In '71 the NSA and CIA were engaged in domestic spying.

The DOD was eavesdropping on Kissenger. The White

House, and Camp David were wired for sound. Nixon and

Kissinger were eavesdropping on their aides, as well

as reporters. Famously, Nixon's Plumbers had in their

number many former CIA agents, including Howard Hunt,

Jim McCord, and Eugenio Martinez.

On July the 7th, 1971, John Ehrlichman, Nixon's domestic

policy chief told DCI Cushman, Nixon's hatchet-man in the

CIA, to let Cushman "know that Hunt was in fact doing

some things for the President.. you should consider he has

pretty much carte blanche " Importantly, this included a

camera, disguises, a voice altering device, and ID papers furnished by the CIA, as well as the CIA's participation enveloping film from the burglary Hunt staged on the office of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg's psychologist. On June the 17th, Nixon's Plumbers were caught burglarizing the DNC offices in the Watergate. On June the 23rd, DI Helms was ordered by the White House to wave the FBI off using national security as a pretext. The new DCI, Walters, another Nixon hack, told the acting director of the FBI and told him to drop the investigation as ordered. On June the 26th, Nixon's counsel John Dean ordered DCI Walters to pay the plumbers untraceable hush money. The CIA was the only part of the government that had the power to make off the book payments, but it could only be done on the orders of the CIA, or if he was out of the country, the DCI. The Acting Director of the FBI started breaking ranks. He demanded the CIA produce a signed document attesting to

the national security threat of the investigation. Jim McCord's lawyer contacted the CIA informing them that McCord had

been offered a Presidential pardon if he fingered the CIA, testifying that the break-in had been an operation of the CIA. Nixon had long been frustrated by what he saw as a liberal infection inside the CIA, and had been trying for years to tear the CIA out by its roots. McCord wrote "If DI Helms goes (takes the fall) and the Watergate operation is laid at the CIA's feet, where it does not belong, every tree in the forest will fall. It will be a scorched desert."

On November the 13th, after Nixon's landslide re-election, Nixon told Kissinger "I intend to ruin the Foreign Service. I mean ruin it-the old Foreign Service-and to build a new one." He had similar designs for the CIA, and intended to replace Helms with James Schlesinger. Nixon had told Helms that he was on the way out, and promised that Helms could stay on until his 60th birthday, the mandatory retirement age. On February the 2nd, Nixon broke that promise, carrying through with his intention to "remove the deadwood" from the CIA. "Get rid of the clowns" was his order to the incoming CI.

Kissinger had been running the CIA since the beginning of Nixon's presidency, but Nixon impressed on Schlesinger that he must appear to congress to be in charge, averting their suspicion of Kissinger's involvement. Nixon also hoped that Schlesinger could push through broader changes in the intelligence community that he had been working towards for years, the creation of a Director of National Intelligence, and spinning off the covert action part of the CIA into a separate organ. Before Helms would leave office, he would destroy every tape he had secretly made of meetings in his office, and many of the papers on Project MK Ultra. In Schlesinger's 17 week tenure, he would fire more than 1,500 employees. As Watergate threw the spotlight on the CIA, Schlesinger, who had been kept in the dark about the CIA's involvement, decided he needed to know what skeletons were in the closet. He issued a memo to every CIA employee directing them to disclose to him any CIA activity they knew of past or present, that could fall outside the scope of the CIA's charter.

This became the Family Jewels. It included information linking the CIA to the assassination of foreign leaders, the illegal surveillance of some 7,000 U.S. citizens involved in the anti-war movement (Operation CHAOS), the CIA had also experimented on U.S. and Canadian citizens without their knowledge, secretly giving them LSD (among other things) and observing the results. This prompted Congress to create the Church Committee in the Senate, and the Pike Committee in the House. President Gerald Ford created the Rockefeller Commission, and issued an executive order prohibiting the assassination of foreign leaders. DCI Colby leaked the papers to the press, later he stated that he believed that providing Congress with this information was the correct thing to do, and ultimately in the CIA's own interests.

"TITTER YE NOT"

******************************

The CIA have nominated

ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Boko

Haram for the ASL Ice Bucket Challenge.

Or waterboarding, as it was once known.

******************************

ISIS were not really bothered about the CIA's water-boarding techniques.

It was when they started using soap with it, they got scared.

******************************

There were 3 possible burial

sites for Osama Bin Laden.

