CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was established following WORLD WAR II, from which the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as superpowers with vast military might and sharply conflicting world views. To protect the nation’s security in all international matters and to ensure continued democracy and freedom for the United States, Congress created
the CIA with the National Security Act of 1947 (ch. 343, 61 Stat. 495 [1947]). Gathering information from other countries relevant to national security is a sensitive task requiring considerable secrecy and covert activity. Unlike
most other organizations, the CIA receives comparatively little media coverage when it is doing its job well. For this reason, most of the information
that reaches the media concerning the CIA is negative.
All intelligence information collected by the
CIA is reported to the NATIONAL SECURITY
COUNCIL, under whose direction the CIA acts.
The CIA is headed by the director of central
intelligence, who is a member of the president’s
cabinet and the presidential spokesperson for
the agency and the intelligence community. The
director and deputy director of the CIA are
appointed by the president with the advice and
consent of the Senate.
The CIA is headquartered at a 258-acre
compound in Langley, Virginia, and maintains
twenty-two other offices in the Washington,
D.C., area. The main compound includes a
printing plant that produces phony documents,
such as birth certificates, passports, and driver’s
licenses, for use by its agents. The plant also produces
the President’s Daily Brief, an eight-page
CIA document that is presented to the president
every morning. Another facility is used exclusively
for recruiting spies to work for the CIA;
another houses the Foreign Broadcast Information
Service, which monitors and translates
broadcasts from forty-seven countries. Several other facilities recruit officers of the former
Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti
(KGB)—the State Security Committee for countries
in the former Soviet Union, now known as
the Russian Federal Security Service—to spy on
their own countries. The agency also maintains
facilities in 130 countries throughout the world.
Of the $28 billion that is budgeted annually to
the U.S. Intelligence Committee, $3 billion goes
to the CIA. The official number of individuals
employed by the CIA is sixteen thousand, but
many believe the actual number to be closer to
twenty-two thousand.
Although all aspects of the CIA revolve
around gathering intelligence and maintaining
the security of the nation, the actual responsibilities
of the agency are many and varied; they
include
■ Advising the National Security Council in
matters concerning national security
■ Gathering and disseminating foreign intelligence
(The CIA coordinates with the FEDERAL
BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI) to
gather intelligence within the United States.)
■ Conducting counterintelligence activities
outside of the United States (The CIA coordinates
with the FBI to conduct intelligence
and counterintelligence activities within the
United States.)
■ Gathering and disseminating intelligence on
the foreign aspects of narcotics production
and trafficking
■ Conducting other special activities approved
by the president.
In its earliest days the CIA operated in a
shroud of secrecy. In recent years, however,
increased media attention has made the country
more aware of CIA activities. Since the mid
1970s, the CIA has received more attention for
breaking the law than it has for upholding
national security. Four events focused unwanted
attention to the CIA: the Church committee
hearings, the IRAN-CONTRA AFFAIR, the Aldrich
Ames scandal, and the end of the COLD WAR.
The Church Committee Hearings
In 1974, the New York Times broke a story
that the CIA had violated its charter by spying
on U.S. citizens who openly opposed the VIETNAM
WAR. An investigation followed, headed by
Senator Frank Church (D-ID). Church and his
committee uncovered a wealth of damaging
information about the agency that went far
beyond the issue of the Vietnam War. The
Church committee hearings changed the way
the public looked at the agency that is responsible
for the security of its country.
The Church committee found that the CIA
had been intercepting and reading mail
exchanged between the United States and the
Soviet bloc. The CIA had records on more than
three hundred thousand U.S. citizens who had
no ties with ESPIONAGE or intelligence. The CIA
had also conducted LSD tests on unknowing
participants, one of whom was driven to suicide.
Through the CIA, the United States had tried to
assassinate at least five foreign leaders, including
Cuban premier Fidel Castro. The CIA had first
decided to embarrass the Cuban leader and
thereby damage his popularity. To accomplish
this, the agency plotted to make Castro’s beard
fall off by placing thallium salts in his shoes. The
agency had a second plot: to give Castro a personality
disorder by contaminating his cigars.
The agency had even enlisted the help of the
mafia in its attempt to assassinate Castro. These
shocking disclosures brought demands for
closer scrutiny of CIA activities.
