Central Intelligence Agency

Seal of the Central Intelligence Agency
Agency overview
Formed	26 July, 1947
Preceding agency	Central Intelligence Group
Headquarters	Langley, Virginia, United States
Employees	Classified[1][2]
Annual budget	Classified[3][4]
Minister responsible	John Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence
Agency executives	General Michael Hayden USAF, Director Stephen Kappes, Deputy Director Michael Morell, Associate Deputy Director
Website	www.cia.gov

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] 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), Israel's Mossad and India's Research & Analysis Wing (RAW)

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.

Organization

Agency 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.

Structure

• Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DCIA) – The head of the CIA is given the title of the DCIA. The act that created the CIA in 1947 also created a Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) to serve as head of the United States intelligence community, act as the principal adviser to the President for intelligence matters related to the national security, and serve 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.
• Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (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.
• Associate Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (ADD) – Created July 5 2006, the ADD was delegated all authorities and responsibilities vested previously in the post of Executive Director. The post of Executive Director, which was responsible for managing the CIA on a day-to-day basis, was simultaneously abolished.^[9]
• Associate Director for Military Support (AD/MS) – The DCIA's principal adviser and representative on military issues. The AD/MS coordinates Intelligence Community efforts to provide Joint Force commanders with timely, accurate intelligence. The AD/MS also supports Department of Defense officials who oversee military intelligence training and the acquisition of intelligence systems and technology. A senior general officer, the AD/MS ensures coordination of Intelligence Community policies, plans and requirements relating to support to military forces in the intelligence budget.

Directorates and other offices

• The Directorate of Intelligence, the analytical branch of the CIA, is responsible for the production and dissemination of all-source intelligence analysis on key foreign issues.^[10]
• The National Clandestine Service, a semi-independent service which was formerly the Directorate of Operations, is responsible for the clandestine collection of foreign intelligence and covert action.
• The Directorate of Science & Technology creates and applies innovative technology in support of the intelligence collection mission.^[11]
• The Directorate of Support provides the mission critical elements of the Agency's support foundation: people, security, information, property, and financial operations. Most of this Directorate is sub-structured into smaller offices based on role and purpose, such as the CIA Office of Security.
• The Center for the Study of Intelligence maintains the Agency's historical materials and promotes the study of intelligence as a legitimate and serious discipline.^[12]
• 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.^[13]
• 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.
• 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.^[14]
• The Office of Military Affairs provides intelligence and operational support to the US armed forces.^[15]

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, Spain's CNI, 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.

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. 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."^[16] 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."^[17]

Despite opposition from the military establishment, the State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)^[16], President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group in January 1946.^[18] Later, under the National Security Act of 1947 (effective September 18, 1947), the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency were established.^[19] 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."^[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.^[20] 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".^[21]

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.

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. 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.^[22]

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 sixteen 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. Fifty-two years earlier, in 1949, Congress and President Harry S. 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.

Linkages with former Nazis

The CIA had 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.^[23] 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.^[24] Some claim that these agents had a long-term corrosive effect on American intelligence agencies.^[25]

Developing world

In 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 militant leaders such as 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.^[26]

CIA and the media

In 1967 it was revealed that the Congress of Cultural Freedom, founded in 1950, 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".^[27]

Air America

The CIA operated the predecessor of Air America Civil Air Transport, which at one time it was the largest "airline" in the entire world. With the war in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in the 1960s, the CIA consolidated its "airlines" under the name of Air America. Air America disbanded in 1975. An Air America Memorial is located in Dallas, Texas.^[28]

Drug trafficking

Numerous 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. According to a personal account by Everett Ellis Briggs, former U.S. Ambassador to Panama and Honduras, CIA undermined efforts to put a stop to the drug smuggling activities of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega prior to the December, 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama.^[29]

Contras

The 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.^[30] 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." ^[31]

Representative Maxine Waters testified to Congress:

Senator Kerry and his Senate investigation found drug traffickers had used the Contra war and tie to the Contra leadership to help this deadly trade. Among their devastating findings, the Kerry committee investigators found that major drug lords used the Contra supply networks and the traffickers provided support for Contras in return. The CIA of course, created, trained, supported, and directed the Contras and were involved in every level of their war.^[32]

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 DCI, George Tenet, declared that he was releasing the report.^[31] 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"^[31][33] 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.^[33] 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.^[33] 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.^[31]

Drugs in Asia

It 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.

The CIA's air cargo operation, Air America, has also been accused of transporting drugs.^[34]

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 Republic of the Congo Patrice Lumumba, former leader of Panama Omar Torrijos^[35] 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.^[36]

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.^[37]

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:

1. counteract the "new wave of books and articles criticizing the [Warren] Commission's findings...[and] conspiracy theories ...[that] have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization";
2. "discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts, especially politicians and editors;" and
3. "employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. ... Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. ... The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists..."^[38]

Operation Gladio

The CIA set up a para-military network of Stay-behind forces to fight a Soviet invasion of NATO countries. Several of these stay-behind networks began to operate as right-wing terrorist organizations such as the Turkish Grey Wolves member attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II. [2][3] Spanish para-military organizations such as the GLA operated as deathsquads assasinating Basque ETA members.^[39]

Declassified CIA interrogation manuals

In 1984, a CIA manual for training the Nicaraguan contras in psychological operations was discovered, entitled "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla War".^[40] The manual recommended “selective use of violence for propagandistic effects” and to “neutralize” (i.e., kill) government officials. Nicaraguan Contras were taught to lead:

...demonstrators into clashes with the authorities, to provoke riots or shootings, which lead to the killing of one or more persons, who will be seen as the martyrs; this situation should be taken advantage of immediately against the Government to create even bigger conflicts.

The manual also recommended:

...selective use of armed force for PSYOP [psychological operations] effect.... Carefully selected, planned targets — judges, police officials, tax collectors, etc. — may be removed for PSYOP effect in a UWOA [unconventional warfare operations area], but extensive precautions must insure that the people “concur” in such an act by thorough explanatory canvassing among the affected populace before and after conduct of the mission.^[41]

The CIA claimed that the purpose of the manual was to "moderate" activities already being done by the Contras.^[42]

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."^{[43] [44]} 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."^[45]

Robertson Panel

The Robertson Panel was a committee commissioned by CIA in 1952 in response to widespread Unidentified Flying Object reports, especially in the Washington D.C. area. The panel was briefed on U.S. military activities and intelligence; hence the report was originally classified Secret.

