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National intelligence agency of the United States From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA /ˌsiː.aɪˈeɪ/), known informally as the Agency,[6] metonymously as Langley[7] and historically as the Company,[8] is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action through its Directorate of Operations. The agency is headquartered in the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.
 | It has been suggested that Office of Congressional Affairs be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since June 2024. |
Seal of the Central Intelligence Agency | |
 Flag of the Central Intelligence Agency | |
 George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia | |
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | September 18, 1947 |
| Preceding agency | |
| Type | Independent (component of the Intelligence Community) |
| Headquarters | George Bush Center for Intelligence, Langley, Virginia, U.S. 38°57′07″N 77°08′46″W |
| Motto | (Official): The Work of a Nation. The Center of Intelligence. (Unofficial): And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:32)[2] |
| Employees | 21,575 (estimate)[3] |
| Annual budget | $15 billion (as of 2013[update])[3][4][5] |
| Agency executives |
|
| Parent department | Office of the President of the United States |
| Parent agency | Office of the Director of National Intelligence |
| Child agencies | |
| Website | cia |
As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the director of national intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the president and Cabinet. The agency's founding followed the dissolution of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of World War II by President Harry S. Truman, who created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a director of central intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946.[9] The agency's creation was authorized by the National Security Act of 1947.
Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is a domestic security service, the CIA has no law enforcement function and is mainly focused on intelligence gathering overseas, with only limited domestic intelligence collection.[10] The CIA serves as the national manager for HUMINT, coordinating activities across the IC. It also carries out covert action at the behest of the president.[11][12]
The CIA exerts foreign political influence through its paramilitary operations units, including its Special Activities Center.[13] The CIA was instrumental in establishing intelligence services in many countries, such as Germany's Federal Intelligence Service. It has also provided support to several foreign political groups and governments, including planning, coordinating, training in torture, and technical support. It was involved in many regime changes and carrying out terrorist attacks and planned assassinations of foreign leaders.[14][3]
Since 2004, the CIA is organized under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Despite having had some of its powers transferred to the DNI, the CIA has grown in size following the September 11 attacks. In 2013, The Washington Post reported that in the fiscal year 2010, the CIA had the largest budget of all intelligence community agencies, exceeding prior estimates.[3][15]
The CIA's role has expanded since its creation, now including covert paramilitary operations.[3] One of its largest divisions, the Information Operations Center (IOC), has shifted from counterterrorism to offensive cyber operations.[16]
The agency has been the subject of several controversies, including its use of torture, domestic wiretapping, propaganda, and alleged human rights violations and drug trafficking. In 2022, a CIA domestic surveillance program was uncovered that had not been subject to congressional oversight.[17][18]
When the CIA was created, its purpose was to create a clearinghouse for foreign policy intelligence and analysis, collecting, analyzing, evaluating, and disseminating foreign intelligence, and carrying out covert operations.[19][20]
As of 2013, the CIA had five priorities:[3]
The CIA has an executive office and five major directorates:
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) is appointed by the president with Senate confirmation and reports directly to the director of national intelligence (DNI); in practice, the CIA director interfaces with the director of national intelligence (DNI), Congress, and the White House, while the deputy director (DD/CIA) is the internal executive of the CIA and the chief operating officer (COO/CIA), known as executive director until 2017, leads the day-to-day work[21] as the third-highest post of the CIA.[22] The deputy director is formally appointed by the director without Senate confirmation,[22][23] but as the president's opinion plays a great role in the decision,[23] the deputy director is generally considered a political position, making the chief operating officer the most senior non-political position for CIA career officers.[24]
The Executive Office also supports the U.S. military, including the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, by providing it with information it gathers, receiving information from military intelligence organizations, and cooperating with field activities. The associate deputy director of the CIA is in charge of the day-to-day operations of the agency. Each branch of the agency has its own director.[21] The Office of Military Affairs (OMA), subordinate to the associate deputy director, manages the relationship between the CIA and the Unified Combatant Commands, who produce and deliver regional and operational intelligence and consume national intelligence produced by the CIA.[25]
The Directorate of Analysis, through much of its history known as the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), is tasked with helping "the President and other policymakers make informed decisions about our country's national security" by looking "at all the available information on an issue and organiz[ing] it for policymakers".[26] The directorate has four regional analytic groups, six groups for transnational issues, and three that focus on policy, collection, and staff support.[27] There are regional analytical offices covering the Near East and South Asia, Russia, and Europe; and the Asia–Pacific, Latin America, and Africa.
