Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an organisation that was established by President Harry S. Truman to advise the president of the USA on matters relating to national security. Established by the National Security Act of 1947, the CIA was given wide powers to gather information ("intelligence"), and some limited powers to act, in the interests of national security.

During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) had been established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to conduct espionage on behalf of the USA. It established a very large team of agents behind enemy lines, and gave substantial help to the resistance movements in areas of Europe occupied by the Axis powers, and also to Mao Zedong's Red Army in China and to the Viet Minh in French Indochina who were fighting the Japanese. At the end of the war, President Truman ordered the OSS to be closed, leaving only a small intelligence organization, (the Strategic Services Unit) within the War Department.

The role of the new CIA, which took over the intelligence gathering and analytical activities of the OSS, was to evaluate intelligence reports and coordinate the intelligence activities of the various government departments in the interest of national security. At first it was not given the clandestine human-source intelligence or covert action capabilities of the OSS - these activities, popularly understood as "spying", were at first undertaken by other agencies, but in 1952 such missions came under the CIA. The legislation that created the CIA gave it no domestic authority. Also, see clandestine human-source intelligence and covert action for some of the organizational thinking that went into the new organization.

From the beginning, the CIA produced a wide range of intelligence analysis studies for government policymakers, and to some extent these incorporated information gained by clandestine human-source intelligence i.e. by espionage. Gathering information is generally considered a legitimate and indeed an essential role of governments, although the legitimacy of the means of gathering information may be questioned. Far more controversial, however, was the covert action role of the CIA, which included black propaganda, subversion, political warfare, sabotage, and other actions of which the U.S. government could deny knowledge. Some of these capabilities were used to overthrow governments and other missions that, in hindsight, may not have been in the long-term interest of the United States.

Until 2004, the Director of Central Intelligence headed both the CIA and the United States intelligence community (IC). Partially as a result of recommendations from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States ("9/11 Commission") and the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 transferred the IC-wide function a newly created Director of National Intelligence, with the DCI renamed the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. CIA remained responsible for a wide range of analysis functions, as well as being the central human-source intelligence organization of the U.S. government, sharing covert action with military organizations.

When discussing the CIA, it is critical to understand when one is speaking of the older IC-wide responsibilities, or its present set of responsibilities. The IC still has internal politics, although an increasing number of interagency "centers", as well as the Intellipedia information sharing mechanism, are hoped to be improvements.

Organization

In its present form, the CIA has an executive office and several agency-wide functions, and four major directorates:

• Directorate of Intelligence (DI), responsible for all-source intelligence research and analysis
• National Clandestine Service (NSC(, formerly the Directorate of Operations (DO)
• Directorate of Support (DS)
• Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T)

Executive Office

The DCIA, who heads the CIA, now reports to the DNI. In practice, the DCIA deals with the DNI, Congress, and White House, and the Deputy DCIA is the internal executive. CIA has varying amounts of Congressional oversight, although that is principally a guidance role. Historically, its budget, as well as the budget of the entire intelligence community, was classified, but the total IC budget is now made public, and there is a strong drive to have the next level of detail, at the major agency level, published.

Strong DCIs of the past had a strong influence on the Agency's culture; see Director of Central Intelligence.

In 2006, the third-ranking position in the CIA, Executive Director, who was more hands-on than the DDCIA, was replaced with an Associate Deputy Director of the CIA. )

The CIA supports the military with information it gathers, receives information from military intelligence organizations, and cooperates on field activities. Two senior executives have responsibility, one CIA-wide and one for the National Clandestine Service. The Associate Director for Military Support, a senior military officer, manages the relationship between CIA and the Unified Combatant Commands, who produce regional/operational intelligence and consume national intelligence. The AD/MS is assisted by the Office of Military Affairs in providing support to all branches of the military

In the National Clandestine Services, an Associate Deputy Director for Operations for Military Affairs (ADDO/MA) deals with specific clandestine human-source intelligence and covert action in support of military operations.

CIA also makes national-level intelligence available to tactical organizations, usually to their all-source intelligence group.

Executive Staff

There are an assortment of staff offices that report to the executive offices.

General Publications

CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence maintains the Agency's historical materials and promotes the study of intelligence as a legitimate and serious discipline.

In 2002, CIA's Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis began publishing the unclassified Kent Center Occasional Papers, aiming to offer "an opportunity for intelligence professionals and interested colleagues—in an unofficial and unfettered vehicle—to debate and advance the theory and practice of intelligence analysis."

General Counsel and Inspector General

Two offices advise the Director on legality and proper operations. The Office of the General Counsel advises the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on all legal matters relating to his role as CIA director and is the principal source of legal counsel for the CIA.

The Office of Inspector General promotes efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability in the administration of Agency activities. OIG also seeks to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. The Inspector General is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Inspector General, whose activities are independent of those of any other component in the Agency, reports directly to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. OIG conducts inspections, investigations, and audits at Headquarters and in the field, and oversees the Agency-wide grievance-handling system. The OIG provides a semiannual report to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency which the Director is required by law to submit to the Intelligence Committees of Congress within 30 days.

