Central Intelligence Agency

I

Introduction

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), government agency of the United States created in 1947 to gather information (intelligence) and conduct secret operations to protect the country’s national security. The CIA also coordinates the activities of the United States intelligence community, which includes agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA). In addition, the CIA takes overall responsibility for gathering information from other US intelligence agencies, analyzing the separate pieces of information from each source, and providing a recommendation to the president of the United States and the president’s advisers.

II

Responsibilities

The president dictates the CIA’s general tasks and assignments, a process known as tasking. The nature of the tasks has changed over the years. Today, for example, the CIA’s responsibilities include identifying terrorists and halting terrorist attacks, anticipating threats to international oil supplies, and preventing the theft of trade secrets from US businesses. These problems were less acute in the agency’s early years. The CIA must also monitor the spread of weapons of mass destruction, such as nuclear and chemical weapons, and prevent these weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists or criminals. See also Terrorism; Nuclear Weapons; Chemical and Biological Warfare.

Some responsibilities have remained constant, however. The foremost of the CIA’s jobs is assessing the long-term potential threat to the United States by other countries. The CIA also has to predict short-term military threats, so it operates a warning system to protect the United States and its allies from surprise attack. In addition, the CIA works in cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to forestall terrorist attacks and to conduct counter-espionage.

Several presidents have also ordered the CIA to conduct covert operations (the use of secret means to achieve foreign policy objectives). Covert operations might include providing weapons to a rebel army, kidnapping an individual leader who is seen as hostile to US interests, or organizing the removal of a government through a coup d’état. President Gerald Ford banned assassination as an instrument of US policy following a congressional (see Congress of the United States) investigation of the CIA’s malpractices in 1975, but President George W. Bush restored the policy in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The CIA’s covert operations are controversial for this reason and because they so often involve conducting violent actions in other countries without a congressional declaration of war. In other instances the operations are uncontroversial and are covert in name only, and may become the subject of debate in open sessions of Congress and in the news media.

The CIA also has the responsibility of gathering information from other US intelligence agencies and producing joint reports known as estimates. The NSA, for example, often breaks secret codes used by other countries and then intercepts the countries’ secret communications. The NSA passes the important messages to the CIA, which then integrates this information with the intelligence provided by other US government intelligence agencies and with intelligence from the CIA’s own sources. The CIA sends these estimates to the president and other members of the National Security Council (NSC), which includes the chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (representing the armed forces), the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and certain other members of the government’s executive branch.

III

Structure

The CIA is part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, which means that the president has direct control of the agency. The president appoints the CIA director of central intelligence (DCI) and deputy director of central intelligence with the consent of the US Senate, and the two directors are responsible for ensuring that the CIA follows the president’s instructions. The president’s appointees sometimes come into conflict with career (permanent) CIA officials if the president tries to push the CIA in a direction that career officials view as unwise. The CIA also has to work to coordinate its efforts with the strategy established by the NSC. In practice, however, because the CIA’s day-to-day operations are secret, and its budget rarely made public, the agency has more discretion to act than nearly all other parts of the US government.

Within the CIA, the DCI and the deputy director of central intelligence supervise four additional deputy directors. Each of these four deputy directors leads a directorate (branch) of the agency. The Operations Directorate is the best known because it conducts covert action and counter-intelligence around the world. The Operations Directorate has specialized divisions for each region of the world. The Science and Technology Directorate interprets data gathered from code-breaking activities; from telephone, radio, and other electronic transmissions; and from detailed photographs taken by spy satellites. The Intelligence Directorate takes the information provided by other parts of the CIA, other agencies in the intelligence community, and from publicly available sources, and produces analyses and estimates for policy makers. The Administration Directorate arranges the agency’s finances, personnel matters, computer facilities, and medical services. It also assumes the critical task of internal security, including detecting spies and potential spies within the agency.

Besides all this work concentrated in the CIA’s headquarters building in Langley, Virginia, the agency undertakes fieldwork in foreign countries. The CIA has an office, or station, in almost every nation, whether friend or potential foe. Each office is headed by a station chief, whose real job is hidden by a fictitious job known as a cover. A station chief’s cover is often as an official within the US embassy. The station chief must find out what is happening in the host country that may have a bearing on US national security. Station chiefs are officers of the CIA and do not usually conduct actual spying, but they often hire spies to achieve their goals.

To ensure that the CIA meets these various responsibilities in a proper manner, the agency has an inspector general, who audits its secret accounts and investigates malpractice. In an attempt to limit the responsibilities and therefore the power of the DCI, Congress provided in 1947 that the CIA should not collect intelligence in the United States. The CIA only monitors the domestic activities of US citizens when it believes they may be involved in espionage or international terrorist activities. Since then, Congress has periodically investigated the agency. In the mid-1970s, both the House of Representatives and the Senate set up permanent committees to oversee the CIA, and these committees have established procedures for the monitoring of covert operations.

IV

Intelligence Gathering and Analysis

Not all information that is gathered is secret. CIA analysts spend much of their time gathering and analyzing information from newspapers, television and radio broadcasts, speeches by foreign leaders, and other public sources. CIA analysts call these open sources, and they are sometimes adequate to predict how a country is likely to act in the future. This enables the president, Congress, and other important officials to formulate effective US policy. In many cases, however, open sources provide only an incomplete picture of how a country will act. In some instances, governments may deliberately disseminate false information in order to fool foreign countries.

In many cases open sources do not provide enough information to enable analysts to draw firm conclusions. To help CIA analysts develop a complete understanding of world events, the CIA supplements open sources with three clandestine sources. These include human intelligence provided by CIA field officers, electronic intelligence gathering, and intelligence provided by other agencies. Analysts sift through and evaluate all the open and clandestine sources to develop a general assessment of how a country will act. The analysts pass these assessments to their superiors, who forward important reports to the DCI, who then takes responsibility for keeping the president informed.