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United States. Central Intelligence AgencyWe have 10 books for this author.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. Its primary function is obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers. Additionally, the agency sometimes engages in propaganda and public relations efforts.[5] It also serves as the government's paramilitary hidden hand via covert operations at the direction of the President and under oversight by Congress.[6] This last role has caused much controversy for the CIA, raising questions about the legality, morality, effectiveness, and wisdom of such operations. Its headquarters is in the community of Langley in the McLean CDP of Fairfax County, Virginia, a few miles northwest from downtown Washington, D.C. along the Potomac River. The CIA is part of the U.S. Intelligence Community, led by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The role and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) and Israel's Mossad. The CIA is sometimes referred to euphemistically in government and military parlance as Other Government Agencies (or OGA), particularly when its operations in a particular area are an open secret.[7][8] Other terms include The Company and The Agency. History
 The Central Intelligence Agency was created by Congress with passage of the 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. But the need for a centralized postwar intelligence-gathering operation was clearly recognized. Eleven months earlier, in 1944, William J. Donovan (a.k.a. Wild Bill Donovan), the OSS's creator, proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt creating a new espionage 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."[9] 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."[10] Despite opposition from the military establishment, the State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)[9], President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group in January 1946.[11] Later, under the National Security Act of 1947 (effective September 18, 1947), the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency were established. 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 unauthorised persons."[5] 
In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act (Public Law 81-110) was passed, permitting the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures, and exempting it from most 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." 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.[12] During the first years of its existence, other branches of government did not exercise much control over the Central Intelligence Agency; justified by the desire to match and defeat KGB actions throughout the globe, a task many believed could be accomplished only through an approach as equally ungentlemanly as the KGB's, consequently, few in government closely inquired about the CIA's activity. The rapid expansion of the CIA, and a developed sense of independence under the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Allen Dulles added to this trend. Things came to a head in the early 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 U.S. Presidency, the executive branch of the U.S. Government. Revelations about past CIA activities, such as assassinations and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders, illegal domestic spying on U.S. citizens, provided the opportunities to execute Congressional oversight of U.S. 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 Nixon's subsequent use of the CIA to impede the FBI's investigation of the burglary. In the famous "smoking gun" audio tape provoking 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 of Cuba, and, therefore, that the CIA should tell the FBI to cease investigating the Watergate burglary, due to reasons of "national security".[13] 
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 conducted surveillance on some seven thousand American citizens involved in the antiwar movement (Operation CHAOS). 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 a directive prohibiting the assassination of foreign leaders. Repercussions from the Iran-Contra 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 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". In 1988, President George H. W. Bush became the first former chief of the CIA to be elected President of the United States. 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 U.S. Congressional committees, but also answers directly to the President. The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the cabinet, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, et cetera; all fifteen Intelligence Community agencies are under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence. Many of the post-Watergate restrictions upon the Central Intelligence Agency were lifted after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the The Pentagon. 52 years earlier, in 1949, Congress and President Harry Truman had approved arrangements that CIA and national intelligence funding could be hidden in the U.S federal budget. Some critics charge this violates the requirement in the U.S. Constitution that the federal budget be openly published. OrganizationAgency seal
The heraldic symbol of the CIA consists of 3 representative parts: the left-facing bald eagle head atop, 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 world-wide 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 and intelligence. Structure
Directorates and other offices
Relationship with other agencies
