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Central Intelligence Agency
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The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is the successor of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) formed during World War II to coordinate espionage activities between the branches of the US military services.
Its primary function is collecting and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers.
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Encyclopedia
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is the successor of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) formed during World War II to coordinate espionage activities between the branches of the US military services.
Its primary function is collecting and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers. Prior to December 2004, the CIA was literally the central intelligence organization for the US government. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 created the office of the Director of National Intelligence (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. 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 to strengthen the role of the DNI.
When discussing the CIA, it is critical to distinguish whether one is speaking of the agency as it was during the period that it bore IC-wide responsibilities, or as it is today, given its present set of responsibilities. The IC still has internal politics, although an increasing number of interagency "centers", as well as the Intellipedia information sharing mechanism, are hoped to be improvements.
The current CIA still has a number of functions in common with other countries' intelligence agencies; see relationships with foreign intelligence agencies. The CIA's headquarters is in Langley in the McLean CDP of Fairfax County, Virginia, a few miles west of Washington, D.C. along the Potomac River.
Sometimes, the CIA is referred to euphemistically in government and military parlance as Other Government Agencies (OGA), particularly when its operations in a particular area are an open secret. Other terms include The Company and The Agency.
Organization
The heraldic symbol that composes the CIA seal consists of three representative parts: the "right"-facing bald eagle head atop, ("right" facing, since the eagle looks over its "right" shoulder, not the left shoulder) the compass star (or compass rose), and the shield. The eagle is the national bird, standing for strength and alertness. The 16-point compass star represents the CIA's worldwide search for intelligence outside the United States, which is then reported to the headquarters for analysis, reporting, and re-distribution to policymakers. The compass rests upon a shield, symbolic of defense.
The CIA has an executive office, four major directorates, and a variety of specialized offices. Prior to the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, it had some additional responsibilities for the IC as a whole.
Executive offices
Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community (IC), serving as the president's principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 amended the National Security Act to provide for a Director of National Intelligence who would assume some of the roles formerly fulfilled by the DCI, with a separate Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DCI's title now is "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.
Currently, the Central Intelligence Agency answers directly to the Director of National Intelligence, although the CIA Director may brief the President directly. The CIA has its budget approved by the US Congress, a subcommittee of which see the line items. The intelligence community, however, does not take direct orders from the Congress. The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the National Security Council, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all 16 US Intelligence Community agencies are under the policy, but not necessarily budgetary, authority of the Director of National Intelligence.
The effect of the personalities of the DCIs on the structure and behavior of the Agency and indeed the IC is analyzed in Painter's dissertation on "Early Leader Effects" of Donovan, Dulles and Hoover
Until the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the director of the CIA met regularly with the president to issue daily reports on ongoing operations. After the creation of the post of DNI, currently Mike McConnell, the report is now given by the DNI, who oversees all US intelligence activities, including intelligence community operations outside of CIA jurisdiction. Former CIA Director Porter Goss, who had been a CIA officer, denied this has had a diminishing effect on morale, but promoted his mission to reform the CIA into the lean and agile "counter-terrorism"-focused force he believes it should be.
A Deputy Director of the CIA (DDCIA) assists the director in his duties as head of the CIA and exercises the powers of the director when the director’s position is vacant or in the director’s absence or disability. Either the director or deputy director may be a military officer, but both positions may not be filled, at the same time, by military officers.
On July 5, 2006, the position of Executive Director, who managed day-to-day operations and budget, was replaced with an Associate Deputy Director of the CIA (ADD)
Support to the Military
As the DCIA's principal adviser and representative on military issues, the Associate Director for Military Support (AD/MS), a senior general officer, coordinates CIA efforts to provide Joint Force commanders, who are principally consumers of national-level intelligence but producers of operational intelligence. The AD/MS also supports Department of Defense officials who oversee military intelligence training and the acquisition of intelligence systems and technology. John A. Gordon was the first AD/MS, before the creation of ODNI. There is also an Associate Deputy Director for Operations for Military Affairs (ADDO/MA)
The Office of Military Affairs provides intelligence and operational support to the US armed forces.
Covert Action Authorities
President George W. Bush, in creating the National Clandestine Service (NCS), set a clear policy that the CIA would be in charge of all human intelligence (HUMINT) operations. NCS, (formerly the Directorate of Operations, and earlier the "Directorate of Plans"), collects clandestine human intelligence collection, and conducts deniable psychological operations (psyops) and paramilitary operations. See, Psychological Operations (United States). Creation of the NCS was the culmination of a years old turf war regarding influence, philosophy and budget between the United States Department of Defense and the CIA. DoD had organized the Defense HUMINT Service, which, with the Presidential decision, became part of the NCS.
Special Activities Division (SAD) is the NCS's unit responsible for Covert Action and "Special Activities". These special activities include the covert political influence and paramilitary operations. Special Operations Group (SOG) is the element within SAD responsible for paramilitary operations. They recruit solely from the Joint Special Operations Command and are then trained through an extensive course to become a clandestine intelligence officer. This unit is the most secretive and one of the most elite special operations forces in the world. .
Covert Action authorities come from the National Security Act of 1947. President Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 12333 titled "United States Intelligence Activities" in 1984. This order defined covert action as both political and military activities that the US Government could legally deny and granted them exclusively to the CIA. The CIA was also designated as the sole authority under the 1991 Intelligence Authorization Act and mirrored in Title 50 of the United States Code Section 413(e).
The Pentagon commissioned a study to determine whether the CIA or the Department of Defense (DoD) should conduct covert action paramilitary operations. Their study determined that the CIA should maintain this capability and be the sole government agency conducting covert action. The DoD found that it does not have the legal authority to conduct covert action nor the agility to carry out these type of missions.
