The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a U.S. government agency primarily tasked with gathering and analyzing intelligence from foreign countries and conducting counterintelligence against threats to U.S. interests. Established during World War II, the CIA played a crucial role in combating the Axis powers. Later, it became the spearhead against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Despite its secrecy in military operations, handling agents worldwide, cyber security, and espionage activities, some of its disclosed missions have faced criticism for unethical practices and human rights violations.
History of the CIA
The United States was one of the last major powers to establish an intelligence agency responsible for gathering covert information for policymakers. Before 1942, the country lacked a centralized intelligence agency. Information was collected sporadically by the Office of Naval Intelligence, Army Intelligence, and the FBI, and was rarely shared with other government agencies or senior policymakers. For example, due to competition between Army and Navy intelligence, President Franklin Roosevelt was not informed of sensitive information about Japan in the months leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941.
In response to these intelligence failures, Roosevelt established the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in June 1942. This new agency aimed to coordinate intelligence gathering among U.S. security institutions. A precursor to the OSS, known as the Coordinator of Information, was created in July 1941 but failed due to hostility from the State Department, military intelligence, and the FBI. Recognizing its importance, Roosevelt revived it as the OSS, appointing William Donovan as its head. Donovan significantly improved its ability to conduct intelligence, economic, and political analysis, earning Roosevelt’s trust. Donovan was known for his creative, though sometimes controversial, ideas, such as using bats as weapons against Japan.
During World War II, the OSS, with around 12,000 members, gathered and analyzed information in areas where U.S. military forces operated. It used numerous agents in Nazi-occupied Europe, including Berlin, conducted counter-propaganda and deception activities, produced analytical reports for policymakers, and oversaw special operations like sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. Before the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, over 500 OSS agents were operating in occupied France. They prepared assessments of German industry, war-making capacity, and a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler, predicting he would likely commit suicide if Germany was defeated. The OSS was highly effective under Donovan’s leadership, despite the initial inexperience of most of its members. However, it was disbanded at the end of the war.
Recognizing the need for a coordinated intelligence institution after the war, President Harry Truman established the CIA and the National Intelligence Authority in 1946 by executive order, recruiting many former OSS members. As with the Coordinator of Information, there were initial trust and competition issues between the new security agencies, military intelligence, and the FBI. In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, which established the National Security Council (NSC) to oversee the CIA. The CIA was granted broad authority to conduct foreign intelligence operations, advise the NSC on intelligence matters, coordinate the intelligence activities of other government agencies, and carry out additional tasks as requested by the NSC. Although the act did not completely eliminate competition between these agencies, it established the CIA as the leading intelligence agency in the country. The CIA was generally seen as the American counterpart to the Soviet KGB, which was disbanded in 1991. However, unlike the KGB, the CIA was prohibited by the National Security Act from conducting domestic intelligence and espionage operations, unlike the Soviet intelligence services, which conducted most of their operations within the Soviet Union and against Soviet citizens.
Organization and Responsibilities
The CIA is headed by a director and a deputy director, only one of whom may be a military officer. Until 2004, the CIA director managed all U.S. intelligence-gathering activities and served as the president’s chief intelligence advisor, often playing a critical role in shaping U.S. foreign policy, as seen with Allen Dulles during Dwight Eisenhower’s administration (1953-1961) and William Casey during Ronald Reagan’s administration (1981-1989).
The CIA is organized into four main directorates:
- The Directorate of Intelligence: Responsible for analyzing intelligence gathered by both overt means, such as news media, and covert means, such as field agents, satellite imagery, and intercepted communications. These analyses aim to integrate intelligence from all possible sources to build a comprehensive picture and estimate the situation. During the Cold War, much of this work focused on the Soviet military and industrial complex.
- The Directorate of Operations: Oversees espionage and intelligence collection, as well as the management of clandestine and often illegal special operations, including sabotage. These covert activities are conducted under various covers, including diplomatic cover used by nearly every intelligence agency and companies created or acquired by the CIA. Despite the complexity of some covert operations, such activities represent only a small portion of the CIA’s overall budget.
- The Directorate of Science and Technology: Keeps the CIA up-to-date with scientific and technological developments and carries out technical operations, such as coordinating intelligence from reconnaissance satellites and monitoring foreign media. During the Cold War, this directorate produced materials based on intelligence gathered from aerial reconnaissance, such as the Soviet grain harvest and ballistic missile development. Satellite-obtained information was crucial in the arms control process and played a vital role in designing spy satellites and intercepting communications from other countries.
- The Directorate of Support: Responsible for financial affairs and agency personnel matters. It also houses the Office of Security, responsible for personnel, facility, and information security, as well as detecting spies within the CIA.
CIA Activities
Based on post-Cold War memoirs published by former agents and declassified documents from the United States and Russia, a fairly comprehensive picture of CIA activities, including its successes and failures, has emerged. The CIA’s data collection and analysis were crucial for arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War and for shaping U.S. strategy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when President John F. Kennedy relied on information gathered by the agency from Soviet double agent Colonel Oleg Penkovsky. During the 1970s and 1980s, its agents within the Soviet military and the KGB provided information on the Soviet military-industrial complex. Technical operations included tapping the main communication line of the Soviet army in East Germany during Operation Gold, developing reconnaissance aircraft like the U-2, and spy satellites capable of photographing small targets like missile silos and providing early warnings about Soviet missile deployments in Cuba and the development of new missiles in the Soviet Union.
