After the armed landing of Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961, President John F. Kennedy discharged Dulles and replaced him.

Raborn, a distinguished naval officer who directed the design and development of the entire Polaris ballistic missile submarine system, had a somewhat short and unhappy tenure as the DCI.

Helms became the director of the Office of Special Operations (OSO) after the CIA's disastrous role in the attempted Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961.

In an audio tape provoking Nixon's resignation as president, Nixon ordered his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, to tell the CIA that further investigation of the Watergate affair would "open the whole can of worms" about the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba, and, therefore, that the CIA should tell the FBI to cease investigating the Watergate burglary, due to reasons of "national security".

[30] In December 1974, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the news of the "Family Jewels" (leaked to him by Colby) 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).

President Gerald Ford created the aforementioned Rockefeller Commission, and issued an Executive Order prohibiting the assassination of foreign leaders.

[clarification needed] Colby cooperated, not out of a desire for major reforms, but in the belief that the actual scope of such misdeeds was not great enough to cause lasting damage to the CIA's reputation.

Meanwhile, after many years of involvement, South Vietnam fell to Communist forces in April 1975, a particularly difficult blow for Colby, who had dedicated so much of his life and career to the American effort there.

A US Naval Academy classmate of Jimmy Carter's, Turner enjoyed the confidence of the White House, but his emphasis on technical methods of intelligence collection, such as SIGINT and IMINT, and his apparent dislike for, and firing of, HUMINT specialists made him quite unpopular within the CIA.

Turner eliminated more than 800 operational positions in what was called the "Halloween Massacre", invoking a moniker previously used in conjunction with President Ford's 1975 staff reorganization.

Reform and simplification of the intelligence community's multilayered secrecy system was one of Turner's significant initiatives, but produced no results by the time he left office.

[35] During Turner's term as head of the CIA, he became outraged when former agent Frank Snepp published a book called Decent Interval which exposed incompetence among senior American government personnel during the fall of Saigon.

The court forced Snepp to turn over all his profits from Decent Interval and to seek preclearance of any future writings about intelligence work for the rest of his life.

[38] The CIA would later rely on the Snepp legal precedent in forcing Turner to seek preclearance of his own memoirs, which were highly critical of President Ronald Reagan's policies.

[39] During his tenure at the CIA, Casey played a large part in the shaping of Reagan's foreign policy, particularly its approach to Soviet international activity.

During his tenure restrictions were lifted on the use of the CIA to directly, covertly influence the internal and foreign affairs of countries relevant to American policy.

[43] The final report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, issued on August 4, 1993, said that Gates "was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities.

The evidence developed by Independent Counsel did not warrant indictment..."[44] As the director of central intelligence, Woolsey is notable for having a very limited relationship with President Bill Clinton.

"[45] Another quotation about his relationship with Clinton, according to Paula Kaufman of Insight magazine: Remember the guy who in 1994 crashed his plane onto the White House lawn?

As the head of the CIA, Deutch continued the policy of his predecessor R. James Woolsey to declassify records pertaining to American covert operations during the Cold War.

[47] In 1996, the US 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.

After John Deutch's abrupt resignation in December 1996, Tenet served as acting director until he was officially appointed the position on July 11, 1997, after a unanimous confirmation vote in the Senate.

Tenet focused on potential problems such as "the transformation of Russia and China", "rogue states" like North Korea, Iran, and Iraq, and terrorism.

As Tenet expressed it in his book,[53] How could [an intelligence] community without a strategic plan tell the President of the United States just four days after 9/11 how to attack the Afghan sanctuary and operate against al-Qaeda in ninety-two countries around the world?

[56] Bob Woodward, in his book Plan of Attack,[57] wrote that Tenet privately lent his personal authority to the intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq.

Goss was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, telling The Washington Post in 2002 that he had done some "small-boat handling" and had "some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits.

In mid-2004, Goss took a very strong position, during what had already been announced as his last congressional term, urging specific reforms and corrections in the way the CIA carried out its activities, lest it become "just another government bureaucracy.

Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA and a frequent commentator on intelligence issues, believed the report showed that Goss gave "clear priority to providing political protection for the president" when conducting the inquiry.

Another Democratic member of the committee, Ron Wyden (D-OR), expressed concerns that given Goss's history within and ties to the CIA, he would be too disinclined to push for institutional change.

In an interview carried out by Michael Moore's production company on March 3, 2004, Goss described himself as "probably not qualified" for a job within the CIA, because the language skills the agency now seeks are not languages he speaks and because the people applying today for positions within the CIA's four directorates have such keen technical and analytic skills, which he did not have when he applied to the agency in the early 1960s.