Proposed support to Homeland Security
A great sensitivity remains about CIA having domestic responsibilities, but it clearly will, on occasions, collect information outside the US that relates directly to domestic security. CIA, for example, is more likely to obtain HUMINT on terrorists than the very limited foreign resources of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The DHS, like the military, is seen principally as a consumer of national intelligence, but its border and transportation security functions also produce intelligence. At present, however, there is no well-defined way for DHS to task intelligence collection agencies with its requirements. One proposal suggests using the AD/MS as a prototype, to create an AD/Homeland Security in the CIA, and possibly an equivalent position in the US Justice Department, which, through the FBI and other agencies, legally collects domestic intelligence. This proposal is one of many to improve coordination and avoid intelligence failures caused by not "connecting the dots", when the dots are held by different agencies.
National estimates
Prior to 2004, CIA had two analytic roles: the main effort based in the Directorate of Intelligence, which used internal experts to analyze data collected by the CIA, National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the military collection organizations, and other parts of the intelligence community. Many of these reports were on current subjects, such as the status of a revolutionary group, or the technical details of a new Chinese factory.
Another function, however, was preparing "estimates", which try to predict the future. Estimates are a product of the intelligence community as a whole. National Intelligence Estimates were the most extensively coordinated documents, often that could be scheduled on a regular basis, such as a regular report on Soviet intentions. Special National Intelligence Estimates (SNIE) were quick-response publications, often providing guidance in a crisis, but were still interagency consensus rather than CIA alone.
CIA had a separate and prestigious office, going by different names and organizations, such as the Office of National Estimates, Board of National Estimates, or a set of National Intelligence Officers, which would seek out the consensus of all the intelligence agencies, and then have some of the most senior analysts write a draft. The idea of such estimates is often credited to Sherman Kent, sometimes called the father of US intelligence analysis, with special emphasis on the production of estimates. This function is now in the National Intelligence Council of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Originally defined in 1950, this responsibility stated "CIA is now in the business of producing what are called National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) along the lines laid down in NSC 50. These papers are interdepartmental in character, designed to focus all available intelligence on a problem of importance to the national security." In the early days of the process, CIA used the State Department's intelligence staff for drafting the NIEs, but a "small top level Office of National Estimates" was set up to integrate the departmental drafts. A senior CIA analyst responsible for the document would work out differences. There is also a process by which an agency can disagree with a comment called a "reclama", which is a footnote expressing an alternate position. For an example of such dissents, see Special National Intelligence Estimate 10-9-65 in CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific#Vietnam 1965: Viet Cong and DRV Reactions, where there are dissents to various parts from all or part of the military, and from the Department of State.
Upon approval by an interagency review committee, the paper becomes a NIE and is sent by the Director of Central Intelligence to the President, appropriate officers of Cabinet level, and the NSC.
Directorate of Intelligence
The "DI" is the analytical branch of the CIA, responsible for the production and dissemination of all-source intelligence analysis on key foreign issues.. While it has, like most government agencies, reorganized over the years, its current structure has four regional analytic groups, six groups for transnational issues, and two support units.
Prior to the formation of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, the President's Daily Brief was prepared by the CIA Office of Current Intelligence.
Some open source intelligence (OSINT), such as the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, were, at different times, part of the Directorate of Intelligence or the Directorate of Science & Technology. Along with other OSINT functions, the National Open Source Enterprise is now in the ODNI.
Transnational groups
The Office of Terrorism Analysis, which supports the National Counterterrorism Center, is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The Office of Transnational Issues applies unique functional expertise to assess existing and emerging threats to US national security and provides the most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support.
The CIA Crime and Narcotics Center researches information on international narcotics trafficking and organized crime for policymakers and the law enforcement community. Since the CIA has no domestic police authority, it sends its analytic information to the FBI and other law enforcement organizations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
The Weapons, Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center provides intelligence support deals with national and non-national threats, as well as supporting threat reduction/arms control. This works with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
Again cooperating with the FBI for domestic activity, the Counterintelligence Center Analysis Group identifies, monitors, and analyzes the efforts of foreign intelligence entities, both national and non-national, against US interests.
The Information Operations Center Analysis Group evaluates foreign threats to US computer systems, particularly those that support critical infrastructures. It works with critical infrastructure protection organizations in the United States Department of Defense (e.g., CERT Coordination Center) and the Department of Homeland Security (e.g., United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team)
Support and general units
The Office of Collection Strategies and Analysis provides comprehensive intelligence collection expertise to the DI, a wide range of senior Agency and Intelligence Community officials, and key national policymakers.
The Office of Policy Support customizes DI analysis and presents it to a wide variety of policy, law enforcement, military, and foreign liaison recipients.
National Clandestine Service
The National Clandestine Service, a semi-independent service which was formerly the Directorate of Operations, is responsible for collection of foreign intelligence, principally from clandestine HUMINT sources, and covert action. The new name reflects its having absorbed the Defense HUMINT Service, which did strategic human intelligence HUMINT collection for the Department of Defense (DoD). HUMINT directly related to military missions remains under the DoD. Note that there is an open source function in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which may be taking over certain legal interviews in the US that previously were the Domestic Contact Division (or Domestic Contact Service).
While the NCS organization chart has not been published, although there have been prior descriptions of the Directorate of Plans or the Directorate of Operations, a fairly recent organization chart of the Defense HUMINT Service will indicate functions transferred into the NCS, and may well be fairly close to the overall NCS organizational structure.
The Special Activities Division (SAD) is a division of the Central Intelligence Agency's National Clandestine Service, responsible for covert action paramilitary operations, the collection of intelligence in hostile and/or denied areas and all high threat military and/or intelligence operations when the US government does not wish to be overtly associated with such activities. As such, members of the unit, when on missions, normally do not carry any objects or clothing (e.g., military uniforms) that would associate them with the United States. If compromised during a mission, the government of the United States may legally deny their status and all knowledge of their mission. SAD officers are a majority of the recipients of the coveted Distinguished Intelligence Cross and the Intelligence Star. These are the two highest medals for valor in the CIA. Not surprisingly, SAD officers also make up the majority of those memorialized on the Wall of Honor at CIA headquarters. These Paramilitary Operations Officers were the spearhead of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
There are references to earlier structures in various historical documents. For example, in a CIA paper on the internal probe into the Bay of Pigs Invasion, there are several comments on the Directorate of Plans organizational structure in 1962. Even though any large organization will constantly reorganize, the basic functions will stay and can be a clue to future organization.