Following the Church committee hearings,
Congress amended the National Security Act of
1947 in 1980 to require the CIA to inform the
House and Senate Intelligence Committees of
“significant anticipated intelligence activity.”
Within six years, however, the CIA found itself
in trouble once more for failing to inform Congress
of its activities.
The Iran-Contra Affair
On November 3, 1986, the Lebanese magazine
Shiraa reported that Robert McFarland,
U.S. national security adviser, had come to Iran
with a shipment of arms from the United States.
This revelation spurred what was ultimately
termed the Iran-Contra affair and spoiled an
otherwise secret operation.
The CIA had involved itself in a covert
action in which arms were shipped to Iran in
exchange for the release of hostages. The payments
that were received from the Iranians were,
in turn, diverted to the Nicaraguan Contra
rebels who were fighting the Communist Sandanista
regime, at a time when U.S. military aid
to the Contras was prohibited by federal law. All
of this was done without the knowledge of Congress;
the CIA informed neither the House Intelligence
Committee nor the Senate Intelligence
Committee of its actions. President RONALD
REAGAN had not approved the agency’s covert
activity.
One year after the arms had been sold,
WILLIAM J. CASEY, director of central intelligence
and a cabinet member, asked the president
to approve the transaction retroactively. Reagan
signed an agreement to that effect, which specified
that Congress was not to be told of the
approval. John Poindexter, the national security
adviser at the time, later testified that he
destroyed the only copy of the agreement in
order to save President Reagan from political
embarrassment.
Despite great media attention and congressional
finger-pointing, actual punishments for
the Iran-Contra affair were few and lenient.
Casey was never indicted in the scandal.McFarland
and Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger
were brought up on criminal charges, but
both were pardoned on Christmas Eve 1992 by
president GEORGE H.W. BUSH. All other persons
linked to the scandal either were also pardoned
by Bush or were punished with small fines, PROBATION,
or both, or had their convictions overturned
on appeal.
The Ames Scandal
It did not take the CIA long to make its way
back into the spotlight. This time, it was not the
agency that broke the law, but an individual. On
February 21, 1994, Agent Aldrich Ames became
the highest-ranking CIA official ever arrested.
Ames had been selling U.S. secrets to the Soviet
Union.
Ames’s responsibilities as a CIA agent
included directing the analysis of Soviet intelligence
operations and recruiting Soviet agents
who would betray those operations. This position
put Ames in frequent contact with Soviet
officials at the Soviet Embassy in Washington,
D.C. Ultimately, Ames began selling U.S. security
secrets to the Soviets, a venture that earned
him more than $2.5 million before his arrest.
Some of this information involved betraying
double agents, disclosures that led to the death
of at least twelve Soviet and Eastern European
spies.
The CIA began to search for a mole (a double
agent) in 1986, after two intelligence officers
at the Soviet Embassy who had been recruited as
double agents by the FBI were recalled to
Moscow, arrested, tried, and executed. The CIA
was jolted again in 1989 when three more of its
most valued Soviet double agents met their
deaths by firing squad in Russia.
In 1991 the CIA began to work with the FBI
in investigating East Germany and other former
Warsaw Pact countries for leads to possible
moles in the U.S. government.Ames became one
of the suspects and was quietly transferred to the
CIA’s counternarcotics center. Since the FBI was
in charge of counterintelligence domestically,
Ames fell under its jurisdiction of investigation.
CIA officials played down the possibility of one
of its key employees being a spy and blocked
independent scrutiny by the FBI. Ames continued
to betray the CIA and the country.
The CIA was sharply criticized for its unwillingness
to consider one of its own a double
agent and for its refusal to allow the FBI to
investigate the situation. For years, the agency
failed to monitor Ames’s overseas travel, to question
his personal finances, or to detect unauthorized
contacts between Ames and Soviet
officials. As early as 1989, the CIA had been
warned that Ames appeared to colleagues and
neighbors to have accumulated sudden wealth.
Ames was questioned about the source of the
money during a routine 1991 background
check. He said he had inherited money from his
father-in-law.