The CIA acts as the primary American provider of central intelligence estimates. It is believed to make use of the product derived from surveillance satellites of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the signal interception capabilities of the National Security Agency (NSA), including the ECHELON system, the surveillance aircraft of the various branches of the U.S. armed forces and the analysts of the State Department and Department of Energy. At one point, the CIA even operated its own fleet of U-2 and A-12 OXCART surveillance aircraft. The agency has also operated alongside regular military forces, and also employs a group of clandestine officers with paramilitary skills in its Special Activities Division. Johnny Michael "Mike" Spann, a CIA officer killed in November 2001 during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, was one such individual. The CIA also has strong links with other foreign intelligence agencies such as the UK's Secret Intelligence Service, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Israel's Mossad, and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. Further, it is currently believed to be financing several Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers. One of these, known under the codename of Alliance Base, was allegedly set up in Paris and jointly run in cooperation with France's DGSE. Although classified, the CIA may also be actively cooperating with India's Research and Analysis Wing and possibly Russia's SVR. The CIA worked extensively with Pakistan's ISI throughout the Afghan-Soviet War, and works with this agency closely for the War on Terror. Historical operations and controversies
North AmericaIn 1950, the CIA organized the Pacific Corporation, the first of many CIA private enterprises. In 1951, the Columbia Broadcasting System began co-operating with the CIA; President Truman created the Office of Current Intelligence. Director Hillenkoetter approved Project BLUEBIRD, later renamed Project ARTICHOKE, which was the CIA's first mind control program. In the 1950s and 60s, the CIA ran a mind-control research program code-named Project MKULTRA in the United States and Canada. The project in Montreal included developing techniques used by Nazi scientists to wipe out the existing personalities of the victims.[21] Europe
CIA was successful in limiting native Communist influence in France and Italy, notably in the 1948 Italian election. After WWII, a clandestine NATO "stay-behind" operation in Italy called Operation Gladio, was set up in Western Europe, intended to counter a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. There are allegations that throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Gladio operatives were involved in a series of "false flag" fascist terrorist actions in Italy that were blamed on the "Red Brigades" and other Left-wing political groups in an attempt to politically discredit the Italian Left wing.[22] The US state department has denied involvement in terrorism and stated that some of the claims have been influenced by a Soviet forgery, US Army Field Manual 30-31B.[23] In some unexplained way, the CIA managed to acquire the Rosenholz files, containing the list of foreign spies of the Stasi, in the former GDR.[24] Nazi linkages
After World War II, many scientists who had worked in Nazi Germany were extracted from Germany in order to aid the U.S.; their recruitment was under aegis of Operation Paperclip. The CIA had also been aware of the location of some high-profile Nazi war criminals, including the whereabouts of Adolf Eichmann two years before he was captured by Israeli agents, but the agency did not publicize this information, as it did not have a policy of pursuing Nazi war criminals at the time.[25] Several former Nazi operational agents were recruited as U.S. secret agents, yet formed just a minor portion of the agents at that time; they were induced financially and promised exemption from criminal prosecution and trial for war crimes committed during World War II.[26] Some claim that these agents had a long-term corrosive effect on American intelligence agencies.[27] Developing worldIn the 1950s, with Europe stabilizing along the Iron Curtain, the CIA then tried limiting the spread of Soviet influence elsewhere around the world, especially in the poor countries of the Third World. Encouraged by DCI Allen Dulles, clandestine operations quickly dominated the organization's actions. Particularly during the Cold War, the CIA supported many dictators, including General Augusto Pinochet of Chile; dictators in Central America, African Dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko and Jonas Savimbi, the Shah of Iran, and the religious despots in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Kuwait and Indonesia, who have been friendly to perceived U.S. geopolitical interests (anti-Communism, natural resource access for petroleum companies and multinational corporations, and implementing neoliberal economics). In some cases the CIA supported coups against elected governments, partially because they were perceived, at the time, as turning into Communist dictatorships. John Stockwell, formerly a high-level CIA operative, claims that six million people have been killed by the United States in the Third World countries. This claim includes the deaths in the Korea and Vietnam wars that Stockwell feels should be blamed on the United States.[28] 