CIA only refer to these sites

as A, B and C.

Apparently he was buried

at C.

******************************

The CIA are overjoyed at

the discovery of a 'treasure trove' of computer hard drives and DVDs in Osama Bin Laden's house.

A spokesman said:

''This is

possibly the most comprehensive collection of

goat and donkey porn the

world has ever seen.''

******************************

C.I.A. ASSASSIN MERCHANDISE

C.I.A. ASSASSIN TEE SHIRT

C.I.A. NIGHT OPS

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian foreign

intelligence agency of the U.S. Government, tasked with

gathering, processing and analysing national security

information from around the world, primarily through the use of

human intelligence (HUMINT). A component of the 17-member

U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), CIA reports to the Director

of National Intelligence.

Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is an

internal intelligence and security service, CIA has no

domestic law enforcement function and is focused on

overseas intelligence collection. As one of several IC members specializing in HUMINT

operations, CIA serves as the national manager for coordination and deconfliction for

HUMINT activities. Moreover, it is the only agency authorized to carry out and oversee covert

action, unless the President finds that another agency is better suited for such operations. It

can, for example, exert foreign political influence through its tactical divisions, such as the Special Activities Division. In 2013, The Washington Post reported that in fiscal year 2010 CIA had the largest budget appropriation in the Intelligence

Community, exceeding previous estimates. The CIA has increasingly taken on offensive roles, including covert paramilitary operations. One of its largest divisions, the Information Operations Centre (IOC), has shifted focus from counter-terrorism to offensive cyber operations.

Several CIA activities have attracted criticism. They include non consensual human experiments, extraordinary rendition, enhanced interrogation techniques (torture), targeted killings, assassinations and the funding and training of militants who would go on to kill civilians and non-combatants. When the CIA was created, its purpose was to create a clearinghouse for foreign policy intelligence and analysis. Today its primary purpose is to collect, analyse, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence, and to perform covert actions. According to its fiscal 2013 budget, the CIA has five

priorities:

Counterterrorism , the top priority, given the ongoing Global War on

Terror.

Nonproliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction ,

with North Korea described as perhaps the most difficult target.

Warning American leaders of important overseas events , with

Pakistan described as an "intractable target".

Counterintelligence , with China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, and Israel

described as "priority" targets.

Cyber intelligence .

The CIA has an executive office and five major directorates.

The Directorate of Digital Innovation
The Directorate of Analysis
The Directorate of Operations
The Directorate of Support
The Directorate of Science and Technology

The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) reports directly to

the Director of National Intelligence (DNI); in practice, the director deals with the DNI, Congress, and the White House, while the Deputy Director is the internal executive.

The Executive Office also support the U.S. military by providing it with information it gathers, receiving information from military intelligence organizations, and cooperating on field activities. The Executive Director is in charge of the day to day operation of the CIA, and each branch of the service has its own Director. The Associate Director of military affairs, a senior military officer, manages the relationship between the CIA and the Unified Combatant Commands, who produce regional operational intelligence and consume national intelligence.

CIA ISIS

C.I.A. ASSASSIN

C.I.A. DRONES

The CIA established its first training facility, the Office of Training and Education, in 1950. Following the end of the Cold War, the CIA's training budget was slashed, which had a negative effect on employee retention. In response, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet established CIA University in 2002. CIA University holds between 200 and 300 courses each year, training both new hires and experienced intelligence officers, as well as CIA support staff. The facility works in partnership with the National Intelligence University, and includes the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis, the Directorate of Analysis' component of the university.

For later stage training of student operations officers, there is at least one classified training area at Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Virginia. Students are selected, and their progress evaluated, in ways derived from the OSS, published as the book Assessment of Men, Selection of Personnel for the Office of Strategic Services. Additional mission training is conducted at Harvey Point, North Carolina.

The primary training facility for the Office of Communications is Warrenton Training Center, located near Warrenton, Virginia. The facility was established in 1951 and has been used by the CIA since at least 1955.

Details of the overall United States intelligence budget are classified. Under the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, the Director of Central Intelligence is the only federal government employee who can spend "un-vouchered" government money. The government has disclosed a total figure for all non-military

intelligence spending since 2007; the fiscal 2013 figure is $52. 6 billion.

According to the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures, the CIA's

fiscal 2013 budget is $14.7 billion, 28% of the total and almost 50% more

than the budget of the National Security Agency.

