History of the Central Intelligence Agency
The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) dates back to September 18, 1947, when President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 into law.
A major impetus that has been cited over the years[citation needed] for the creation of the CIA was the unforeseen attack on Pearl Harbor,[1] but whatever Pearl Harbor's role, at the close of World War II government circles identified a need for a group to coordinate government intelligence efforts, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the State Department, the War Department, and even the Post Office were all jockeying for that new power.
[8] The rapid reorganizations that followed reflected not only routine bureaucratic competition for resources but also exploration of the proper relationships between clandestine intelligence collection and covert action (i.e., paramilitary and psychological operations).
The first public mention of the "Central Intelligence Agency" concept and term appeared on a U.S. Army and Navy command-restructuring proposal presented by James Forrestal and Arthur Radford to the U.S. Senate Military Affairs Committee at the end of 1945.
Like other organs of the CIA, the ORE received a regular stream of requests from the rest of the Government, including the NSC, Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Department of State, and branches of the military.
[18] In the beginning, Central Intelligence was the beast of three masters: Truman, who, from his position under a mountain of state, DOD, and FBI reports (the FBI having jurisdiction in Latin America)[19][20] quickly saw the need for a centralized outlet to organize the information that would reach his desk; Defense, who wanted CI to both know everything about military adversaries, perform military sabotage, and foment partisans that would fight with the US if war came; and the State Department, that wanted CI to bring global political change positive to the ends of the US.
Sidney Souers (formerly Deputy Chief of Naval Intelligence), after a little more than a hundred days in his position as the first Director of the Central Intelligence Group during which "The Pentagon and the State Department refused to talk to [the CIG]" and "the FBI treated [the CIG] with the deepest disdain", left a top secret note simply stating "There is an urgent need to develop the highest possible quality of information on the USSR in the shortest possible time" before he completed the goal he set out in his first days of office... "[going] home".
Vandenberg's goals were much like the ones set out by his predecessor in the note he left leaving office, finding out "everything about the Soviet forces in Eastern and Central Europe – their movements, their capabilities, and their intentions"[22] in the shortest possible time.
On June 18, 1948, the National Security Council issued Directive 10/2[23] "[calling] for covert operations to attack the Soviets around the world,"[24] and giving 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 U.S. government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them."
He allowed them to tap the $200 million Exchange Stabilization Fund which had been designed during the Depression to shore up the value of the dollar overseas, but was used during World War II as a depository for captured Axis Loot, and was, at that time, earmarked for the reconstruction of Europe.
[31] Some Seoul State Department intelligence officers were skeptical, but the party lasted until Haney was replaced in September 1952 by John Limond Hart, a Europe veteran with a vivid memory for bitter experiences of misinformation.
Speaker of the House John McCormack called a Czech shipment of weapons bypassing the U.S. arms embargo on Guatemala an "atomic bomb planted in America's backyard.
[44] On June 27, after days of the miniature bombing campaign, Arbenz, thinking his forces outmatched and that his grasp on the military was failing, ceded power to Colonel Carlos Diaz.
CIA Agent Rocky Stone who had played a minor role in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état was working at the Damascus embassy as a diplomat, but was actually the station chief.
During this "photo gap", the CIA received a report from a source from Operation Mongoose, a road watcher describing covered tractor trailers moving that were shaped like large telephone poles.
The Cuban Missile Crisis formally started the next day when American photo analysts identified R-12 1 Megaton MRBMs which could target parts of the east coast with its 2,000 km range.
A memorandum from National Security Advisor Walt Rostow to President Lyndon B. Johnson suggests that the Bolivian unit which captured and killed Guevara was "the one we have been training for some time.
According to Rodriguez, he and a fellow Cuban-American operative "were issued false U.S. re-entry permits" under fake names, after which they were flown to Bolivia and introduced to the Commander-in-Chief of the Bolivian armed forces as "experts on guerrilla warfare.
[63] The OSS Patti mission arrived in Vietnam near the end of World War II and had significant interaction with the leaders of many Vietnamese factions, including Ho Chi Minh.
[64] While the Patti mission forwarded Ho's proposals for phased independence, with the French or even the United States as the transition partner, the US policy of containment opposed forming any government that was communist in nature.
As a result of the investigations, Congressional oversight of the CIA evolved into a select intelligence committee in the House while the Senate supervised covert actions authorized by the President.
The CIA seized the opportunity to arm and finance Chad's Prime Minister, Hissène Habré, after he created a breakaway government in Western Sudan, even giving him Stinger missiles.
This paved the way for a trade of 504 TOW missiles to Iran for $10,000 each and the release of Benjamin Weir, a captive of Islamic Jihad, the group that claimed responsibility for the Beirut bombings which later became Hezbollah.
William J Crowe, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted that the CIA "talked about the Soviet Union as if they weren't reading the newspapers, much less developed clandestine intelligence.
In Guatemala, the CIA produced the Murphy Memo based on audio recordings made by bugs planted in the bedroom of Ambassador Marilyn McAfee, placed by Guatemalan intelligence.
[99] As disclosed to The Sunday Times by CIA sources, "American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia".
[116] In 2000, the CIA and USAF jointly ran a series of flights over Afghanistan with a small remote-controlled reconnaissance drone, the Predator; they obtained probable photos of Bin Laden.
After several days of surveillance of Awlaki by the Central Intelligence Agency, armed drones took off from a new, secret American base in the Arabian Peninsula, crossed into northern Yemen, and fired a number of Hellfire missiles at al-Awlaki's vehicle.
[122][123] The agency attracted widespread criticism after it used a doctor in Pakistan to set up a vaccination program in Abbottabad in 2011 to obtain DNA samples from the occupants of a compound where it was suspected bin Laden was living.
[136] A postmortem of the intelligence failures in the lead up to Iraq led by former DDCI Richard Kerr would conclude that the CIA had been a casualty of the cold war, wiped out in a way "analogous to the effect of the meteor strikes on the dinosaurs.
