The CIA

Established: September 18, 1947
Director: Gen. Michael V. Hayden, USAF
Deputy Director: Stephen R. Kappes
Associate Deputy Director: Michael J. Morrell
Associate Director for Military Support: MGen. John T. Brennan, USAF

General Information

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Government. Its primary function is obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the Government. A second function is overtly and covertly disseminating information, both true and false, that influences others to make decisions favorable to the United States Government. The second function is usually known as propaganda or public relations. A third function of the CIA is to act as the "hidden hand" of the government by engaging in covert operations, some of notably questionable intelligence, at the direction of the President. It is this last function that has caused most of the controversies regarding the CIA over the years.

Its headquarters are in the community of Langley in the McLean CDP of Fairfax County, Virginia, a few miles up the Potomac River from downtown Washington, D.C.. The CIA is part of the American Intelligence Community, which is now led by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The roles and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the United Kingdom's MI6 and Israel's Mossad.

The Agency, created in 1947 by the National Security Act of 1947 signed by President Harry S. Truman, is a descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II. The OSS was dissolved in October 1945 but William J. Donovan (aka Wild Bill), the creator of the OSS, submitted a proposal to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 calling for a new organization having direct Presidential supervision, "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." Despite strong opposition from the military, the State Department, and the FBI, Truman established the Central Intelligence Group in January 1946. Later under the National Security Act of 1947 (which became effective on September 18, 1947) the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency were established. In its creation many disposed Nazi operatives were recruited to become agents, they were offered financial packages and promised to be exempt from trial for their war crimes committed in World War II. This was a result of Operation Paperclip. Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was appointed as the first Director of Central Intelligence.

In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act (also called "Public Law 110") was passed, permitting the agency to use confidential, fiscal, and administrative procedures and exempting it from many 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 a program called "PL-110" to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" outside normal immigration procedures, as well as giving those persons cover stories and economic support. By 1949, the West German intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst, under Reinhard Gehlen, was under the CIA's control.

In 1950, the CIA organized the Pacific Corporation, the first of many CIA private enterprises. Director Hillenkoetter approved Project BLUEBIRD, the CIA's first structured behavioral control program. In 1951, the Columbia Broadcasting System began cooperating with the CIA. President Truman created the Office of Current Intelligence. Project BLUEBIRD was renamed Project ARTICHOKE.

During the first years of its existence, other branches of government did not exercise much control over the Agency. This was often justified by a desire to defeat and match the activities of the KGB across the globe, a task that many believed could only be accomplished through an equally ungentlemanly approach. As a result, few in government inquired too closely into CIA activity. The rapid expansion of the Agency and a developing sense of independence under DCI Allen Dulles added to this trend.

Things came to a head in the early 1970s, around the time of the Watergate affair. One dominant feature of political life during this period were the attempts of Congress to assert its power of oversight over the executive branch of government. Revelations about past CIA activities, such as assassination attempts of foreign leaders and illegal domestic spying, provided the opportunity to carry out this process in the sphere of intelligence operations. Hastening the Agency's fall from grace were the involvement of ex-CIA agents in the Watergate break-in and President Nixon's subsequent attempts to use the CIA to stop the FBI investigation of Watergate. In the famous "smoking gun" tape which led to Nixon's resignation, Nixon ordered his chief of staff Haldeman to tell the CIA that further investigation of Watergate would "open the whole can of worms" about the Bay Of Pigs operation, and therefore that the CIA should tell the FBI to stop investigating Watergate because of "national security."