U.S. occupation of Iraq, and the widely perceived need for systematic review of the respective roles of the CIA, FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency. On July 9 2004 the final report of the US Senate Intelligence Committee states that the CIA described the danger presented by weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in an unreasonable way, largely unsupported by the available intelligence. [10]

8 "Worldwide Attack Matrix"

In a briefing held September 15 2001 George Tenet presented the Worldwide Attack Matrix, a "top-secret" document describing covert CIA anti-terror operations in 80 countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The actions, underway or being recommended, would range from "routine propaganda to lethal covert action in preparation for military attacks". The plans, if carried out, "would give the CIA the broadest and most lethal authority in its history". [11]

9 Other

Other Government Agency or OGA is reportedly slang for the CIA.

A pejorative term for people who work for the CIA or other intelligence agencies is often 'spook'.

One of the CIA's publications, the CIA World Factbook, is unclassified and is indeed made freely available without copyright restrictions. Much of the demographic information presented in Wikipedia is drawn from this publication.

10 See also

Blowback
CIA cryptonym
Conspiracy theories
In-Q-Tel
List of U.S. foreign interventions since 1945
MKULTRA - CIA mind control program
MOCKINGBIRD - alleged program of media control
Nonofficial cover - NOC
Numbers station
National Security Agency
Operation Phoenix
Philip Agee - former CIA agent who published a book revealing numerous CIA secrets
The Agency- A CBS TV Series about The CIA

11 External links

12 Further reading

Robert Baer , See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism ( Three Rivers Press , 2003) BooksEnthsiast.com
Milton Bearden and James Risen , The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown With the KGB, ( Random House, 2003) BooksEnthsiast.com
William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II ( Common Courage Press , 2003) BooksEnthsiast.com [12]
Zbigniew Brzezinski The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives ( Basic Books 1998) BooksEnthsiast.com
Loch K. Johnson , America's Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society ( Oxford University Press, 1991)
Ronald Kessler , Inside the CIA (1992, Pocket Books reissue 1994) BooksEnthsiast.com
L. Fletcher Prouty, Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, Prentice Hall; (April 1973), ASIN 0137981732
W. Thomas Smith, Jr., Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency ( Facts on File , 2003) BooksEnthsiast.com
H. Bradford Westerfield , ed., Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992 ( Yale University Press, 1997) BooksEnthsiast.com

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