Later declassified, the Robertson Panel's report concluded that UFOs were not a direct threat to national security, but could pose an indirect threat by overwhelming standard military communications due to public interest in the subject. Most UFO reports, they concluded, could be explained as misidentification of mundane aerial objects, and the remaining minority could, in all likelihood, be similarly explained with further study.

The Robertson Panel concluded that a public relations campaign should be undertaken in order to "debunk" UFOs, and reduce public interest in the subject, and that civilian UFO groups should be monitored. 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 by 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.^{[46] [47]}

Farewell dossier

The 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.^[48]

CIA on technology

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 Soviets might develop. This effort gained impetus in fifties with the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the USSR. The agency was also extremely interested in computer and information technology. In 1999, CIA created the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel to help fund and develop technologies of interest to the agency.^{[49] [50]}

Covert Operations in support of Espionage, Counter-Espionage and Regime Change

Template:Totally-disputed

Here we summarize CIA Covert Operations by Region, Country and Date from available sources.^[51][52]

North America

• 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.

• 1950-1953. Director Hillenkoetter approved Project BLUEBIRD, later renamed Project ARTICHOKE, which was the CIA's first mind control program.

• 1950-1960s. 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.^[53]

• 1951-1966 CIA pays the National Student Association to spy on campus, both by funding the staff positions of the organization, and by enticing or coercing individual students to act as informants.

• 1958 CIA pays Michigan State University USD 25,000,00 to hire five employees to send to South Vietnam to train students in covert police methods. Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other universities are also paid for this purpose. This operation was exposed in an April, 1966 article in Ramparts Magazine^[54][55][56]

Western Europe

Germany

• 1990. CIA acquired the Rosenholz files, containing the list of foreign spies of the Stasi, in the former GDR.^[57]

Greece

• 1949. President Harry S. Truman authorizes CIA to support aid to Greek anti-communists in cooperation with Britain's Secret Intelligence Service.

Italy

• 1948.
  See also: Strategy of tension
  , Operation Gladio's strategy of tension chronology
  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.

• 1960s-1980s. 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.^[58] 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.^[59]

Eastern Europe, Eurasia and Eastern Bloc

Albania

• 1949-1952. CIA supports a failed coup against Enver Hoxha.

Hungary

• 1956. CIA supports the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 against Communist government by dissidents. Radio Free Europe broadcasts Nikita Khrushchev's secret de-Stalinization speech and hints at coming U.S. aid. 7000 of 200,000 involved Russian troops are killed, 30,000 dissidents die. Russia field 2,500 tanks. The rebellion fails.

Soviet Union

• 1952-1973. In operation HTLINGUAL CIA intercepts mail from the U.S. to the Soviet Union.

• 1967. In Operation Acoustic Kitty, CIA attempts to eavesdrop on men in a park outside the Soviet embassy in Washington with a USD 20,000,000 cat. The cat is run over by a car en route to mission.

• 1977CIA funds Islamic extremists within Afghanistan. These Islamic extremists murder several Soviet Advisors and their families and this triggers the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

• 1978 CIA funds the Mujahadeen and uses Saudi Arabian money and jihadists for this task. The CIA trains jihadis in warfare.

• 1987Soviets claim that the Zbegniew Brezinski develops a plan to use the CIA is to infiltrate Islamic extremists into the Muslim Republics of the Soviet Union to trigger a civil war which occurs primarily with Chechnya and Dagastan.It is interesting the note that Zbegniew Brezinski is the board member of the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya and the Russian government states that this and other organizations support these Anti-Russian Islamic terrorists^[60][61]

Africa

North Africa

Algeria

• 1958-1962. CIA supports Algerian university students in the Algerian War with France. French press accuses CIA of trying to overthrow or assassinate Charles de Gaulle and of supporting Maurice Challe.

Southern Africa

Angola

• 1975-1976. The CIA participated in the Angolan Civil War, hiring and training American, British, French and Portuguese private military contractors to fight against the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola led by Agostinho Neto.^[62]John Stockwell asserts that he commanded the CIA's Angola effort in 1975-1976.^[26] CIA's Angola operations were approved by the 40 Committee after collapse of the Portuguese colonial regime.

Democratic Republic of the Congo

• 1960. See Congo in CIA regime change actions, Congo Political Crises (1960-1965) and Arrest of Patrice Lumumba.

East Africa

Sudan (Darfur)

• 1996. It's reported that early CIA involvement in Darfur and US complicity in the Darfur tragedy has gone unrecognized.^[63] 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."^[64]

• 2005. 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.^[65]

• 2007. 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”.^[66][67]

Latin America

Caribbean

Cuba

• 1959. On 11 December 1959, CIA recommends assassinate Fidel Castro.

• 1960. Operation Mongoose was approved by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower to assassinate Fidel Castro.

• 1961. Operation Mongoose was re-approved to Edward Lansdale by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in November 1961. The CIA tried and failed several times to assassinate Fidel Castro. Various methods are discussed, such as hiding bombs in seashells.

The 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.

The CIA supported a variety of anti-Castro agents such as Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, who are wanted in Venezuela for terrorism charges. [4]

• 1963. November 1963, Operation Mongoose is cancelled following the John F. Kennedy assassination.

Dominican Republic

• 1961. President Rafael Trujillo is assassinated in a CIA-sponsored ambush.

Central America

Guatemala

• 1951-1954.

PBSUCCESS, 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.”^[68] 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. Arbenz had threathened the interest of the United Fruit Company by instigating sweeping land reform acts. However, contrary to popular belief the responsibility of the United Fruit Company in instigating the coup d'etat was relatively small.^[69] He had put forth a number of new policies that the U.S. intelligence community deemed to be Communist in nature, and, in the intensely anti-Communist McCarthyism prevalent at the time, suspected that the Soviet Union was pulling the strings, fueling a fear of Guatemala becoming a "Soviet beachhead in the western hemisphere.^[70]

• 1965 President Lyndon Johnson wanted to invade Guatemala with private military contractors. In support of this, CIA Director William Raborn was tasked with finding evidence to support the President's belief that Guatemala was a Cuban puppet state. Raborn was unsuccessful in finding such evidence.

Honduras

• 1980s CIA supports and trains Honduran Army unit Battalion 316.