GuatemalaPBSUCCESS, authorized by President Eisenhower, is the codename for the CIA first covert operation in Latin America, carried out in Guatemala. According to most historians, the CIA-sponsored military coup in 1954 was “the poison arrow that pierced the heart of Guatemala's young democracy.”[29] The purpose of the operation was to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala. The U.S. began to worry about the growth of Communism there because of policies set forth by Jacobo Arbenz. By recruiting a Guatemalan military force the CIA's operation succeeded in eliminating the democratic government and replacing it with a military junta headed by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. The political and consequent social instability created in Guatemala 6 years later resulted in a very long civil war and its consequent, destructive impact upon the society, the economy, human rights and the culture of Guatemala. IranBritain, resentful of Iran’s nationalization its oil industry, came up with the idea for the coup in 1952 and pressed the U.S. to mount a joint operation to remove the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh[30] and install the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to rule Iran autocratically. Partially due to fear of a Communist overthrow due to increasing influence of the Communist Tudeh party, and partly to gain control of a larger share of Iranian oil supplies, the US agreed. Brigadier General Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. and CIA guru Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. were ordered to begin a covert operation to overthrow Mossadegh. A complex plot, codenamed Operation Ajax, was conceived and executed from the US Embassy in Tehran. Full details of the operation were released fifty years later, in 2003. Britain, who previously had controlled all of the Iranian oil industry, lost its monopoly and allowed U.S. oil companies to compete in Iran. Because the Shah had neutralized or assassinated all of his moderated political opposition, when the Shah was finally overthrown in 1979, it was by extreme Islamic fundalmentalists. Former CIA director Admiral Stansfield Turner had poor intelligence of the Islamist revolution of 1979 in Iran as, "It was a big gap in CIA coverage." Consequently the CIA engaged in numerous covert operations in an attempt to maintain control. CubaThe limitations of large scale covert action became apparent during the CIA-organized Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961. The failed para-military invasion embarrassed the CIA and the United States world-wide. Recently de-classified documents show in written confirmation that President Kennedy had officially denied the CIA authorization to invade Cuba. Cuban leader Fidel Castro used the routed invasion to consolidate his power and strengthen Cuba's ties with the Soviet Union. Later, the CIA tried and failed several times to assassinate Fidel Castro. IndochinaCIA operations became less visible after the Bay of Pigs, and shifted to being closely linked to aiding the U.S. military operation in Vietnam. Between 1962 and 1975, the CIA organized a Laotian group 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. The CIA's Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War was described by a former official as a "sterile depersonalized murder program". Quote: "I never knew an individual to be detained as a VC suspect who ever lived through an interrogation"[31] In December 1978, three-and-a-half years after the withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Indochina, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and dislodged the genocidal regime of Pol Pot. According to socialist U.S. foreign policy critic William Blum, the State Department continued to recognize the former government as the legitimate representative of Cambodia at the United Nations, and the United States used a variety of means to give indirect support to the Khmer Rouge, in an ongoing effort to thwart the Vietnamese-installed regime of Heng Samrin. Blum also claims that the CIA supplied arms directly to Khmer Rouge forces and also funneled more than $20 million/year of "non-lethal" aid to a coalition which included the Khmer Rouge, without Congressional approval.[32] IraqAccording to certain authors the CIA supported the 1963 military coup d'état in Iraq against the Qassim government and supported the subsequently installed government of Saddam Hussein, until the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. U.S. support for the invasion was predicated upon the notion that Iraq was a key buffer state in geopolitical relations with the Soviet Union. There are U.S. court records indicating the CIA militarily and monetarily assisted Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. The CIA also was involved in the failed 1996 coup against Saddam Hussein.[33][34][35][36][37] The CIA also supported the Ba'ath Party's 1968 coup d'état against the Government of Rahman Arif, with Saddam Hussein eventually assuming power.[38] According to former U.S. intelligence officials, the CIA orchestrated a bomb and sabotage campaign between 1992 and 1995 in Iraq via one of the resistance organizations, Iyad Allawi's group, the man later installed as prime minister by the U.S.-led coalition after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. According to the Iraqi government at the time, and former CIA officer Robert Baer, the bombing campaign against Baghdad included both government and civilian targets. According to this former CIA official, the civilian targets included a movie theater and a bombing of a school bus and schoolchildren were killed. No public records of the secret bombing campaign are known to exist, and the former U.S. officials said their recollections were in many cases sketchy, and in some cases contradictory. "But whether the bombings actually killed any civilians could not be confirmed because, as a former C.I.A. official said, the United States had no significant intelligence sources in Iraq then."[39] ChileOn September 4, 1970 Salvador Allende gained presidency after four elections and became the first socialist to be democratically elected in the Western Hemisphere in the 20th century. Soon after, President Richard Nixon ordered a covert operation, Project FUBELT, to undermine Allende's government and promote military coup in Chile. Joining the operations included Henry Kissinger (National Security Advisor), Richard Helms (CIA Director), and Attorney General John Mitchell. Under the supervision of Thomas Karamessines, a special task force was established and led by veteran David Atlee Phillips. On September 11, 1973 General Augusto Pinochet, who had just 19 days prior become the commander in chief of the army, executed a bloody coup d'etat which resulted in the death of Allende and the beggining of Pinochet's dictatotship, during which opposition was suppressed via state terrorism. Whether the US directly participated in the coup itself is disputed, see 1973 Chilean coup d'état. Afghanistan