In February 2008, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael V. Hayden, sent a message to employees that Inspector General John L. Helgerson will accept increased control over the investigations by that office, saying "John has chosen to take a number of steps to heighten the efficiency, assure the quality and increase the transparency of the investigation process". The Washington Post suggested this was a response to senior officials who believe the OIG has been too aggressive in looking into counterterrorism programs, including detention programs. The changes were the result of an investigation, begun in April 2007, by one of Hayden's assistants, Robert L. Deitz. There was congressional concern that restrictions on the OIG might have a chilling effect on its effectiveness. Senator Ron Wyden , a Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, did not disagree with any of Hayden's actions, said the inquiry “should never have happened and can’t be allowed to happen again.”...“I’m all for the inspector general taking steps that help C.I.A. employees understand his processes, but that can be done without an approach that can threaten the inspector general’s independence

Public Affairs

The Office of Public Affairs advises the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on all media, public policy, and employee communications issues relating to his role as CIA director and is the CIA’s principal communications focal point for the media, the general public and Agency employees. See CIA influence on public opinion.

Directorate of Intelligence

Coming from the OSS Research & Analysis Branch, through an interim stay in the Department of State, the "DI" produces all-source intelligence analysis on key foreign issues.. It is organized into four regional analytic groups, six groups for transnational issues, and two support units.

Regional groups

There is an Office dedicated to Iraq. In addition, there are regional analytical Offices covering:

• Near East, North Africa and South Asia: The Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis (NESA)
• Russia and Europe: The Office of Russian and European Analysis (OREA)
• Asian-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa: The Office of East Asian, Pacific, Latin American and African Analysis (APLAA)

Transnational groups

The Office of Terrorism Analysis, which supports the National Counterterrorism Center, in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Office of Transnational Issues applies unique functional expertise to assess existing and emerging threats to US national security and provides the most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support.

The CIA Crime and Narcotics Center researches information on international narcotics trafficking and organized crime for policymakers and the law enforcement community. Since the CIA has no domestic police authority, it sends its analytic information to the FBI and other law enforcement organizations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The Weapons, Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center provides intelligence support deals with national and non-national threats, as well as supporting threat reduction and arms control. It receives the output of National Technical Means of Verification

The Counterintelligence Center Analysis Group identifies, monitors, and analyzes the efforts of foreign intelligence entities, both national and non-national, against US interests. It works with FBI personnel in the DNI National Counterterrrorism Center.

Threats to U.S. computer systems fall under the Information Operations Center Analysis Group.

Support and general units

The Office of Collection Strategies and Analysis provides comprehensive intelligence collection expertise to the DI, a wide range of senior Agency and Intelligence Community officials, and key national policymakers.

The Office of Policy Support customizes DI analysis and presents it to a wide variety of policy, law enforcement, military, and foreign liaison recipients.

National Clandestine Service

With the creation of the ODNI, CIA was given charge of all US human intelligence, which many consider the core of the agency, although its analytical work may be equally important. As a compromise for having given up most of its HUMINT capabilities, the [[United States Department of Defense was given additional budget for special operations. There has been more of an emphasis on the military running larger paramilitary operations.

The National Clandestine Service, formerly the Directorate of Operations, is responsible for collection of foreign intelligence, principally from clandestine HUMINT sources, and covert action. The new name reflects its having absorbed some Department of Defense HUMINT assets, which did strategic human intelligence HUMINT collection for the Department of Defense (DoD). DoD retained HUMINT directly related to military.

Creation of the NCS was an attempt to end years of rivalry over influence, philosophy and budget between the United States Department of Defense and the CIA. DoD had organized the Defense HUMINT Service, which, with the Presidential decision, became part of the NCS.

Counterintelligence Force Protection Source Operations, directly related to the protection of military forces and facility, stay under military authority. Another HUMINT area that remains with DoD is direct support to special operations, by an organization, originally called the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) are part of the United States Special Operations Command, where their classified names and special access program designations are changed frequently.

The specific NCS organization is classified, but a fairly recent organization chart of the Defense HUMINT Service will indicate functions transferred into the NCS, and may well be fairly close to the overall NCS organizational structure. This structure is generally consistent, understanding there are always reorganizations, with past publications of Directorate of Operations structure.

Directorate of Science and Technology

The Directorate of Science & Technology was established to research, create, and manage technical collection disciplines and equipment. Many of its innovations were transferred to other intelligence organizations, or, as they became more overt, to the military services. Albert D. "Bud" Wheeler (1963-66) and Carl E. Duckett (1966-76) built the directorate into a strong component of the CIA and then guided it through its golden age of technical innovation. In contrast, decisions by Ruth David (1995-98) contributed, Richelson (2001) argues, to a decline in the importance and status of the directorate as it lost control over key responsibilities, including the analysis of satellite photography.

Richelson (2001) explains the major DS&T's achievements, especially reconnaissance airplanes and a series of increasingly sophisticated surveillance satellites, with cameras that could photograph Soviet bomber bases and missile sites with startling clarity from orbits deep in space. In 1960, the first effective satellite produced coverage of more than one million square miles, surpassing all previous U-2 photography combined. This imagery revealed that the Soviets had far fewer bombers and (later) ICBMs than the Pentagon expected. The worst-case estimates of the U.S. Air Force proved wildly exaggerated, and the myths of the bomber and missile "gaps" were punctured by empirical data.

The development of the U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft was done in cooperation with the United States Air Force. The U-2's original mission was clandestine imagery intelligence over denied areas such as the Soviet Union. It was subsequently provided with signals intelligence and measurement and signals intelligence capabilities, and is now operated by the Air Force.

Imagery intelligence collected by the U-2 and reconnaissance satellites was analyzed by a DS&T organization called the National Photointerpretation Center (NPIC), which had analysts from both the CIA and the military services. Subsequently, NPIC was transferred to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA).

The CIA has always shown a strong interest in how to use advances in technology to enhance its effectiveness.It had two primary goals

1. harnessing techniques for its own use
2. countering any new intelligence technologies the Soviets might develop.

In 1999, CIA created the venture capital firm CIA-Outside#In-Q-Tel to help fund and develop technologies of interest to the agency.