CIA's HUMINT budget is $2.3 billion, the SIGINT budget is $1.7 billion,

and spending for security and logistics of CIA missions is $2.5 billion.

"Covert action programs", including a variety of activities such as the

CIA's drone fleet and anti-Iranian nuclear program activities, accounts for

$2.6 billion.

There were numerous previous attempts to obtain general information

about the budget. As a result, it was revealed that CIA's annual budget

in Fiscal Year 1963 was US $550 million (inflation-adjusted US$ 4.2 billion

in 2015), and the overall intelligence budget in FY 1997 was US $26.6 billion (inflation-adjusted US$ 39.1 billion in 2015). There have been accidental disclosures; for instance, Mary Margaret Graham, a former CIA official and deputy director of national intelligence for collection in 2005, said that the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion, and in 1994 Congress accidentally published a budget of $43.4 billion (in 2012 dollars) in 1994 for the non-military National Intelligence Program, including $4.8 billion for the CIA. After the Marshall Plan was approved, appropriating $13.7 billion over five years 5% of those funds or $685 million were made available to the CIA.

The Central Intelligence Agency was created on 26 July 1947, when Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act into law.

A major impetus for the creation of the CIA was the unforeseen attack on Pearl Harbour. In addition, towards the end of World War II the U.S. government felt the need for a group to coordinate intelligence efforts.

The success of the British Commandos during World War II prompted U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to authorize the creation of an intelligence service modeled after the British Secret Intelligence Service ( MI6 ), and Special Operations Executive. This led to the creation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). On September the 20th, 1945, shortly after the end of World War II, Harry S. Truman signed an executive order dissolving the OSS, and by October 1945 its functions had been divided between the Departments of State and War.

The division lasted only a few months. The first public mention of the "Central

Intelligence Agency" appeared on a command-restructuring proposal presented by Jim Forrestal and Arthur Radford to the U.S. Senate Military Affairs Committee at the end of 1945. Despite opposition from the military establishment, the United States Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI, Truman established the National Intelligence Authority in January 1946, which was the direct predecessor of the CIA. Its operational extension was known as the Central Intelligence Group (CIG).

In 1951, Mohammad Mosaddegh, a member of the National Front was elected Iranian prime-minister. As prime minister, he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company which

his predecessor had supported. Nationalization of the British funded Iranian oil industry, including the largest oil refinery in the world, was disastrous for Mossadeq. A British naval embargo shuttered the British oil facilities, which Iran had no skilled workers to operate. In '52 Mosaddeq bucked against royal refusal to approve his Minister of War, and resigned in protest. The National Front took to the streets in protest. Fearing a loss of control the military pulled its troops back five days later, and the Shah gave in to Mosaddeq's demands. Mosaddeq

quickly replaced military leaders loyal to the Shah with those loyal to him, giving him personal control over the military. Mosaddeq would take 6 months of emergency powers, giving him the power to unilaterally pass legislation. When that expired, his powers were extended for another year. In 1953 Mossadeq dismissed parliament and assumed dictatorial powers. This power grab triggered the Shah to exercise his constitutional right to dismiss Mosaddeq. Mosaddeq launched a military coup as the Shah fled the country.

As was typical of CIA operations, CIA interventions were preceded by radio announcements on July the 7th,1953 made by

the CIA's intended victim by way of operational leaks. On August the 19th a CIA paid mob led by Ayatollahs Khomeini would spark what a US embassy officer called "an almost spontaneous revolution."... But Mosaddeq was protected by his new inner military circle, and the CIA had been unable to get any sway within the Iranian military. Their chosen man, former general Zahedi had no troops to call on. General McClure, commander of the American military assistance advisory group would get his second star buying the loyalty of the Iranian officers he was training. An attack on Mosaddeq's house would force him to flee. He would surrender the next day, and his military coup would come to an end. The end result would be a 60/40 oil profit split in favour of Iran (possibly similar to agreements with Saudi Arabia and Venezuela).

