CIA activities in the United States

Central Intelligence Agency
Seal of the Central Intelligence Agency
Flag of the Central Intelligence Agency
Intelligence agency overview
Formed September 18, 1947 (1947-09-18)
Preceding Intelligence agency
Headquarters George Bush Center for Intelligence
Langley, Virginia, U.S.
38°57′07″N 77°08′46″W / 38.95194°N 77.14611°W / 38.95194; -77.14611
Motto "The Work of a Nation. The Center of Intelligence."
Unofficial motto: "And you 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)[3][4][5]
Intelligence agency executives
Parent Intelligence agency None (independent)
Website cia.gov

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the United States federal government, tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world.

The National Resources Division is the domestic wing of the CIA. Although the CIA is focused on gathering intelligence from foreign nations, it has performed operations within the United States to achieve its goals. Some of these operations only became known to the public years after they had been conducted, and were met with significant criticism from the population as a whole, with allegations that these operations may violate the Constitution.

1950

Starting in 1950, the CIA researched and experimented with the use of possible mind-control drugs and other chemical, biological and radiological stimuli on both willing and uninformed subjects. The purpose of these programs was to "investigate whether and how it was possible to modify an individual's behavior by covert means."[6]

CIA Director Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter approved the first mind-control study, named Project BLUEBIRD, which was later renamed Project ARTICHOKE.[7]

Crusade for Freedom

1950 was the beginning of the Crusade for Freedom, a ten-year campaign to generate domestic support for Radio Free Europe (and to conceal the CIA as the primary source of RFE's funding).[8]

Project MK-ULTRA

Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, is perhaps the most famous of the CIA mind-control programs. Experiments were conducted on CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, prisoners, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public in order to study their reactions. Drugs were administered alone and in combination with other drugs and at varying doses and frequencies. The drugs included LSD, heroin, morphine, temazepam (used under code name MKSEARCH), mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, marijuana, alcohol, and sodium pentothal. In one case, LSD was given to subjects for 77 days straight. The project was later expanded to Canada, focusing on Nazi research and techniques for erasing memories and personalities.[9] One of the most controversial issues surrounding Project MK-ULTRA involved the mysterious death of Dr. Frank Olson, a scientist at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where many of these studies were conducted. According to the government's version of events, as part of the MK-ULTRA experiments, Olson was dosed with LSD without his knowledge, and he suffered severe paranoia and a nervous breakdown. The CIA sent him to New York to see one of their psychiatrists, who recommended that Olson be placed into a mental institution for recovery. On his last night in New York, Olson allegedly threw himself out his hotel room window, plunging to his death. The circumstances leading up to Olson's fall remain unclear. A grand jury inquiry of Olson's death was approved on April 27, 1996 and on the same day former CIA chief William Colby disappeared and his remains were found in a lake.[10]

1951

Forerunner of Domestic Contact Service/OSINT

This function, run by the Domestic Contact Service(also called the Domestic Contact Division) of the CIA, was legal, as it did not violate the CIA prohibitions of police power or spying on Americans. It was a voluntary debriefing of Americans with useful information. It is now considered part of Open Source Intelligence OSINT.[11]

Office of Current Intelligence

President Truman created the Office of Current Intelligence[12] which was directed by Huntington D. Sheldon. This was a renamed and extended version of the World War II section of the OSS that gave White House and other high-level briefings.

1952

The Robertson Panel was a committee commissioned by CIA in 1952 in response to widespread Unidentified Flying Object reports, especially in the Washington D.C. area. The panel was briefed on U.S. military activities and intelligence; hence the report was originally classified Secret. See article on Art Lundahl addressing discussions in 1967.

1952-1975

A number of projects, some run by NSA and some by CIA, intercepted mail and electronic communications of US citizens in the US. These programs were, by 1975, discontinued as illegal without warrants. Various interception programs under the George W. Bush administration have been restarted, although these are only allowed for communication with foreign nationals, and claims no warrants are needed under the doctrine of unitary authority.

