The CQ Researcher : Reforming the CIA

From the February 2, 1996 issue of The CQ Researcher, Volume 6, No. 5, p. 107.

Chronology

1940s-1950s
The Central Intelligence Agency is created to help stop the expansion of the Soviet Union and, during the heyday of covert operations, orchestrates several overseas coups.

Sept. 18, 1947
The National Security Act creates the CIA and the position of director of central intelligence to head the new agency and oversee all other agencies comprising the U.S. intelligence community.

1953
The CIA supports the ouster of Mohammad Mossadeq, the leftist premier of Iran, and the installation of the pro-American shah.

1954
U.S. intelligence officers bring about the ouster of Guatemalan leader Jacobo Arbenz Guzman after he threatens to appropriate the U.S.-owned United Fruit Co.

1960s-1970s
The CIA, after enjoying free rein in the early days of the Cold War, comes under growing scrutiny.

1960
The U-2 spy plane piloted by American pilot Francis Gary Powers is shot down on a reconnaissance flight over the Soviet Union.

April 17, 1961
The CIA's first major, public fiasco occurs when a CIA-backed invasion of Cuba by 1,400 U.S.-trained Cuban exiles is thwarted at the Bay of Pigs.

1962
The CIA's discovery of Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba sparks the Cuban missile crisis, prompting President John F. Kennedy to demand, and eventually obtain, the withdrawal of the missiles and end the Cold War's most dangerous crisis.

1965
The CIA again falls into disfavor following the disclosure of its covert operations to shore up the anti-communist government of South Vietnam. Criticism grows with the escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

1972
Hostility toward the CIA mounts when it is revealed that former agency employees working for the Republicans broke into Democratic Party headquarters in Washington's Watergate complex. The scandal launches congressional investigations that uncover numerous violations of the CIA's 1947 mandate.

1980s
The intelligence community expands as a result of President Ronald Reagan's campaign to “rearm America.”

1987
Public support for the CIA plummets with the Iran-contra scandal, involving the illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund the agency's secret support of anti-government rebels in Nicaragua.

1990s
The demise of the Soviet Union and resulting end of the Cold War prompt a re-examination of U.S. intelligence needs.

1991
U.S. military commanders complain of delays in receiving vital intelligence data during the Persian Gulf War, the first major military conflict of the post-Cold War era.

February 1994
CIA officer Aldrich H. Ames is arrested for selling secrets to Soviet authorities over nearly a decade, damaging U.S. national security and leading to the executions of at least 10 CIA informants in the Soviet Union.

Jan. 9, 1995
CIA Director R. James Woolsey resigns in the wake of the Ames scandal. Adm. William O. Studeman becomes acting director.

Feb. 2, 1995
President Clinton calls on former Defense Secretary Les Aspin to head a bipartisan commission to study the intelligence requirements of the post-Cold War era. Following Aspin's death in May, former Defense Secretary Harold Brown is appointed to head the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the U.S. Intelligence Community. At about the same time, congressional intelligence committees also begin hearings on possible reforms in U.S. intelligence gathering.

March 1995
President Clinton nominates Deputy Defense Secretary John M. Deutch to become the director of central intelligence.

March 1, 1996
The Brown commission is scheduled to report its findings to the president.