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Central Intelligence Agency CIA |
|
 Seal of the Central Intelligence Agency |
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| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 26 July 1947 |
| Preceding Agency | Central Intelligence Group |
| Headquarters | Langley, Virginia, United States |
| Employees | Classified |
| Annual Budget | Classified |
| 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 | |
| Footnotes | |
| [1][2][3][4] | |
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. Its primary function is obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers. Additionally, the agency sometimes engages in propaganda and public relations efforts.[5] It also serves as the government's paramilitary hidden hand via covert operations at the direction of the President and under oversight by Congress.[6] This last role has caused much controversy for the CIA questions about the legality, morality, effectiveness, and wisdom of such operations.
Its headquarters is in the community of Langley in the McLean CDP of Fairfax County, Virginia, a few miles northwest from downtown Washington, D.C. along the Potomac River. The CIA is part of the U.S. Intelligence Community, led by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The role and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) and Israel's Mossad.
The CIA is sometimes referred to euphemistically in government and military parlance as Other Government Agencies (or OGA), particularly when its operations in a particular area are an open secret.[7][8] Other terms include The Company and The Agency.
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History
The Central Intelligence Agency was created by Congress with passage of the National Security Act of 1947, signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It is the descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which was dissolved in October 1945 and its functions transferred to the State and War Departments. But the need for a centralized postwar intelligence-gathering operation was clearly recognized. Eleven months earlier, in 1944, William J. Donovan (a.k.a. Wild Bill Donovan), the OSS's creator, proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt creating a new espionage organization directly supervised by the President which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies."[9] Under his plan, a powerful, centralized civilian agency would have coordinated all the intelligence services. He also proposed that this agency have authority to conduct subversive operations abroad," but "no police or law enforcement functions, either at home or abroad.[10]
Despite opposition from the military establishment, the State Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)[9], President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group in January 1946.[11] Later, under the National Security Act of 1947 (effective September 18, 1947), the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency were established. Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was appointed as the first Director of Central Intelligence.
The National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1948 (NSC 10/2) further gave the CIA the authority to carry out covert operations against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorised persons.[5]
In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act (Public Law 81-110) was passed, permitting the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures, and exempting it from most of the usual limitations on the use of Federal funds. The act also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its "organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed." It also created the program "PL-110", to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" who fall outside normal immigration procedures, as well as giving those persons cover stories and economic support.[12] During the first years of its existence, other branches of government did not exercise much control over the Central Intelligence Agency; justified by the desire to match and defeat KGB actions throughout the globe, a task many believed could be accomplished only through an approach as equally ungentlemanly as the KGB's, consequently, few in government closely inquired about the CIA's activity. The rapid expansion of the CIA, and a developed sense of independence under the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Allen Dulles added to this trend.
Things came to a head in the early 1970s, around the time of the Watergate political burglary affair. A dominant feature of political life during that period were the attempts of Congress to assert oversight of U.S. Presidency, the executive branch of the U.S. Government. Revelations about past CIA activities, such as assassinations and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders, illegal domestic spying on U.S. citizens, provided the opportunities to execute Congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence operations. Hastening the Central Intelligence Agency's fall from grace were the burglary of the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic Party by ex-CIA agents, and President Nixon's subsequent use of the CIA to impede the FBI's investigation of the burglary. In the famous "smoking gun" audio tape provoking President Nixon's resignation, Nixon ordered his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, to tell the CIA that further investigation of Watergate would "open the whole can of worms" about the Bay Of Pigs of Cuba, and, therefore, that the CIA should tell the FBI to cease investigating the Watergate burglary, due to reasons of "national security".[13]
In 1973, then-DCI James R. Schlesinger commissioned reports known as the "Family Jewels" on illegal activities by the Agency. In December 1974, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the news of the "Family Jewels" in a front-page article in the New York Times, revealing that the CIA had assassinated foreign leaders, and had conducted surveillance on some seven thousand American citizens involved in the antiwar movement (Operation CHAOS).
Congress responded to the disturbing charges in 1975, investigating the CIA in the Senate via the Church Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), and in the House of Representatives via the Pike Committee, chaired by Congressman Otis Pike (D-NY). In addition, President Gerald Ford created the Rockefeller Commission, and issued a directive prohibiting the assassination of foreign leaders.
Repercussions from the Iran-Contra arms smuggling scandal included the creation of the Intelligence Authorization Act in 1991. It defined covert operations as secret missions in geopolitical areas where the U.S. is neither openly nor apparently engaged. This also required an authorizing chain of command, including an official, presidential finding report and the informing of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, which, in emergencies, requires only "timely notification".
In 1988, President George H. W. Bush became the first former chief of the CIA to be elected President of the United States.
Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community, serving as the president's principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DCI's title now is "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.
Currently, the Central Intelligence Agency reports to U.S. Congressional committees, but also answers directly to the President. The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the cabinet, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, et cetera; all fifteen Intelligence Community agencies are under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.
Many of the post-Watergate restrictions upon the Central Intelligence Agency were lifted after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the The Pentagon. 52 years earlier, in 1949, Congress and President Harry Truman had approved arrangements that CIA and national intelligence funding could be hidden in the U.S federal budget. Some critics charge this violates the requirement in the U.S. Constitution that the federal budget be openly published.