Central Intelligence Agency

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY. World War II stimulated the creation of the first U.S. central intelligence organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), whose functions included espionage, special operations ranging from propaganda to sabotage, counterintelligence, and intelligence analysis. The OSS represented a revolution in U.S. intelligence not only because of the varied functions performed by a single, national agency but because of the breadth of its intelligence interests and its use of scholars to produce finished intelligence.

In the aftermath of World War II, the OSS was disbanded, closing down on 1 October 1945, as ordered by President Harry S. Truman. The counterintelligence and secret intelligence branches were transferred to the War and State Departments, respectively. At virtually the same time that he ordered the termination of the OSS, Truman authorized studies of the intelligence structure required by the United States in the future, and the National Intelligence Authority (NIA) and its operational element, the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), were formed. In addition to its initial responsibility of coordinating and synthesizing the reports produced by the military service intelligence agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the CIG was soon assigned the task of clandestine human intelligence (HUMINT) collection.

CIA Organization

As part of a general consideration of national security needs, the National Security Act of 1947 addressed the question of intelligence organization. The act established the Central Intelligence Agency as an independent agency within the Executive Office of the President to replace the CIG. According to the act, the CIA was to have five functions: advising the National Security Council concerning intelligence activities; making recommendations to the National Security Council for the coordination of intelligence activities; correlating, evaluating, and disseminating intelligence; performing services of common concern as determined by the National Security Council; and performing "such functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." The provisions of the act left considerable scope for interpretation, and the fifth and final provision has been cited as authorization for covert action operations. In fact, the provision was intended only to authorize espionage. The ultimate legal basis for covert action became presidential direction and congressional approval of funds for such programs.

The CIA developed in accord with a maximalist interpretation of the act. Thus, the CIA has become the primary U.S. government agency for intelligence analysis, clandestine human intelligence collection, and covert action. It has also played a major role in the development of reconnaissance and other technical collection systems employed for gathering imagery, signals, and measurement and signature intelligence. In addition, as stipulated in the agency's founding legislation, the director of the CIA serves as director of central intelligence (DCI) and is responsible for managing the activities of the entire national intelligence community. As a result, the deputy DCI (DDCI) usually assumes the responsibility of day to-day management of the CIA.

CIA headquarters is in Langley, Virginia, just south of Washington, D.C., although the agency has a number of other offices scattered around the Washington area. In 1991, the CIA had approximately 20,000 employees, but post–Cold War reductions and the transfer of the CIA's imagery analysts to the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) probably reduced that number to about 17,000. Its budget in 2002 was in the vicinity of $3 billion. The CIA consists of three major directorates: the Directorate of Operations (known as the Directorate of Plans from 1952 to 1973), the Directorate of Intelligence, and the Directorate of Science and Technology (established in 1963). In addition, it has a number of offices with administrative functions that were part of the Directorate of Administration until 2000, when that directorate was abolished.

Directorate of Operations

The Directorate of Operations has three major functions: human intelligence collection, covert action, and counterintelligence. The directorate's intelligence officers are U.S. citizens who generally operate under cover of U.S. embassies and consulates, which provides them with secure communications within the embassy and to other locations, protected files, and diplomatic immunity. Others operate under "nonofficial cover" (NOC). Such NOCs may operate as businesspeople, sometimes under cover of working at the overseas office of a U.S. firm. The CIA officers recruit foreign nationals as agents and cultivate knowledgeable foreigners who may provide information as either "unwitting" sources or outside a formal officer-agent relationship.

During the Cold War, the primary target of the CIA was, of course, the Soviet Union. Despite the closed nature of Soviet society and the size and intensity of the KGB's counterintelligence operation, the CIA had a number of notable successes. The most significant was Colonel Oleg Penkovskiy, a Soviet military intelligence(GRU) officer. In 1961 and 1962, Penkovskiy passed great quantities of material to the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service, including information on Soviet strategic capabilities and nuclear targeting policy. In addition, he provided a copy of the official Soviet medium-range ballistic missile manual, which was of crucial importance at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.

In subsequent years, the CIA penetrated the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Defense Ministry and General Staff, GRU, KGB, at least one military research facility, and probably several other Soviet organizations. Individuals providing data to the CIA included some stationed in the Soviet Union, some in Soviet consulates and embassies, and some assigned to the United Nations or other international organizations. CIA HUMINT operations successfully penetrated a number of other foreign governments during the last half of the twentieth century, including India, Israel, the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Ghana.

The CIA also experienced notable failures. During 1987, Cuban television showed films of apparent CIA officers in Cuba picking up and leaving material at dead drops. It seemed a significant number of Cubans had been operating as double agents, feeding information to the CIA under the supervision of Cuban security officials. CIA operations in East Germany were also heavily penetrated by the East German Ministry for State Security. In 1995, France expelled several CIA officers for attempting to recruit French government officials. From 1984 to 1994, the CIA counterintelligence officer Aldrich Ames provided the Soviet Union and Russia with a large number of documents and the names of CIA penetrations, which resulted in the deaths of ten CIA assets.