Nicaragua

• 1987. The operation underlying the Iran-Contra Affair was given legal approval by then-CIA deputy counsel David Addington among others, according to Salon.com Washington bureau chief Sidney Blumenthal.^[71]

• 1989. It is alleged that CIA smuggled cocaine from Nicaragua to the U.S. to finance the Contra war in Nicaragua.

South America

Argentina

• 1977-1984. Argentine military works with CIA in Operation Charly.

Bolivia

• 1967. CIA arranges for the assassination of Che Guevara by the Bolivian Army in October 1967, according to Bolivian Minister of Interior Antonio Arguedas Mendieta and as documented by Gregorio Selser^[72].

Chile

• 1964 CIA spreads disinformation that Salvador Allende, the Socialist candidate, was receiving funds from Eastern Bloc nations or Cuba. The Christian Democrat Party of Chile candidate Eduardo Frei Montalva wins the election.

• 1970.
  Main article: Project FUBELT
  On 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 20^th 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. USD 10,000,000 is authorized; USD 8,000,000 is spent.

• 1973. 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 beginning of Pinochet's dictatorship, 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.

Ecuador

• 1961. CIA installs Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy as President on 7 November 1961.

• 1963. CIA overthrows Carlos Julio Arosemena Monroy.

Venezuela

• 2002

In 2002, Washington is claimed to have approved and supported a coup against the democratically-elected Venezuelan government, acting through senior officials of the U.S. government, including Special Envoy to Latin America Otto Reich and convicted Iran-contra figure and George W. Bush "democracy 'czar'" Elliott Abrams, who have long histories in the U.S. backed "dirty wars" of the 1980s in Central America, and links to U.S.-supported death squads working in Central America at that time.^[73] Top coup plotters, including Pedro Carmona, the man installed during the coup as the new president, began visits to the White House months before the coup and continued until weeks before the putsch. The plotters were received at the White House by the man President George W. Bush tasked to be his key policy-maker for Latin America, Special Envoy Otto Reich.^[74] It has been claimed that Reich was the U.S. mastermind of the coup.^[75]

Former U.S. Navy intelligence officer Wayne Madsen, told the British newspaper the Guardian that American military attaches had been in touch with members of the Venezuelan military to explore the possibility of a coup. "I first heard of Lieutenant Colonel James Rogers [the assistant military attache now based at the U.S. embassy in Caracas] going down there last June [2001] to set the ground," Mr. Madsen reported, adding: "Some of our counter-narcotics agents were also involved." He claims the U.S. Navy assisted with signals intelligence as the coup played out and helped by jamming communications for the Venezuelan military, focusing on jamming communications to and from the diplomatic missions in Caracas. The U.S. embassy dismissed the allegations as "ridiculous".^[76]

The U.S. also funded opposition groups in the year leading up to the coup, channeling hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to U.S. and Venezuelan groups opposed to President Hugo Chavez, including the labor group whose protests sparked off the coup. The funds were provided by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED),^[77] a nonprofit organization whose roots, according to an article in Slate trace back to the late 1960s when the public learned of CIA machinations to covertly fund parties and activists opposing the Soviets. Congress created the NED in 1983 which disburses money to pro-democracy groups around the globe and do so openly.^[78] The State Department is now examining whether one or more recipients of the NED money may have actively plotted against the Venezuelan government. ^[79]

Bush Administration officials and anonymous sources acknowledged meeting with some of the planners of the coup in the several weeks prior to April 11, but have strongly denied encouraging the coup itself, saying that they insisted on constitutional means. [5] Because of allegations, Sen. Christopher Dodd requested a review of U.S. activities leading up to and during the coup attempt. The OIG report found no "wrongdoing" by U.S. officials either in the State Department or in the U.S. Embassy. Inspector General Report

• 2007

Venezuelan counterintelligence release a CIA memo they claim to have discovered outlining 'Operation Pliers', a CIA plot to combine press manipulation and military intervention to cause a mass insurrection in the wake of the constitutional reform referendum.

Venezuela claims that a confidential memorandum from the US embassy to the CIA revealed and circulated by the Venezuelan government on November 26, 2007 provides details on the activity of a CIA unit engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming national referendum and to coordinate the civil and military overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Venezuela. According to the Venezuelan government, the memo, entitled "Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer," was sent by Michael Middleton Steere addressed to the Director of CIA, Michael Hayden, and outlines covert Operation Pincer (OP) (Operación Tenaza). ^[80]

According to these claims, Operation Pincer entails a two-pronged strategy of impeding the upcoming national referendum of December 2, 2007 on important changes to the Venezuelan constitution urged by the government of President Hugo Chavez, rejecting the outcome, and at the same time calling for a 'no' vote. In the run up to the referendum, OP includes running phony polls, attacking electoral officials and running propaganda through the private media accusing the government of fraud and calling for a 'no' vote. Contradictions, the report emphasizes, are of no matter.^[81]

According to these claims, the most dangerous threats to Venezuelan democracy urged by the US Embassy memo are the mobilization of students at private university, backed by top administrators, to attack key government buildings including the Presidential Palace, Supreme Court and the National Electoral Council. The US Embassy provided $8 million dollars in propaganda alone, according to the Embassy memo, to shape the university students' views; the right-wing opposition and the business elite through free air time on the private right-wing media, have organized a majority of the upper middle class students from the private universities, backed by the Catholic Church hierarchy. The Embassy is especially full of praise for the ex-Maoist group for its violent street fighting activity. Ironically, small Trotskyist sects and their trade unionists join the ex-Maoists in opposing the constitutional amendments.^[82]

According to these claims, the ultimate objective of OP as outlined in the memo is to seize a territorial or institutional base with the "massive support" of the defeated electoral minority within three or four days, presumably after the elections, backed by an uprising by oppositionist military officers principally in the National Guard. The Embassy operative concede that the military plotters have run into serous problems as key intelligence operatives were detected, stores of arms were decommissioned and several plotters are under tight surveillance. Apart from the deep involvement of the US, the primary organization of the Venezuelan business elite (FEDECAMARAS), as well as all the major private television, radio and newspaper outlets have been engaged in a campaign of fear and intimidation campaign against the referendum and any results thereof.^[83]

The US has called Venezuelan accusations of a CIA conspiracy "ridiculous".^[84] According to the International Herald Tribune, Benjamin Ziff, an embassy spokesman said:^[85]"We reject and are disappointed in the Venezuelan government's allegations that the United States is involved in any type of conspiracy to affect the outcome of the constitutional referendum."