The Directorate of Operations is responsible for collecting foreign intelligence (mainly from clandestine HUMINT sources), and for covert action. The name reflects its role as the coordinator of human intelligence activities between other elements of the wider U.S. intelligence community with their HUMINT operations. This directorate was created in an attempt to end years of rivalry over influence, philosophy, and budget between the United States Department of Defense (DOD) and the CIA. In spite of this, the Department of Defense announced in 2012 its intention to organize its own global clandestine intelligence service, the Defense Clandestine Service (DCS),[28] under the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Contrary to some public and media misunderstanding, DCS is not a "new" intelligence agency but rather a consolidation, expansion and realignment of existing Defense HUMINT activities, which have been carried out by DIA for decades under various names, most recently as the Defense Human Intelligence Service.[29]
This Directorate is known to be organized by geographic regions and issues, but its precise organization is classified.[30]
The Directorate of Science & Technology was established to research, create, and manage technical collection disciplines and equipment. Many of its innovations were transferred to other intelligence organizations, or, as they became more overt, to the military services.
The development of the U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, for instance, was done in cooperation with the United States Air Force. The U-2's original mission was clandestine imagery intelligence over denied areas such as the Soviet Union.[31] It was subsequently provided with signals intelligence and measurement and signature intelligence capabilities and is now operated by the Air Force.
A DS&T organization analyzed imagery intelligence collected by the U-2 and reconnaissance satellites called the National Photointerpretation Center (NPIC), which had analysts from both the CIA and the military services. Subsequently, NPIC was transferred to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).[citation needed]
The Directorate of Support has organizational and administrative functions to significant units including:
The Directorate of Digital Innovation (DDI) focuses on accelerating innovation across the Agency's mission activities. It is the Agency's newest directorate. The Langley, Virginia-based office's mission is to streamline and integrate digital and cybersecurity capabilities into the CIA's espionage, counterintelligence, all-source analysis, open-source intelligence collection, and covert action operations.[32] It provides operations personnel with tools and techniques to use in cyber operations. It works with information technology infrastructure and practices cyber tradecraft.[33] This means retrofitting the CIA for cyberwarfare. DDI officers help accelerate the integration of innovative methods and tools to enhance the CIA's cyber and digital capabilities on a global scale and ultimately help safeguard the United States. They also apply technical expertise to exploit clandestine and publicly available information (also known as open-source data) using specialized methodologies and digital tools to plan, initiate and support the technical and human-based operations of the CIA.[34] Before the establishment of the new digital directorate, offensive cyber operations were undertaken by the CIA's Information Operations Center.[35] Little is known about how the office specifically functions or if it deploys offensive cyber capabilities.[32]
The directorate had been covertly operating since approximately March 2015 but formally began operations on October 1, 2015.[36] According to classified budget documents, the CIA's computer network operations budget for fiscal year 2013 was $685.4 million. The NSA's budget was roughly $1 billion at the time.[37]
Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who served as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, endorsed the reorganization. "The director has challenged his workforce, the rest of the intelligence community, and the nation to consider how we conduct the business of intelligence in a world that is profoundly different from 1947 when the CIA was founded," Schiff said.[38]
The CIA established its first training facility, the Office of Training and Education, in 1950. Following the end of the Cold War, the CIA's training budget was slashed, which had a negative effect on employee retention.[39][40]