At the top level, Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell had two Assistant Deputy Directors, C. Tracy Barnes and Richard Helms. Warner explains "operational details fell to Branch 4 (Cuba) of the DDP's Western Hemisphere Division (WH)", with some exceptions. Jacob Esterline, chief of the Cuba Branch, reported directly to Bissell and Barnes rather than to his division chief, J.C. King "although King was regularly informed and often consulted. To confuse matters still further, Branch 4 had no direct control over the Brigade's aircraft, which were managed by a separate DDP division that also took some orders directly from Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) Charles P. Cabell, a US Air Force general who liked to keep his hand in the planning of airdrops and other missions." Air operations, therefore, were in a separate division either for covert support, paramilitary operations, or both.
Cuba Branch had a "Foreign Intelligence Section," foreign intelligence being a term of art for HUMINT. The branch, however, established a separate 'G-2' unit, subordinate to its Paramilitary Section, which planned the actual invasion. This gives us the model of a geographic branch with subordinate sections, at least, for intelligence collection and paramilitary actions.
Warner's paper also mentions that certain DDP groups were outside the scope of the post-mortem by Executive Director Lyman Kirkpatrick, but their mention tells us that these were representative components of the DDP: "... the Havana station or the Santiago base, the development of foreign intelligence assets and liaison contacts, Division D's technical collection programs, or counter-intelligence work against the Cuban services." CIA "stations" are the parts of the embassy with officers under diplomatic cover, in a typical diplomatic office building. "Bases", however, are large facilities for supporting operations, typically with an airfield, secure warehouses, barracks and training areas. Division D was the joint CIA-NSA collection effort, where CIA would use clandestine operations personnel to emplace NSA SIGINT sensors. The reference to counter-intelligence work appears to refer to a main counterintelligence division, presumably the Counterintelligence Staff under James Jesus Angleton.
Directorate of Science and Technology
The Directorate of Science & Technology creates and applies innovative technology in support of the intelligence collection mission.
The CIA has always shown a strong interest in how to use advances in technology to enhance its effectiveness. This interest in modern technology came from two main aims: firstly, to harness these techniques its own use, and second to counter any new technologies the Soviet Union might develop. This effort gained impetus in the fifties with the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the USSR. The agency is also extremely interested in computer and information technology. In 1999, the CIA created the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel to help fund and develop technologies of interest to the agency.
Its website mentions its priorities being in:
- Application Software and Analytics
- Bio, Nuclear, and Chemical Technologies
- Communications and Infrastructure
- Digital Identity and Security
- Embedded Systems and Power
In January 2008, its featured collaboration was with Streambase Systems, makers of a "high-performance Complex Event Processing (CEP) software platform for real-time and historical analysis of high-volume intelligence data", using a new processing paradigm for Structured Query Language (SQL), allowing queries against multiple real-time data streams still updating the data base.
Directorate of Support
The Directorate of Support provides necessary "housekeeping" administration functions, but in a manner consistent with the need to keep their details protected. These functions include personnel, security, communications, and financial operations. Most of this Directorate is sub-structured into smaller offices based on role and purpose, such as the Office of Security, which is concerned both with personnel and physical security. Other major offices include the Office of Communications and the Office of Information Technology.
Logistics and proprietaries
Under the original NSC 10/2 authorization, CIA was made responsible not just for covert action during the cold war, but for such action during major wars, in collaboration with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When DCI Smith created the Directorate of Plans and ended the autonomy of the OPC and OSO, he recognized it was necessary to establish logistical support for these operations before the start of a hot war. Smith did not want to duplicate existing military support systems, and proposed, in 1952, that the CIA should be able to draw, on a reimbursable basis, on military supply stocks. In many respects, this was the beginning of the idea that what was to become the Directorate of Support had a far wider scope than the OSS and initial CIA term, Directorate of Administration.
Smith presented the concept that the CIA would need a worldwide system of support bases, which usually could be tenant organizations on military bases. According to Smith's memo, A major logistical support base will consist of a CIA base headquarters, training, communications, medical accommodation for evacuees and storage for six months’ hot war requirements as well as provide logistical support for CIA operational groups or headquarters... Informal planning along the lines indicated has been carried out by elements of CIA with ... the Joint Chiefs of Staff ...
The CIA was expected to reimburse "extraordinary expenses" incurred by the military services.
While military transportation might be appropriate for some purposes, there would be cases where the arrival of a military aircraft at a location other than a military base might draw undue attention. This was the origin of the idea of the CIA operating proprietary airlines, whose relationship to the US government would not be public. Among these organizations were airlines that provided covert logistical support, such as Civil Air Transport, Southern Air Transport, and consolidated them into Air America. The latter was heavily involved in support with the war in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in the 1960s.
Training
This directorate includes the Office of Training, which starts with a Junior Officer Training program for new employees. So that the initial course might be taken by employees who had not received final security clearance and thus were not permitted unescorted access to the Headquarters building, a good deal of basic training has been given at office buildings in the urban areas of Arlington, Virginia.
It is known, although not acknowledged by the US Government, that the CIA runs at least two operations training facilities. One is known as The Farm, at Camp Peary, Virginia. The other is known as The Point at Harvey Point, North Carolina. While the course outline has never been revealed, it is believed to include such things as surveillance, countersurveillance, cryptography, paramilitary training as well as other tradecraft. The course is believed to be slightly less than a year and runs at irregular intervals depending on circumstances. Operations training is delivered by experienced operations officers.
