Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an American intelligence agency, responsible for obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the U.S. Government.

Historical operations

Eastern Europe

In its earliest years the CIA and its predecessor, the OSS, attempted to rollback Communism in Eastern Europe by supporting local anti-communist groups; none of these attempts met with much success. In Poland the CIA spent several years sending money and equipment to an organisation invented and run by Polish intelligence. It was more successful in its efforts to limit Communist influence in France and Italy, notably in the 1948 Italian election.

Related Topics:
OSS - Rollback - Poland

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It has now been firmly established (see references below) that the OSS actively recruited and protected many high ranking Nazi officers immediately following World War II, a policy that was carried on by the CIA. These included, the CIA now admits, the notorious "butcher of Lyon" Klaus Barbie, Hitler's Chief of Soviet Intelligence General Reinhard Gehlen, and numerous less-renowned Gestapo officers. General Gehlen, due to his extensive (if dubious) intelligence assets within the Soviet Union, was allowed to keep his spy-network intact after the war in the service of the United States. The Gehlen organization soon became one of America's chief sources of Intelligence on the Soviet Union during the cold war, and formed the basis for what would later become the German intelligence agency the BND.

Related Topics:
OSS - Nazi - World War II - Klaus Barbie - Reinhard Gehlen - Gestapo - Soviet Union - United States - Intelligence - Cold war - BND

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Third World

With Europe stabilizing along the line of the Iron Curtain, the CIA then moved in the 1950s to try and limit the spread of Soviet influence elsewhere around the globe, especially in the Third World. With the encouragement of DCI Allen Dulles, clandestine operations quickly came to dominate the organisation. Initially they proved very successful: in Iran in 1953 (see Operation Ajax) and in Guatemala in 1954 (see Operation PBSUCCESS), CIA operations, with little funding, played a major role in ensuring pro-American governments ruled those states. Often, as in these two cases, success in these operations came at the expense of democratically elected governments.

Related Topics:
Iron Curtain - Third World - Allen Dulles - Iran - 1953 - Operation Ajax - Guatemala - 1954 - Operation PBSUCCESS - Democratically

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In 1965, the President of Indonesia, Sukarno was ousted in a coup de etat supported by the CIA, led by Suharto. The overthrow of Sukarno by the CIA and Suharto resulted in a nationwide purge of some 500,000 suspected Communists, most of whom were peasants. The CIA secretly supplied Suharto's troops with a field communications network. Flown in at night by US Air Force planes from the Philippines, this was state-of-the-art equipment, whose frequencies were known to the CIA and the National Security Agency. Not only did this technology allow Suharto's generals to coordinate the killings, it also meant that the highest echelons of the US administration were listening in. Suharto was able to seal off large areas of the country.

Related Topics:
Sukarno - Coup de etat - Suharto

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Ralph McGehee, a senior CIA operations officer at the time, described the ousting of Sukarno in Indonesia as a "model operation" for the US-run coup that got rid of the democratically elected Salvador Allende in Chile seven years later. http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/PIL108A.html

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The limitations of covert action became readily apparent during the CIA organized Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961. The failure embarrassed the CIA and the United States on the world stage, as Cuban leader Fidel Castro used the botched invasion to consolidate power and strengthen ties with the Soviet Union.

Related Topics:
Bay of Pigs Invasion - Cuba - 1961 - Fidel Castro

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CIA operations became less ambitious after the Bay of Pigs, and shifted to being closely linked to aiding the U.S. military operation in Vietnam. Between 1962 and 1975, the CIA organized a Laotian group known as the Secret Army and ran a fleet of aircraft known as Air America to take part in the Secret War in Laos, part of the Vietnam War.

Related Topics:
Vietnam - 1962 - 1975 - Laotian - Secret Army - Air America - Secret War - Vietnam War

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The CIA continued to involve itself in Latin America. During the early 1970s, the CIA conducted operations to prevent the election of Salvador Allende in Chile. When these operations failed, the CIA supported Allende's Chilean opponents, who would eventually overthrow him in a coup. In the early 1980s, the CIA funded and armed the Contras in Nicaragua, forces opposed to the Sandinista government in that country, until the Boland Amendment forbade the agency from continuing their support. This support resulted in a World Court decision in the case Nicaragua v. United States ordering the United States to pay Nicaragua reparations. In 1993, with support of the U.S. government, Colombia created the Search Block to locate and kill Pablo Escobar.

Related Topics:
1970s - Salvador Allende - Chile - 1980s - Contra - Nicaragua - Sandinista - Boland Amendment - World Court - Nicaragua v. United States - 1993 - Colombia - Pablo Escobar

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In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of exposes for the San Jose Mercury News, entitled "Dark Alliance," in which he uncovered a massive CIA operation that allowed Central American narcotics traffickers to import crack cocaine to US cities in the 1980s. Internal government investigations supported Webb's reporting.

Related Topics:
1996 - Gary Webb - San Jose Mercury News - Central American - Crack cocaine

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