To what part of the U.S. government does the CIA director report?

Photo courtesy CIA

Despite plenty of Hollywood films near the CIA and its spies, many people however don't know what the agency actually does. In this article, we'll take a expect at the history of the CIA and the scandals that accept rocked it through the decades. We'll meet how the organization is structured today, who oversees it and what kinds of checks and balances are in place. Nosotros'll besides have a look at how the spies do their jobs -- in other words, we'll see just how much of that Hollywood stuff is existent.

The CIA stands for the Fundamental Intelligence Bureau. Its primary stated mission is to collect, evaluate and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the president and senior United States government policymakers in making decisions about national security. The CIA may besides engage in covert action at the president's request. Information technology doesn't make policy. It isn't immune to spy on the domestic activities of Americans or to participate in assassinations, either -- though it has been accused of doing both.

Like other aspects of the U.S. authorities, the CIA has a arrangement of checks and balances. The CIA reports both to the executive and legislative branches. During the CIA'due south history, the amount of oversight has ebbed and flowed. On the executive side, the CIA must respond to three groups -- the National Security Council, the President'southward Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the Intelligence Oversight Board.

The National Security Council is made up of the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense force. "The NSC advises the President on domestic, foreign and military issues that relate to national security and provides guidance, review and direction on how the CIA gathers intelligence," co-ordinate to the CIA Web site. The President'due south Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board comprises people from the individual sector who study how well the CIA is doing its job and the effectiveness of its structure. The Intelligence Oversight Lath is supposed to ensure that intelligence drove is washed properly and that all intelligence gathering is legal.

On the legislative side, the CIA works primarily with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. These two committees -- along with the Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees -- qualify the CIA's programs and oversee the CIA. The appropriations committees appropriate funds for the CIA and all U.S. government activities.

Photograph courtesy CIA
CIA Headquarters -- the George Bush-league Heart for Intelligence in Langley, Va. Come across more spy pictures.

Speaking of funds, the CIA upkeep is hugger-mugger and the agency is allowed to keep its staffing, organizational structure, salaries and number of employees hugger-mugger nether an act passed in 1949. Hither's what we do know: In 1997, the total budget for all U.South. regime intelligence and intelligence-related activities (of which the CIA is a part) was $26.6 billion. That was the starting time year the figure had been fabricated public. In 1998, the upkeep was $26.7 billion. The intelligence budgets for all other years remain classified. On the staffing front end, the CIA employs almost twenty,000 people.

CIA History
The U.s.a. has ever engaged in foreign intelligence activities. Covert action aided the patriots in winning the Revolutionary State of war. Just the offset formal, organized agencies didn't exist until the 1880s, when the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Army'due south Armed forces Intelligence Segmentation were created. Effectually World War I, the Bureau of Investigation (the forerunner of the FBI) took over intelligence-gathering duties. The intelligence structure continued through several iterations. For case, the Office of Strategic Services, known as the OSS, was established in 1942 and abolished in 1945.

Photograph courtesy Naval Historical Center
The USS Arizona burning afterwards the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This set on was a major intelligence failure and contributed to the creation of the CIA.

After World War II, U.South. leaders struggled with how to improve national intelligence. The Pearl Harbor bombing, which brought the U.s.a. into Earth War II, was considered a major intelligence failure.

In 1947, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, which created the CIA. The human action as well created a director of central intelligence, who had three different roles: the president's master adviser on security issues, the head of the unabridged U.S. intelligence community and the caput of the CIA, one of the agencies within that intelligence community. This construction was revised in 2004, with the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which created the position of director of national intelligence to oversee the intelligence community. Now, the director of the CIA reports to the director of national intelligence.

Photo courtesy United states of america Air Force
General Michael V. Hayden, USAF, director of the CIA as of May 30, 2006

Two years later, Congress passed the Central Intelligence Agency Act, which allows the bureau to keep its budget and staffing clandestine. For many years, the agency's primary mission was to protect the United States against communism and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. These days, the agency has an even more complex job -- to protect the United states of america from terrorist threats from all over the globe.

CIA Structure
The CIA is broken downward into four different teams, each with its ain responsibilities:

National Clandestine Service
This is where the so-called "spies" work. NCS employees go undercover abroad to collect foreign intelligence. They recruit agents to collect what is called "human being intelligence." What kinds of people work for the NCS? NCS employees are generally well-educated, know other languages, like to work with people from all over the world and tin can adjust to any state of affairs, including dangerous ones. Well-nigh people, including their friends and family unit members, will never know exactly what NCS employees do. Later we'll take a look at how the spies stay cloak-and-dagger and cheque out some of their cool gadgets.

Directorate of Science and Technology
The people on this team collect overt, or open source, intelligence. Overt intelligence consists of information that appears on Television receiver, on the radio, in magazines or in newspapers. They also utilize electronic and satellite photography. This team attracts people who enjoy science and technology.

Directorate of Intelligence
All of the information gathered past the first 2 teams is turned over to the Advisers of Intelligence. Members of this team translate the information and write reports about it. A DI employee must accept splendid writing and analytical skills, be comfy presenting data in forepart of groups and exist able to handle deadline pressure.

Advisers of Support
This team provides back up for the rest of the organization and handles things like hiring and training. "The Directorate of Back up attracts the person who may be a specialist in a field such equally an creative person or a finance officer, or a generalist with many different talents," co-ordinate to the CIA Spider web site.

Next, we'll accept a look at CIA scandals and learn more about spies.