CIA covert action operations have included (1) political advice and counsel, (2) subsidies to individuals, (3) financial support and technical assistance to political parties or groups, (4) support to private organizations, including labor unions and business firms, (5) covert propaganda, (6) training of individuals, (7) economic operations, (8) paramilitary or political action operations designed to overthrow or to support a regime, and (9) until the mid-1960s, attempted assassinations. Successes in the covert action area included monetary support to anticommunist parties in France and Italy in the late 1940s that helped prevent communist electoral victories. The CIA successfully engineered a coup that overthrew Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954. In contrast, repeated attempts to eliminate Fidel Castro's regime and Castro himself failed. CIA covert action in cooperation with Britain's Secret Intelligence Service was crucial in restoring the shah of Iran to the throne in 1953, and, by providing Stinger missiles to the Afghan resistance, in defeating the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Such operations subsequently had significant detrimental consequences. The CIA also orchestrated a propaganda campaign against Soviet SS-20 missile deployments in Europe in the 1980s.

Counterintelligence operations conducted by the Directorate of Operations include collection of information on foreign intelligence and security services and their activities through open and clandestine sources; evaluation of defectors; research and analysis concerning the structure, personnel, and operations of foreign intelligence and security services; and operations disrupting and neutralizing intelligence and security services engaging in activities hostile to the United States. Successful counterintelligence efforts have included penetration of a number of foreign intelligence services, including those of the Soviet Union and Russia, the People's Republic of China, and Poland.

Directorate of Intelligence

The Directorate of Intelligence, established in 1952 by consolidating different intelligence production offices in the CIA, is responsible for converting the data produced through examination of open sources, such as foreign journals and Newspapers, and collection of imagery, signals intelligence, and human intelligence into finished intelligence. The finished intelligence produced by the Directorate of Intelligence comes in several varieties whose names are self-explanatory: biographical sketches, current intelligence, warning intelligence, analytical intelligence, and estimative intelligence. A directorate component is responsible for producing the "President's Daily Brief," a document restricted to the president and a small number of key advisers that contains the most sensitive intelligence obtained by the U.S. intelligence community. In addition to producing intelligence on its own, the directorate also plays a major role in the national estimates and studies produced by the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which is outside the CIA structure and reports directly to the director of central intelligence. The NIC consists of national intelligence officers responsible for specific topics or areas of the world.

During the Cold War, a key part of the directorate's work was producing national intelligence estimates on Soviet strategic capabilities, the annual NIE 11-3/8 estimate. Its estimates on the prospects of foreign regimes included both notable successes and failures. The directorate provided no significant warning that the shah of Iran would be forced to flee his country in early 1979. In contrast, from the time Mikhail Gorbachev assumed power in the Soviet Union, CIA analysts noted the difficult path he faced. By 1987, their pessimism had grown, and by 1989, they raised the possibility that he would be toppled in a coup. In April 1991, the head of the Office of Soviet Analysis noted that forces were building for a coup and accurately identified the likely participants, the justification they would give, and the significant chance that such a coup would fail.

Directorate of Science and Technology

The Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T) was established in August 1963 to replace the Directorate of Research, which had been created in 1962 in an attempt to bring together CIA activities in the area of science and technology. By 1962, those activities included development and operation of reconnaissance aircraft and satellites, including the U-2 spy plane and the Corona satellite; the operation and funding of ground stations to intercept Soviet missile telemetry; and the analysis of foreign nuclear and space programs.

The directorate went on to manage the successful development of a number of advanced reconnaissance systems. The A-12 (Oxcart) spy plane, which operated from 1967 to 1968, became the basis for the U.S. Air Force's SR-71 fleet, which conducted reconnaissance operations from 1968 to 1990. More importantly, the directorate, along with private contractors, was responsible for the development of the Rhyolite signals intelligence satellite, which provided a space-based ability to intercept Soviet and Chinese missile telemetry, and two imagery satellites, the KH-9 and the KH-11. The latter gave the United States the ability to monitor events in real time, that is, to receive imagery of an activity or facility as the satellite was passing over the target area. The successors to the KH-11 and the Rhyolite remained in operation at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The DS&T has undergone several reorganizations and has gained and lost responsibilities. Both the Directorate of Intelligence and the Directorate of Operations have at times disputed actual or planned DS&T control of various offices and divisions. In 1963, the directorate assumed control of the Office of Scientific Intelligence, which had been in the Directorate of Intelligence. In 1976, all scientific and technical intelligence analysis functions were transferred back to the Directorate of Intelligence. A 1993 reorganization of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) eliminated the semiautonomous role of the directorate in the development and operation of reconnaissance satellites. In 1996, the National Photo-graphic Intelligence Center (NPIC), which had been transferred to the DS&T in 1973, was merged into the Newly created NIMA.

In the early twenty-first century, the directorate responsibilities included the application of information technology in support of intelligence analysts; technical support for clandestine operations; development of emplaced sensor systems, such as seismic or chemical sensors placed near an airbase or chemical weapons facility; the collection of signals intelligence in cooperation with the National Security Agency; and provision of personnel to the NRO to work on satellite reconnaissance development. The directorate also operated the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which monitors and analyzes foreign radio, television, Newspapers, and magazines.