Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the United States of America's foreign intelligence agency, responsible for obtaining and analysing information about foreign governments, corporations, and individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the US government. During the Cold War it was also the agency responsible for many attempts to depose foreign governments suspected of Communist ties, such as the plot to overthrow left wing Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954, financing of the failed attempt to invade Cuba by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, and the employment and training of assassins.

The Agency, created in 1947 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[?], the creator of the OSS, had submitted a proposal to the President in 1944. He called 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 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act 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." Some critics have charged that this violates a provision of the U.S. Constitution that the federal budget be openly published.

The activities of the CIA are largely undisclosed. Like other intelligence agencies, it collects information from a variety of sources, the vast majority probably being public information in the countries concerned, but also from individuals who for various reasons including bribes, blackmail, and ideology, decide to pass otherwise secret information to the CIA. It also undoubtedly makes use of the surveillance satellites and signal interception capabilities of the NSA, including the Echelon system, and the surveillance aircraft of the various branches of the US armed forces. At one stage, the CIA even operated its own fleet of U-2 surveillance aircraft.

The agency also employs a group of officers with paramilitary skills. Michael Spann, the CIA officer killed in November 2001 during the Afghanistan conflict, was one such individual. A small number of other CIA officers are confirmed to be working in similar roles in Afghanistan, but the other paramilitary actions of the CIA since the Bay Of Pigs are largely unknown.

One of the CIA's publications, the CIA World Factbook, is unclassified and is indeed made freely available without copyright restrictions. The factbook forms the basis of most of the country entries in this Wikipedia.

In 1988, President George H. W. Bush became the first former head of the CIA to become President of the United States.

The activities of the CIA have caused considerable political controversy both in the United States and in other countries, often nominally friendly to the United States, where the agency has operated (or been alleged to). For instance, the CIA has supported various dictators, including Manuel Noriega, who have been friendly to perceived US geopolitical interests, sometimes over democratically elected governments.

The agency has also been criticized for ineffectiveness as an intelligence gathering agency. These criticism included allowing a double agent, Aldrich Ames to gain high positions 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[?]. In addition, the CIA has come under particular criticism for failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union.

On November 5, 2002, newspapers reported that a car full of Al-Qaeda operatives had been killed by a missile launched from a CIA-controlled Predator drone (a high-altitude, remote-controlled aircraft).

CIA Directors

The head of the CIA is given the title Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). The DCI isn't only the head of the CIA but also the leader of the entire U.S. intelligence community and the President's principal advisor on intelligence matters. A list of DCIs (in chronological order) follows.

Rear Adm. Sidney W. Souers[?], USNR	January 23, 1946 - June 10, 1946
Lt. Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg[?], USA	June 10, 1946 - May 1, 1947
Rear Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter[?], USN	May 1, 1947 - October 7, 1950
Gen. Walter Bedell Smith[?], USA	October 7, 1950 - February 9, 1953
Allen W. Dulles	February 26, 1953 - November 29, 1961
John A. McCone[?]	November 29, 1961 April 28, 1965
Vice Adm. William F. Raborn, Jr.[?], USN (Ret.)	April 28, 1965 - June 30, 1966
Richard M. Helms	June 30, 1966 - February 2, 1973
James R. Schlesinger[?]	February 2, 1973 - July 2, 1973
William E. Colby[?]	September 4, 1973 - January 30, 1976
George H. W. Bush	January 30, 1976 - January 20, 1977
Adm. Stansfield Turner[?], USN (Ret.)	March 9, 1977 - January 20, 1981
William J. Casey	January 28, 1981 - January 29, 1987
William H. Webster[?]	May 26, 1987 - August 31, 1991
Robert M. Gates[?]	November 6, 1991 - January 20, 1993
R. James Woolsey[?]	February 5, 1993 - January 10, 1995
John M. Deutch[?]	May 10, 1995 - December 15, 1996
George J. Tenet	July 11, 1997 - present

External links

The official CIA home page: http://www.cia.gov/
Homepage of Killing Hope (http://members.aol.com/bblum6/American_holocaust.htm), a deprecatory history of CIA interventions
Description of an example of CIA crimes (http://www.webcom.com/hrin/magazine/oct96/cia.html)
A timeline of CIA atrocities (http://www.korpios.org/resurgent/CIAtimeline.html)

Common misspelling and questions (FAQ)

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