A CIA spokesman called the memo "a fake", while independent analysts and researchers doubt its authenticity.^[85] Jeremy Bigwood, an independent researcher in Washington, said:"^[86]"I find the document quite suspect. There's not an original version in English, and the timing of its release is strange. Everything about it smells bad."

Middle East

Afghanistan

• 1973-1974.

Roger Morris, writing in the Asia Times, argues that as early as 1973-74, the CIA began offering covert backing to Islamic radical rebels in Afghanistan premised on the claim that the right-wing, authoritarian government headed by Mohammed Daoud Khan, might prove a likely instrument of Soviet military aggression in South Asia. Morris argues that this premise was without basis in fact; Daoud had always held the Russians, his main patron when it came to aid, at arm's length, and had savagely purged local communists who supported him when he overthrew the Afghan monarchy in 1973. The Soviets had also shown no inclination to use the notoriously unruly Afghans and their army for any expansionist aim.^{[87][unreliable source?]} Morris claims that during this period U.S. foreign policy leaders saw the Soviets as always being "on the march." This apprehension resulted in a rash of U.S. secret wars, assassinations, terrorist acts and manifold corruptions. U.S. secret backing of radical Islamic rebels ceased following an abortive rebel uprising in 1975.^[88]

The Black Book of Communism argues that Daoud relied on Communist army officials in order to carry out the coup. After the coup, at the instigation of Communists a wave of repression was unleashed. However, he got rid of the Communists in the government in 1975 and after that his days were numbered. The Soviet Union had no intention of letting Afghanistan escape from Soviet influence.^[89]

• 1978-1989.

One of the American intelligence community's biggest operations and initially considered a major success was the funding of the Mujahedeen (Islamist fighters) in Afghanistan and their training, arming, and supplying. The program was initiated under Carter and greatly expanded following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December 1979. Under Reagan funding reached levels of $600 million/year. It has been alleged that part of the Mujahedeen trained by the CIA later became the core cadre of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda Islamist organization,^[90] a charge denied by American and Pakistan intelligence officials and journalist Peter Bergen. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor under President Carter, has discussed U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan in several magazines.^{[91] [92]} It is alleged that CIA smuggled opium from Afghanistan to the West to raise operational funds or to the Soviet Union to damage their society.

Roger Morris, writing in the Asia Times, states that in April 1978, the crackdown by the regime of Daoud on Afghanistan's small Communist Party provoked a successful coup by Communist Party loyalists in the army. The coup occurred in defiance of a skittish Moscow, which had stopped earlier coup plans.

According to Morris, by autumn 1978, an Islamic insurgency, armed and planned by the U.S., Pakistan, Iran and China, and soon to be actively supported, at Washington's prodding, by the Saudis and Egyptians, was fighting in eastern Afghanistan. U.S. planners continued funding the radical Islamic insurgency to "suck" the Russians into Afghanistan.^[93] According to the "Progressive South Asia Exchange Net", claiming to cite an article in Le Nouvel Observateur, U.S. policy, unbeknownst even to the Mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military intervention." National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski stated:

"According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." "That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap.... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War." ^[94]

The Black Book of Communism instead puts the blame on the Soviet Union who feared that Afghanistan was escaping its domination. There was little Muslim extremism before the Communist coup. After the coup, according to the Black Book, several antireligous campaigns by the Communist regime, as well as the harsh repressions, soon caused a fierce insurgency. The director of the infamous Pol-e-Charki prison stated "We'll leave only 1 million Afghans alive - that's all we need to build socialism."^[95] The claim in the Black Book that there was little Islamin insurgency before the coup is not necessarily inconsistent with the notion that the U.S. government organized the Islamic insurgency to lure in the Soviets to quell the instability in the country.

With instability and bloody civil strife raging in a country on their border, the Soviets invaded in December 1979, according to the Asia Times report, fulfilling the hopes of Washington as expressed by National Security Adviser Brzezinski.^{[96] [97]}

The Black Book of Communism states approximately 100,000 people had been killed by the Communists before the Soviet Invasion. It argues that one of the primary reasons for the Soviet Invasion and murder of the Communist President Hafizullah Amin was that he had began to show signs of independence from Moscow's control.^[98]

The CIA provided assistance to the fundamentalist insurgents through the Pakistani secret services, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in a program called Operation Cyclone. Somewhere between $3–$20 billion in U.S. funds were funneled into the country to train and equip troops with weapons, including Stinger surface-to-air missiles.^[99][100] On July 20, 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country was announced pursuant to the negotiations that led to the Geneva Accords of 1988.^[101]

The people of Afghanistan suffered enormously in the war, with one and a half million died during more than a quarter-century of war and unrest. Morris claims that this was a continuing catastrophe beyond any other in the history of nation-states.^{[102] [103]} Five million Afghan people, one third of the prewar population of the country, were made refugees in Pakistan and Iran, and an additional two million Afghans were forced by the war to migrate within the country. In the 1980s, one out of two refugees in the world was an Afghan.^[104] The Black Book of Communism states that the Communists were the side most responsible for the deaths and that such high death tolls were not unusual in Communist regimes. For example the Khmer Rouge killed proportionately more than of the population than was the case in Afghanistan.^[105] The Black Book of Communism is controversial and has been criticized for being one-sided in its review of Communist regimes, and for attributing victims to Communist regimes that were not victims of Communism at all so that the Book can arrive at a set target of total victims.^{[106] [107] [108] [109]}

Iran

• 1952-1953

Britain, resentful of the nationalization of Iran’s 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^[110] 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.