Scandals and Spy Stuff

During its more than 50-year history, the CIA has been criticized for its interest (or lack of interest) in many controversial events. Let'southward take a look at a few of them:

Islamic republic of iran - In 1953, a CIA-backed coup ousted Islamic republic of iran's popular prime government minister and restored power to the Shah of Iran. Many historians now consider this a error, as the Shah of Iran'southward repressive rule eventually led to a revolution in the 1970s. Afterwards the revolution, anti-American leaders came to power.
Bay of Pigs - In 1961, a paramilitary force of Cuban exiles, backed by the CIA, attacked Republic of cuba's Bay of Pigs. Cuban forces crushed the invasion, bringing information technology to a quick end.
Watergate - In 1972, former CIA officers, role of a grouping working for President Nixon's re-ballot campaign, were implicated in the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters.
Family Jewels - After Watergate, CIA director James Schlesinger vowed to find out if at that place were whatever other dangerous secrets in the history of the CIA. The investigation bore enough of fruit. However, by the fourth dimension the report had been compiled, Schlesinger had moved on and go the Defense Secretary. The new head of the CIA, William Colby, inherited the 693-page document known as "the family jewels." The report said the agency had plotted to impale Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders; spied on Americans, tapping their telephone lines and reading their tax returns; and conducted LSD experiments on unwitting human subjects. Colby eventually turned over the study -- an try, he said after, to save the bureau.
The Iran-Contra Thing - Several members of the Reagan administration violated an embargo by helping to sell arms to Iran. The proceeds were used to fund the Contras, a right-fly guerrilla group in Nicaragua. In 1986, President Reagan affirmed that defensive weapons were transferred to Iran. Subsequently, information surfaced that CIA director William Casey was involved in the scandal.
Aldrich Ames - This CIA officer spent nine years as a mole for the KGB. He turned over the names of many spies that the U.S. had working in the Soviet Wedlock. The KGB paid Ames more than $2 1000000 and kept some other $2 meg earmarked for him in a Moscow bank, making him the highest-paid spy in the world [ref]. Ames was arrested in 1994 and is serving a sentence of life in prison house.
Sept. 11, 2001 - Terrorists carried out the largest act of terrorism ever to take place on U.Due south. soil, and the CIA (forth with the rest of the intelligence community) was criticized for failing to stop the attacks. Part of the problem, critics have said, is that the different intelligence agencies were not working together. Since so, the CIA has beefed up its spy plan, training many new officers. There have also been structural changes within the overall intelligence community to ensure cooperation betwixt agencies.
Valerie Plame Wilson - CIA covert officeholder Valerie Plame Wilson was publicly exposed in 2003, setting off a major Washington scandal. Bourgeois writer Robert Novak outed her in a newspaper column. The ensuing investigation has centered on who leaked her name to Novak. It is a crime to purposefully blow the cover of a U.S. intelligence operative. A federal probe began in September 2003, and former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff Lewis Libby was indicted on charges of lying and obstruction of the probe. Equally of May 2006, nobody has been charged in the bodily leak.

Spy Stuff

About a third of the agency'south estimated 20,000 employees are clandestine or take been at some bespeak in their CIA careers, co-ordinate to a Los Angeles Times story, which delved into simply how they keep those covers.

Most of the agency's overseas officers are under official comprehend, meaning they pose equally employees of another authorities agency, such as the state department. A much smaller number are under nonofficial cover or NOC (pronounced "knock"). This means they usually pose every bit employees of real international corporations, employees of false companies or equally students. Valerie Plame worked as a NOC, posing as the employee of a shell company in Boston called Brewster-Jennings. NOC is more than dangerous than having an official cover, because if NOCs are caught by a strange intelligence service, they have no diplomatic immunity to protect them from prosecution in that country.

In a newspaper interview, an anonymous source said that he posed equally a mid-level executive at multinational corporations while collecting intelligence overseas for more a decade. He worked several years as a business organisation consultant earlier joining the agency, giving him a great resume for the NOC program. Senior executives at his cover employer'southward were aware of his real chore, but his coworkers mean solar day-to-twenty-four hours were not. He carried out the normal duties that someone in his embrace job would do, once even working on a $2 million deal. However, he also often spent three or four nights a week holding clandestine meetings.

In that location is plenty of lore about the cloak-and-dagger lives that spies lead. Some of it is just that -- lore. On the other hand, spies through the years actually take used a diverseness of gadgets and technology to exercise their jobs. Some are now enshrined at the CIA Museum. Highlights of the museum include:

The dead drib fasten, a concealment device that has been used since the tardily 1960s to hide money, maps, documents, microfilm and other items. The fasten is waterproof and can be shoved into the ground or placed in a shallow stream to be retrieved afterward.
The Marker IV microdot camera was used to laissez passer documents betwixt agents in East and Westward Berlin during the 1950s and '60s. Agents took photographs that were the size of a pinhead and glued them to typed letters. The agent who recieved the letter could then view the image under a microscope.
The silver dollar hollow container is still beingness used today. Information technology looks like a silver dollar and can exist used to hide messages or film.

Image courtesy CIA
A pamphlet dropped during the Western farsi Gulf War
CIA-produced pamphlets, which were dropped during the Persian Gulf War, warning civilians of a bombing run and giving military units an opportunity to surrender.

Though the bureau has had its share of failures and scandals, the government still depends heavily on the CIA to provide intelligence and assist with maintaining national security. Although terrorism intelligence is the CIA's current focus, the United States will ever have a need for counterintelligence, espionage and covert action.

For lots more than information about the CIA and related topics, check out the links on the next page.

To what part of the U.S. government does the CIA director report?

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