In 1949 Colonel Adib Shishakli rose to power in Syria in a CIA backed coup. Four years later he would be overthrown by the military, Baathists, and communists. The CIA and MI6 started funding right wing members of the military, but suffered a large setback in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis. CIA Agent Rocky Stone who had played a minor role in the Iranian revolution was working at the Damascus embassy as a diplomat, but was actually the station chief. Syrian officers on the CIA dole quickly appeared on television stating that they had received money from the "corrupt and sinister Americans" "in

an attempt to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria" Syrian forces surrounded the embassy and rousted Agent Stone, who confessed and subsequently made history as the first American diplomat expelled from an Arab nation. This strengthened ties between Syria and Egypt, helping establish the United Arab Republic, and poisoning the well for the US for the foreseeable future. The inability to deny the complicity of the U.S. government put this operation outside the charter of the CIA.

On September the 25th, 1957, the CIA were ordered to start a revolution in Indonesia with the goal of regime change. Three days later, Blitz, a Soviet weekly newspaper in India reported that the US was plotting to overthrow Sukarno. This was picked up by the media in Indonesia. One of the first parts of the operation was a 11,500 ton US navy ship landing at Sumatra, delivering weapons for as many as 8,000 potential revolutionaries. The delivery drew a crowd of spectators,

again little thought was given to plausible dependability.

Counter to CIA predictions, the Indonesian military, with some planning assistance from their colleagues in the US Military, the only people the CIA had successfully kept their involvement a secret from, reacted swiftly and effectively.

CIA Agent Al Pope's bombing and strafing Indonesia in a CIA B-26 was described by the CIA to the President as attacks by "dissident planes". Al Pope's B-26 was shot down over Indonesia on May the 18th, and he bailed out. When he was captured, the Indonesian military found his personnel records, after action reports, and his membership card for the officer's club at Clark Field. On March the 9th, Foster Dulles, the secretary of state, and the brother of DI Allen Dulles, made a public statement calling for a revolt against communist despotism under Sukarno. Three days later the CIA reported to the White House that the Indonesian Army's actions against CIA instigated revolution was suppressing communism.

After Indonesia, the president of America displayed mistrust of both the CIA, and its Director, Allen Dulles. Allen Dulles too displayed mistrust of the CIA itself. Abbot Smith, a CIA analyst who would rise to the position of chief of the Office of National Estimates said "We had constructed for ourselves a picture of the USSR, and whatever happened had to be made to fit into this picture. Intelligence estimators can hardly commit a more abominable sin." Something reflected in the intelligence failure in Indonesia. On December the 16th, the president received a report from his intelligence board of consultants that said that the agency was "incapable of making objective appraisals of its own intelligence information as well as its own operations."

After the Bomber gap came the Missile Gap. Eisenhower wanted to use the U-2 to disprove the missile gap, but he had banned U2 overflights of the USSR after the successful meeting at Camp David with Khrushchev. Another reason Ike objected to the use of the U2 was that, in the nuclear age, the intelligence he needed most was on their intentions, without which, the US would face a paralysis of intelligence. Ike was particularly worried that U-2 flights could be seen as the preparation for first strike attacks as he had high hopes for an upcoming meeting with Khrushchev in Paris. Conflicted, Ike finally gave into CIA pressure to authorize a 16 day window for flights, which, because of poor weather, was later extended for another 6 days. On May the 1st, 1960 the USSR shot down a U-2 flying over the USSR. To Ike, the ensuing coverup destroyed one of his biggest assets, his perceived honesty, and the biggest hope he had, leaving a legacy of thawing relations with Khrushchev. It would also mark the beginning of a long downward slide in the credibility of the Office of the President of the United States. Ike later said that the U-2 coverup was the greatest regret of his Presidency.

C.I.A. AL QUAEDA

The CIA welcomed Fidel Castro on his visit to DC, and gave him a face to face briefing. The CIA hoped that Castro would bring about a friendly democratic government, and planned to curry his favour with money and guns. On December the 11th, 1959, a memo reached the DI's desk recommending Castro's "elimination". Dulles replaced the word "elimination" with "removal", and set the wheels in motion. By mid August 1960, Dick Bissell would seek, with the blessing of the CIA, to hire the Mafia to assassinate Castro. At the same time, his men were working on a parallel plan, recruiting a Cuban exile

to assassinate him.