In 1953, the CIA worked with the United Kingdom to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Iran lead by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh who had attempted to nationalize Iran's oil, threatening the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Declassified CIA documents show that Britain was fearful of Iran's plans to nationalize its oil industry and pressed the U.S. to mount a joint operation to remove the prime minister.^[111] The prize was Iran's oil fields; in 1951 the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize the oil fields of the country. Anti-Communism had also risen to a fever pitch in Washington, and officials were worried that Iran might fall under the sway of the Soviet Union, a historical presence there. "The aim was to bring to power a government which would reach an equitable oil settlement, enabling Iran to become economically sound and financially solvent, and which would vigorously prosecute the dangerously strong Communist Party."^[112] Prime minister Mossadegh had dissolved the parliament, claiming massive support for the measure in a plebiscite and accepted the support of the Communist Tudeh party, allegedly leading to U.S. fears of a Communist overthrow.^[113]

The coup was led by CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. (grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt). With help from British intelligence, the CIA planned, funded and implemented Operation Ajax.^[114] The U.K. and U.S. boycott and other political pressures by both governments, together with a massive covert propaganda campaign in the months leading up to the coup created the environment necessary for success.^[115]

Another aspect of the covert action was the U.S. government's attempt to manipulate U.S. public opinion through the American media. The CIA hoped to plant articles in American newspapers saying that Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi's return to govern Iran resulted from a homegrown revolt against a Communist-leaning government. This attempt to manipulate the U.S. media largely failed, although the CIA did successfully use its contacts at the Associated Press to put on the news wire a statement from Tehran about royal decrees that the CIA itself had written.^[116] The CIA hired Iranian assets who posed as Communists, harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home to turn the Islamic religious community against the government.^[117] See false-flag operation.

The coup initially seemed to fail and the Shah (monarch) Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled the country. After four days of rioting pro-shah army units and street crowds defeated Mossadeq's forces and the Shah returned. According to the 1906 constitution he was a constitutional monarch who should rule together with the democratically elected parliament, but after the coup he who ruled autocratically, with little concern for democracy.^[118][119] The Shah's power was consolidated with help from the CIA, and Iran became the U.S. most important ally in the Middle East, after Israel.^[120]

The Shah was one of the most brutal dictators of his era.^[121] The Shah's brutal regime included a secret police, the SAVAK, allied and trained by the CIA, which routinely used torture, and is claimed to have destroyed any real possibility of the survival of an Iranian democratic counterforce to the ayatollahs' ensuing clerical tyranny bred by the Shah's blundering, martyring repression.^[122] However, partially due to U.S. pressure, he also attempted to modernize Iran and introduced many social reforms (See the White Revolution).

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in a speech on March 17, 2000 before the American Iranian Council on the relaxation of U.S. sanctions against Iran, finally acknowledged:

"In 1953, the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons, but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development and it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.

Moreover, during the next quarter century, the United States and the West gave sustained backing to the Shah's regime. Although it did much to develop the country economically, the Shah's government also brutally repressed political dissent.

As President Bill Clinton has said, the United States must bear its fair share of responsibility for the problems that have arisen in U.S.-Iranian relations. Even in more recent years, aspects of U.S. policy toward Iraq during its conflict with Iran appear now to have been regrettably shortsighted, especially in light of our subsequent experiences with Saddam Hussein."^[123]

• 1957-1979

CIA and MOSSAD help form and train SAVAK, the internal security apparatus of the Shah. CIA provides SAVAK with lists of Communists who the Savak would either imprison or execute (Ostrovsky,1990 and Dreyfyss,2005).

• 1978

From August 1978 through beginning of 1979, CIA has no HUMINT on Iran.

• 1979

Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi flees Iran for the U.S. on 16 January 1979. The CIA is caught unaware. Because the Shah had neutralized or assassinated all of his moderate political opposition, when the Shah was finally overthrown in 1979, it was by extreme Islamic fundamentalists. 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.^[124][125]

• 1980

Z magazine reported that in June 1980, students in Iran revealed a 1980 memorandum from U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance recommending the "destabilization" of the Iranian government by using Iran's neighbors.^[126] The U.S. has denied that it gave Iraq a "green light" for its September 22 1980 invasion of Iran, but evidence suggests that it did just that. Five months before Iraq's invasion, on April 14 1980, Zbigniew Brzezinski, signaled the U.S.'s willingness to work with Iraq: "We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the United States and Iraq... we do not feel that American- Iraqi relations need to be frozen in antagonisms." According to Iran's president at the time, Abolhassan Banisadr, Brzezinski met directly with Saddam Hussein in Jordan two months before the Iraqi assault. Bani-Sadr wrote, "Brzezinski had assured Saddam Hussein that the United States would not oppose the separation of Khuzestan [in southwest Iran] from Iran."^[127]

Author Kenneth R. Timmermann and former Iranian President Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr argue separately that Brzezinski met with Hussein in July 1980 in Amman, Jordan, to discuss joint efforts to oppose Iran. According to Hussein biographer Said Aburish however, at the Amman meeting Saddam Hussein met with three CIA agents, not Brzezinski personally. Former Carter official Gary Sick denies that Washington directly encouraged Iraq's attack, but instead let "Saddam assume there was a U.S. green light because there was no explicit red light." ^[128] Journalist Robert Parry reports (Consortiumnews.com, January 31 1996) that in a secret 1981 memo summing up a trip to the Middle East, then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig noted:

"It was also interesting to confirm that President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through Prince Fahd" of Jordan.^[129]

The Financial Times reported that the U.S. passed satellite intelligence to the regime of Saddam Hussein via third countries, leading Iraq to believe Iranian forces would quickly collapse if attacked. ^[130] Z magazine therefore argues that it is likely therefore that the U.S. helped push Saddam Hussein to attack Iran, causing a long and bloody war.^[131]

The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague. Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction. "Fundamentally, the policy was justified," argues David Newton, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, who runs an anti-Hussein radio station in Prague. "We were concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-term hope was that Hussein's government would become less repressive and more responsible." Although U.S. arms manufacturers were not as deeply involved as German or British companies in selling weaponry to Iraq, the Reagan administration effectively turned a blind eye to the export of "dual use" items such as chemical precursors and steel tubes that can have military and civilian applications. According to several former officials, the State and Commerce departments promoted trade in such items as a way to boost U.S. exports and acquire political leverage over Hussein. "Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam," said Joe Wilson, Glaspie's former deputy at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein. "Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and commercial relationships that would have the effect of moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this was a miscalculation."^[132]

A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former U.S. policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in arming Iraq.^[133] The United States and its European allies had provided the regime of Saddam Hussein with its chemical and biological weapons.^[134] The American Type Culture Collection, a nonprofit Rockville, Md, made 70 government-approved shipments of anthrax and other disease-causing pathogens to Iraq between 1985 and 1989, according to congressional records<;ref>Newsday, November 27 1996</ref> According to reports of the U.S. Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, the U.S., under the successive presidential administrations sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992^{[135] [136]}. The chairman of the Senate committee, Don Riegle, said: "The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licences for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think its a devastating record."^[137]