Student progress is monitored by experienced evaluators who meet to discuss a recruit's progress and who have the power to dismiss a recruit even before his or her training is complete. Evaluation techniques for the CIA's World War II predecessor, the OSS, were published as the book Assessment of Men, Selection of Personnel for the office of Strategic Services. (See Roger Hall's You're Stepping on my Cloak and Dagger for an accurate but amusing account of Hall's OSS duty, which included finding unexpected solutions to things in the assessment process as well as his experience in real operations.)
Psychological stress is part of operations training, but of a different type than military special operations force evaluation, such as the Navy SEAL Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course or Army Special Forces Assessment and Selection. For instance, an operations training officer will often lie to a recruit saying they have evidence that will result in the recruit to be arrested and tried for felony crimes. This is a test of the recruit's ability to maintain a cover under stress.
Contrary to popular belief or what is seen in film and television series, US-born, professional employees trained to work for the National Clandestine Service (CIA) are never referred to as "secret agents", "spies", "agents" or "special agents", they are known as 'Operations Officers' or 'Case Officers', or Officer for short. To highlight this point: within the intelligence community, the equivalent of an FBI Special Agent is a CIA Officer. Within the law enforcement community, the equivalent of a CIA 'agent' is an FBI informant. There does not exist any working title or job position known as 'CIA Agent', agents of the CIA are usually always foreigners who pass along secret information to the government through CIA Case Officers, who are posted at US embassies worldwide.
These CIA Case Officers recruit foreign agents, known as 'assets', to give information to the CIA. There are a wide range of motivations for a person to become an asset; CIA Case Officers are normally sent abroad under a cover identity, most commonly as a diplomat but sometimes under "nonofficial cover" using an assumed identity and having no immunity.
Other offices
General Publications
One of the CIA's best-known publications, The World Factbook, is in the public domain and is made freely available without copyright restrictions because it is a work of the United States federal government.
CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence maintains the Agency's historical materials and promotes the study of intelligence as a legitimate and serious discipline. The CIA since 1955 has published an in-house professional journal known as Studies in Intelligence that addresses historical, operational, doctrinal, and theoretical aspects of the intelligence profession. The Center also publishes unclassified and declassified Studies articles, as well as other books and monographs. A further annotated collection of Studies articles was published through Yale University Press under the title Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992.
In 2002, CIA's Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis began publishing the unclassified Kent Center Occasional Papers, aiming to offer "an opportunity for intelligence professionals and interested colleagues—in an unofficial and unfettered vehicle—to debate and advance the theory and practice of intelligence analysis."
General Counsel and Inspector General
Two offices advise the Director on legality and proper operations. The Office of the General Counsel advises the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on all legal matters relating to his role as CIA director and is the principal source of legal counsel for the CIA.
The Office of Inspector General promotes efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability in the administration of Agency activities. OIG also seeks to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. The Inspector General is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Inspector General, whose activities are independent of those of any other component in the Agency, reports directly to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. OIG conducts inspections, investigations, and audits at Headquarters and in the field, and oversees the Agency-wide grievance-handling system. The OIG provides a semiannual report to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency which the Director is required by law to submit to the Intelligence Committees of Congress within 30 days.
In February 2008, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael V. Hayden, sent a message to employees that Inspector General John L. Helgerson will accept increased control over the investigations by that office, saying "John has chosen to take a number of steps to heighten the efficiency, assure the quality and increase the transparency of the investigation process". The Washington Post suggested this was a response to senior officials who believe the OIG has been too aggressive in looking into counterterrorism programs, including detention programs. The changes were the result of an investigation, begun in April 2007, by one of Hayden's assistants, Robert L. Deitz. There was congressional concern that restrictions on the OIG might have a chilling effect on its effectiveness. Senator Ron Wyden , a Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, did not disagree with any of Hayden's actions, said the inquiry “should never have happened and can’t be allowed to happen again.”...“I’m all for the inspector general taking steps that help C.I.A. employees understand his processes, but that can be done without an approach that can threaten the inspector general’s independence
Public Affairs
The Office of Public Affairs advises the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on all media, public policy, and employee communications issues relating to his role as CIA director and is the CIA’s principal communications focal point for the media, the general public and Agency employees. See CIA influence on public opinion.
Relationship with other sources of intelligence
The CIA acts as the primary American HUMINT, HUMan INTelligence, and general analytic agency, under the Director of National Intelligence, who directs or coordinates the 16 member organizations of the United States Intelligence Community. It obtains information from other U.S. government intelligence agencies, commercial information sources, and foreign intelligence services.
Other U.S. intelligence agencies
A number of those organizations are fully or partially under the budgetary control of the United States Secretary of Defense or other cabinet officers such as the Attorney General of the United States.
As do other analytic members of the U.S. intelligence community such as the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the analytic division of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), its raw input includes imagery intelligence IMINT collected by air and space systems of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) processed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), signal intelligence SIGINT of the National Security Agency (NSA), and measurement and signature intelligence MASINT from the DIA MASINT center.
Open Source Intelligence
Until the 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community, one of the "services of common concern" that CIA provided was OSINT from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS).
FBIS, which had absorbed the Joint Publication Research Service, a military organization that translated documents, which moved into the National Open Source Enterprise under the Director of National Intelligence.
CIA still provides a variety of unclassified maps and reference documents both to the intelligence community and the public.
As part of its mandate to gather intelligence, CIA is looking increasingly online for information, and has become a major consumer of social media. "We're looking at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence," said Doug Naquin, director of the DNI Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA. "We're looking at chat rooms and things that didn't exist five years ago, and trying to stay ahead."
Outsourcing
In a trend some find disturbing, many of duties and functions of Intelligence Community activities, not the CIA alone, are being outsourced and privatized. Mike McConnell, 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; "...what we have today with the intelligence business is something far more systemic: senior officials leaving their national security and counterterrorism jobs for positions where they are basically doing the same jobs they once held at the CIA, the NSA and other agencies - but for double or triple the salary, and for profit. It's a privatization of the highest order, in which our collective memory and experience in intelligence - our crown jewels of spying, so to speak - are owned by corporate America. Yet, there is essentially no government oversight of this private sector at the heart of our intelligence empire. And the lines between public and private have become so blurred as to be nonexistent."