Often cited as one of the American intelligence community's biggest mistakes was the training, arming, supplying and supporting of the Mujahedeen (Islamist fighters) in Afghanistan[citation needed], initiated under Carter and greatly expanded under Reagan, as American proxy soldiers against the Marxist regime and later the Soviet intervention. Part of the Mujahedeen trained by the CIA later became the core cadre of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda Islamist organization.[40] Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor under President Carter, has discussed U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan in several magazines.[41] [42] Sudan (Darfur)Democracy Now reported on June 5, 2005, "CIA Secretly Restores Ties to Sudan Despite Ongoing Human Rights Abuses in Darfur". The Los Angeles Times recently revealed that the U.S. has quietly forged a close intelligence partnership with Sudan despite the government's role in the mass killings in Darfur.[43] It's reported that early CIA involvement in Darfur and US complicity in the Darfur tragedy has gone unrecognized.[44] In 1978 oil was discovered in Southern Sudan. Rebellious war began five years later and was led by John Garang, who had taken military training at infamous Fort Benning, Georgia School of Americas. "The US government decided, in 1996, to send nearly $20 million of military equipment through the 'front-line' states of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Uganda to help the Sudanese opposition overthrow the Khartoum regime."[45] Sudan’s interior minister accused Central Intelligence Agency of smuggling weapons into the troubled region of Darfur. Interior Minister Zubair Bashir Taha addressing a crowd consisting of youth organizations said that the CIA is seeking to “disrupt the demographics of Darfur”. The US special envoy to Darfur Andrew Natsios told reporters in Khartoum last week that Arab groups from neighboring countries were resettling in West Darfur and other lands traditionally belonging to local African tribes.Taha accused the US of being responsible for “prolonging the war in Darfur and the death of thousands of people after the Abuja peace agreement just like they did in Iraq”.[46][47] Cultural activitiesIn 1967 it was revealed that the Congress of Cultural Freedom had been sponsored by the CIA. It published literary and political journals such as Encounter (as well as Der Monat in Germany and Preuves in France), and hosted dozens of conferences bringing together some of the most eminent Western thinkers; it also gave some assistance to intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain. The CIA states that, "Somehow this organization of scholars and artists — egotistical, free-thinking, and even anti-American in their politics — managed to reach out from its Paris headquarters to demonstrate that Communism, despite its blandishments, was a deadly foe of art and thought".[48] Drug traffickingNumerous accusations have been made that the CIA has been involved in drug trafficking to fund illegal operations in Nicaragua during their civil war, Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion, and in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. ContrasThe Kerry Committee report in 1989 found that the U.S. State Department had paid drug traffickers. Some of these payments were after the traffickers had been indicted by federal law enforcement agencies on drug charges or while traffickers were under active investigation by these same agencies.[49] The report declared, "It is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking...and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers." [50] Representative Maxine Waters testified to Congress:
In 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of exposés for the San Jose Mercury News entitled, "Dark Alliance", in which he reported evidence that CIA aircraft, which had ferried arms to the Nicaraguan Contras, had been used to ship cocaine to the United States on their return flights. Webb also alleged that Central American narcotics traffickers could distribute cocaine in U.S. cities in the 1980s without the interference of normal law enforcement agencies, and that the CIA intervened to prevent the prosecution of drug dealers who were helping to fund the Contras. He asserted that this led, in part, to the crack cocaine epidemic, especially in poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Faced with heavy Congressional and mainstream media criticism (especially from the Los Angeles Times), the Mercury News ultimately retracted Webb's conclusions, and Webb was prevented from conducting any further investigative reporting. (Webb was transferred to cover non-controversial suburban stories and subsequently gave up journalism and committed suicide.) After the "Dark Alliance" reports in the Mercury News, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz was assigned to investigate these allegations. In 1998 the new CIA director, George Tenet declared that he was releasing the report.[50] The report and Hitz's testimony showed that the "CIA did not 'expeditiously' cut off relations with alleged drug traffickers" and "the CIA was aware of allegations that 'dozens of people and a number of companies connected in some fashion to the contra program' were involved in drug trafficking"[50][52] Hitz also said that under an agreement in 1982 between Ronald Reagan's Attorney General William French Smith and the CIA, agency officers were not required to report allegations of drug trafficking involving non-employees, which was defined as meaning paid and non-paid "assets [meaning agents], pilots who ferried supplies to the contras, as well as contra officials and others.