The U.S. also provided critical battle planning assistance at a time when U.S. intelligence agencies knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the war, according to senior military officers with direct knowledge of the program. The U.S. carried out the covert program at a time when Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci and National Security Adviser General Colin L. Powell were publicly condemning Iraq for its use of poison gas, especially after Iraq attacked Kurdish villagers in Halabja in March 1988. U.S. officials publicly condemned Iraq's employment of mustard gas, sarin, VX and other poisonous agents, but sixty Defense Intelligence Agency officers were secretly providing detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for airstrikes and bomb-damage assessments for Iraq. It has long been known that the U.S. provided intelligence assistance, such as satellite photography, to Saddam's regime. Carlucci said: "My understanding is that what was provided" to Iraq "was general order of battle information, not operational intelligence." "I did agree that Iraq should not lose the war, but I certainly had no foreknowledge of their use of chemical weapons."^[138] Notwithstanding all these efforts by the U.S., the Iranian government was not toppled by the war.

• 1983

The Soviet KGB defector ,Vasili Mitrokhin states in his book (The World War Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World ) that the CIA continued to provide lists of Iranian Communists that the Islamic revolutionary government utilized to arrest,torture and execute Iranian communists.

• 2006-2007

According to a recent broadcast of the PBS documentary series "Frontline," CIA is supporting Anti-Iranian organizations such as the People's Mujahedin of Iran (also known as the MEK or MKO) which has been involved in terrorist activities within Iran. Iran has demanded that the US stop supporting the MEK in exchange for stopping it's support of Shiite's in Iraq.^[139]

The Asia Times cites a New Yorker Magazine's investigative report, according to which the U.S. has military commando units operating inside Iran.^[140] That same article in Asia Times reported that U.S. policy is one of lighting "the fire of ethnic and sectarian strife" to destabilize and eventually topple the government of Iran. The Washington Quarterly magazine as cited by the Asia Times article, reported:

"the Sunni Balochi resistance could prove valuable to Western intelligence agencies with an interest in destabilizing the hardline regime in Tehran.... The United States maintained close contacts with the Balochis till 2001, at which point it withdrew support when Tehran promised to repatriate any U.S. airmen who had to land in Iran as a result of damage sustained in combat operations in Afghanistan."^[141]

According to ABC news, citing U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources, U.S. officials have been secretly encouraging and advising a Pakistani Balochi militant group named Jundullah that is responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran, reported ABC News online. The Jundullah militants "stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera," This militant group is led by a youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, sometimes known as "Regi." The U.S. provides no direct funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or "presidential finding" as well as congressional oversight. A CIA spokesperson said "the account of alleged CIA action is false" and reiterated that the U.S. provides no funding of the Jundullah group.^[142] Regi is also claimed by Iran to be associated with al Qaida which the group denies. The Baluchis accuse the government of discriminatory and repressive policies. Hossein Ali Shahriari, the representative from Zahedan in Parliament, said the attack had been carried out by “insurgents and smugglers who are led by the world imperialism,” a common reference to the United States and Britain.^[143]

Another claimed US proxy inside Iran has been the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PEJAK). The New Yorker in November 2006 was told by a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon civilian leadership of secret US support for PEJAK for operations inside Iran, stating that the group had been given “a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the U.S.”.^[144]

Iraq

• 1963-1990. According 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 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.

• 1963. In 1963, the United States backed a coup against the government of Iraq headed by General Abdul Karim Kassem, who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. The CIA helped the new Baath Party government in ridding the country of suspected leftists and Communists.^{[145] [146] [147] [148]} In a Baathist bloodbath, the government used lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the CIA, to systematically murder untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite--killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. The victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.^{[149] [150] [151]} According to an op-ed in the New York Times, the U.S. sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the U.S. supported against Kassem and then abandoned. American and U.K. oil and other interests, including Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum, were conducting business in Iraq. ^[152]

• 1968. The leader of the new Baathist government, Salam Arif, died in 1966 and his brother, Abdul Rahman Arif, not a Ba'athist, assumed the presidency.^{[153] [154] [155] [156]} Said K. Abuirsh alleges that in 1967, the government of Iraq was very close to giving concessions for the development of huge new oil fields in the country to France and the USSR. PBS reported that Robert Anderson, former secretary of the treasury under President Eisenhower, secretly met with the Ba'ath Party and came to a negotiated agreement according to which both the oil field concessions and sulphur mined in the northern part of the country would go to United States companies if the Ba'ath again took over power.^[157] In 1968, again with the alleged backing of the CIA, Rahman Arif was overthrown by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr of the Baath Party, bringing Saddam Hussein to the threshold of power. ^[158] To carry out the coup, Ba'athists donned military uniforms, attacked the presidential palace and occupied it. The president surrendered immediately. "You're going with me to the airport because you're leaving this country", said Saddam Hussein to the prime minister as Saddam held a gun to his head. Years later, Saddam assassinated him in front of the Intercontinental Hotel in London.^[159] The Asia Times reported that the CIA deputy for the Middle East Archibald Roosevelt (grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt and cousin of Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.) stated, referring to Iraqi Ba'ath Party officers on his payroll in the 1963 and 1968 coups, "They're our boys bought and paid for, but you always gotta remember that these people can't be trusted"^[160] General Ahmed Bakr was installed as president. Saddam Hussein was appointed the number two man,^[161] security chief for the newly installed ruler, and became his protege.^[162]

• 1992-1995. 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."^[163]According to former U.S. intelligence officials interviewed by the New York Times, the CIA orchestrated a bomb and sabotage campaign between 1992 and 1995 in Iraq via one of the insurgent organizations, the Iraqi National Accord, led by Iyad Allawi. The campaign had no apparent effect in toppling Saddam Hussein's rule.^[164] 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 CIA official said, the United States had no significant intelligence sources in Iraq then." The Iraqi government at the time claimed that the bombs, including one it said exploded in a movie theater, resulted in many civilian casualties. In 1996, Amneh al-Khadami, who described himself as the chief bomb maker for the Iraqi National Accord, recorded a videotape in which he talked of the bombing campaign and complained that he was being shortchanged money and supplies. Two former intelligence officers confirmed the existence of the videotape. Mr. Khadami said that "we blew up a car, and we were supposed to get $2,000" but got only $1,000, as reported in 1997 by the British newspaper The Independent, which had obtained a copy of the videotape.^[164] The campaign was directed by CIA asset Dr. Iyad Allawi,^[165] later installed as interim prime minister by the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003.

