Following World War Two the USA faced a very challenging threat in the form of the Soviet Union. Traditionally during times of the war the USA built intelligence gathering services to gather information on the enemy. The Cold War presented new problems because the USA was technically not at war. Demands for a new centralized permanent intelligence gathering service. This became the CIA, or Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA presented many challenges though. Its secretive nature and lack of transparency often made it an independent force operating outside of government oversight and public accountability.
The story of the CIA begins well before the CIA was actually created. It really has its roots within WWII and William Donovan
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Dulles, the next DCI, was famous for both his major accomplishments and failures. During Dulles’s DCI career the CIA, built the Berlin Tunnel and U-2 spy plane. Along with this the CIA undertook many successful covert operations all of the world. The Dulles regime experienced many notable failures though. Most importantly the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers (U-2 pilot) by the Soviet Union in 1960. As well as the disastrous invasion mission of Cuba in 1961, known commonly as Bay of Pigs, which tarnished the CIA’s reputation for a while. Because of these mishappenings the CIA lost favor with the Kennedy administration. It did however regain it with the next DCI, John A. McCone. McCone did this by getting spy plane photos showing Soviet missiles in Cuba, with which Kennedy used in the Cuban Missile …show more content…
This was an important time because the CIA was involved in secret war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Helms tried his best to win these secret wars to protect the threat of Communism. Helms eventually lost out with the president of the time Lyndon B. Johnson over domestic concerns and was soon fired by in February, 1973. After a short time of great scrutiny of the CIA under the DCI of William E. Colby, the DCI was given to George H. W. Bush (the future president of the US). During Bush’s time as DCI the CIA focused greatly on improvements of satellite technology. He was replaced when James E. Carter became president in January 20, 1977, by Admiral Stansfield Turner. Turner continued Bush’s focus on improvements in satellite technology, but took it one step farther as to try to distance the CIA from its past. This is seen in the amount of covert operations, which declined greatly during his leadership. The next DCI, brought in in 1981, was William J. Casey. Under Casey’s leadership the CIA grew immensely, in budget, size and influence. During Casey’s DCI career, the CIA took part in many covert operations. Probably the most important of these operations was helping Communist fighting regimes in Afghanistan and
One reason for this is that “...the CIA felt that Kennedy was going to disband them.” The reason for this is because the CIA wanted the Cuban leader dead, but JFK disagreed (“The one JFK conspiracy”). The CIA planned to invade Cuba, but Kennedy had assured the Cuban leader that he would not invade his country, ruining the CIA’s plan. Another reason the CIA might have wanted JFK dead was because “President Kennedy told Senator Mike Mansfield of his plans to tear the CIA “into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind” (Hager). The CIA had a reason to be worried about Kennedy’s plans to shut down their agency. The CIA looks very suspicious including the circumstances of their problem.
BAY OF PIGS It seems that the United States has been one of the most dominant, if not the most dominant, countries in the world, since the Declaration of Independence. Yet, on Monday, April 17, 1961, our government experienced incredible criticism and extreme embarrassment when Fidel Castro, dictator of Cuba, instantly stopped an invasion on the Cuban beach known as the Bay of Pigs. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, his advisors, and many Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials, made the largest error of their political careers. Once the decision was made to invade Cuba, to end Castro and his Communist government, Kennedy and his administration were never looked at in the same light nor trusted again.
Prados, John. Safe for Democracy The Secret Wars of the CIA. Chicago, IL: Ivan R Dee, Publisher, 2006.
In the Early Years: 1961-1963, Kennedy administration and Vietnam take flight. Assumptions behind the administration's decisions to increase U.S involvement in Vietnam strains two very important aspects that would gainsay obligation; one, the fall of South Vietnam to Communist control and the U.S military role and support. Discussion of knowledgeable ties to Southeast Asia emerged. Lack of governmental experts created obstacles. When the Berlin crisis occurred in 1961and during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, President Kennedy was able to turn to senior people like Llewellyn Thompson, Charles Bohlen and George Keenan, who knew the Soviets intimately. There were no senior officials in the Pentagon or State Department with comparable knowledge of Southeast Asia. Ultimately, the administration failed to critically analyze their assumptions and the foundations of their decisions, which inevitable ended in disaster.
Kennedy took office in January 1961 and he trusted the CIA and his advisors, and in April 1961 the exiles were on their way to Cuba. The plan failed terribly with Castro anticipating the attack. Cuba held the exiles hostage, and Kennedy was confronted with the issue of using American forces to liberate the hostages. Kennedy’s hawk advisors and the CIA all urged the use of American forces, but Kennedy was resilient against it.
