Central Intelligence Agency history

By 1953, the CIA was a recognized and respected agency and by the Korean War, it had grown six times in size and three of its current five directorates had been established.

The CIA successfully engineered a coup that overthrew Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in 1954.

At that time, the Air Force had its own satellite project in the works, but the CIA's CORONA, launched in 1959, would prove much more successful, and would outlast the Air Force SAMOS program by a decade.

The agency recruited Cuban exiles living in the United States and trained them in military tactics for an invasion of the island nation that had come under the leadership of communist Fidel Castro following a revolution. For example, declassified government records suggest that the CIA was behind the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

Kennedy's brother, Robert Kennedy, negotiated with Castro to release the prisoners in December 1962 in exchange for $53 million in food and medical supplies.

In 1963, the Directorate for Science and Technology (DDS&T) was created.

Nixon fired him in February, 1973, and after a six-month period in which James R. Schlesinger led the agency, William E. Colby became DCI. Colby's was a difficult tenure, as the CIA came under intense scrutiny from journalists and committees in Congress.

In 1974, the New York Times broke a story that the CIA had violated its charter by spying on United States citizens who openly opposed the vietnam war.

Details of MK-Ultra and other Cold War-era programs became public in 1975, during a series of investigations into widespread illegal CIA activities—including assassinations of foreign leaders—around the world and within the United States.

In 1976, all scientific and technical intelligence analysis functions were transferred back to the Directorate of Intelligence.

The directorate provided no significant warning that the shah of Iran would be forced to flee his country in early 1979.

Today the CIA reports regularly to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as required by the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980 and various Executive Orders.

From 1985 onward, Ames and his wife Rosario bought a $540,000 house for cash, put $99,000 worth of improvements into the house, purchased a Jaguar, bought a farm and condominium in Colombia, and invested $165,000 in stocks.

Gregory Treverton, Covert Action: The Limits of Intervention in the Postwar World (1987), is excellent on the CIA and Allende.

The amendments were designed to increase congressional oversight of the CIA. Congress created the office of the Inspector General of the CIA in 1988.

The CIA was jolted again in 1989 when three more of its most valued Soviet double agents met their deaths by firing squad in Russia.

Criminal indictments against National Security Advisor John Poindexter and Oliver North of the National Security Council were dismissed, and six others who were indicted or convicted of various crimes were pardoned in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush.

During the tenure of R. James Woolsey, appointed in 1993, the CIA came under criticism with the exposure of Aldrich Ames, a mole for the Soviet Union and later Russia, who had operated within of the agency for many years.

Eternal Vigilance? 50 Years of the CIA. Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1997.

Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999. ——. The Wizards of Langley: Inside the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology.

Again, nothing was done with this information. It was shown that the CIA had tracked two of the terrorists from that day at an al Qaeda summit in January 2000.

2002. "Bush Concedes FBI, CIA Faults, But Doubts Attacks Avoidable." Washington Times (June 5).

Richelson, Jeffrey T. Science, Technology and the CIA. National Security Archive, George Washington University. <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB54/index2.html> (April 24, 2003).

In February 2004, President George W. Bush called for an investigation into United States intelligence failures prior to the invasion.

But it was not until 2007 that the intricate details of many of the most covert—and sometimes illegal—CIA operations were released to the general public for review.