Pakistan

• The CIA has been accused of having played a key role of engineering the regime change against Ali Bhutto by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark.^[166]. The CIA is suspected to have installed General Zia ul Haq as President. Zia ul Haq promoted an Islamization of Pakistan which the CIA saw as essential to suppressing Pakistani Communists. Zia ul Haq allowed the CIA to use bases in Pakistan to send CIA paramilitary agents into Afghanistan to aid the Mujuahadeen. Pakistan was the major conduit of arms and supplies from the CIA to the Mujahadeen.

• 2005 On May 15, 2005, it was reported that Predator drones had been used to assassinate Al-Qaeda figure Haitham al-Yemeni inside Pakistan.^[167]

• 2006. 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.^[33] 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.^{[168] [169][170] [171][172]}

Syria

• 1983 In 1983, President Assad of Syria signed a peace and friendship treaty with the Soviet Union and some have suggested that the co-incidental uprising by the Muslim brotherhood in Syria was a CIA operation to overthrow Assad for his pro-Soviet policies.^[173]

Yemen

• 2002. 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). ^[172]

Far East

East Asia

China

• 1952-1973. In operation HTLINGUAL CIA intercepts mail from the U.S. to China.

Japan

1950s-1960s. CIA gave money to support the (conservative) Liberal Democratic Party.^[174]

Southeast Asia and Indochina

Cambodia

• 1970.

• March 1970. Prince Norodom Sihanouk, in his 1973 book, claims that CIA engineers his ouster in March of 1970.

• April 1970. CIA analysts do not find evidence of a North Vietnamese headquarters in Cambodia. U.S. President Richard Nixon authorizes a ground invasion to locate and destroy a North Vietnamese headquarters in Cambodia should one exist.

• It is alleged that CIA smuggled opium from Eastern Cambodia to the U.S.

• 1972. Senator Clifford P. Case sponsors a law effective December 1972 cutting off funds for CIA and private military company operations in Cambodia.

• 1978. 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.^[175]

Indonesia

• 1958. CIA attempts a coup against President Achmed Sukarno. In May of 1958 an B-26 operated by CIA proprietary Civil Air Transport was shot down during a bombing and strafing mission and the resulting publicity ended the attempt.

Laos

• 1962-1975. 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.

Philippines

• 1948-1954. CIA funded an indigenous counter-insurgency war against the Hukbalahap. United States Air Force Colonel Edward Lansdale, seconded to the CIA, led the effort, befriending future Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay.

Singapore

• 1961. CIA attempts to infiltrate Singapore Secret Police. They are discovered, and attempt to bribe Lee Kuan Yew to cover up the story. His complaint leads to Secretary of State Dean Rusk apologizing for the CIA.

Vietnam

• 1954-1958. United States Air Force Colonel Edward Lansdale, seconded to the CIA, leads an unsuccessful effort to overthrow the government of North Vietnam.

• 1961-1963. CIA sponsors and trains the Civilian Irregular Defense Group in the South Central Highlands.

• 1962-1975. CIA operations became less visible after the Bay of Pigs, and shifted to being closely linked to aiding the U.S. military operation in Vietnam.

• 1963-1971 It is alleged that CIA smuggled opium from Western Vietnam to the U.S. ^[176]

• 1967-1972. 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"^[177] Over 20,000 Viet Cong enemy combatants are executed.

Oceania and Southern Hemisphere

Australia

• 1975. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam is deposed in favor of Malcolm Fraser on 11 November 1975. This is rumored to be the result of a joint CIA-British Government operation.^[178]

Recent controversies

War on terror

Soon after CIA Predator drone attacks on Al-Qaeda operatives on November 5, 2002 in Yemen and May 15, 2002 in Pakistan, 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]}

The CIA launched a subsequent Predator attack on January 13, 2006 in Pakistan targeting Ayman al-Zawahiri. This attack caused diplomatic friction between the U.S. and Pakistan.

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.^[179]

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.^[180]

Tyler Drumheller, a 26-year CIA veteran and former head of covert operations in Europe, told CBS News "60 Minutes" correspondent Ed Bradley in an April 23, 2006 interview that there was widespread disbelief within the agency about the Bush administration's public claims regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. According to Drumheller, the CIA had penetrated Saddam Hussein's inner circle in the fall of 2002, and this high-level source told CIA "they had no active weapons of mass destruction program." Asked by Bradley about the apparent contradiction with Bush administration statements regarding Iraqi WMDs at that time, Drumheller said, "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming. And they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy." ^[181] Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book “The Threatening Storm” generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein, told Seymour Hersh that what the Bush administration did was "dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. ... They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information," Pollack said. ^[182]

A July 14, 2003 syndicated newspaper column in The Washington Post by Robert Novak identified CIA officer Valerie Plame publicly as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV had been sent by CIA to the African nation of Niger to investigate claims that Iraq intended to purchase uranium yellowcake from that country, which was incorporated in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address to support waging a preemptive war against Iraq. The disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's then-still-classified covert CIA identity as "Valerie Plame" led to a grand jury investigation and the subsequent indictment and conviction of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Jr. on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to federal investigators. ^[183]

Detention, interrogation and rendition practices

A claim that the black sites existed was made by The Washington Post in November 2005 and before by human rights NGOs.^[184] US President George W. Bush acknowledged the existence of secret prisons operated by the CIA during a speech on September 6, 2006.^[185][186]

Supporting warlords in Somalia

The CIA supported warlords in Somalia in order to prevent Al-Qaeda members hiding in the war-torn country.^[187] 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.