[52] This agreement, which had not previously been revealed, came at a time when there were allegations that the CIA was using drug dealers in its controversial covert operation to bring down the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.[52] Only after Congressional funds were restored in 1986 was the agreement modified to require the CIA to stop paying agents whom it believed were involved in the drug trade.[50] Drugs in AsiaIt has also been alleged that the CIA was involved in the opium/heroin trade in Asia during the Vietnam War and later, which was the focus of Alfred W. McCoy's book, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, an earlier edition of which had already been subjected to attempted suppression by the CIA.[53][54][55] The CIA's air cargo operation, Air America, has also been accused of transporting drugs.[56] Mafia connections and assassination plots
The United States government has conspired with organized crime figures to assassinate foreign heads of state. The CIA has been linked to several assassination attempts on foreign leaders, including first democratically elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo Patrice Lumumba, former leader of Panama Omar Torrijos[57] and the President of Cuba, Fidel Castro. Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA with the help of the Mafia assassins pursued a series of plots to poison or shoot Castro according to the assassination plots proposed by Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security.[58] Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey, counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, states that the CIA withheld information from the Warren Commission and frustrated the efforts of the Congressional Committee he represented.[59] According to a 1997 New York Times article, the CIA conducted a covert propaganda campaign to squelch criticism of the Warren Report. The CIA urged its field stations to use their "propaganda assets" to attack those who didn't agree with the Warren Report. In a dispatch from CIA headquarters, the Agency instructed its stations around the world to:
Declassified CIA torture manuals
In 1984, a CIA manual for training the Nicaraguan contras in psychological operations was discovered, entitled "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla War".[61] The manual recommended “selective use of violence for propagandistic effects” and to “neutralize” (i.e., kill) government officials. Nicaraguan Contras were taught to lead:
The manual also recommended:
The CIA claimed that the purpose of the manual was to "moderate" activities already being done by the Contras.[63] On January 24, 1997, two new manuals were declassified in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Baltimore Sun in 1994. The first manual, "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation," dated July 1963, is the source of much of the material in the second manual. The second manual, "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual - 1983," was used in at least seven U.S. training courses conducted in Latin American countries, including Honduras, between 1982 and 1987. Both manuals deal exclusively with interrogation and have an entire chapter devoted to "coercive techniques."[64] [65] These manuals recommend arresting suspects early in the morning by surprise, blindfolding them, and stripping them naked. Interrogation rooms should be windowless, soundproof, dark and without toilets. Suspects should be held incommunicado and should be deprived of any kind of normal routine in eating and sleeping. The manuals describe coercive techniques to be used "to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist."[66] UFOs and Robertson Panel
In 1951 the US Air Force revitalized Project Grudge, a program investigating UFOs between 1948-1949. Captain Edward J. Ruppelt ran the program and recommended that the Battelle Memorial Institute, a Columbus, Ohio think tank, do a statistical analysis of existing UFO reports. The think tank released its report in late 1953. Before the final Battelle report was ready however, the CIA became interested in the UFO issue as a national security and arranged to have a secret official committee, the Robertson Panel, look into the compiled UFO data.[67] The Robertson Panel began in January 1953, and met for a total of twelve hours, studying twenty-three alleged UFO sighting cases. The CIA concluded that UFOs presented little or no interesting scientific data and were only a threat to the United States if sighting reports clogged communications facilities and created a climate of fear among the population which the enemy could exploit before launching an attack. The Robertson Panel therefore suggested, first, an active campaign of public education, perhaps using TV and radio celebrities and the services of Walt Disney Productions; second, an active debunking of sightings in order to de-mystify UFOs in the public mind. Implicit in this education campaign was increased air force secrecy about sighting reports so as not to support public interest. The committee also recommended covert surveillance of civilian UFO groups, in order to monitor those who could promote public interest in UFOs.