Directorate of Support

The Directorate of Support does many traditional organizational administrative functions, such as personnel, security, communications, and financial operations, but in a manner consistent with the needs of highly sensitive operations. Significant units include

• Office of Security, responsible for with personnel and physical
• Office of Communications
• Office of Information Technology.

Logistics and proprietaries

Under the original NSC 10/2 authorization, CIA was made responsible not just for covert action during the cold war, but for such action during major wars, in collaboration with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When DCI Walter Bedell Smith created the Directorate of Plans and ended the autonomy of the OPC and OSO, he also recommended, in 1952, that the CIA could obtain logistical support from the Department of Defense, making internal budget transfers to repay the DoD.

While some support functions still were unique to CIA requirements, Smith proposed that wherever possible, those functions could be tenant organizations on military bases. He wrote,

A major logistical support base will consist of a CIA base headquarters, training, communications, medical accommodation for evacuees and storage for six months’ hot war requirements as well as provide logistical support for CIA operational groups or headquarters... Informal planning along the lines indicated has been carried out by elements of CIA with ... the Joint Chiefs of Staff ...

When military transportation would be too obvious, CIA needed an alternative, which led to the creation of the CIA proprietary airlines, whose relationship to the US government was not public. These consolidated them into Air America, which was was heavily involved in support with the war in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in the 1960s.

Training

This directorate includes the Office of Training, which starts with a Junior Officer Training program for new employees. So that the initial course might be taken by employees who had not received final security clearance and thus were not permitted unescorted access to the Headquarters building, a good deal of basic training has been given at office buildings in the urban areas of Arlington, Virginia.

For a later stage of training of student operations officer, there is at least one classified training area at Camp Peary, Virginia, near Williamsburg. Students are selected, and their progress evaluated, in ways derived from the OSS, published as the book Assessment of Men, Selection of Personnel for the office of Strategic Services. Roger Hall's You're Stepping on my Cloak and Dagger for an accurate but amusing account of Hall's OSS duty, which included finding unexpected solutions to things in the assessment process as well as his experience in real operations. He described a specific assessment period at a rural facility called "Station S". Hall said he tried to find out why it was called Station S, and finally decided the reason was that "assess" has more "S" letters than any other.

Organizational history

The Central Intelligence Agency was created by Congress with National Security Act of 1947, signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It is the descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which was dissolved in October 1945 and its functions transferred to the State and War Departments. Eleven months earlier, in 1944, William J. Donovan, the OSS's creator, proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt creating a new organization directly supervised by the President: "which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies." Under his plan, a powerful, centralized civilian agency would have coordinated all the intelligence services. He also proposed that this agency have authority to conduct "subversive operations abroad," but "no police or law enforcement functions, either at home or abroad."

CIA personnel have died on duty, some in accidents and some by deliberate hostile action. On the memorial wall at CIA headquarters, some of the stars have no name attached, because it would reveal the identity of a clandestine officer. Both the OSS and its British counterparts, as do other agencies worldwide, struggle with finding the right organizational balance among clandestine intelligence collection, counterintelligence, and covert action. See clandestine human-source intelligence and covert action for a historical perspective on this problem. These issues also bear on the reasons that, in the history below, some "eras" overlap. Also see the Wikipedia article Director of Central Intelligence, which contains an expanded history of CIA by director; the priorities and personalities of individual directors have had a strong influence on Agency operations.

Immediate predecessors, 1946-1947

In 1941 President Franklin D. Roosevelt was relying on intelligence information provided by British intelligence (and slanted by them to favor their position.) In 1941 he created the Office of Strategic Services, which was the first independent US intelligence agency. The OSS was broken up shortly after the end of the war, by President Truman, on September 20, 1945. The rapid reorganizations that followed reflected the routine sort of bureaucratic competition for resources, but also trying to deal with the proper relationships of clandestine intelligence collection and covert action (i.e., paramilitary and psychological operations). See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for a more detailed history of this problem, which was not unique to the US during and after World War II. In October 1945, the functions of the OSS were split between the Departments of State and War:

New Unit	Oversight	OSS Functions Absorbed
Strategic Services Unit (SSU)	War Department	Secret Intelligence (SI) (i.e., clandestine intelligence collection) and Counter-espionage (X-2)
Interim Research and Intelligence Service (IRIS)	State Department	Research and Analysis Branch (i.e., intelligence analysis)
Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) (not uniquely for former OSS)	War Department, Army General Staff	Staff officers from Operational Groups, Operation Jedburgh, Morale Operations (black propaganda)

This division lasted only a few months.Despite opposition from the military establishment, the United States Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) in January 1946 which was the direct predecessor to the CIA. The CIG was an interim authority established under Presidential authority. The assets of the SSU, which now constituted a streamlined "nucleus" of clandestine intelligence was transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO).

Early CIA, 1947-1952

Americans, still mesmerized by the intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor, welcomed the new spy agency because it seemed to promise the nation would always stay on alert. The CIA's Ivy League intellectuals and scions of high society contrasted sharply with the Pentagon brass; an adversarial relationship was born that still sours relations between the two. The CIA's budget was minuscule ($5 million) until NSC-68 in 1950 provided blueprints for an active Cold War.

In September 1947, the National Security Act of 1947 established both the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was appointed as the first Director of Central Intelligence.

The 16 ft (5 m) diameter CIA seal in the lobby of the Original Headquarters Building.

The National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1948 (NSC 10/2) further gave the CIA the authority to carry out covert operations "against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons."

