CIA and Espionage

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CIA AND ESPIONAGE

The National Security Act of 1947 created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), America's first peacetime, civilian intelligence organization. The director of central intelligence (DCI) heads the CIA, is the president's chief intelligence advisor, and coordinates U.S. intelligence activities.

Before establishing the CIA, President Truman questioned the need for a centralized intelligence structure. The legacy of Pearl Harbor and concerns about expansion by the Soviet Union into Western Europe overcame Truman's antipathy toward a secret intelligence organization. However, decisions made then involved compromises, and later bureaucratic and political compromises have created a diverse intelligence community of which the CIA is only one part. The CIA's mandate made it the leading governmental entity for gathering, processing, and disseminating foreign intelligence for national policymakers. Growing tensions early in the Cold War led to an expansion of that role to include responsibility for political and paramilitary covert activities and for the development of such technical collection systems as the U-2 spy plane and reconnaissance satellites.

waging the covert cold war

In the 1950s, presidents used the CIA's covert capabilities to confront Communist expansionism in Europe and Asia. The agency helped the Philippine government defeat a Communist insurgency. In Korea, the CIA equipped and trained Koreans for behind-the-lines operations. However, covert actions in Eastern Europe did little to contain Soviet control in that region. President Eisenhower appointed Allen Dulles, head of Office of Strategic Services (OSS) activities in Switzerland during World War II, as DCI. Dulles' brother, John Foster Dulles, became secretary of state. The anticommunist views of the brothers facilitated a reliance on covert action as a policy instrument.

In 1953, the CIA spearheaded a coup in Iran, toppling a Communist-supported government and returning the Shah to power. The next year it helped replace a Guatemalan president, perceived as under Communist influence, with a military junta. However, the Soviet Union's crushing of the 1956 Hungarian revolt, arguably encouraged by U.S. rhetoric over the CIA-controlled Radio Free Europe, was followed by unsuccessful covert actions in Indonesia and Tibet.

growing use of technology

When the USSR attained nuclear capability in 1949, intelligence about Soviet weaponry became a CIA priority. Infiltration of agents, flights along Soviet borders, and unmanned camera-carrying high-altitude balloons yielded minimal information. In response, the CIA and Lockheed Aircraft Company developed the U-2 aircraft, designed to fly above Soviet interceptors.

When flights over the USSR began in 1956, over-head photography became, along with the National Security Agency's communications intelligence, a major means for monitoring Soviet military posture. Use of the U-2 over Russia ended when a flight was shot down in May 1960. Many Americans found the incident disconcerting because they had been unaware of such espionage activities and because Eisenhower initially sought to deny the plane's true mission. Strategically, the loss of over-head intelligence was replaced in August 1960 by the success of the CORONA reconnaissance satellite program managed by the CIA and the Air Force.

Despite the failure in 1961 of the CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, which precipitated Dulles' dismissal as DCI, President Kennedy continued the CIA's paramilitary operation in Laos, where native tribesmen were recruited, trained, and armed for guerrilla and conventional warfare. The agency's collection, analytical, and reconnaissance management capabilities played a crucial role in supporting Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. However, as the Vietnam quagmire deepened, CIA analytical production was at times controversial as agency analysts often viewed the war less optimistically than others in Washington.

congress and the cia

The CIA responded well to new requirements arising from the Nixon administration's foreign policy initiatives, such as détente, arms limitation talks, and relations with Communist China. However, the Watergate period brought intense scrutiny by Congress, media, and public of a range of questionable CIA activities (from attempted assassinations to experimentation in mind-altering drugs). As a result of investigations by Senator Frank Church and others, Congress strengthened its intelligence over-sight mechanisms by establishing Senate and House intelligence committees.

The investigations left the CIA with internal morale problems and a tarnished public image. In January 1976, President Ford appointed George H.W. Bush as DCI. Although in the position less than a year, Bush was the most popular leader inside the agency since Dulles. In recognition of Bush's leadership, the CIA Headquarters compound was renamed the George Bush Center for Intelligence in April 1999.

In 1981, President Reagan made William J. Casey the first DCI to hold Cabinet rank. Reagan and his successor, George H.W. Bush, used the CIA to support indigenous forces confronting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and to support anticommunist movements in Central America and Africa. The agency's backing of the anti-Sandinista contra forces in Nicaragua in the face of congressional opposition and its links to secret arms sales to Iran brought the CIA considerable criticism as the Cold War wound down.

war on terror

The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 led some to question the continued need for the CIA; and in 1994 the agency's worst nightmare occurred, when Aldrich Ames, a career officer, was exposed as a long-time Russian spy. Simultaneously, the challenges confronting the CIA in carrying out its core functions of collection, analysis, and covert action were broadening and becoming more complicated. Monitoring compliance with arms agreements and the security of Russia's nuclear arsenal continues, but the agency is increasingly engaged with such nontraditional issues as ethnic conflict, human rights violations, and humanitarian operations.

Such changes were accelerated by the attacks on the U.S. territory on September 11, 2001. Whether better coordination between the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) could have prevented the terrorists' acts is arguable. Nevertheless, CIA involvement in the war on terrorism ranges from intelligence gathering to military-like actions. In Afghanistan, CIA personnel worked with tribal elements to support U.S. Special Forces and the application of airpower in removing the Taliban from power. And in Yemen in November 2002, the CIA used a missile launched from an unmanned Predator aircraft to kill a senior al-Qaida leader.

Despite an ongoing enthusiasm for espionage novels, movies, and television programs, Americans remain ambivalent about some of the CIA's assigned functions. The secrecy that accompanies the conduct of clandestine affairs is antithetical to democratic ideals. Yet, every U.S. president since Truman has found the intelligence product critical to protecting national security and employed covert operations as an alternate policy choice in advancing American interests.

bibliography

Gates, Robert M. From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

Jeffreys-Jones, Rhodri. The CIA and American Democracy, 2nd edition, revised. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

Johnson, Loch K. A Season of Inquiry: The Senate Intelligence Investigation. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985.

Murphy, David E., Kondrashev, Sergei A., and Bailey, George. Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.

Powers, Thomas. The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA. New York: Knopf, 1979.

Winks, Robin W. Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939–1961, 2d edition. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.

Internet Resource

Central Intelligence Agency. <http://www.cia.gov/index.html.>

Clark, J. Ransom. "The Literature of Intelligence: A Bibliography of Materials, with Essays, Reviews, and Comments." Available from <http://intellit.muskingum.edu>.

J. Ransom Clark