Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA)

principal u.s. agency responsible for collection and assessment of worldwide intelligence data.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was established in 1947. It is responsible directly to the president of the United States and carries out functions ordered by the president and the president's staff. The agency and its director (called the director of central intelligence, or DCI) are charged not only with collecting and analyzing intelligence data but also with coordinating the activities of other U.S. intelligence agencies, including those attached to the military services and those of the state and defense departments. The agency is divided into three principal directorates: for clandestine collection of foreign intelligence and the conduct of covert actions; for analysis of political, military, and economic developments outside the United States; and for collection and analysis of technical and scientific intelligence. It also maintains the DCI Counterterrorist Center. The CIA is headquartered just outside Washington, D.C., in Langley, Virginia.

In the Middle East, the CIA is best known for having organized the 1953 overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh and having returned Reza Shah Pahlavi to Iran's Peacock Throne in a covert operation. Mossadegh, although widely seen in the Middle East as a nationalist, was viewed by the Eisenhower administration as a tool of the Soviet Union who threatened U.S. interests. The CIA has also been implicated in General Husni alZaʿim's 1949 coup in Syria, and the Free Officers' 1952 coup in Egypt. Other CIA covert actions in the Middle East have included providing arms and covert support to rebel groups, including the Iraqi Kurds in the early 1970s; the Afghan guerrillas following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979; and Chad's forces opposing a Libyan invasion in 1980.

Lebanon was for some time the center of much CIA activity. According to newspaper accounts, during the 1970s and the early 1980s, the CIA and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had a cooperative arrangement, centered in Beirut, to ensure security against terrorist attacks to Americans. This occurred despite the U.S. government's official, public refusal to deal with the PLO. Apparently in the hope of gaining diplomatic advantage, the PLO warned of any impending attack on U.S. citizens and provided physical protection to U.S. diplomats and installations. The principal PLO contact person in this arrangement, Ali Hasan alSalama (1940–1979), was killed in a 1979 car bombing believed to have been engineered by Israel, but the security cooperation continued until the PLO left Beirut in the aftermath of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. The following year saw a marked upsurge in attacks on U.S. installations and large numbers of American deaths. According to one account, following bombings of the American embassy and a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and 1984—all believed to be the work of the Shiʿite group Hizbullah, whose spiritual leader was Shaykh Husayn Fadlallah—the CIA arranged to have Fadlallah stopped. A car bomb was detonated in March 1985 at his apartment building; Fadlallah, however, was not harmed. The CIA denied involvement, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, following an investigation, concluded that no direct or indirect CIA involvement could be shown.

Although not responsible for maintaining diplomatic relationships with other countries, the CIA often provides a vehicle by which the U.S. government can solidify a relationship through unofficial contacts or cooperate with another country covertly on operations of joint interest. This often occurs through regular meetings between a CIA official and a foreign leader. Liaison between the CIA and the intelligence services of friendly nations provides another means of cooperation. This type of liaison—involving cooperation on counterterrorist operations, coordination on other specific operations, and the exchange of intelligence data—has been conducted with many Middle East countries, most particularly Israel. The CIA has also been involved as a diplomatic intermediary between nations, as was the case when senior CIA officials Kermit Roosevelt, James Jesus Angleton, and Miles Copeland provided a secret channel of communication between Egypt and Israel in 1954 and 1955. The CIA helped coordinate security arrangements made by Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the late 1990s, and DCI George Tenet even offered his own plan for resolving the Israel–Palestinian conflict in June 2001.

The CIA was actively involved in stepped-up counterterrorist activities in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that were engineered by the al-Qaʿida network. CIA operatives were active in Afghanistan during the American invasion of that country beginning in October 2001, and one became the first American to die there as a result of hostile activity. They were also present in Iraq during and after the U.S. invasion in the spring of 2003. The inability of the American forces to find the chemical and biological weapons the United States had claimed the Iraqi regime was stockpiling led to criticism of the CIA's and other U.S. intelligence agencies' prewar intelligence. In February 2004, President George W. Bush called for an investigation into U.S. intelligence failures prior to the invasion.

see also bush, george walker; fadlallah, shaykh husayn; free officers, egypt; hizbullah; mossadegh, mohammad; pahlavi, reza; palestine liberation organization (plo); qaʿida, al-; roosevelt, kermit; zaʿim, husni al-.