CIA, and the rest of the intelligence community, receives product from thousands of NSA SIGINT programs. During this same period, CIA received extensive SIGINT on Southeast Asia and the Soviet bloc, and the rest of the world, and used this in preparing analytical products. Among these, for example, are nearly 200 National Intelligence Estimates on Southeast Asia, plus monthly summaries for Vietnam and specific studies relevant to military operations.

Among these were Project SHAMROCK and Project MINARET surveillance data on Americans, judged inappropriate by the Director of NSA and shut down by 1975. Much to the surprise of some, not everything CIA received from NSA involved impropriety.

Another program, HTLINGUAL intercepted physical mail, first simply recording the source and destination addresses on the envelope, and later surreptitiously opening and reading mail. This ran from 1952 to 1973.

1973

"After Colby left the Agency on January 28, 1976, and was succeeded by George Bush, the CIA announced a new policy: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full‑time or part‑time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station” At the time of the announcement, the Agency acknowledged that the policy would result in termination of less than half of the relationships with the 50 U.S. journalists it said were still affiliated with the Agency. The text of the announcement noted that the CIA would continue to “welcome” the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists. Thus, many relationships were permitted to remain intact."[13]

1977

Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey, counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, states that the CIA withheld information from the Warren Commission and the Congressional Committee he represented.[14]

According to a 1977 New York Times article, the CIA conducted a covert propaganda campaign to squelch criticism of the Warren Report. The CIA urged its field stations to use their "propaganda assets" to attack those who didn't agree with the Warren Report. In a dispatch from CIA headquarters, the Agency instructed its stations around the world to:

  1. counteract the "new wave of books and articles criticizing the [Warren] Commission's findings...[and] conspiracy theories ...[that] have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization";
  2. "discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts, especially politicians and editors;" and
  3. "employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. ... Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. ... The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists..."[15]

In 1997 the CIA came forward to admit its historical interest in UFOs.[16][17]

References

  1. ↑ "History of the CIA". Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved March 28, 2014.
  2. ↑ "CIA Observes 50th Anniversary of Original Headquarters Building Cornerstone Laying". Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved September 18, 2012.
  3. 1 2 Gellman, Barton; Miller, Greg (August 29, 2013). "U.S. spy network's successes, failures and objectives detailed in 'black budget' summary". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 29, 2013.
  4. ↑ Kopel, Dave (July 28, 1997). "CIA Budget: An Unnecessary Secret". Cato Institute. Retrieved April 15, 2007.
  5. ↑ "Cloak Over the CIA Budget". The Washington Post. November 29, 1999. Retrieved July 4, 2008 – via Federation of American Scientists.
  6. ↑ Marks J. The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. W. W. Norton. 1979. p 62,53,203.
  7. ↑ http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB54/
  8. ↑ Medhurst, Martin J. (Fall 1997). "Eisenhower and the Crusade for Freedom: The Rhetorical Origins of a Cold War Campaign". Presidential Studies Quarterly. 27 (4): 646–661. JSTOR 27551792.
  9. ↑ Karin Goodwin (2004-11-17). "Brainwash victims win cash claims". The Sunday Times. London. Archived from the original on 2013-05-05. Retrieved 2007-04-15.
  10. ↑ http://www.frankolsonproject.org/Articles/LondonMail.html
  11. ↑ Prados, John (2002). "Intelligence and Counterintelligence". Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy.
  12. ↑ Key Events in DI History
  13. ↑ Bernstein, Carl. "The CIA and the Media: How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up". originally appeared in Rolling Stone, 1977, reprinted on author's website
  14. ↑ "Interview: G. Robert Blakey". Who was Lee Harvey Oswald?. Frontline. 20 November 2003. G. Robert Blakey's 2003 Addendum.
  15. ↑ "Warren Report". New York Times: A3. December 26, 1977.
  16. ↑ Phillipe Mora (2007-11-02). "Plan 9 from outer space". Sydney Morning Herald. Archived from the original on 2009-02-10. Retrieved 2007-11-02.
  17. ↑ Denzler, Brenda (2003). The Lure of the Edge: Scientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of UFOs. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23905-9. p. 21
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