In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act (Public Law 81-110) authorized the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures, and exempting it from most of the usual limitations on the use of Federal funds. It also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its "organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed." It also created the program "PL-110", to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" who fall outside normal immigration procedures, as well as giving those persons cover stories and economic support.

The structure stabilizes, 1952

Then-DCI Walter Bedell Smith, who enjoyed a special degree of Presidential trust, having been Dwight D. Eisenhower's primary Chief of Staff during World War II, insisted that the CIA -- or at least only one department -- had to direct the OPC and OSO. Those organization, as well as some minor functions, formed the euphemistically named Directorate of Plans in 1952.

Also in 1952, United States Army Special Forces were created, with some missions overlapping those of the Department of Plans. In general, the pattern emerged that the CIA could borrow resources from Special Forces, although it had its own special operators.

Early Cold War, 1953-1966

Lockheed U-2 "Dragon Lady", the first generation of near-space reconnaissance satellites.

Allen Dulles, who had been a key OSS operations officer in Switzerland during the Second World War, took over from Smith, at a time where US policy was dominated by a containment policy, with serious discussions of roll-back policies going on, especially in the State Department. Dulles enjoyed a high degree of flexibility, as his brother, John Foster Dulles, was simultaneously Secretary of State.

Allen Dulles (head 1953-61) became the trusted advisor on what was going to happen in the world to President Eisenhower and to his brother John Foster Dulles. The CIA gathered information and provided written assessments of the capabilities and intentions of all world leaders. Its regular briefings gave each president the sense that he knew exactly what was happening across the globe. Like ingenious prognosticators through the ages, the CIA's predictions seemed highly explicit yet never could quite be pinned down. They failed to predict any of the major surprises of the postwar era. On the other hand, estimates of the performance of the Soviet economy proved much more accurate than the information Moscow itself possessed, and forecast the failure of that economy in the 1980s.

Concern regarding the Soviet Union and the difficulty of getting information from its closed society, which few agents could penetrate, led to solutions based on advanced technology. Among the first success was with the Lockheed U-2 aircraft, which could take pictures and collect electronic signals from an altitude above Soviet air defenses' reach.SR-71

The USAF's SR-71 Blackbird was developed from the CIA's A-12 OXCART.

Covert operations

Dulles devoted 80% of his much enlarged budget ($82 million) to covert (secret) operations to contain Communism. On the other side was the Soviet KGB; as the the retired head of the K.G.B.'s first chief directorate, Leonid Shabarshin, later explained, "The essence of the KGB's active undertakings was to inflict political and moral damage on our basic opponent, the United States. . . . [so] We compromised political figures, organs of the press, and Americans whose activities were in some way unwelcome [to the Soviets]." The KGB veteran revealed that every "active measure" against the enemies of the Soviet Union abroad was submitted by KGB to the Politburo “and was implemented only with its permission. The results of the action were also reported to the Politburo." Which side performed better remains an open question. CIA money subsidized anti-communist intellectuals and strengthened liberal political parties across Europe and the Third World. Striking low-cost successes early on reinforced the CIA's mastermind image. CIA-supported parties defeated the Communists in Italy and France in the late 1940s. A handful of agents provided assistance to opposition groups which forced anti-American prime ministers out of office in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954) and Chile (1973). CIA counterintelligence tried to neutralize the KGB and other hostile agencies, like the GRU (Soviet military intelligence), East Germany's Stasi and Cuba's DGI.

In Guatamala in 1954 the CIA operation was marked by chronic lapses in security, the failure to plan beyond the operation's first stages, the Agency's poor understanding of the intentions of the Guatemalan Army, the local communist party (the Guatemalan Labor Party), and the government, the hopeless weakness of invasion leader Carlos Castillo Armas's troops, and the failure to make provisions for the possibility of defeat. Just as the entire operation seemed hopeless, and before there were any significant violentattacks on it, the leftist Guatemalan government suddenly, inexplicably collapsed and a pro-American government took over.

Numerous covert actions were launched to neutralize perceived Communist expansion. Some of the largest operations were aimed at Cuba after the coming to power of the communists in early 1960. In 1960-61 the CIA organized Cuban exiles, whose invasion came to grief at the Bay of Pigs Invasion. There have been suggestions that the Soviet attempt to put missiles into Cuba came, indirectly, when they realized how badly they had been compromised by a US-UK defector in place, Oleg Penkovsky.

The CIA, working with the military, formed the joint National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to operate reconnaissance aircraft such as the SR-71 and later satellites. "The fact of" the United States operating reconnaissance satellites, like "the fact of" the existence of NRO, was highly classified for many years.

Early CORONA/KH-4B imagery IMINT satellite.

Assassinations

The CIA sent hundreds of agents to Vietnam and Laos to build up anticommunist guerrilla groups. The CIA assisted (but did not actually operate) the "Phoenix" program by which South Vietnamese police forces identified and arrested Viet Cong leaders (torturing many and killing several thousand of them). In the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, it planned several assassinations, with Fidel Castro a target of "Operation Mongoose." Fidel survived the exploding cigars; indeed, as a hostile Senate committee concluded, the agency did not in fact assassinate anyone. Congress has never passed a law forbidding assassinations, but every president since Ford has issued executive orders that prohibit direct (or indirect) attempts at assassination.