Congress has required an outsourcing report by March 30, 2008.
The Director of National Intelligence has been granted the authority to increase the number of positions (FTEs) on elements in the Intelligence Community by up to 10% should there be a determination that activities performed by a contractor should be done by a US government employee.
Part of the contracting problem comes from Congressional restrictions on the number of employees in the IC. According to Hillhouse, this resulted in0% 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 employees--more or less."
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. NRO had been significantly involved in the design of such sensors, but 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 next-generation satellite Future Imagery Architecture project, 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.
Foreign intelligence services
Many intelligence services cooperate. There may even be a deniable communications channel with ostensibly hostile nations.
The role and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki) (SVR), the French foreign intelligence service Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) and Israel's Mossad. While the preceding agencies both collect and analyze information, some like the US State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research are purely analytical agencies. See List of intelligence agencies.
The closest links of the US IC to other foreign intelligence agencies are to those of other mainly White Anglo-Saxon Protestant states: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. There is a special communications marking that 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 US military communications network. Previously, the marking of NOFORN (i.e., No Foreign Nationals) required the originator to specify which, if any, non-US countries could receive the information. A new handling caveat, USA/AUS/CAN/GBR/NZL Eyes Only, used primarily on intelligence messages, gives an easier way to indicate that the material can be shared with Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and New Zealand.
Organizational history
The Central Intelligence Agency was created by Congress with National Security Act of 1947, signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It is the descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which was dissolved in October 1945 and its functions transferred to the State and War Departments. Eleven months earlier, in 1944, William J. Donovan, the OSS's creator, proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt creating a new organization directly supervised by the President: "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." Under his plan, a powerful, centralized civilian agency would have coordinated all the intelligence services. He also proposed that this agency have authority to conduct "subversive operations abroad," but "no police or law enforcement functions, either at home or abroad."
CIA personnel have died on duty, some in accidents and some by deliberate hostile action. On the memorial wall at CIA headquarters, some of the stars have no name attached, because it would reveal the identity of a clandestine officer. Both the OSS and its British counterparts, as do other agencies worldwide, struggle with finding the right organizational balance among clandestine intelligence collection, counterintelligence, and covert action. See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for a historical perspective on this problem. These issues also bear on the reasons that, in the history below, some "eras" overlap. Also see the Wikipedia article Director of Central Intelligence, which contains an expanded history of CIA by director; the priorities and personalities of individual directors have had a strong influence on Agency operations.
Immediate predecessors, 1946–1947
The Office of Strategic Services, which was the first independent US intelligence agency, created for the Second World War, was broken up shortly after the end of the war, by President Harry S. Truman, on September 20, 1945 when he signed an Executive Order which made the breakup 'official' as of October 1, 1945. The rapid reorganizations that followed reflected the routine sort of bureaucratic competition for resources, but also trying to deal with the proper relationships of clandestine intelligence collection and covert action (i.e., paramilitary and psychological operations). See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for a more detailed history of this problem, which was not unique to the US during and after World War II. In October 1945, the functions of the OSS were split between the Departments of State and War:
| New Unit | Oversight | OSS Functions Absorbed |
|---|
| Strategic Services Unit (SSU) | War Department | Secret Intelligence (SI) (i.e., clandestine intelligence collection) and Counter-espionage (X-2) | | Interim Research and Intelligence Service (IRIS) | State Department | Research and Analysis Branch (i.e., intelligence analysis) | | Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) (not uniquely for former OSS) | War Department, Army General Staff | Staff officers from Operational Groups, Operation Jedburgh, Morale Operations (black propaganda) |
This division lasted only a few months.Despite opposition from the military establishment, the United States Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) in January 1946 which was the direct predecessor to the CIA. The CIG was an interim authority established under Presidential authority. The assets of the SSU, which now constituted a streamlined "nucleus" of clandestine intelligence was transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO).
Early CIA, 1947–1952
In September 1947, the National Security Act of 1947 established both the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was appointed as the first Director of Central Intelligence.
The National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1948 (NSC 10/2) further gave the CIA the authority to carry out covert operations "against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons."
In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act (Public Law 81-110) authorized the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures, and exempting it from most of the usual limitations on the use of Federal funds. It also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its "organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed." It also created the program "PL-110", to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" who fall outside normal immigration procedures, as well as giving those persons cover stories and economic support.
The structure stabilizes, 1952
Then-DCI Walter Bedell Smith, who enjoyed a special degree of Presidential trust, having been Dwight D. Eisenhower's primary Chief of Staff during World War II, insisted that the CIA or at least only one department had to direct the OPC and OSO. Those organization, as well as some minor functions, formed the euphemistically named Directorate of Plans in 1952.
Also in 1952, United States Army Special Forces were created, with some missions overlapping those of the Department of Plans. In general, the pattern emerged that the CIA could borrow resources from Special Forces, although it had its own special operators.
Early Cold War, 1953–1966
Allen Dulles, who had been a key OSS operations officer in Switzerland during the Second World War, took over from Smith, at a time where US policy was dominated by intense anticommunism. Various sources existed, the most visible being the investigations and abuses of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the more quiet but systematic containment doctrine developed by George Kennan, the Berlin Blockade and the Korean War. Dulles enjoyed a high degree of flexibility, as his brother, John Foster Dulles, was simultaneously Secretary of State.
Concern regarding the Soviet Union and the difficulty of getting information from its closed society, which few agents could penetrate, led to solutions based on advanced technology. Among the first success was with the Lockheed U-2 aircraft, which could take pictures and collect electronic signals from an altitude above Soviet air defenses' reach. After Gary Powers was shot down by an SA-2 surface to air missile in 1960, causing an international incident, the SR-71 was developed to take over this role.