A little while later, the FBI advised the CIA that it would be impossible to overthrow Castro with these chatty Cuban exiles. In the days before the Bay of Pigs, and during the invasion Richard M. Bissell, Jr. lied to everyone. He lied to Adlai Stevenson, he lied to the people commanding the mission, guaranteeing them air support while he lied to the President, promising success, and minimal air support. The President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities had concluded, and many other reviews prior, and to come, that Covert Action had to be completely isolated from intelligence and analysis. The Inspector General of the CIA investigated the Bay of Pigs. His conclusion was that there was a need to drastically improve the organization and management of the CIA. The Special Group (Later renamed the 303 committee) was convened in an oversight role. Subsequent to the shoot-downs of the may day U-2 reconnaissance plane, and a later shot down in China, JFK ordered a 45 day cessation of U-2 flights, including flights

over Cuba that had recently discovered the first Soviet high

altitude Surface to Air Missile launcher site. There were fears of

antagonism, and an election was around the corner.

During this "photo gap" the CIA received a report from a source

from Operation Mongoose, a road watcher describing covered

tractor trailers moving that were shaped like large telephone

poles. Control of U-2 flights was moved to the Air Force, and

October the 14th U-2 flights resumed. The Cuban Missile Crisis

formally started the next day when American photo analysts

identified R-12 1 Megaton MRBMs which could target parts

of the east coast with its 2,000 km range. R-14s which could

target most of the continental US, as well as 9 M21 tactical

nukes had also been deployed.

The first CIA mission to Indochina, under the code name

Saigon Military Mission arrived in 1954, under Edward

Lansdale. U.S. - based analysts were simultaneously trying to

project the evolution of political power, both if the scheduled referendum chose merger of the North and South, or if the South, the U.S. client, stayed independent. Initially, the US focus in Southeast Asia was on Laos, not Vietnam.

During the period of U.S. combat involvement in the Vietnam War, there was considerable argument about progress among the Department of Défense under Robert McNamara, the CIA, and, to some extent, the intelligence staff of Military Assistance Command Vietnam. In general, the military was consistently more optimistic than the CIA. Sam Adams, a junior CIA analyst with responsibilities for estimating the actual damage to the enemy, eventually resigned from the CIA, after expressing concern to Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms with estimates that were changed for inter agency and White House political reasons. Adams afterwards wrote the book War of Numbers.

Sometime between 1959 and 1961 the CIA started Project Steel Tiger, a program of dropping South Vietnamese agents into North Vietnam to gather intelligence. These were a tragic failure; the Deputy Chief for Project Tiger, Captain Do Van Tien, admitted that he was an agent for Hanoi. President Diem's brutal government violently repressed the Buddhist majority. On August the 23rd, 1963, after being approached by a South Vietnamese General, Kennedy ordered the newly appointed South Vietnamese Ambassador to make detailed plans for Diem's replacement. DI McCone compared Diem to a bad pitcher, implying that he shouldn't be taken out of the game unless they had a better replacement. Kennedy's Cabinet was dubious about the coup, and JFK would come to regret it. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, a long time political opponent of JFK, was jealous that the CIA station had more money, power, and people than his staff. Lodge revealed the name of John Richardson, the CIA station chief, to a reporter, branding him an agent of the CIA, he later moved into Richardson's Saigon house, which was larger than the one Lodge had been in. The coup occurred on the 1st of November.

The assassination of Diem sparked a cascade of coups in Saigon, and at the same time the city was wracked with assassinations. Johnson, the new President wanted to refocus the CIA on intelligence, rather than covert action, while the Kennedy's were seen as relentless in their hounding of the CIA to produce results, Johnson would soon give them only the most minimal attention. In the face of the failure of Project Steel Tiger, the Pentagon wanted CIA paramilitary forces to participate in their Op Plan 64A, this resulted in the CIA's foreign paramilitaries being put under the command of the DOD, a move seen as a slippery slope inside the CIA, a slide from covert action towards militarization. After touring Vietnam in '64, DI McCone and secretary of defence McNamara had different views of the US position. McCone believed that as long as the ho chi minh trail was active the US would struggle.

A CIA analyst assessment of Vietnam was that the US was "becoming progressively divorced from reality... and proceeding with far more courage than wisdom". The CIA had created an exhaustive report, "The Vietnamese Communists Will to Persist". This created a key flashpoint in the U.S.

government, PAVN troop levels. Was it 500k or more as the

CIA believed, or 300k or less as the commanders of US

forces in Vietnam believed. The argument went on for

months, but Helms finally OK'd a report saying that PAVN

troop levels were 299,000 or less. The DOD argument was

that whatever the facts on the ground, to publicly admit any

higher number could be the last nail in the coffin of the war

for vietnam in the press.