[67] The recommendations of the Robertson Panel were implemented by a series of special military regulations. Joint-Army-Navy-Air Force Publication 147 (JANAP 146) of December 1953 made reprinting of any UFO sighting to the public a crime under the Espionage Act, with fines of up to ten thousand dollars and imprisonment ranging from one to ten years. This act was considered binding on all who knew of the act's existence, including commercial airline pilots. A 1954 revision of Air Force Regulation 200-2 (AFR 200-2) made all sighting reports submitted to the air force classified material and prohibited the release of any information about UFO sightings unless the sighting was able to be positively identified. In February 1958 a revision of AFR 200-2 allowed the military to give the FBI the names of people who were "illegally or deceptively bringing the subject [of UFOs] to public attention". Because of the Robertson Panel the air force's Project Blue Book's procedures of investigating UFOs also changed, attempting to find a quick explanation and then file them away. Project Blue Book was a successor of Project Grudge.[67] In 1956 retired Marine Major Donald Keyhoe founded the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), a UFO investigations organization. By 1969 Keyhoe turned his focus on the CIA as the source of the UFO cover up. NICAP's board, headed by Colonel Jospeph Bryan III, forced Keyhoe to retire as NICAP chief. Bryan was actually a former covert CIA agent who had served the agency as founder and head of its psychological warfare division. Under Bryan's leadership, the NICAP disbanded its local and state affiliate groups, and by 1973 it had been completely closed.[68] After the Freedom of Information Act was made law in 1974, Ufologists involved in making FOIA requests reported that more than nine hundred pages of information released for the CIA indicated that the organization was collecting and analyzing sighting reports from as early as 1949. In 1997 the CIA came forward to admit its historical interest in UFOs.[69] Farewell dossierThe Farewell Dossier in 1981 revealed massive Soviet espionage on Western technology. A successful counter-espionage program was created which involved giving defective technologies to Soviet agents.[70] CIA on TechnologyCIA was not only keeping a tab on enemy agents and spies but was all the time, looking at how to solve these vexed issues through the use of technology and IT. Its obsession with technology was twofold: one for its own use and second what the Soviets might be using it for. Right from the onset, the agency has been making confidential reports and assessing technology. The big push for the same came in fifties with the launch of Sputnik satellite by erstwhile USSR. The agency did not miss the irrepressible computer either, the miracle machine that was also evolving more or less around the same time. There are around 517 declassified documents on computers, from the oldest on German textile industry using computers as a tool published in August 1945 to the latest on WMD search in Iraq dating from September, 2004. In one document, the author, late Joseph Becker, referred to the computer as a 'competent mechanical slave'.[1] Recent controversiesWar on terror
On November 5, 2002, newspapers reported that Al-Qaeda operatives in a car travelling through Yemen had been killed by a missile launched from a CIA-controlled Predator drone (a medium-altitude, remote-controlled aircraft). On May 15, 2005, it was reported that another of these drones had been used to assassinate Al-Qaeda figure Haitham al-Yemeni inside Pakistan.[71] Soon after, President Bush appointed the CIA to be in charge of all human intelligence and manned spying operations. This was the culmination of a years old turf war regarding influence, philosophy and budget between the DIA of The Pentagon and the CIA. The Pentagon, through the DIA, wanted to take control of the CIA's paramilitary operations and many of its human assets. The CIA, which has for years held that human intelligence is the core of the agency, successfully argued that the CIA's decades long experience with human resources and civilian oversight made it the ideal choice. Thus, the CIA was given charge of all US human intelligence, but as a compromise, the Pentagon was authorized to include increased paramilitary capabilities in future budget requests.[citation needed] Despite reforms which have led back to what the CIA considers its traditional principal capacities, the CIA Director position has lost influence in the White House. For years, the Director of the CIA met regularly with the President to issue daily reports on ongoing operations. After the creation of the post of Director of National Intelligence, currently occupied by Mike McConnell, the report is now given by the DNI—who oversees all US Intelligence activities, including DIA operations outside of CIA jurisdiction. Former CIA Director Porter Goss, himself also a former CIA officer, denies this has had a diminishing effect on morale, in favor of promoting his singular mission to reform the CIA into the lean and agile counter-terrorism focused force he believes it should be.[citation needed] On January 13, 2006, the CIA launched an airstrike on Damadola, a Pakistani village near the Afghan border, where they believed Ayman al-Zawahiri was located. The airstrike killed a number of civilians but al-Zawahiri apparently was not among them.[52] The Pakistani government issued a strong protest against the US attack, considered a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty. However, several legal experts argue that this cannot be considered an assassination attempt as al-Zawahiri is named as terrorist and an enemy combatant by the United States, and therefore this targeted killing is not covered under Executive Order 12333, which banned assassinations.[72] [73][74] [75] [76] The 2003 War in Iraq
