CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)

History

According to the CIA, in 1941 President Roosevelt created the Office of the Coordinator of Information under William Donovan; on 13 June 1942 part of it became the OSS, which was disbanded on 1 October 1945. January 1946 saw the creation of the Central Intelligence Group, responsible for coordinating, planning, evaluating and disseminating intelligence.¹

The National Security Act was signed on 26 July 1947, and the CIA officially came into being on 18 September 1947. Two years later President Truman signed the Central Intelligence Agency Act, which among other things allowed the CIA to fund its operations covertly.¹

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA), signed on 17 December 2004, abolished the post of Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and created the post of Director of the CIA; coordination of the whole community passed to the Director of National Intelligence.^1,2

Congressional oversight

On 27 January 1975 the Senate set up a committee chaired by Senator Frank Church to investigate abuses by federal agencies, including the CIA, FBI, IRS and NSA. In its final report of 29 April 1976 it found that the intelligence agencies had violated citizens’ constitutional rights, and it made 96 recommendations.³

In 1976, by Senate Resolution 400, the Senate established a permanent Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to oversee US intelligence activities.³

In 1978 Congress passed, and President Carter signed, the FISA act, which required warrants for wiretapping and surveillance to be obtained from a new FISA court.³

Limits on its powers

The Rockefeller Commission (report to the President, June 1975) pointed out that the 1947 Act stipulates that the Agency “shall have no police, subpoena, law-enforcement powers, or internal security functions”. The commission called this prohibition “an integral part of the definition of the CIA’s authority”, and noted that the Agency “has never disputed that its authority is restricted to foreign intelligence”.⁴

The commission also observed that the Act does not expressly authorise the CIA to collect intelligence: that task was assigned to it by the National Security Council under the clause on “other functions and duties related to intelligence”.⁴

Mission and organisation today

The CIA describes its mission as collecting foreign intelligence, producing all-source analysis, conducting covert action at the direction of the President and safeguarding secrets. It works with the rest of the intelligence community, the military and law enforcement, in areas such as counterintelligence and counterterrorism.⁵

The Agency has five directorates – Analysis, Operations, Science and Technology, Mission Systems, and Support – and eleven regional and functional mission centres (among them cyber intelligence, counterintelligence, counterterrorism and counterproliferation). Its offices include the Inspector General, an office for congressional affairs and a board that reviews texts by former employees before publication.⁶

The CIA is one of the 18 elements of the US intelligence community, which is coordinated by the ODNI.⁷

The CIA and Poland

According to the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), between 1971 and 1981 Colonel Ryszard Kukliński passed about 40,000 pages of documents on the Polish People’s Republic, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact to the Americans; he worked with the CIA under the cryptonym “Jack Strong”. On the night of 7–8 November 1981 CIA officers exfiltrated him from Poland together with his wife and two sons (see “Jack Strong”).⁸

According to the IPN, in the exchange on the Glienicke Bridge on 11 June 1985, 25 people imprisoned in the GDR and in Poland were released in return for four Eastern Bloc agents, including the Polish People’s Republic intelligence officer Marian Zacharski; the Polish Interior Ministry’s draft communiqué spoke of “CIA spies captured in Poland”.⁹

US counterterrorism support for the transit of Jews from the USSR through Poland in 1990 is described in the entry Operation Bridge.¹⁰