In 1981, French President Mitterrand told Reagan to look at the

product from Vladimir Vetrov, the Farewell Dossier. This detailed

information from Line X of the KGB's Science and Technology

Directorate. This detailed the Russian's technological espionage

efforts, including the agents involved. The CIA started feeding the

KGB flawed designs for chips, Space Shuttles and software. One

of the highest profile successes was the explosion of the Siberian

oil pipeline.

Chad's neighbour Libya was a major source of weaponry to

communist rebel forces. The CIA seized the opportunity to arm and

finance Chad's Prime Minister, Hissène Habré after he created a

breakaway government in Western Sudan, even giving him Stinger

missiles.

In Afghanistan, the CIA funnelled a billion dollars worth of weapons

to Pakistani Intelligence, which funnelled them through Pakistani

tribes, which funnelled them to Afghan resistance groups, notably

the Mujahideen. At each step, some of the weapons were held

back. Under President Carter, the CIA was conducting covertly

funding pro-American opposition against the Sandinista. In March, 1981, Reagan told Congress that the CIA would protect El Salvador by preventing the shipment of Nicaraguan arms into the country to arm Communist rebels. This was a ruse. The CIA was actually arming and training Nicaraguans Contras in Honduras in hopes that they could depose the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Through William J. Casey's tenure as DI, little of what he said in the National Security Planning Group, or to President Reagan was supported by the intelligence branch of the CIA, so Casey formed the Central American Task Force, staffed with yes men from Covert Action. On December the 21st, 1982, Congress passed a law restricting the CIA to its stated mission, restricting the flow of arms from Nicaragua to El Salvador, prohibiting the use of funds to oust the Sandinistas. Reagan testified before Congress, assuring them that the CIA was not trying to topple the Nicaraguan government.

During this time, with funding increases, the CIA would hire 2,000 new employees, but these new recruits lacked the experience of the WW2 vets they replaced, living in the theatres where the war was fought, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. During Casey's tenure, CIA management would become experts at lying to, and deceiving Congress, and even to one another.

For more than a decade, hostage taking had plagued the middle east. The CIA's best source of information there was

Hassan Salameh The PLO's Chief of Intelligence, until Israel assassinated him. Through Salameh, the CIA gained a foothold in the world of Muslim extremism, and had entered in a agreement where Americans would be safe, and the PLO and CIA would share information on mutual enemies.

With the CIA's paramilitary forces over extended in Central America, they turned to former Special Forces soldiers, one of whom had an old comic book that had, in Vietnam, been used to teach natives how to take control of a village by assassinating the Mayor, Chief of Police, and Militia. The CIA translated this into Spanish, and distributed it to the Contras. This shortly became public. The CIA also mined the port of Cor into, an act of war that resulted in a public trial in the International Court of Justice. These two public incidents triggered Congress to clamp down on CIA funding even more, banning them from soliciting funds from third parties to fund the Contras.

OBAMA DID HE REALLY?

At Reagan's second inaugural, the two most pressing issues for the CIA were the Contras and the hostages. On June the 14th, 1985 Hezbollah took TWA Flight 847, and executed an American Navy diver on the tarmac of Beirut airport. Reagan negotiated a trade of prisoners for hostages. This paved the way for a trade of 504 TOW Missiles to Iran for $10,000 each, and the release of Benjamin Weir, a captive of Islamic Jihad, the group that claimed responsibility for the Beirut bombings, which would later become Hezbollah.

This broke two of the public pillars of Reagan's foreign policy, no deals with terrorists, and no arms to Iran.

Ghorbanifar sent word that the 6 remaining hostages in exchange for thousands of Hawk missiles. A Boeing 707 with 18 Hawk missiles landed at Tehran from Tel Aviv with Hebrew markings on the crates. The CIA realised on that day, October the 25th that they needed a signed presidential order to authorise the shipment. A month later Reagan would sign an order to retroactively authorising $850,000 of the transaction went to Contras. In July 1986, Hezbollah was holding 4 American hostages, trading the for arms. Six months later, they had 12 American hostages. On October the 5th, 1986, an American C-123 full of weapons was shot down by a Nicaraguan soldier. The sole survivor was an American cargo handler who said that he was working for the CIA. On November the 3rd, anonymous leaflets were scattered in Tehran revealing the Iran connection. The Iran Contra Affair broke. Oliver North and John Poindexter had been shredding documents for weeks, but a memo about suspicions that Secord was taking more than his agreed cut surfaced. DI Bill Casey had a seizure and was hospitalised, to be replaced by Judge Webster, clearly brought in to clean house.