In response, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet established CIA University in 2002.[39][26] CIA University holds between 200 and 300 courses each year, training both new hires and experienced intelligence officers, as well as CIA support staff.[39][40] The facility works in partnership with the National Intelligence University, and includes the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis, the Directorate of Analysis' component of the university.[26][41][42]
For later stage training of student operations officers, there is at least one classified training area at Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Virginia. Students are selected, and their progress evaluated, in ways derived from the OSS, published as the book Assessment of Men, Selection of Personnel for the Office of Strategic Services.[43] Additional mission training is conducted at Harvey Point, North Carolina.[44]
The primary training facility for the Office of Communications is Warrenton Training Center, located near Warrenton, Virginia. The facility was established in 1951 and has been used by the CIA since at least 1955.[45][46]
Details of the overall United States intelligence budget are classified.[3] Under the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, the Director of Central Intelligence is the only federal government employee who can spend "un-vouchered" government money.[47] The government showed its 1997 budget was $26.6 billion for the fiscal year.[48] The government has disclosed a total figure for all non-military intelligence spending since 2007; the fiscal 2013 figure is $52.6 billion. According to the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, the CIA's fiscal 2013 budget is $14.7 billion, 28% of the total and almost 50% more than the budget of the National Security Agency. CIA's HUMINT budget is $2.3 billion, the SIGINT budget is $1.7 billion, and spending for security and logistics of CIA missions is $2.5 billion. "Covert action programs," including a variety of activities such as the CIA's drone fleet and anti-Iranian nuclear program activities, accounts for $2.6 billion.[3]
There were numerous previous attempts to obtain general information about the budget.[49] As a result, reports revealed that CIA's annual budget in Fiscal Year 1963 was $550 million (inflation-adjusted US$ 5.5 billion in 2024),[50] and the overall intelligence budget in FY 1997 was US$26.6 billion (inflation-adjusted US$ 50.5 billion in 2024).[51] There have been accidental disclosures; for instance, Mary Margaret Graham, a former CIA official and deputy director of national intelligence for collection in 2005, said that the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion,[52] and in 1994 Congress accidentally published a budget of $43.4 billion (in 2012 dollars) in 1994 for the non-military National Intelligence Program, including $4.8 billion for the CIA.[3]
After the Marshall Plan was approved, appropriating $13.7 billion over five years, 5% of those funds or $685 million were secretly made available to the CIA. A portion of the enormous M-fund, established by the U.S. government during the post-war period for reconstruction of Japan, was secretly steered to the CIA.[53]
The role and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in Germany, MI6 in the United Kingdom, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) in Australia, the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) in France, the Foreign Intelligence Service in Russia, the Ministry of State Security (MSS) in China, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in India, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Pakistan, the General Intelligence Service in Egypt, Mossad in Israel, and the National Intelligence Service (NIS) in South Korea.
The CIA was instrumental in the establishment of intelligence services in several U.S. allied countries, including Germany's BND and Greece's EYP (then known as KYP).[54][citation needed]
The closest links of the U.S. intelligence community to other foreign intelligence agencies are to Anglophone countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Special communications signals that intelligence-related messages can be shared with these four countries.[55] An indication of the United States' close operational cooperation is the creation of a new message distribution label within the main U.S. military communications network. Previously, the marking of NOFORN (i.e., No Foreign Nationals) required the originator to specify which, if any, non-U.S. countries could receive the information. A new handling caveat, USA/AUS/CAN/GBR/NZL Five Eyes, used primarily on intelligence messages, gives an easier way to indicate that the material can be shared with Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and New Zealand.