During this period, there were numerous covert actions against resource nationalism and socialism. The CIA overthrew a democratically-elected government for the first time during Operation Ajax, after Iran moved to take control of its petroleum reserves. Some of the largest operations were aimed at Cuba after the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship, including assassination attempts against Fidel Castro and the dubiously deniable Bay of Pigs Invasion. There have been suggestions that the Soviet attempt to put missiles into Cuba came, indirectly, when they realized how badly they had been compromised by a US-UK defector in place, Oleg Penkovsky.
The CIA, working with the military, formed the joint National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to operate reconnaissance aircraft such as the SR-71 and later satellites. "The fact of" the United States operating reconnaissance satellites, like "the fact of" the existence of NRO, was highly classified for many years.
Indochina and the Vietnam War (1954–1975)
The OSS Patti mission arrived in Vietnam near the end of the Second World War, and had significant interaction with the leaders of many Vietnamese factions, including Ho Chi Minh. While the Patti mission forwarded Ho's proposals for phased independence, with the French or even the United States as the transition partner, the US policy of containment opposed forming any government that it believed was communist in nature, even if it was democratically-elected.
The first CIA mission to Indochina, under the code name Saigon Military Mission arrived in 1954, under Edward Lansdale. US-based analysts were simultaneously trying to project the evolution of political power, both if the scheduled referendum chose merger of the North and South, or if the South, the US client, stayed independent. Initially, the US focus in Southeast Asia was on Laos, not Vietnam.
During the period of US combat involvement in the Vietnam War, there was considerable arguments about progress among the Department of Defense under Robert S. McNamara, the CIA, and, to some extent, the intelligence staff of Military Assistance Command Vietnam. In general, the military was consistently more optimistic than the CIA. Sam Adams, a junior CIA analyst with responsibilities for estimating the actual damage to the enemy, eventually resigned from the CIA, after expressing concern to Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms with estimates that were changed for interagency and White House political reasons. Adams afterward wrote the book War of Numbers.
Abuses of CIA authority, 1970s–1990s
Things came to a head in the mid-1970s, around the time of the Watergate political burglary affair. A dominant feature of political life during that period were the attempts of Congress to assert oversight of US Presidency, 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 illegal domestic spying on US citizens (the CIA has no authority to conduct any domestic activities whatsoever), provided the opportunities to execute Congressional oversight of US intelligence operations. Hastening the Central Intelligence Agency's fall from grace were the burglary of the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic Party by ex-CIA agents, and President Richard Nixon's subsequent use of 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, to tell the CIA that further investigation of Watergate would "open the whole can of worms" about the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba, and, therefore, that the CIA should tell the FBI to cease investigating the Watergate burglary, due to reasons of "national security".
In 1973, then-DCI James R. Schlesinger commissioned reports known as the "Family Jewels" on illegal activities by the Agency. In December 1974, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the news of the "Family Jewels" in a front-page article in The New York Times, revealing that the CIA had assassinated foreign leaders, and had illegally conducted surveillance on some 7,000 US citizens involved in the antiwar movement (Operation CHAOS). The CIA had also experimented on people, who unknowingly took LSD (among other things).
Congress responded to the disturbing charges in 1975, investigating the CIA in the Senate via the Church Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), and in the House of Representatives via the Pike Committee, chaired by Congressman Otis Pike (D-NY). In addition, President Gerald Ford created the Rockefeller Commission, and issued an executive order prohibiting the assassination of foreign leaders. As the CIA fell out of favor with the public, Ford assured Americans that his administration was not involved: "There are no people presently employed in the White House who have a relationship with the CIA of which I am personally unaware."
Repercussions from the Iran-Contra Affair arms smuggling scandal included the creation of the Intelligence Authorization Act in 1991. It defined covert operations as secret missions in geopolitical areas where the US 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".
2004, DCI takes over CIA top-level functions
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 Central Intelligence Agency. The DCI's title now is "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.
Currently, the Central Intelligence Agency reports to the Director of National Intelligence. Prior to 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.
Mission-related issues and controversies
The history of CIA deals with several things, certainly including covert action, but also clandestine and overt intelligence collection, intelligence analysis and reporting, and logistical and technical support of its activities. Prior to the December 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community (IC), it also was responsible for coordinations of IC-wide intelligence estimates.
These articles are organized in two different ways: By geographical region (for state actors or non-state actors limited to a country or region) and by transnational topic (for non-state actors).
CIA operations by region, country and date are discussed in detail in the following articles:
CIA analyses of issues such as the effect of emerging infectious diseases, and the detection of WMDs, are inherently transnational, and are discussed in the following articles. CIA operations and, where appropriate, authorizations for covert operations (for example, NSDD 138 authorizing direct action against opponents) by transnational topic are discussed in the following Wikipedia articles:
In addition, a view of covert US activity specifically oriented towards regime change actions is given in the following Wikipedia article:
- CIA sponsored regime change
Major sources for this section include the Council on Foreign Relations of the United States series, the National Security Archive and George Washington University, the Freedom of Information Act Reading Room at the CIA, U.S. Congressional hearings, Blum's book and Weiner's book Note that the CIA has posted a rebuttal to Weiner's book, and that Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive has also been sharply critical of it.
Areas of controversy about inappropriate, often illegal actions include experiments, without consent, on human beings to explore chemical means of eliciting information or disabling people. Another area involved torture and clandestine imprisonment. There have been attempted assassinations under CIA orders and support for assassinations of foreign leaders by citizens of the leader's country, and, in a somewhat different legal category that may fall under the customary laws of war, assassinations of militant leaders.
Security and counterintelligence failures
While the names change periodically, there are two basic security functions to protect the CIA and its operations. There is an Office of Security in the Directorate for Support, which is responsible for physical security of the CIA buildings, secure storage of information, and personnel security clearances. These are directed inwardly to the agency itself.