On January the 25th, 1993, there was a shooting at the headquarters of the CIA in Langley Virginia. Mir Qazi killed two agents and wounded three others. On February 26, Omar Abdel Rahman bombed the parking garage of the World Trade centre, killing 6 people, and wounding a thousand. Of Rahman, the Blind Sheiks seven applications to enter the United States, the CIA had given the OK six times.

Agency files show that it believed Osama Bin Laden was funding the Afghan rebels against the USSR in the '80s. In 1991, Bin Laden returned to his native Saudi Arabia protesting the presence of troops, and Operation Desert Storm. He was expelled from the country. In 1996 the CIA created a team to hunt Bin Laden. They were trading information with the Sudanese until, on the word of a source that would later be found to be a fabricator, the CIA closed its Sudan station later that year.

In 1998 Bin Laden would declare war on America, and, on August the 7th, strike in Tanzania and Nairobi. On October the 12th, 2000, Al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole. In 1947 when the CIA was founded, there were 200 agents in the Clandestine Service. In 2001, of the 17,000 employees in the CIA, there were 1,000 in the Clandestine Service. Of that 1,000 few would accept hardship postings. In the first days of George W. Bush' Presidency, Al Qaeda threats were ubiquitous in daily Presidential CIA briefings, but it may have become a case of the boy who cried wolf.

The Agency's predictions were dire, but carried little weight, and the attentions of the President, and his defence staff were elsewhere. The CIA arranged the arrests of suspected Al Qaeda members through cooperation with foreign agencies, but

the CIA could not definitively say what effect these arrests had, and it could not gain hard intelligence from those captured.

The President had asked the CIA if Al Qaeda could plan attacks in the US. On August the 6th, Bush received a daily briefing with the headline, not based on current, solid intelligence, "Al Qaeda determined to strike inside the US." The US had been hunting Bin Laden since '96 and had had several opportunities, but neither Clinton, nor Bush had wanted to risk their skin taking an active role in a murky assassination plot, and the perfect opportunity had never materialized for a trigger shy DI that would have given him the reassurances he needed to take the plunge. That day, Richard A. Clarke sent National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice warning of the risks, and decrying the inaction of the CIA. On September the 11th, 2001, Al Qaeda hijacked 4 passenger jets, flying them into both of New York City's Twin Towers as well as The Pentagon killing 2,996 people.

In 1999, CIA chief George Tenet launched a grand "Plan" to deal with al-Qaeda. The Counterterrorist Centre, its new chief Cofer Black and the centre's Bin Laden unit were the Plan's developers and executors. Once it was prepared Tenet assigned CIA intelligence chief Charles E. Allen to setup a "Qaeda cell" to oversee its tactical execution. In 2000, the CIA and USAF jointly ran a series of flights over Afghanistan with a small remote-controlled reconnaissance drones, the Predator; they obtained probable photos of Bin Laden. Cofer Black and others became advocates of arming the Predator with

missiles to try to assassinate Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders. After the

Cabinet-level Principals Committee meeting on terrorism of September the 4th,

2001, the CIA resumed reconnaissance flights, the drones now being weapons

capable.

While the CIA insists that those who conducted the attacks on 9/11 were not

aware that the agency was operating at 7 World Trade Centre under the guise of

another (unidentified) federal agency, this center was the headquarters for many

notable criminal terrorism investigations. Though the New York field offices'

main responsibilities were to monitor and recruit foreign officials stationed at

the United Nations, the field office also handled the investigations of the August

1998 bombings of United States Embassies in East Africa and the October 2000

bombing of the USS Cole. Despite the fact that the CIA's New York branch may

have been damaged by the 9/11 attacks and they had to loan office space from

the US Mission to the United Nations and other federal agencies, there was an

upside for the CIA.

In the months immediately following 9/11 there was a huge increase in the

amount of applications for CIA positions. According to CIA representatives that

spoke with the New York Times, pre-9/11 the agency received approximately 500

to 600 applications a week, in the months following 9/11 the agency received that

number daily.