The task of the division called "Verbindungsstelle 61" of the German Bundesnachrichtendienst is keeping contact to the CIA office in Wiesbaden.[56]
The success of the British Commandos during World War II prompted U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to authorize the creation of an intelligence service modeled after the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), and Special Operations Executive. This led to the creation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) by a Presidential military order issued by President Roosevelt on June 13, 1942. The idea for a centralized intelligence organization was first proposed by General William J. Donovan, who envisioned an intelligence service that could operate globally to counter communist threats and provide crucial intelligence directly to the President.[57]
Donovan proposed the idea to President Roosevelt in 1944, suggesting the creation of a "Central Intelligence Service" that would continue peacetime operations similar to those of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which he led during World War II.[57] Upon President Roosevelt's death, the new president Harry Truman inherited a presidency largely uninformed about key wartime projects and global intelligence activities. Truman's initial view of the proposed central intelligence agency was that of a simple information gathering entity that would function more as a global news service rather than a spy network. His vision starkly contrasted with Donovan's, which focused on avoiding the creation of an American version of the Gestapo.[58]
On September 20, 1945, shortly after the end of World War II, Truman signed an executive order dissolving the OSS. By October 1945 its functions had been divided between the Departments of State and War. The division lasted only a few months. The first public mention of the "Central Intelligence Agency" appeared on a command-restructuring proposal presented by Jim Forrestal and Arthur Radford to the U.S. Senate Military Affairs Committee at the end of 1945.[59] Army Intelligence agent Colonel Sidney Mashbir and Commander Ellis Zacharias worked together for four months at the direction of Fleet Admiral Joseph Ernest King, and prepared the first draft and implementing directives for the creation of what would become the Central Intelligence Agency.[60][61][62] Despite opposition from the military establishment, the State Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),[63] Truman established the National Intelligence Authority[64] in January 1946. Its operational extension was known as the Central Intelligence Group (CIG),[65] which was the direct predecessor of the CIA.[66]
The Central Intelligence Agency was created on July 26, 1947, when President Truman signed the National Security Act into law. A major impetus for the creation of the agency was growing tensions with the USSR following the end of World War II.[67]
Lawrence Houston, head counsel of the SSU, CIG, and, later CIA, was principal draftsman of the National Security Act of 1947,[68][69][70] which dissolved the NIA and the CIG, and established both the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.[65][71] In 1949, Houston helped to draft the Central Intelligence Agency Act (Pub. L. 81–110), which authorized the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures, and exempted it from most limitations on the use of federal funds. The act also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its "organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed," and created the program "PL-110" to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" who fell outside normal immigration procedures.[72][73]
At the outset of the Korean War, the CIA still only had a few thousand employees, around one thousand of whom worked in analysis. Intelligence primarily came from the Office of Reports and Estimates, which drew its reports from a daily take of State Department telegrams, military dispatches, and other public documents. The CIA still lacked its intelligence-gathering abilities.[74] On August 21, 1950, shortly after, Truman announced Walter Bedell Smith as the new Director of the CIA. The change in leadership took place shortly after the start of the Korean War in South Korea, as the lack of a clear warning to the President and NSC about the imminent North Korean invasion was seen as a grave failure of intelligence.[74]
The CIA had different demands placed on it by the various bodies overseeing it. Truman wanted a centralized group to organize the information that reached him.[75][76] The Department of Defense wanted military intelligence and covert action, and the State Department wanted to create global political change favorable to the US. Thus the two areas of responsibility for the CIA were covert action and covert intelligence. One of the main targets for intelligence gathering was the Soviet Union, which had also been a priority of the CIA's predecessors.[75][76][77]
U.S. Air Force General Hoyt Vandenberg, the CIG's second director, created the Office of Special Operations (OSO) and the Office of Reports and Estimates (ORE).[76] Initially, the OSO was tasked with spying and subversion overseas with a budget of $15 million (equivalent to $190 million in 2023),[78] the largesse of a small number of patrons in Congress. Vandenberg's goals were much like the ones set out by his predecessor: finding out "everything about the Soviet forces in Eastern and Central Europe – their movements, their capabilities, and their intentions."[79]