Soviet estimates

The CIA began systematic estimates of the Soviet economy during Max Millikan's tenure as the founding director of the Office of Research and Reports (1951-1952). The strategy was to start with an "inventory of ignorance" and then reduce the list of unknowns through successive approximations. Soviet military expenditures were estimated by the "building-block method," which began by estimating the number ships, planes, jeeps, barracks and even soldiers in use, then estimating the procurement and operating costs of each, and adding them up using estimated prices. The building blocks had advantages in that published data on physical units seemed accurate and in any case were easier to verify through covert means. The elaborate reports of the 1990s included almost 1800 such categories. Since the Soviets lackd computers and had rudimentary accounting procedures, the CIA had a better overall picture of Soviet military spending than did the Kremlin. The reports emphasized physical units, realzing that expenditures alone could not predict what sort of military threat in the future would be presented by the Red Army. To estimate costs the CIA used analogs--using Soviet trucks or American tanks, for instance, to estimate the costs of Soviet tanks--and then adjusted for differences in weight and performance. Analog-based data, far shakier than direct-cost data, accounted for over half of earlier estimates, dropping to about one-third by the late 1980s. In the 1960s the CIA increasingly used quantitative techniques, of the sort promoted in American business schools. A crisis in the mid-1970s was caused by as a combination of external pressures, new data (some from a key Russian who defected to the West) and internal works forced a major revision of the defense burden, showing the proportion of of the overall Soviet economy devoted to the military. The crisis sparked heated public debate when the CIA announced that their earlier estimates of Soviet defense spending at 6-8% of GNP was too low by as much as half; the revised estimated burden ranged from 11-13%, indicating a severe economic burden that slowed Soviet growth.

Complications from Indochina and the Vietnam War (1954-1975)

As the US military and electorate were affected by Vietnam, so was the CIA. The OSS Patti mission had arrived near the end of the Second World War, and had significant interaction with the leaders of many Vietnamese factions, including Ho Chi Minh. While the Patti mission forwarded Ho's proposals for phased independence, with the French or even the United States as the transition partner, the US policy of containment opposed forming any government that might be Communist.

The first CIA mission to Indochina, under the code name Saigon Military Mission arrived in 1954, under Edward Lansdale. US-based analysts were simultaneously trying to project the evolution of political power, both if the scheduled referendum chose merger of the North and South, or if the South, the US client, stayed independent. Initially, the US focus in Southeast Asia was on Laos, not Vietnam.

During the period of American combat involvement in the Vietnam War, there was considerable arguments about progress among the Department of Defense under Robert S. McNamara, the CIA, and, to some extent, the intelligence staff of the Military Assistance Command Vietnam. In general, the military was consistently more optimistic than the CIA. Sam Adams, a junior CIA analyst with responsibilities for estimating the actual damage to the enemy, eventually resigned from the CIA, after expressing concern, to Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms with estimates that were changed for interagency and White House political reasons, writing the book War of Numbers.

Image and reputation

Cloak and dagger stories became part of the popular culture of the Cold War in both East and West, with innumerable novels and movies that showed how polarized and dangerous the world was. Soviet audiences thrilled at spy stories showing how their KGB agents protected the motherland by foiling dirty work by America's nefarious CIA, Britain's devious MI 6, and Israel's devilish Mossad. After 1963, Hollywood increasingly depicted the CIA as clowns (as in the comedy TV series "Get Smart") or villains (as in Oliver Stone's "JFK" (1992). Leftists around the globe routinely blamed the mysterious CIA for events that displeased them, putting the image of the USA as a champion of freedom and democracy in disrepute. The CIA lost influence after 1963. President Lyndon B. Johnson disliked its pessimistic forecasts about Vietnam; President Richard M. Nixon and his national security advisor Henry Kissinger did not seek its advice. After Watergate (1974) it came under heavy attack for promoting right-wing governments, hampering the success of genuinely democratic protest movements, illegally monitoring dissent inside the USA, and frustrating democracy at home by its secrecy and lack of accountability. Was it needed in an age of detente? With 15,000 employees in 1973, it had a budget of about $740 million, of which $440 went to clandestine operations. Congressional committees began to monitor the agency closely. Employment and budgets were cut sharply (the totals are secret), and most covert operations were abandoned. Morale plummeted as the agency retreated to a mission of collecting and interpreting information about the Soviets.

Abuses of CIA authority, 1970s-1990s

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 Richard Nixon's subsequent use of the CIA to impede the FBI's investigation of the burglary. In the famous "smoking gun" recording that led to President Nixon's resignation, Nixon ordered his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, to tell the CIA that further investigation of Watergate would "open the whole can of worms" about the Bay of Pigs of Cuba, and, therefore, that the CIA should tell the FBI to cease investigating the Watergate burglary, due to reasons of "national security".

In 1973, then-DCI James R. Schlesinger commissioned reports — known as the "Family Jewels" — on illegal activities by the Agency. In December 1974, 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 charges in 1975, investigating the CIA in the Senate via the Church Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), and in the House of Representatives via the Pike Committee, chaired by Congressman Otis Pike (D-NY). In addition, President Gerald Ford created the Rockefeller Commission, and issued an Executive Order prohibiting the assassination of foreign leaders.

Repercussions from the Iran-Contra Affair arms smuggling scandal (1987) 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".

Since 1980

In 1981 President Reagan appointed his campaign manager Bill Casey to run the CIA; Casey, a dynamic veteran of O.S.S. espionage, revived the CIA into a powerful instrument of rollback policy. With nuclear deterrence tying the Kremlin's hands, Casey used the CIA to attack the weak links in the Soviet empire. In Afghanistan, it funded and trained Mujahidin guerrillas who deliberately created "another Vietnam" to weaken the Soviet invaders, and indeed finally did defeat the Soviet invasion. Anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan and Cambodia received strong support from Congress, but operations in Angola and especially Nicaragua became the focus of intense political controversy. When Congress one year prohibited the CIA from operating in Nicaragua, Reagan's White House exploited a loophole by sending its own staffer, Oliver North, to funnel arms and money to the Contra guerrillas.