In what is now the National Clandestine Service, there is a counter-intelligence function, called the Counterintelligence Staff under its most controversial chief, James Jesus Angleton. This function has roles including looking for staff members that are providing information to foreign intelligence services (FIS) as moles. Another role is to check proposals for recruiting foreign HUMINT assets, to see if these people have any known ties to FIS and thus may be attempts to penetrate CIA to learn its personnel and practices, or as a provocateur, or other form of double agent.
This agency component may also launch offensive counterespionage, where it attempts to interfere with FIS operations. CIA officers in the field often have assignments in offensive counterespionage as well as clandestine intelligence collection.
Security failures
In 1993, the headquarters of the CIA was attacked by Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani national. Two CIA employees were killed, Frank Darling and Lansing Bennett, M.D.
The "Family Jewels" and other documents reveal that the Office of Security violated the prohibition of CIA involvement in domestic law enforcement, sometimes with the intention of assisting police organizations local to CIA buildings.
Counterintelligence failures
Perhaps the most disruptive period involving counterintelligence was James Jesus Angleton's search for a mole, based on the statements of a Soviet defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn. A second defector, Yuri Nosenko, challenged Golitsyn's claims, with the two calling one another Soviet double agents. Many CIA officers fell under career-ending suspicion; the details of the relative truths and untruths from Nosenko and Golitsyn may never be released, or, in fact, may not be fully understood. The accusations also crossed the Atlantic to the British intelligence services, who also were damaged by molehunts.
On February 24, 1994, the agency was rocked by the arrest of 31-year veteran case officer Aldrich Ames on charges of spying for the Soviet Union since 1985.
Other defectors have included Edward Lee Howard, a field operations officer, and William Kampiles, a low-level worker in the CIA 24-hour Operations Center. Kampiles sold the Soviets the detailed operational manual for the KH-11 reconnaissance satellite.
Failures in intelligence analysis
The agency has also been criticized for ineffectiveness as an intelligence gathering agency. Former DCI Richard Helms commented, after the end of the Cold War, "The only remaining superpower doesn't have enough interest in what's going on in the world to organize and run an espionage service." The CIA has come under particular criticism for failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union.
See the information technology section of the intelligence analysis management for discussion of possible failures to provide adequate automation support to analysts, and US intelligence community A-Space for a IC-wide program to collect some of them. Cognitive traps for intelligence analysis also goes into areas where CIA has examined why analysis can fail.
Agency veterans have lamented CIA's inability to produce the kind of long-range strategic intelligence that it once did in order to guide policymakers. John McLaughlin, who was deputy director and acting director of central intelligence from October 2000 to September 2004, said that drowned by demands from the White House and Pentagon for instant information, "intelligence analysts end up being the Wikipedia of Washington." In the intelligence analysis article, orienting oneself to the consumers deals with some of ways in which intelligence can become more responsive to the needs of policymakers.
For the media, the failures are most newsworthy. A number of declassified National Intelligence Estimates do predict the behavior of various countries, but not in a manner attractive to news, or, most significantly, not public at the time of the event. In its operational role, some successes for the CIA include the U-2 and SR-71 programs, and anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s.
Among the first analytic failures, before the CIA had its own collection capabilities, it assured President Harry S Truman on October 13, 1950 that the Chinese would not send troops to Korea. Six days later, over one million Chinese troops arrived. See an analysis of the failure; also see surrounding text for the two Koreas and China, and the time period before the Korean War. Earlier, the intelligence community failed to detect the North Korean invasion, in part because resources were not allocated to SIGINT coverage of the Korean peninsula.
The history of US intelligence, with respect to French Indochina and then the two Vietnams, is long and complex. The Pentagon Papers often contain pessimistic CIA analyses that conflicted with White House positions. It does appear that some estimates were changed to reflect Pentagon and White House views.. See CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific for detailed discussions of intelligence and covert operations from 1945 (i.e., before the CIA) onwards.
Another criticism is the failure to predict India's nuclear tests in 1974. A review of the various analyses of India's nuclear program did predict some aspects of the test, such as a 1965 report saying, correctly, that if India did develop a bomb, it would be explained as "for peaceful purposes".
A major criticism is failure to forestall the September 11, 2001 attacks. The 9/11 Commission Report identifies 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, however, criticizes both CIA analysis, and impeding their investigation.
The executive summary of a report which was released by the office of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson on August 21, 2007 concluded that former DCI George Tenet failed to adequately prepare the agency to deal with the danger posed by Al Qaeda prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The report had been completed in June, 2005 and was partially released to the public in an agreement with Congress, over the objections of current DCI General Michael V. 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-a-vis al-Qaeda, particularly from 1999.
Questionable/controversial tactics
The CIA has been called into question on several occasions for some of the tactics it employs to carry out its missions. At times these tactics have included torture, training of groups and organizations that would later participate in killing of civilians and other non-combatants, human experimentation, and targeted killings and assassinations.
In understanding the CIA's role in human rights, there are challenging problems of ethics. John Stockwell, a CIA officer who left the Agency and became a public critic, said of the CIA field officers: "They don't meet the death squads on the streets where they're actually chopping up people or laying them down on the street and running trucks over their heads. The CIA people in San Salvador meet the police chiefs, and the people who run the death squads, and they do liaise with them, they meet them beside the swimming pool of the villas. And it's a sophisticated, civilized kind of relationship. And they talk about their children, who are going to school at UCLA or Harvard and other schools, and they don't talk about the horrors of what's being done. They pretend like it isn't true.".
Recently, in 2007, Red Cross investigators concluded in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level al Qaeda prisoners constituted torture which could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes.
On January 28, 2009, a news story broke about a CIA station chief in Algiers, Algeria who was under investigation by the Diplomatic Security Service for having allegedly raped two Muslim women.