In 2002 an anonymous source, quoted in the Washington Post, says the CIA was authorized to execute a covert operation, if necessary with help of the Special Forces, that could serve as a preparation for a full military attack against Iraq.[77] U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have been focus of intense scrutiny in the U.S. In 2004, the continuing armed resistance against the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, and the widely-perceived need for a systematic review of the respective roles of the CIA, the FBI, and the Defense Intelligence Agency are prominent themes. On July 9, 2004, the Senate Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq of the Senate Intelligence Committee reported that the CIA exaggerated the danger presented by weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, largely unsupported by the available intelligence.[78] Secret CIA prisonsA report by the human rights organisation Human Rights Watch, entitled Enduring Freedom - Abuses by US Forces in Afghanistan, claims that the CIA has operated in Afghanistan since September, 2001[79]; maintaining a large facility in the Ariana Chowk neighborhood of Kabul and a detention and interrogation facility at the Bagram airbase. A story by reporter Dana Priest published in The Washington Post of November 2, 2005, reported: "The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important alleged al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement."[80] The reporting of the secret prisons was heavily criticized by members and former members of the Bush Administration. However, Dana Priest states no one in the administration requested that the Washington Post not print the story. Rather they asked they not publish the names of the countries in which the prisons are located.[81] "The Post has not identified the East European countries involved in the secret program at the request of senior U.S. officials who argued that the disclosure could disrupt counter-terrorism efforts".[82] While it was maintained that these prisons did not exist, recently the Bush administration has come forward and admitted their existence.[83] An August 13, 2007 story by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker reports that the CIA has operated "black site" secret prisons by the direct Presidential order of George W. Bush since shortly after 9/11, and that extreme psychological interrogation measures based at least partially on the Vietnam-era Phoenix Program were used on detainees. These included sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation, keeping prisoners naked indefinitely and photographing them naked to degrade and humiliate them, and forcibly administering drugs by suppositories to further break down their dignity. According to Mayer's report, CIA officers have taken out professional liability insurance, fearing that they could be criminally prosecuted if what they have already done became public knowledge. [84] On August 19, 2007, the American Psychological Association ruled that psychologists can no longer be associated with such interrogation techniques because the methods are "immoral, psychologically damaging and counterproductive in eliciting useful information." The APA said that psychologists who witness interrogators using mock executions, simulated drowning, sexual and religious humiliation, stress positions or sleep deprivation are required to intervene to stop such abuse, to report the activities to superiors and to report the involvement of any other psychologists in such activities to the association. Failure to do so could lead the APA to strip those professionals of their membership, which could lead to revocation of their license(s) by the states in which they practice. [85] [86] In December 2005, ABC News reported that former agents claimed the CIA used waterboarding, along with five other "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", against detainees held in the secret prisons.[87][88] Waterboarding is widely regarded as a form of torture, though there are reports that President Bush signed a secret "finding" that it is not, authorizing its use. After a media and public outcry in Europe concerning headlines about "secret CIA prisons" in Poland and other US allies, the EU through its Committee on Legal Affairs investigated whether any of its members, especially Poland, the Czech Republic or Romania had any of these "secret CIA prisons." After an investigation by the EU Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, the EU determined that it could not find any of these prisons. In fact, they could not prove if they had ever existed at all. To quote the report, "At this stage of the investigations, there is no formal, irrefutable evidence of the existence of secret CIA detention centres in Romania, Poland or any other country. Nevertheless, there are many indications from various sources which must be considered reliable, justifying the continuation of the analytical and investigative work."[89] On 28 December 2006, the BBC reported that during 2003, a well-known CIA Gulfstream aircraft implicated in extraordinary renditions, N379P, had on several occasions landed at the Polish airbase of Szymany. The airport manager reported that airport officials were told to keep away from the aircraft, which parked at the far end of the runway and frequently kept their engines running. Vans from a nearby intelligence base (Stare Kiejkuty) met the aircraft, stayed for a short while and then drove off. Landing fees were paid in cash, with the invoices made out to "probably fake" American companies. [90] On 13 December 2005 Dick Marty, investigating illegal CIA activity in Europe on behalf of the Council of Europe, reported evidence that "individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal standards". His investigation has found that no evidence exists establishing the existence of secret CIA prisons in Europe, but added that it was "highly unlikely" that European governments were unaware of the American program of renditions. However, Marty's interim report, which was based largely on a compendium of press clippings has been harshly criticised by the governments of various EU member states. [91] Khaled el-MasriKhalid El-Masri is a German citizen who was detained, flown to Afghanistan, and interrogated and allegedly tortured by the CIA for several months, and then released without charge. This was apparently due to a misunderstanding that arose concerning the similarity of the spelling of El-Masri's name with the spelling of suspected terrorist Khalid al-Masri. Germany has issued warrants for 13 people suspected to be involved with the abduction. Imam RapitoThe Imam Rapito affair refers to the alleged abduction and transfer by the CIA to Egypt of the Imam of Milan, and alleged terrorist, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, and tortured and abused. Hassan Nasr was released by Egyptian justice in February 2007, who considered his detention "unfounded," and has not been indicted for any alleged crime in Italy. Ultimately, twenty-six Americans and nine Italians have been indicted with a trial pending. Supporting warlords in SomaliaThe CIA supported warlords in Somalia in order to prevent Al-Qaeda members hiding in the war-torn country.