From 1985 onward, Ames and his wife
Rosario bought a $540,000 house for cash, put
$99,000 worth of improvements into the house,
purchased a Jaguar, bought a farm and condominium
in Colombia, and invested $165,000 in
stocks. In one year, they charged more than
$100,000 on their credit cards. According to court documents, the Ameses spent nearly $1.4
million from April 1985 to November 1993. All
of this took place while Ames’s annual CIA
salary never exceeded $70,000. According to
CIA officials, indications of wrongdoing by CIA
employees were often overlooked because
supervisors were far too trusting of employees,
whom they treated as family.
When Ames got a call to go to his CIA office
in the morning of February 21, 1994, he had no
inkling that after almost nine years his career of
selling secrets to Moscow was about to end.With
Ames planning to travel to Russia the next day
on CIA business, the FBI believed that it had to
act. A block and a half from Ames’s house, his
Jaguar was forced to the curb, and Ames was
arrested by FBI agents.
On April 28, 1994, Ames pleaded guilty to
the criminal charges of espionage and TAX EVASION.
He received a sentence of life imprisonment
without PAROLE, the maximum sentence
he could have expected if convicted after trial.

The End of the Cold War

The importance of the threat imposed by
Ames’s dealings with the Soviet Union was
seemingly diminished with that country’s dissolution.
But despite the apparent end of the cold
war and the break-up of the former Soviet
Union, the United States continues to spy on the
Russian Republic. The former Soviet Union also
continues its own covert activities within the
United States.
Some question the continued need for the
CIA in the post-cold war era. But supporters
need point no further than the war with Iraq to
justify continued backing for the agency. The
CIA was responsible for supplying intelligence
reports that allowed the United States to cripple
the Iraqi efforts in the GulfWar with an initial
air strike. Without the assistance of the
CIA, the war might not have reached such a
swift ending. Supporters also argue that it is
unfair to criticize a covert organization for its
failures when so little attention is given to its
successes. When the CIA is functioning efficiently
and effectively, its operation is invisible
to the country’s citizens; it is only in failure that
the secrecy of the agency is betrayed to scrutinizing
eyes.
Since the end of the cold war, some members
of Congress have called for severe cuts in the
CIA’s budget or dissolution of the agency. President
BILL CLINTON said that such ideas are “profoundly
wrong,” and that the United States still
faces many threats and challenges, including
TERRORISM, drug trafficking, and nuclear proliferation.
“I believe making deep cuts in intelligence
during peacetime is comparable to
canceling your HEALTH INSURANCE when you’re
feeling fine,” he said.
September 11th and The Aftermath
Having seemingly lost some of its purpose
with the end of the Cold War, the CIA found a
new purpose in the aftermath of the terrorist
attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon
on September 11, 2001. However, this new purpose
came with both criticism and concern as to
whether the CIA was up to the challenge of tackling
terrorism. There was strong debate after
September 11th as to what role the CIA should
play, and how it fit in to the new security paradigm.
Like every other domestic and foreign intelligence
service in the United States, the CIA was
apparently caught by surprise on Sept. 11th.
However, there were some who argued that it
should not have been. It was shown that the
CIA had tracked two of the terrorists from that
day at an al Qaeda summit in January 2000. But
the CIA did nothing to share the information
with other agencies, and both men were
allowed to enter the United States. The CIA
also told President GEORGE W. BUSH at a briefing in August 2001 that terrorists associated
with Osama bin Laden might be planning to
hijack a plane. Again, nothing was done with
this information.
Although President Bush defended the
agency and refused to fire its director, George
Tenet, he conceded that the cooperation
between the CIA and the FBI could have been
better: “In terms of whether the FBI and CIA
communicated properly, I think it’s clear that
they weren’t.”
FURTHER READINGS
Benjamin, Daniel, and Steven Simon. 2002. The Age of Sacred
Terror. New York: Random House.
Curl, Joseph. 2002. “Bush Concedes FBI, CIA Faults, But
Doubts Attacks Avoidable.”Washington Times (June 5).
Gellman, Barton. 2001. “CIA Weighs ‘Targeted Killing’ Missions.”
Washington Post (October 28).
Kessler, Ronald. 1992. Inside the CIA. New York: Pocket
Books.
Ranelagh, John. 1986. The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the
CIA from Wild Bill Donovan to William Casey. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Rudgers, David F. 2000. Creating the Secret State: The Origins
of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943–1947. Lawrence:
Univ. Press of Kansas.