Highly illegal activites

In 1996, the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a congressional report estimating that: "Hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day (easily 100,000 times a year) DO officers engage in highly illegal activities (according to foreign law) that not only risk political embarrassment to the US but also endanger the freedom if not lives of the participating foreign nationals and, more than occasionally, of the clandestine officer himself."^[188][189]

In the same document, the committee wrote, "Considering these facts and recent history, which has shown that the [Director of the Central Intelligence Agency], whether he wants to or not, is held accountable for overseeing the [Clandistine Service], the DCI must work closely with the Director of the CS and hold him fully and directly responsible to him."^[189]

Criticism for ineffectiveness

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 organise and run an espionage service."^[190] 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.^[191] 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.”^[192]

"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.^[193]

Other controversies

Former 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."^[194]

In a trend some find disturbing, many of its former duties and functions 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. However, this report was abruptly classified as national secret.^{[195] [196]}

It has been reported in the media that the WikiScanner tool had detected people using CIA computers to edit Wikipedia.^[197] Allegedly, employees of the intelligence agency altered biographical information contained in Wikipedia entries on former presidents including Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. Changes were also made to the pages on Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former CIA chief Porter Goss, and the Iraq war^[198]. 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." ^[199] Content appearing on Wikipedia has also been cited as a source and referenced in some U.S. intelligence agency products.^[200]

38°57′07″N 77°27′04″W / 38.952°N 77.451°W / 38.952; -77.451

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.

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.^[201] 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.^[202]

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."^[203]

CIA in fiction

• The character Jack Ryan in Tom Clancy books is a CIA agent ^[204]

See also

References

Further reading

• Andrew, Christopher (1996). For the President's Eyes Only. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-638071-9. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Baer, Robert (2003). See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 1-4000-4684-X. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Baer, Robert (2003). Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude. Crown. ISBN 1-4000-5021-9. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Bearden, Milton (2003). The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown With the KGB. Random House. ISBN 0-679-46309-7. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Blum, William (2003). Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II. Common Courage Press. ISBN 1-56751-252-6. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); External link in |title= (help)
• "Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents relating to the Military Coup, 1970-1976". National Security Archives Online. Retrieved 1998-09-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
• Chomsky, Noam (2003). Hegemony or Survival. Henry Holt & Co. ISBN 0-8050-7688-3. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) Also Deterring Democracy, also 9/11
• Cockburn, Alexander (October 1999). Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press. Verso. ISBN 1-8598-4258-5. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Grey, Stephen (2006). Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0312360238. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Johnson, Loch K. (1991). America's Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society. Oxford University Press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Kessler, Ronald (1992, reissue 1994). Inside the CIA. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-73458-X. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Littell, Robert (2002). The Company: A Novel of the CIA. New York: Overlook Press. ISBN 978-1585671977. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Mahle, Melissa Boyle (2004). Denial and Deception: An Insider's View of the CIA from Iran-Contra to 9/11. Nation Books. ISBN 1-56025-649-4. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Marchetti, Victor (1975 reissue 1989). The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Dell. ISBN 978-0440203360. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• McCoy, Alfred W. (2003). The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Lawrence Hill Books. 1556524838. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) CIA involvement with the drug trade since World War 2 to present day.
• Mendez, Antonio J. (1999). Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA. William Morrow and Company, Inc. ISBN 0-06-095791-3. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Moran, Lindsay (2005). Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy and Other Misadventures. Berkley Books. ISBN 0-425-20562-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Prouty, L. Fletcher (April 1973). The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World. Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-798173-2. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Scott, Peter Dale (April 1998). Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America. University of California Press. 0520214498. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) CIA involvement in the drug trade during the US backed Contra war with Nicaragua.
• Saunders, Frances Stonor (1999). The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. New Press. ISBN 1-56584-664-8. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) (AKA, Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War 1999 Granta [UK edition])
• Smith, Jr., W. Thomas (2003). Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency. Facts on File. ISBN 0-8160-4667-0. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Theoharis, Athan (2007). The Quest for Absolute Security; The Failed Relations Among U.S. Intelligence Agencies. Ivan R. Dee, Publisher. ISBN 1-56663-697-3. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Turner, Stansfield, Secrecy and Democracy - The CIA in Transition, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1985, ISBN 0-395-35573-7.
• Webb, Gary (May 1999). Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. Seven Stories Press. 1888363932. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Weiner, Tim (2007). Legacy of Ashes. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-51445-3. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Westerfield, H. Bradford (1997). Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-07264-3. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Woodward, Bob (1988). Veil. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-66159-0. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

External links

Official websites and documents

• CIA official site
• CIA official Freedom of Information Act (foia) site
• George Washington University National Security Archive:
  • Documents on CIA involvement with Pinochet
  • On CIA involvement in Guatemala
  • On CIA involvement with Nazi War Criminals (especially the Gehlen organization)
• U.S. National Archive's Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group.
  • Summary of newly acquired CIA name files (including Klaus Barbie)
• CIA manual on coercive questioning
• CIA World Factbook

Other links

• A Tech Journalist's Blog Here the journalist has done extensive research on how CIA was keeping a tab on technology and how it was using computer systems itself.
• www.rca5600.be about the action of the Agency in Cultural field
• The Spy Who Billed Me author Dr.R.J. Hillhouse's national security blog, focusing upon the outsourcing of the War on Terror and regularly covering the latest developments with the CIA outsourcing to private intelligence corporations.
• "The CIA plan to destabilize Venezuela" November 2007
• Art, Truth and Politics: Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize Lecture. Online posting. 8 December 2005. 9 December 2005.
• "CIA Venezuela Destabilization Memo Surfaces" November 2007
• CIA information at Rotten.com.
• Cop vs. CIA. Online posting. From the Wilderness (mirror site) /
• Cocaine Import Agency. Online posting. San José Mercury News. (On alleged drug-smuggling by the CIA.)
• The Cultural Cold War, by Nathaniel Catchpole.
• In-Q-Tel official site.
• Inside the Company: CIA Diary. Online posting. Third World Traveler: Excerpt from a book by leading whistleblower Philip Agee.
• Killing Hope, by William Blum.
• National Security Archive (George Washington University).
• "Outsourcing Intelligence". Online blogpost. Montage 5 January 2005.
• The Relations between the CIA and the Executive Power since 2001. Online posting (HTML file). ISRIA. 5 February 2006.
• The Role of Open Sources in Intelligence. Online posting (Pdf file). 31 31 December 2005.
• "Yet more turmoil at the CIA". Online posting. Janes. (On implications of the "departure" of Porter Goss.
• CIA roll of honour, awards and images.
• Central Intelligence Agency Meeting Notices and Rule Changes from The Federal Register RSS Feed
• Video's and Info
• Proposal for a Privacy Protection Guideline on Secret Personal Data Gathering and Transborder Flows of Such Data in the Fight against Terrorism and Serious Crime by Marcel Stuessi
• CIA "Family Jewels" documents