Kennedy took full public responsibility for the Bay of Pigs disaster though secretly he blamed the CIA. Kennedy fired three of the CIA?s top men whom were responsible for the operation: Director Allen Dulles, who was later a member of the Warren Commission (Lifton 176), General Cabell, and Richard Bissel. (Morrissey) After the CIA lost time, effort, and people in the attempt to secure Cuba, the CIA became hostile and wanted to get rid of Kennedy to prevent him from losing more ground, especially in Vietnam.Adding to the fire were Kennedy?s secret commitments to pulling out of Vietnam and his threat to?Smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them in the wind? (Belzer 79)
... strategies, CIA run uprisings to out undesirable leader. Like previous overthrows, the Cold War regime changes occurred "only when economic interests coincided with ideological ones." The CIA is a dogmatic instrument used, but perceived as an independent immoral and dishonorable force during the Cold War, that lead regime in the fight against civil liberties and insurgence. In the regards to the CIA, Kinzer shines light to the similarities amongst the event and role of the CIA in the Chilean Coup against Salvador Allende in 1973. The CIA abided by the rules and did as they were told even, when personnel cautioned the intervention. Not only was the brutal dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet proof of this sentiment, but when the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigated the coup in years after, it found president Nixon, not the CIA, most responsible.
The FBI's size and jurisdiction during the second World War greatly increased and included intelligence matters abroad. At the end of World War II, and the introduction of the Atomic Bomb, the FBI began working on background security investigations for the White House and other government agencies, as well as internal security for the executive branch of the government. In 1945, the FBI raided a magazine company that was particularly interested in the Far East and discovered a multitude of classified state documents. Around this time, Americans feared the invasion of Communism, which triggered the FBI to investigate people within the U.S. whom were suspected of sabotage and undermining Democracy in the name of Communism.
There have been many attempts to explain the origins of the Cold War that developed between the capitalist West and the communist East after the Second World War. Indeed, there is great disagreement in explaining the source for the Cold War; some explanations draw on events pre-1945; some draw only on issues of ideology; others look to economics; security concerns dominate some arguments; personalities are seen as the root cause for some historians. So wide is the range of the historiography of the origins of the Cold War that is has been said "the Cold War has also spawned a war among historians, a controversy over how the Cold War got started, whether or not it was inevitable, and (above all) who bears the main responsibility for starting it" (Hammond 4). There are three main schools of thought in the historiography: the traditional view, known alternatively as the orthodox or liberal view, which finds fault lying mostly with the Russians and deems security concerns to be the root cause of the Cold War; the revisionist view, which argues that it is, in fact, the United States and the West to blame for the Cold War and not the Russians, and cites economic open-door interests for spawning the Cold War; finally, the post-revisionist view which finds fault with both sides in the conflict and points to issues raised both by the traditionalists as well as the revisionists for combining to cause the Cold War. While strong arguments are made by historians writing from the traditionalist school, as well as those writing from the revisionist school, I claim that the viewpoint of the post-revisionists is the most accurate in describing the origins of the Cold War.
to collect and analyse information on threats to US security as well. to perform other functions, which was by undermining the enemy by covert means of a. During the Truman presidency the CIA powers were rarely used, but once Eisenhower came to office this attitude changed and the The CIA expanded its operations greatly under the influence of Eisenhower. The biggest success of the CIA is said to have been the overthrow of the left-wing government in Guatemala, 1954 and also the overthrow of the left-wing government of Allende in Chile, 1973.
...e community have had conflicting views and opposing agendas. Lack of cooperation and communication between intelligence agencies; such as the FBI and the CIA refusing to share information prior to the terrorist attacks of 2001, resulted in limited information and failure on the part of the intelligence community and policy decisions regarding US safeguards against terrorist.
knowledge of the CIA and who would later would be involved in the clash between the
The CIA is one of the U.S. foreign inteligency agencies, responsible for getting and analyzing information about foreign government, corporations, individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the U.S. government. The State Department's Bureau or inteligence and reserch and theDefense Department'sdefense inteligence agency comprise the other two. Its headquarters is inLangley, Virginia, across the Potomac River from D.C. The Agency, created in 1947 by President Harry S. Trueman, is a descendant of the Office of stratigic Services(OSS) of World War 2. The OSS was dissolved in October 1945 but William J. Jonavan, the creator of the OSS, had submitted a proposal to President Roosevelt in 1944. He called for a new organization having direct Presidential supervision, "which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies." Despite strong opposition from the military, the State Department, and the FBI, Truman established the Central Intelligence Group in January 1946. Later under the National Security Act of 1947, the National Security council and the Central Intelligence Agency were established.
The case study counterintelligence operation that I will be using is that of Aldrich Ames. During his time with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) he compromised hundreds of operations and passed top secret and other sensitive information to the KGB and the Russian, SVR. Because of this, it resulted in the deaths of numerous people because he exposed their true identities. The majority of US spies were compromises, and the U.S. essentially had to start over their network because of Ames in the Soviet Union.
Throughout the years most country's governments have established some sort of secret police. No matter what the government called it, whether it is the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or her Majesty's secret service (MI6), whatever name the government used, the international term of "secret police" could always be applied. Many agencies of secret police have had their success and failures, some more than others. The KGB, which in English means "the Committee of Public Safety," has had their share of both successes and failures. Most secret police agencies have been used primarily to obtain information from other countries. This was also a primary goal for the KGB, but one of their other goals, which was just as important, was to keep unwanted outside information from the Russian people. This was only one out of many the KGB's objectives. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to prove that the actions of the KGB were, all in all, a success.