Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an independent agency of the United States government. It is responsible for amassing and assessing foreign intelligence to aid the president, the National Security Council (NSC), and other officials in making national security decisions. As of 2011, the CIA had four divisions: the National Clandestine Service, the Directorate of Intelligence, the Directorate of Science and Technology, and the Directorate of Support. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 created a new Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). This office coordinates the 17 members of the U.S. Intelligence Community, including the CIA. Its primary goal is to share and coordinate domestic, international, and military intelligence. Such information is considered to be the first line of defense against terrorism.

In 1947, as a direct result of the intelligence failure that allowed Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act, which established the National Security Council (NSC) and the CIA. The CIA grew out of the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS), run by General William “Wild Bill” Donavan, who recruited from Wall Street and Ivy League schools to form an elite intelligence group based on the East Coast, with an emphasis on covert action abroad. Originally, the CIA operated only outside the United States and was prohibited from collecting intelligence about the domestic activities of its citizens. Domestic intelligence was the responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

During its early years, most CIA operations involved supporting anti-Communist forces in foreign countries. By the 1970s, however, the CIA was working inside the United States. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the CIA, through Operation CHAOS, assembled mountains of intelligence on domestic war protestors and black nationalists. The CIA justified its actions by maintaining that such antigovernment activities must be sponsored by a foreign state. Revelations about brutal CIA activities in Vietnam and assassination plots against several leaders, including Fidel Castro of Cuba and Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, also marred the agency's reputation and indicated a need for reform.

In the post-Watergate 1970s, the U.S. Congress authorized the Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House of Representatives to investigate the CIA. The findings of these committees led to a series of directives. In 1976, President Gerald Ford prohibited CIA assassinations of political leaders. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which curtailed the CIA's ability to gather foreign intelligence within the United States. Some restrictions were lifted, however, by Executive Order 12333, signed by President Ronald Reagan in December 1981. This [Page 124]order allowed domestic electronic surveillance and physical searches in response to a growing threat of Soviet spies within U.S. borders.

Concurrently, terrorism in the Middle East was becoming a top concern. The early 1980s saw a great number of bombings, hijackings, and kidnappings. In particular, war-torn Lebanon became a center of terrorist activity. In 1983 the entire staff of a CIA station—six operatives in total—was killed, along with 57 others, when a suicide bomber targeted the U.S. embassy in Beirut. The Beirut station chief was replaced by William Buckley, who was kidnapped by Islamic militants in 1984 and died in captivity.

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