With the end of the Cold War in 1991, intelligence operations became a natural target for budget cutters. Defenders (including ex-CIA head George Bush) argued that absence of a main enemy meant it was necessary to keep watch on many small potential enemies. Critics responded that it was one thing to spy on Soviet intercontinental missile capability, and quite another to figure out how many AK-47 assault rifles were loose in Somalia.

2004, DCI takes over CIA top-level functions

Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community, serving as the president's principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DCI's title now is "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.

Mission-related failures

For the media, the failures are most newsworthy, and the CIA has, at times, either performed poorly or violated laws. Some of the violations were in response to White House orders.

Security and counterintelligence failures

While the names change periodically, there are two basic security functions to protect the CIA and its operations. There is an Office of Security in the Directorate for Support, which is responsible for physical security of the CIA buildings, secure storage of information, and personnel security clearances. These are directed inwardly to the agency itself.

In what is now the National Clandestine Service, there is a counter-intelligence function, called the Counterintelligence Staff under its most controversial chief, James Jesus Angleton. This function has roles including looking for staff members that are providing information to foreign intelligence services (FIS) as moles. Another role is to check proposals for recruiting foreign HUMINT assets, to see if these people have any known ties to FIS and thus may be attempts to penetrate CIA to learn its personnel and practices, or as a provocateur, or other form of double agent.

This agency component may also launch offensive counterespionage, where it attempts to interfere with FIS operations. CIA officers in the field often have assignments in offensive counterespionage as well as clandestine intelligence collection.

The "Family Jewels" and other documents reveal that the Office of Security violated the prohibition of CIA involvement in domestic law enforcement, sometimes with the intention of assisting police organizations local to CIA buildings.

Perhaps the most disruptive period involving counterintelligence was James Jesus Angleton's search for a mole,based on the statements of a Soviet defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn. A second defector, Yuri Nosenko, challenged Golitsyn's claims, with the two calling one another Soviet double agents. Many CIA officers fell under career-ending suspicion; the details of the relative truths and untruths from Nosenko and Golitsyn may never be released, or, in fact, may not be fully understood. The accusations also crossed the Atlantic to the British intelligence services, who also were damaged by molehunts.

On February 24, 1994, the agency was rocked by the arrest of 31-year veteran case officer Aldrich Ames on charges of spying for the Soviet Union since 1985.

Other defectors have included Edward Lee Howard, a field operations officer, and William Kampiles, a low-level worker in the CIA 24-hour Operations Center. Kampiles sold the Soviets the detailed operational manual for the KH-11 reconnaissance satellite.

See US intelligence involvement with World War II Japanese war criminals and U.S. intelligence involvement with World War II Nazi war criminals.

Failures in intelligence analysis

The agency has also been criticized for ineffectiveness as an intelligence gathering agency. Former DCI Richard Helms commented, after the end of the Cold War, "The only remaining superpower doesn't have enough interest in what's going on in the world to organize and run an espionage service." The CIA has come under particular criticism for failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union.

See the information technology section of the intelligence analysis management for discussion of possible failures to provide adequate automation support to analysts, and US intelligence community A-Space for a IC-wide program to collect some of them. Cognitive traps for intelligence analysis also goes into areas where CIA has examined why analysis can fail.

Among the first analytic failures, before the CIA had its own collection capabilities, it assured President Harry S Truman on October 13, 1950 that the Chinese would not send troops to Korea. Six days later, over one million Chinese troops arrived. See an analysis of the failure; also see surrounding text for the two Koreas and China, and the time period before the Korean War. Earlier, the intelligence community failed to detect the North Korean invasion, in part because resources were not allocated to communications intelligence of the Korean peninsula.

The history of US intelligence, with respect to French Indochina and then the two Vietnams, is long and complex. The Pentagon Papers often contain pessimistic CIA analyses that conflicted with White House positions. It does appear that some estimates were changed to reflect Pentagon and White House views.. See CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific for detailed discussions of intelligence and covert operations from 1945 (i.e., before the CIA) onwards.

Another criticism is the failure to predict India's nuclear tests in 1974. The Agency did predict some aspects of the test, such as a 1965 report saying, correctly, that if India did develop a bomb, it would be explained as "for peaceful purposes".

A major criticism is failure to forestall the 9-11 Attack in 2001 because of three organizational deficiencies: the inability of multiple American intelligence agencies to work together, organizational incentives to take the wrong analytical actions, and resistance to new technologies and ideas. The 9/11 Commission Report identifies failures in the IC as a whole. One problem, for example, was the FBI failing to "connect the dots" by sharing information among its decentralized field offices. The report, however, criticizes both CIA analysis, and impeding their investigation. The CIA Inspector General in 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 9-11 Attack. Tenet disagreed with the report's conclusions, citing his planning efforts vis-a-vis al-Qaeda, particularly from 1999.

Internal/presidential studies, external investigations and document releases

Several investigations (e.g., Church Committee, Rockefeller Commission, Pike Committee), as well as released declassified documents, reveal that the CIA, at times, operated outside its charter. In some cases, such as during Watergate, this may have been due to inappropriate requests by White House staff. In other cases, there was a violation of Congressional intent, such as the Iran-Contra affair.

1949 Eberstadt Report (First Hoover Commission)

The first major analysis, following the National Security Act of 1947, was chaired by former President Herbert Hoover, with a Task Force on National Security Organization under Ferdinand Eberstadt, one of the drafters of the National Security Act and a believer in centralized intelligence.