Among the clandestine operations carried out by the Directorate of Operations were the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and the reinstatement of the Shah in 1953, the ousting of the democratically elected leftist government in Guatemala through a military coup the following year, organizing a secret army of Miao tribesmen to monitor the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War, and financially supporting military officers plotting against Chilean President Salvador Allende before the military coup there in 1973. In the 1980s, the CIA armed and trained the mujahideen fighting the Soviet-backed government and Soviet army in the Afghan war and organized, armed, and trained the Contras in Nicaragua fighting to overthrow that country’s government. In the early 1960s, the CIA briefly considered using illicit drugs to control foreign agents.
While many covert actions were highly successful, some were also failures, sometimes embarrassingly so, such as the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by CIA-backed Cuban exiles in 1961 and the inaccurate intelligence gathering during NATO’s bombing campaign in Yugoslavia in 1999, which led to the destruction of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The CIA also failed in its multiple attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro in the 1960s through agents recruited within the Cuban government and contacts with organized crime figures in the United States. These assassination plots included poisoning Castro’s cigars or lacing them with a hallucinogen, providing him with an exploding cigar, poisoning his suit, or giving him drugs that would cause his beard and eyebrows to fall out.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the CIA restructured its organizational framework and missions. While more than half of its resources before 1990 were devoted to activities targeting the Soviet Union, this shifted in the post-Cold War era to non-state actors, such as terrorists and international criminal organizations. It made significant efforts to gather and analyze information on nuclear proliferation, and spy satellites used exclusively for military purposes were sometimes deployed on other missions, such as gathering evidence of environmental disasters and human rights violations. During the 1990s, the CIA supported U.S. military operations in the Balkans and the Middle East and sometimes acted as a mediator between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government.
Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which al-Qaeda terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City and part of the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., CIA officers assisted the U.S. attack on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, which harbored al-Qaeda, by gathering intelligence and identifying military targets. The agency conducted an extensive campaign to kill or capture al-Qaeda operatives, even though it had been restricted from carrying out assassinations since 1976. The Bush administration justified that the assassination ban did not apply in wartime or during the so-called “war on terror.” President Barack Obama’s administration adopted the same stance, and the CIA’s willingness to use lethal force was demonstrated in 2011 with the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader and mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, by a team of special operations soldiers. In most cases, however, the agency used missile strikes launched by drones to kill al-Qaeda members, a method that has since become dominant.
Criticism and Evaluation of the CIA
The CIA has faced scrutiny for various reasons since its inception, including conducting operations without presidential approval and its role in scandals involving domestic surveillance. Following the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s, Congress established the Church Committee to investigate CIA operations within the United States. The committee concluded that the agency had conducted secret surveillance of Vietnam War opponents and anti-war political activists, engaged in assassination plots, and planned coups. In response, the CIA director resigned, and an executive order issued in 1976 by President Gerald Ford prohibited the CIA from carrying out political assassinations and activities within the United States. During the 1980s, the CIA faced criticism for supporting Nicaraguan Contra rebels fighting to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government. This support was part of the Iran-Contra scandal, which led to congressional investigations and revelations of secret CIA actions, further damaging the agency’s reputation and leading to the resignation of CIA Director William Casey.
CIA operations also sparked controversy during the 1980s due to illegal activities carried out by CIA-backed rebels in Central America, particularly the Nicaraguan Contras. Revelations that the agency had secretly funded and armed these rebels in violation of congressional restrictions led to the Iran-Contra scandal, which severely damaged the CIA’s credibility. Subsequent investigations revealed that CIA officers had concealed information from Congress, leading to a further decline in trust in the agency. The resulting political fallout led to reforms aimed at increasing transparency and oversight, though concerns about the CIA’s activities persisted.
The CIA has faced criticism for conducting controversial activities, including coups against democratically elected governments, interference in foreign affairs, and assassination attempts. These actions have often been criticized for being contrary to democratic principles and international law. The agency’s involvement in the 1953 coup in Iran, the 1973 coup in Chile, and the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba exemplify controversial covert operations that raised ethical and legal concerns. Additionally, in the post-September 11 era, the CIA has been accused of employing enhanced interrogation techniques, which many consider torture, further raising human rights concerns.
Despite these criticisms, the CIA has also received praise for its role in protecting U.S. national security. The agency’s intelligence gathering, analysis, and covert actions have played a vital role in counterterrorism efforts, such as preventing potential terrorist attacks and neutralizing threats. The successful operation that led to the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011 is often cited as a significant achievement of the CIA in the fight against terrorism.
As the CIA continues to adapt to the changing security landscape of the 21st century, it faces challenges and opportunities in addressing emerging threats, including cyber warfare, terrorism, and geopolitical tensions. The CIA’s ability to gather intelligence, conduct covert operations, and provide critical information to policymakers remains a cornerstone of U.S. national security. However, balancing these activities with ethical considerations, legal standards, and democratic values will continue to be a key challenge for the agency in the years to come.