Internal/presidential studies, external investigations and document releases
At various times since the creation of the CIA, the US Government has produced comprehensive reports on CIA actions that marked historical watersheds in how CIA went about trying to fulfill its vague charter purposes from 1947. These reports were the result of internal/presidential studies, external investigations by Congressional committees or other arms of the US Government, or even the simple releases and declassification of large quantities of documents by the CIA.
Several investigations (e.g., the Church Committee, Rockefeller Commission, Pike Committee, etc.), as well as released declassified documents, reveal that the CIA, at times, operated outside its charter. In some cases, such as during Watergate, this may have been due to inappropriate requests by White House staff. In other cases, there was a violation of Congressional intent, such as the Iran-Contra affair. In many cases, these reports provide the only official discussion of these actions available to the public.
Influencing public opinion and law enforcement
This is an area with many shades of gray. There is little argument, for example, that the CIA acted inappropriately in providing technical support to White House operatives conducting both political and security investigations, with no legal authority to do so. Things become much more ambiguous when law enforcement may expose a clandestine operation, a problem not unique to intelligence but also seen among different law enforcement organizations, where one wants to prosecute and another to continue investigations, perhaps reaching higher levels in a conspiracy.
Linkages with former Nazi and Japanese War Criminals
While the United States was involved in the prosecution of war criminals, US military and intelligence agencies protected some war criminals in the interest of obtaining technical or intelligence information from them, or taking part in ongoing intelligence or engineering (e.g., Operation Paperclip). Multiple US intelligence organizations were involved, and many of these relationships were formed before the creation of the CIA in 1947, but the CIA, in some cases, took over the relationships and concealed them for nearly 60 years.
Al-Qaeda and the "War on Terror"
The CIA had long been dealing with terrorism originating from abroad, and in 1986 had set up a Counterterrorist Center to deal specifically with the problem. At first confronted with secular terrorism, the Agency found Islamist terrorism looming increasingly large on its scope.
The network that became known as al-Qaeda ("The Base") grew out of Arab volunteers who fought the Soviets and their puppet regimes in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In 1984 Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden set up an organization known as the Office of Services in Peshawar, Pakistan, to coordinate and finance the "Afghan Arabs", as the volunteers became known.
The CIA also channeled US aid to Afghan resistance fighters via Pakistan in a covert operation known as Operation Cyclone. It denied dealing with non-Afghan fighters, or having direct contact with bin Laden. However, various authorities relate that the Agency brought both Afghans and Arabs to the United States for military training. Azzam and Bin Laden set up recruitment offices in the US, under the name "Al-Khifah", the hub of which was the Farouq Mosque in Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue. This was "a place of pivotal importance for Operation Cyclone".
Among notable figures at the Brooklyn center was the Egyptian "double agent" Ali Mohamed, who worked for the CIA, the Green Berets, Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda at various times in the 1980s and 1990s. FBI special agent Jack Cloonan called him "bin Laden's first trainer". Another was "Blind Sheikh" Abdel Rahman, a leading recruiter of mujaheddin, who obtained US entry visas with the help of the CIA in 1987 and 1990.
In about 1988 Bin Laden set up al-Qaeda from the more extreme elements of the Services Office. But it was not a large organization. When Jamal al-Fadl (who had been recruited through the Brooklyn center in the mid 1980s) joined in 1989, he was described as Qaeda's "third member".
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 Qaeda leader: he was not only a terrorist financier, but a terrorist organizer too. 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".
In 1999 CIA chief George Tenet launched a grand "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 jointly ran a series of flights over Afghanistan with a small remote-controlled reconnaissance drone, the Predator; 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 Qaeda leaders. After the Cabinet-level Principals Committee meeting on terrorism of September 4, 2001, the CIA resumed reconnaissance flights, the drones now being weapons-capable.
The CIA set up a Strategic Assessments Branch in 2001 to remedy the deficit of "big-picture" analysis of al-Qaeda, and apparently to develop targeting strategies. The branch was formally set up in July 2001, but it struggled to find personnel. The branch's head took up his job on September 10, 2001.
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".
The 2003 War in Iraq
Whether or not the intelligence available, or presented by the Bush Administration justified the action or allowed proper planning, especially for the occupation, is quite controversial. See Iraq 2003. See CIA activities in Iraq for additional details of these controversies as well as a history of CIA involvement with Iraq.
Drug trafficking
Two offices of CIA Directorate of Intelligence have analytical responsibilities in this area. The Office of Transnational Issues applies unique functional expertise to assess existing and emerging threats to US national security and provides the most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support.
CIA Crime and Narcotics Center researches information on international narcotics trafficking and organized crime for policymakers and the law enforcement community. Since CIA has no domestic police authority, it sends its analytic information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law enforcement organizations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Department of the Treasury (OFAC).
Another part of CIA, the National Clandestine Service, collects human intelligence (HUMINT) in these areas.
Research by Alfred W. McCoy PhD, Gary Webb, and others has pointed to CIA involvement in narcotics trafficking across the globe, although the CIA officially denies such allegations. During the Cold War, when numerous soldiers participated in transport of SE Asian heroin to the United States by the airline Air America, the CIA's role in such traffic was reportedly rationalized as "recapture" of related profits to prevent possible enemy control of such assets. Researchers point to similar operations during Reagan's Contra War in Nicaragua, US involvement in Afghanistan during the Cold War, and current CIA involvement with Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency, which allegedly has links to the refining of Afghan heroin in Pakistan.
See also
Indices of CIA-related pages and some unindexed pages
- Category:Central Intelligence Agency
- Category:Analysts of the Central Intelligence Agency
- Category:Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency
- Category:Historians of the Central Intelligence Agency
- Category:People of the Central Intelligence Agency
Further reading
- Wallace, Robert; Melton, H. Keith; Schlesinger, Henry R. (2008). Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda. Dutton. ISBN 0525949801
Official websites and documents
- [https://www.cia.gov/ CIA official site]
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Other links
- from The Federal Register
- . Third World Traveler: Excerpt from a book by Philip Agee.
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- , January 2009, ISRIA
External links
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