The task force concluded that the system of the day led to an adversarial relationship, with little effective coordination, among the CIA, the military, and the State Department. "In the opinion of the task force, this produced duplication on one hand, and, on the other, departmental intelligence estimates that "have often been subjective and biased." In large measure, the military and State Department were blamed for their failure to consult and share pertinent information with the CIA. The task force recommended "that positive efforts be made to foster relations of mutual confidence between the [CIA] and the several departments and agencies that it serves."

This report stressed that the CIA "must be the central organization of the national intelligence system." It recommended a "...top echelon [of] an evaluation board or section composed of competent and experienced personnel who would have no administrative responsibilities and whose duties would be confined solely to intelligence evaluation." It also favored a civilian DCI with a long term in office.

"In the arena of covert operations and clandestine intelligence, the Eberstadt Report supported the integration of all clandestine operations into one office within CIA, under NSC supervision. To alleviate concerns expressed by the military who viewed this proposal as encroaching upon their prerogatives, the report stated that clandestine operations should be the responsibility of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in time of war."

The report declared that the failure to appraise scientific advances (e.g., biological and chemical warfare, electronics, aerodynamics, guided missiles, atomic weapons, and nuclear energy) in hostile countries might have more immediate and catastrophic consequences than failure in any other field of intelligence. It urged the US to develop a centralized capability for tracking these developments.

1949 Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report

The Eberstadt report was soon eclipsed by what may have been the most influential policy paper. "On January 8, 1948, the National Security Council established the Intelligence Survey Group (ISG) to "evaluate the CIA's effort and its relationship with other agencies."The Jackson-Dulles-Correa report held an opposite view on clandestine collection to the Eberstadt Report, interesting in that Dulles was a clandestine collection specialist.

Like the Hoover Commission, this group was chartered at the request of President Truman, and was made up of Allen W. Dulles, who had served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the Second World War and would become DCI in 1953, William Jackson, a future Deputy DCI, and Matthias Correa, a former assistant to Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal when the latter had served as Secretary of the Navy during the war. Chaired by Dulles, the ISG presented its findings, known as the Dulles-Jackson-Correa Report, to the National Security Council on January 1, 1949. Partially declassified in 1976, it "contained fifty-six recommendations, many highly critical of the CIA and DCI. In particular, the report revealed problems in the agency's execution of both its intelligence and operational missions. It also criticized the quality of national intelligence estimates by highlighting the CIA's--and, by implication, the DCI's--"failure to take charge of the production of coordinated national estimates." The report went on to argue that the CIA's current trend in clandestine intelligence activities should be reversed in favor of its mandated role as coordinator of intelligence." It was "particularly concerned about the personnel situation at CIA, including internal security, the high turnover of employees, and the excessive number of military personnel assigned to the agency." See the continuing concern about personnel in the 1954 Doolittle Report To add "continuity of service" and the "greatest assurance of independence of action," the report argued that the DCI should be a civilian and that military appointees be required to resign their commissions.

As with the Eberstadt Report, the Dulles Report also expressed concern about the inadequacies in scientific intelligence and the professionalism of the service intelligence organizations, and urged that the CIA provide greater coordination. This led to a recommendation for increased coordination between the DCI and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the arena of counterespionage. In turn, the report recommended that the Director of FBI be elevated to membership in the committee to help the DCI coordinate intelligence and set intelligence requirements.

The report proposed a large-scale reorganization of CIA. Even though it emphasized intelligence analysis and coordination over operations, it

"suggested incorporating covert operations and clandestine intelligence into one office within CIA. ... the Office of Special Operations (OSO), responsible for the clandestine collection of intelligence, and the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), responsible for covert actions, be integrated into a single division within CIA. [It] recommended replacing existing offices with four new divisions for coordination, estimates, research and reports, and operations."

The heads of the new offices would be included in the immediate staff of the DCI so that he would have "intimate contact with the day-to-day operations of his agency and be able to give policy guidance to them." These recommendations would become the start of the model for the future organization and operation of the present-day CIA. Until the DNI creation, estimates were in a separate office reporting to the DCI, coordination was a job of the DDCI (later assisted by the Intelligence Community Staff), research and reports became the Directorate of Intelligence, and operations was first, euphemistically, called the Directorate of Plans. Directorates for Support (originally called Administration), and Science & Technology, were also created.

1954 Doolittle Report on Covert Activities

Gen. James Doolittle did an extensive report on covert actions, specifically for President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The report's first recommendation dealt with personnel. It recommended releasing a large number of current staff that could never be more than mediocre, aggressively recruit new staff with an overall goal of increasing the workforce, and intensify training, with 10% of the covert staff time spent in training. The Director should be nonpolitical.

Security was the next concern, starting with a drive to reduce interim and provisional security clearances. The report strongly endorsed use of the polygraph both for initial recruits and existing staff. Counterespionage needed to be strengthened, and field stations needed both to report on their staff and periodically be inspected. Consolidating the Washington workforce, which was scattered among buildings, into one or a few main buildings was seen as a way of improving the security of classified information.

Coordination in the intelligence community was seen as a problem, especially agreeing on clear understandings between CIA and military intelligence organizations. The overall IC program for eliciting information from defectors needed improvement, with contributions from multiple agencies.

As far as organization and management, the report described the structure of the Directorate of Plans (i.e., the clandestine service) as too complex and in need of simplification. The Inspector General needed an agency-wide mandate. The role of the Operations Coordinating Board, the covert and clandestine oversight staff of the National Security Council needed to be strengthened, with operations clearly approved and guided from the highest levels of government.

