The CQ Researcher : Reforming the CIA

From the February 2, 1996 issue of The CQ Researcher, Volume 6, No. 5, p. 106, 108-109.

Background : A History of U.S. Intelligence Gathering

The Black Chamber

In 1882, the Navy created the nation's first spy service, the Office of Naval Intelligence, to determine the ability of foreign countries to engage U.S. ships at sea. Three years later, the Army set up an analogous service, the Military Information Division. [1]

The shortcomings of these early spy operations became evident during World War I, when the Army set up a more sophisticated spy group, known as MI-8, to detect enemy agents, primarily by intercepting and decoding German correspondence. After the war, the Army disbanded MI-8. But the group's work continued to be carried out by the so-called “Black Chamber,” the country's first civilian spy agency. Soon after its founding in 1919, the small and highly secretive State Department operation had broken the diplomatic codes of most of America's allies and foes alike.

Intelligence activities were controversial from the start. Newly appointed Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson unceremoniously disbanded the Black Chamber in 1929, noting that, “Gentlemen do not read each other's mail.” The business of gathering intelligence on other countries was handed over to the State Department's normal diplomatic channels.

As Europe edged closer to World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called on World War I hero William “Wild Bill” Donovan to help improve the quality of intelligence reaching Washington. Over the strong objections of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and the heads of military spy groups fearful of losing power, the president in 1941 appointed Donovan to head the new office of the Coordinator of Information, which was to collect and analyze all data of interest to national security.

In 1942, after the U.S. entry into the war, Donovan's fledgling group was renamed the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), with responsibility for both military and diplomatic intelligence. The agency received valuable help in perfecting its methods from the respected British secret service, MI-6.

Despite its successes during the war, President Harry S Truman bowed to public pressure from Hoover and congressional critics and disbanded the OSS in 1945.

CIA's Heyday

Less than a year later, Truman reversed his OSS decision in order to deal with the sudden onset of the Cold War. Closed out of the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War II, American policy-makers had no reliable information on which to base U.S. policy toward the wartime ally turned adversary. By contrast, covert action had been an integral part of Soviet foreign policy since the USSR was founded in 1922.

To counter Stalin's KGB, Truman decided the United States needed a permanent, peacetime intelligence capability. Dispelling fears that a new intelligence service could be used to spy on Americans, he persuaded Congress to pass the National Security Act, which he signed into law Sept. 18, 1947. In addition to the CIA, the law created the National Security Council (NSC) to oversee all intelligence activities and a director of central intelligence to manage these operations.

The CIA's legal mandate was to collect, analyze and distribute foreign intelligence to appropriate government officials and to advise the NSC on national security. It was barred from participating in domestic operations, which the law clearly placed under FBI authority. The law also empowered the CIA to carry out “services of common concern” and to “perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the NSC will from time to time direct.” This ambiguous language would later enable the new agency to engage in covert action. It also provided the flexibility to accommodate reforms called for in later years.

The deepening of the Cold War and the onset of the Korean War in 1950 intensified the demand for intelligence. By 1953, just six years after it was created, the CIA employed more than 10,000 people in the United States and in its stations, or offices, around the world. Under the leadership of Allen Dulles, President Dwight D. Eisenhower's director of central intelligence, the CIA enjoyed a period of widespread support from the American public, which viewed it as a key defense against communism.

It was in these years that the CIA engaged in some of its best- known - and most controversial - covert operations. In 1953, the CIA masterminded the ouster of leftist Premier Mohammad Mossadeq in Iran and the installation of the pro-American shah, whose friendly regime gave the United States a foothold in the Middle East. The following year, the agency engineered the ouster of Guatemalan leader Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, who had threatened to appropriate the U.S.-owned United Fruit Co.

Technological advances in the 1950s greatly improved the CIA's ability to collect intelligence. The high-altitude U-2 spy plane, in particular, enabled the United States to photograph Soviet military installations without endangering the lives of agents on the ground. With the U-2 and sophisticated eavesdropping technologies, the CIA could rely more heavily on signals - as opposed to human - intelligence. Even after Soviet missiles managed to shoot down the U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers in 1960, public support for the agency and its high-tech missions ran high.

Crisis Years

The CIA's high approval rating with the American public abruptly plummeted on April 17, 1961, when 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba to overthrow Fidel Castro. The small force was easily routed by Cuban soldiers, and the incident drew worldwide criticism. In the United States, the CIA would never fully recover the public support it had once enjoyed.

The incident led President John F. Kennedy to restructure the CIA, curtailing its paramilitary operations and concentrating on intelligence gathering. The agency's discovery of Soviet missile sites in Cuba in 1962 led to the Cuban missile crisis, enabling the president to demand, and eventually obtain, the withdrawal of the missiles and end the Cold War's most dangerous crisis.

Following a brief period of support, the CIA again fell into disfavor in 1965 following the disclosure of its covert operations to shore up the anticommunist government of South Vietnam. As U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War escalated, so did opposition to the war, including CIA covert operations. Hostility toward the agency peaked in 1972, when the public learned that former CIA employees had broken into Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex.

Shortly after President Richard M. Nixon appointed William E. Colby as CIA director in 1973, an internal CIA investigation into unethical or illegal agency activities was leaked to the press. The list of violations, dubbed the “Family Jewels,” included instances of illegal wiretapping, break-ins and surveillance aimed at American citizens, in clear violation of the 1947 law. The list prompted the first of what would become a series of investigations into the agency's activities.

The Rockefeller Commission, set up by President Gerald R. Ford, found in 1975 that the CIA had kept files on more than 7,500 Americans and infiltrated the antiwar movement, among other abuses. The revelations prompted Congress to establish oversight committees in both houses to investigate CIA activities throughout the world.

Under the direction of Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, and Rep. Otis G. Pike, D-N.Y., the Senate and House intelligence committees uncovered a number of CIA plots to assassinate foreign leaders, including Castro, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic and Patrice Lumumba of Zaire, as well as creating the upheaval in Chile that led to President Salvador Allende's assassination. The committees' findings prompted Ford to reorganize the CIA, specifically forbidding it from participating in assassination attempts and restricting its intelligence-gathering methods.

With the Ayatollah Khomeini's overthrow of the shah in 1979 and subsequent taking of 66 American hostages in Teheran, public attitudes toward the CIA again shifted. Fearful that reform efforts had gone too far during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, American voters in 1980 picked Ronald Reagan to usher in a more aggressive foreign policy, including a reinvigorated CIA.

Under the direction of Reagan appointee William J. Casey, the CIA hired thousands of new staffers, expanded its headquarters and increased covert action, including paramilitary operations in Soviet outposts such as Angola, Afghanistan and Nicaragua. Congress increased funding for intelligence, reportedly raising the CIA's budget by the mid-1980s to more than $3 billion a year, about the same amount as the current budget.

In 1987, however, the agency faced yet another scandal when congressional investigators revealed that the CIA had illegally supported Nicaraguan “contra” rebels by giving them money made from secret arms sales to Iran. Casey died from cancer before he could testify on the Iran-contra affair.

Three years later, the Soviet Union collapsed, ending the Cold War. With the disappearance of the main rationale for its existence, the CIA once again became the focus of intense scrutiny, as policy- makers and legislators began debating the role of intelligence in the post-Cold War era.

[1] Information in this section is based on Rafaela Ellis, The Central Intelligence Agency (1988).