The involvement of the CIA in the newly coined "War on Terror" was further

increased on September the 15th, 2001. During a meeting at Camp David George

W. Bush agreed to adopt a plan proposed by CIA director George Tenet. This plan

consisted of conducting a covert war in which CIA paramilitary officers would

cooperate with anti-Taliban guerrillas inside Afghanistan. They would later be

joined by small special operations forces teams which would call in precision airstrikes on Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. This plan was codified on September the 16th, 2001 with Bush's signature of an official Memorandum of Notification that allowed the plan to proceed.

The agency attracted widespread criticism after it used a doctor in Pakistan to set up a vaccination program in Abbottabad

in 2011 to obtain DNA samples from the occupants of a compound where it was suspected bin Laden was living. Subsequently in May 2014, a counter terrorism advisor to President Obama wrote to deans of 13 prominent public health schools giving an undertaking the CIA would not engage in vaccination programs, or engage U.S. or non-U.S. health workers in immunization arrangements for espionage purposes.

On May the 1st, 2011, President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden was killed earlier that day by "a small

team of Americans" operating in Abbottabad, Pakistan, during a CIA operation. The raid was executed from a CIA forward base in Afghanistan by elements of the U.S. Navy's Naval Special Warfare Development Group and CIA paramilitary operatives. It resulted in the acquisition of extensive intelligence on the future attack plans of al-Qaeda. The operation was a result of years of intelligence work that included the CIA's capture and interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohammad (KSM), which led to the identity of a courier of Bin Laden's, the tracking of the courier to the compound by Special Activities Division paramilitary operatives and the establishing of a CIA safe house to provide critical tactical intelligence for the operation.

The CIA has been called into question for, at times, using torture, funding and training of groups and organizations that would later participate in killing of civilians and other non-combatants and would try or succeed in overthrowing democratically elected governments, human experimentation, and targeted killings and assassinations. The CIA has also been accused of a lack of financial and whistleblower controls which has led to waste and fraud.

The Institute on Medicine as a Profession and the non-profit organization, Open Society Foundations reviewed public records into the medical professions alleging complicity in the abuse of prisoners suspected of terrorism who were held in U.S. custody during the years after 9/11." The reports found that health professionals "Aided cruel and degrading interrogations; Helped devise and implement practices designed to maximize disorientation and anxiety so as to make detainees more malleable for interrogation; and Participated in the application of excruciatingly painful methods of force-feeding of mentally competent detainees carrying out hunger strikes" are not all that surprising. Medical professionals were sometimes used at black sites to monitor detainee health. Whether or not the physicians were compelled is an open question.

Research by Dr Alfred W. McCoy, Gary Webb, and others has pointed to CIA involvement in narcotics trafficking across the globe, although the CIA officially denies such allegations. During the Cold War, when numerous soldiers participated in transport of Southeast Asian heroin to the United States by the airline Air America, the CIA's role in such traffic was reportedly rationalised as "recapture" of related profits to prevent possible enemy control of such assets.

Defeating Bad Guys Since 1776

Kryptos is an encrypted sculpture by the American artist, Jim Sanborn, this is located on the grounds of the Central Intelligence Agency in

Langley, Virginia. Since its dedication on November the 3rd, 1990, there has been much speculation about the meaning of the encrypted messages it bears. Of the four messages, three have been solved, with the fourth remaining one of the most famous unsolved codes in the world. The sculpture continues to provide

a diversion for cryptanalysts, both

amateur and professional, who are

attempting to decipher the final

section. The sculptor has given

clues on several occasions. The

name Kryptos comes from the Greek word for "hidden", and the theme of the

sculpture is "intelligence gathering." The most prominent feature is a large vertical

s-shaped copper screen resembling a scroll, or piece of paper emerging from a

computer printer that is covered with characters constituting encrypted text. The

characters consist of the 26 letters of the standard Latin alphabet and question marks

cut out of the copper. The main sculpture contains four separate, enigmatic messages,

three of which have been solved.

At the same time as the main sculpture was installed, sculptor Jim Sanborn also

placed several other pieces around CIA grounds, such as several large granite slabs

with sandwiched copper sheets outside the entrance to the New Headquarters Building. Several morse code messages are engraved in he copper, and one of the slabs has an engraved compass rose and a lodestone. Other elements of Sanborn's installation include a landscaped area, a duck pond, a reflecting pool, and several other seemingly unmarked slabs. The cost of the sculpture was $250,000.