The report addressed the classic problem of increasing performance while reducing costs. This meant better review of the budgets of covert and clandestine activities by a Review Board, except for the most sensitive operations. It meant providing the Comptroller with enough information, even if sanitized, to do a thorough job.

1956 Bruce-Lovett Report

In his biography of the late Robert Kennedy, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr in briefly discussed a report he said was located in the Kennedy papers. There is no such report in the Kennedy papers, the CIA archives, the National Archives, the Eisenhower Library or other likely archives, and no documentation exists that an actual report ever existed. Schlesinger said that soon after President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Actitivites, that Board requested that Robert A. Lovett and David K.E. Bruce examine CIA's covert operations.. This information comes from Arthur Schlesinger's book about Robert F. Kennedy, cited by cryptome.org. ""Bruce was very much disturbed," Lovett told the Cuba board of inquiry in 1961. "He approached it from the standpoint of 'what right have we to go barging into other countries buying newspapers and handing money to opposition parties or supporting a candidate for this, that or the other office?' He felt this was an outrageous interference with friendly countries. . . . He got me alarmed, so instead of completing the report in thirty days we took two months or more.""

Schlesinger went on to argue that, "The 1956 report, written in Bruce's spirited style, condemned

the increased mingling in the internal affairs of other nations of bright, highly graded young men who must be doing something all the time to justify their reason for being.... Busy, moneyed, and privileged [the CIA] likes its "King Making" responsibility (the intrigue is fascinating -- considerable self-satisfaction, sometimes with applause, derives from "successes" -- no charge is made for "failures" -- and the whole business is very much simpler than collecting covert intellignece on the USSR through the usual CIA methods!).

According to cryptome's account of the Schlesinger book, "Bruce and Lovett could discover no reliable system of control. "there are always, of course, on record the twin, well-born purpose of 'frustrating the Soviets' and keeping others 'pro-western' oriented. Under these almost any [covert] action can be and is being justified.... Once having been conceived, the final approval given to any project (at informal lunch meetins of the OCB [Operations Coordinating Board] inner group) can, at best, be described as pro forma." One consequence was that "no one, other than those in the CIA immediately concerned with their day to day operation, has any detailed knowledge of what is going on." With "a horde of CIA representatives" swarming around the planet, CIA covert action was exerting "significant, almost unilateral influences... on the actual formulation of our foreign policies... sometimes completely unknown" to the local American ambassador." Bruce and Lovett concluded with an plea about taking control of covert operations and their consequences:

Should not someone, somewhere in an authoritative position in our government, on a continuing basis, be... calculating... the long-range wisdom of activities which have entailed a virtual abandonment of the international "golden rule," and which, if successful to the degree claimed for them, are responsible in a great measure for stirring up the turmoitl and raising the doubts about us that exist in many countries of the world today?... Where will we be tomorrow? | "Bruce was very much disturbed," Lovett told the Cuba board of inquiry in 1961. "He approached it from the standpoint of 'what right have we to go barging into other countries buying newspapers and handing money to opposition parties or supporting a candidate for this, that or the other office?' He felt this was an outrageous interference with friendly countries....

The CIA itself would like more detail on this so-called report, a copy of which could not be found, in 1995, by the Agency's History Staff. Referring to reports such as the Dulles-Jackson-Correa, Doolittle, Pike, Church, and Rockefeller reports, the Staff "recently ran across a reference to another item, the so-called "Bruce-Lovett" report, that it would very much like to read--if we could find it! The report is mentioned in Peter Grose's recent biography Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles. According to Grose, [Bruce and Lovett] prepared a report for President Dwight Eisenhower in the fall of 1956 that criticized CIA's alleged fascination with "kingmaking" in the Third World and complained that a "horde of CIA representatives" was mounting foreign political intrigues at the expense of gathering hard intelligence on the Soviet Union.

The History Staff checked the CIA files on the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PBCFIA). They checked with the Eisenhower Library. They checked with the National Archives, which holds the PBCFIA records. They checked with the Virginia Historical Society, the custodian of David Bruce's papers. None had a copy.

"Having reached a dead end, we consulted the author of the Dulles biography, Peter Grose. Grose told us that he had not seen the report itself but had used notes made from it by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger for Robert F. Kennedy and His Times (1978). Professor Schlesinger informed us that that he had seen the report in Robert Kennedy's papers before they were deposited at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. He had loaned Grose his notes and does not have a copy of these notes or of the report itself.

"This raises an interesting question: how did a report on the CIA written for President Eisenhower in 1956 end up in the RFK papers? We think we have the answer. Robert Lovett was asked to testify before Gen. Maxwell Taylor's board of inquiry on the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation. Robert Kennedy was on that board and may have asked Lovett for a copy of the report. But we do not have the answer to another question: where is the "Bruce-Lovett" report? The JFK Presidential Library has searched the RFK papers without success. Surely the report will turn up some day, even if one government agency and four separate archives so far haven't been able to find it. But this episode helps to prove one of the few Iron Laws of History: the official who keeps the best records gets to tell the story."

Schlesinger himself said the "report" had no influence on the CIA or on Eisenhower at the time; indeed no one at the time ever mentioned it.

1975 investigations

The 1975 United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States, better known as the Rockefeller Commission investigated questionable practices including assassination attempts and inappropriate domestic operations. Larger Congressional investigations followed in 1975, first the Church Committee of the United States Senate, followed by the Pike Committee of the United States House of Representatives. Eventually, these interim committees were replaced by the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

1996 reports

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."

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 [Clandestine Service], the DCI must work closely with the Director of the CS and hold him fully and directly responsible to him."

2007 documents

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.

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