On June 18, 1948, the National Security Council issued Directive 10/2[80] calling for covert action against the Soviet Union,[81] and granting the authority to carry out covert operations against "hostile foreign states or groups" that could, if needed, be denied by the U.S. government. To this end, the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was created inside the new CIA. The OPC was unique; Frank Wisner, the head of the OPC, answered not to the CIA Director, but to the secretaries of defense, state, and the NSC. The OPC's actions were a secret even from the head of the CIA. Most CIA stations had two station chiefs, one working for the OSO, and one working for the OPC.[82]
With the agency unable to provide sufficient intelligence about the Soviet takeovers of Romania and Czechoslovakia, the Soviet blockade of Berlin, and the Soviet atomic bomb project. In particular, the agency failed to predict the Chinese entry into the Korean War with 300,000 troops.[83][84] The famous double agent Kim Philby was the British liaison to American Central Intelligence. Through him, the CIA coordinated hundreds of airdrops inside the iron curtain, all compromised by Philby. Arlington Hall, the nerve center of CIA cryptanalysis, was compromised by Bill Weisband, a Russian translator and Soviet spy.[85]
However, the CIA was successful in influencing the 1948 Italian election in favor of the Christian Democrats.[86] The $200 million Exchange Stabilization Fund (equivalent to $2.5 billion in 2023),[78] earmarked for the reconstruction of Europe, was used to pay wealthy Americans of Italian heritage. Cash was then distributed to Catholic Action, the Vatican's political arm, and directly to Italian politicians. This tactic of using its large fund to purchase elections was frequently repeated in the subsequent years.[87]
At the beginning of the Korean War, CIA officer Hans Tofte claimed to have turned a thousand North Korean expatriates into a guerrilla force tasked with infiltration, guerrilla warfare, and pilot rescue.[88] In 1952 the CIA sent 1,500 more expatriate agents north. Seoul station chief Albert Haney would openly celebrate the capabilities of those agents and the information they sent.[88] In September 1952 Haney was replaced by John Limond Hart, a Europe veteran with a vivid memory for bitter experiences of misinformation.[88] Hart was suspicious of the parade of successes reported by Tofte and Haney and launched an investigation which determined that the entirety of the information supplied by the Korean sources was false or misleading.[89] After the war, internal reviews by the CIA would corroborate Hart's findings. The CIA's station in Seoul had 200 officers, but not a single speaker of Korean.[89] Hart reported to Washington that Seoul station was hopeless, and could not be salvaged. Loftus Becker, deputy director of intelligence, was sent personally to tell Hart that the CIA had to keep the station open to save face. Becker returned to Washington, D.C., pronouncing the situation to be "hopeless," and that, after touring the CIA's Far East operations, the CIA's ability to gather intelligence in the far east was "almost negligible".[89] He then resigned. Air Force Colonel James Kallis stated that CIA director Allen Dulles continued to praise the CIA's Korean force, despite knowing that they were under enemy control.[90] When China entered the war in 1950, the CIA attempted a number of subversive operations in the country, all of which failed due to the presence of double agents. Millions of dollars were spent in these efforts.[91] These included a team of young CIA officers airdropped into China who were ambushed, and CIA funds being used to set up a global heroin empire in Burma's Golden Triangle following a betrayal by another double agent.[91]
In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh, a member of the National Front, was elected Iranian prime-minister.[92] As prime minister, he nationalized the Anglo-Persian Oil Company which his predecessor had supported. The nationalization of the British-funded Iranian oil industry, including the largest oil refinery in the world, was disastrous for Mosaddegh. A British naval embargo closed the British oil facilities, which Iran had no skilled workers to operate. In 1952, Mosaddegh resisted the royal refusal to approve his Minister of War and resigned in protest. The National Front took to the streets in protest. Fearing a loss of control, the military pulled its troops back five days later, and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi gave in to Mosaddegh's demands. Mosaddegh quickly replaced military leaders loyal to the Shah with those loyal to him, giving him personal control over the military. Given six months of emergency powers, Mosaddegh unilaterally passed legislation. When that six months expired, his powers were extended for another year. In 1953, Mossadegh dismissed parliament and assumed dictatorial powers. This power grab triggered the Shah to exercise his constitutional right to dismiss Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh launched a military coup, and the Shah fled the country.
Under CIA Director Allen Dulles,