Why Have a CIA?

Friends, the recent revelation that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) never told Congress about a secret 8-year program to assassinate al-Qaeda operatives has people asking questions about the CIA. You know us. We're not asking the should-they or shouldn't-they questions so much as wondering where the CIA came from anyway.

Why have a CIA? How's it supposed to work? Time to do a little snooping on the CIA itself so that you'll have the context you need for any political debate.

Founding "The Company"

The Central Intelligence Agency isn't America's only intelligence service--there are 15 others. It isn't even the largest--the NSA employs more people and consumes more cash. Yet it's supposed to be the central one. At least, that's the reason it was created.

Legally, the CIA is a product of the National Security Act of 1947. Historically, it grew out of a previous intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). President Franklin Roosevelt established the OSS in 1942 as part of the U.S. effort in World War II. Before then, the United States had no centralized intelligence service. The FBI collected information. So did the Army and Navy. But there was no systematic intelligence oversight, and the separate agencies often refused to share information (they still do).

After the war, President Harry Truman disbanded the OSS, but he hired many of its key members to staff what became the CIA. According to Truman, "the CIA was set up by me for the sole purpose of getting all the available information to the president. It was not intended to operate as an international agency engaged in strange activities."

Cold Warriors

Despite Truman's professed intentions, the CIA soon became involved in covert operations, helping produce anti-communist coups and assassination attempts as surely as it produced intelligence estimates. Citizens and politicians alike saw the CIA as the counterpart to the Soviet KGB--though, unlike the KGB, it wasn't supposed to spy on its own citizens.

Congressional hearings in 1975 found that the CIA did spy on U.S. citizens--and had helped overthrow democratically elected governments in Iran, Chile, and elsewhere. That led to the creation of permanent oversight committees in both houses of Congress. When the Soviet Union fell in 1991 and the Cold War ended, commissions began calling for even more reforms. Those calls grew louder after September 11, 2001, and louder still when U.S. investigators failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Reorganization Chart

In 2004, Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, hailed as the biggest reform of the U.S. intelligence community since the act that created the CIA. Before 2004, the CIA director was responsible for coordinating the activities of the entire intelligence community. Now he and the other intelligence chiefs report to a central Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

What's more, the CIA's old Directorate of Operations--responsible for conducting covert ops and counterintelligence worldwide--was recently absorbed by the National Clandestine Service (NCS). The NCS still reports to the CIA director, but it also coordinates human intelligence work between the CIA and other intelligence agencies and "works with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to implement the DNI's statutory authorities."

The three other traditional CIA directorates remain. The Directorate of Science and Technology keeps an eye on spy tech and an ear on intercepted communications (with the NSA). The Directorate of Support handles bookkeeping, personnel, and internal security, including snooping out spies within the CIA. And the Directorate of Intelligence tries to do what Truman wanted--gather information from all sources and produce intelligence estimates for the president.