Central Intelligence Agency

A

Field Officers

The CIA deploys hundreds of field officers all over the world to gather intelligence for the United States. The field officers report to CIA headquarters through the station chief in the country where they are placed. Each station chief supervises several field officers, assessing the information they have gathered and sending it to CIA headquarters. Field officers are expected to have detailed knowledge of the country where they are stationed and to be able to speak its language, although the CIA has sometimes been criticized for sending out unqualified and poorly trained personnel. Field officers must be United States citizens.

Field officers rarely break into foreign military bases, infiltrate political parties, or otherwise try to collect sensitive information themselves. Instead they usually persuade foreign citizens to provide information. Sometimes foreign citizens volunteer to give secret information to the CIA. In oppressive regimes, their motive is sometimes altruistic and even patriotic—they feel they can best serve their country by providing the CIA with information that will help bring about social and political change or diminish the possibility of war. Such a spy is known as a defector in place.

In other situations CIA field officers use money or blackmail to convince foreign citizens to betray their country. The CIA field officer’s most difficult job is figuring out who might be willing to spy for the United States, and then using the right amount of persuasion and coercion to turn the foreign citizen to the American cause. The process of identifying and turning a foreign citizen is delicate because the best sources of information are often senior government and military officials. Approaching the wrong official might lead the foreign government to arrest or even kill the field officer. Even after a subject has been turned, field officers must constantly assess the accuracy of the information that he or she provides.

Because turning a foreign citizen is difficult and the intelligence received is sometimes unreliable, the most valuable spy is often not someone who has been turned, but a defector in place. At times, such “human assets” have supplied vital information that could not have been obtained by technical means. For example, from 1953 until his execution by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) sometime in 1959 or 1960, Pyotr Semyonovich Popov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet army, supplied the CIA with important information about USSR missile systems. Popov’s information helped the CIA understand the Soviet military threat before the advent of satellites made it possible to spy on the USSR from space.

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B

Electronic Intelligence Gathering

The CIA Science and Technology Directorate uses a wide variety of electronic techniques to gather intelligence. These include planting bugs (microphones or other listening devices), intercepting radio transmissions, and using seismic sensors and satellites to monitor military activity around the world. The CIA relies on the National Security Agency for a large portion of its electronically gathered data, but also conducts some electronic intelligence gathering on its own. During the Cold War—the period from 1945 to the early 1990s, when the United States and the USSR vied for global dominance—the CIA operated its own “listening stations” in Norway, Iran, Australia, and other places. But since the end of the Cold War, the CIA has reduced its electronic intelligence operations and relied more heavily on the NSA. The CIA Science and Technology Directorate still contributes significant research, such as developing techniques to detect and measure dangerous gases from long distances.

C

Information from Other Agencies

The CIA receives and analyzes information from several other elements of the U.S. intelligence community. These elements include the DIA, NSA, the intelligence branches of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Treasury Department and its Secret Service, and the FBI. The CIA also manages some joint programs with other parts of the intelligence community. The CIA and the NSA, for example, work together to provide eavesdropping equipment to the CIA’s stations around the world. Similarly, the CIA works with the Air Force to coordinate satellite reconnaissance. The CIA also receives information from the intelligence services of friendly powers. Britain’s MI6 and Israel’s Mossad are the most notable examples. Although the CIA sometimes has disputes with MI6 and Mossad over when and how to share intelligence, the generally close cooperation between these agencies reflects the strong ties that link the United States with Britain and Israel.

D

Analysis and Reporting

CIA analysts have the difficult task of sorting through information from open sources, field officers, electronic intelligence, and intelligence from agencies in the United States and other countries. In many instances most of the information is a jumble of irrelevant facts that analysts refer to as noise. But buried in the noise there may be a critical signal, giving an insight that can prove crucial to U.S. national security. Once the analysts have sorted and assessed the available information, they prepare secret reports that are passed on to policy makers. CIA analysts also prepare overall reports for the president and his staff on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Although the DNI is now the president’s main intelligence adviser, the CIA director may also brief the president personally when requested to do so, or in the event of a sudden crisis.

In most cases the CIA has little role beyond providing information to the president and other policy makers. These leaders must take the responsibility for responding to threats to the country’s national security. But the CIA’s reports may sometimes prod policy makers in a certain direction, and in that way the CIA can have a large impact on the country’s policies. In 1998, for example, the CIA produced a report indicating that a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was producing chemical weapons, leading U.S. president Bill Clinton to order the bombing of the plant. The bombing became controversial when outside experts disputed the CIA’s claim.

V

History

A

Early Years

When World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, the United States had some intelligence expertise but lacked a central coordinating agency. Many Americans were reluctant to see the country enter the war, but others saw war as inevitable and pushed for “preparedness”—a reorganization of government and increased military spending. General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, an adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, favored preparedness and urged the president to create a centralized intelligence agency to coordinate intelligence during the war. On July 11, 1941, the president appointed Donovan to the new position of coordinator of information. Donovan’s new intelligence organization failed to predict Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which brought the United States into the war (see World War II: Pearl Harbor). Despite this failure, Donovan persuaded the president that the country needed a larger intelligence organization. In June 1942, Roosevelt established the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), with Donovan in charge.

During the remainder of the war, the OSS built networks of spies and informants, conducted sabotage, and ran other covert operations in western and southern Europe, North Africa, Burma (now Myanmar), and elsewhere. Donovan urged Roosevelt to accept the need for a permanent central intelligence agency that would operate in peacetime as well as during war. Donovan’s hopes for the OSS seemed doomed in 1945 when Roosevelt died and the new president, Harry S. Truman, decided to disband the organization. But in January 1946, Truman established a new organization, the Central Intelligence Group, an interim measure that prepared the way for the CIA. Congress authorized the CIA in the National Security Act of 1947, which also reorganized the armed forces and set up the NSC.

Historians disagree about why Truman decided to establish the CIA. Documents first released in the mid-1990s, however, suggest that from the earliest days of his presidency, Truman was concerned about Soviet expansionism and was determined to develop an intelligence organization that would help to counter that threat. Members of Congress debated the need for a permanent intelligence agency, with many of the debates centering on the national humiliation of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In the end, Congress decided that it was essential to have an intelligence agency that could warn the nation of such attacks. When Congress approved legislation creating the CIA in 1947, it became the first secret intelligence service in the world to be approved by a democratically elected government.