[92] The US supported the Ethiopian intervention to restore the UN recognized government. The US also carried out reconnaissance flights and air attacks targeting the 1998 Embassy terrorists. Clandestine serviceIn 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.[93][94] According to the report, DO (Directorate of Operations) officers who engage in highly illegal activities not only risk political embarrassment to his or her country and President, but also endanger the freedom of the clandestine officer him- or herself. Regarded the facts and recent history, the case officers are held accountable for overseeing the Clandestine Service (CS) and the Director's of Central Intelligence (DCI) must work closely with the Director of the CS and directly responsible for him.[95] Criticism for ineffectivenessThe 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 organise and run an espionage service."[96] These criticisms included allowing a double agent, Aldrich Ames, to gain high position 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. On October 13, 1950, the CIA had assured President Truman that the Chinese would not send troops to Korea. Six days later, over one million Chinese troops arrived.[97] 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. Proponents of the CIA respond by stating that only the failures become known to the public, whereas the successes usually cannot be known until decades have passed because release of successful operations would reveal operational methods to foreign intelligence, which could affect future and ongoing missions. Some successes for the CIA include the U-2 and SR-71 programs, and anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s, although critics charge that these helped foster the genesis of today's terrorist groups. 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, who said its publication would "consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed.”[98] "The Family Jewels"On 27 June 2007 the CIA released two collections of previously classified documents which outlined various activities of doubtful legality. The first collection, the "Family Jewels," consists of almost 700 pages of responses from CIA employees to a 1973 directive from Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger requesting information about activities inconsistent with the Agency's charter. The second collection, the CAESAR-POLO-ESAU papers, consists of 147 documents and 11,000 pages of research from 1953 to 1973 relating to Soviet and Chinese leadership hierarchies, and Sino-Soviet relations.[99] Other controversiesFormer case officer Philip Agee, who later worked with the Soviet KGB and the Cuban intelligence service, has argued that CIA covert action is extraordinarily widespread, extending to propaganda campaigns within countries allied to the United States.[citation needed] 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 eighty 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."[100] In a trend some find disturbing, many of its former duties and functions are being "outsourced" and "privatized."[2] [3] Wikipedia EditsVarious media outlets have reported that people using CIA computers have edited Wikipedia.[101] Allegedly, employees of the intelligence agency altered biographical information contained in Wikipedia entries on former presidents including Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. When asked by the BBC whether it could confirm whether the changes had been made by a person using a CIA computer, an agency spokesperson responded, "I cannot confirm that the traffic you cite came from agency computers. I'd like in any case to underscore a far larger and more significant point that no one should doubt or forget: The CIA has a vital mission in protecting the United States, and the focus of this agency is there, on that decisive work." [102] Nevertheless, Wikipedia Scanner allegedly shows that workers on the agency's computers made edits to the page of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While other changes that have been made are more innocuous, and include tweaks to the profile of former CIA chief Porter Goss and celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey. The Iraq war article has also been edited by the CIA [103]. As is the case with all Wikipedia edits identifiable by WikiScanner to specific organization's computer networks (those in which a web anonymizer service has not been employed in the process), individuals can make such edits on their own initiative.
PublicationsOne 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. 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. Unclassified and declassified Studies articles, as well as other books and monographs, are made available by CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence on a limited basis through Internet and other publishing mechanisms.[104] 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.[105] 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."[106] See also
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Intelligence agencies and organizations of USA
