TinWiki: Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, is the branch of the United States Government that deals with intelligence, counterintelligence, espionage, and covert operations. The CIA has been implicated in a number of conspiracies--half of them documented and well established, others on the fringes of reality.
No other U.S. government institution has been the topic of so much speculation, suspicion, or fascination as the CIA has.

Early History

The CIA came into being as a result of the National Security Act of 1947, signed by Harry Truman. Prior to that, intelligence activities were run by the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, which was dissolved in 1945 after the end of World War II. However, Major General William J. Donovan, the wartime head of the OSS, suggested to President Roosevelt in 1944 that a bigger, independent agency was needed to collect and process all intelligence, as well as control all activities related to overt and covert intelligence operations.

In 1946, Truman established the Central Intelligence Group. There were massive objections to an independent intelligence group in the U.S. government, mainly from the State Department, the military branches, and the FBI. However, this did not deter Truman, and in September of 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council were born, with Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter becoming the agency's first head.

Former Nazis

One of the first things the CIA did was collect and recruit German scientists who had worked for the Nazis under the guise of Project Paperclip, as well as recruit several former Nazi operatives to become informants and agents. The CIA were willing to forget past grievances with the Nazis because the looming cold war with the Soviet Union created a need for experienced and staunch anti-Communists. It is believed that this early influence of the Nazis in the CIA led to the agency being involved in some of the most disturbing and troubling experiments on humans.

Public Law 110

In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act was passed, granting the CIA increased powers of surveillance and data collection, and also granted the agency exemption from many of the audits, checks, and balances required of other government institutions. The CIA did not have to disclose its use of funds or any of its operations. Few in the government bothered to dig too closely into the CIA, as it was believed to be a necessary evil in combating KGB activities globally.

Cold War

The height of CIA prestige and unaccountability was during the Cold War, when fears of Russian and Communist subversion was at its highest. It was during this time that some of the CIA's most notorious and questionable operations occurred, such as Project MKULTRA and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. During the 1950's, the CIA also held an intense interest in the UFO phenomenon, but was more interested in the value of UFOs as psychological and intelligence warfare tools than the actual nature of the phenomenon, leading it to set up the Robertson Panel.

Project MKULTRA

Project MKULTRA was the CIA's most notorious mind control project. It wasn't brought to public attention until the Church Committee in 1975 as a result of the uncovering of CIA activities and Watergate.

The inspiration for Project MKULTRA was the discovery of brainwashing and mind control techniques used both in the Korean War by the North Koreans and those used by the KGB on prisoners of war during the Korean conflict. The CIA became interested in the potential of this new form of covert warfare for use on its own captives, as well as the potential for use of mind control on foreign leaders. Project MKULTRA was born on April 13, 1953 at the behest of then CIA director, Allen Dulles. Dr. Sydney Gottlieb was in charge of the project.

The project involved experimentation on often involuntary and unwitting subjects, both Americans and foreigners, often recruited through the various fronts used by the CIA, but also through universities, public health facilities, the poor, the homeless, racial minorities, the mentally ill, prostitutes and their customers, and military servicemen. The most common experiments were involving the use of mind-altering drugs, especially '___'. Often, the experiments were quite sadistic, including overdoses of drugs, psychological abuse, blackmail, and sensory depravation while under heavy doses of drugs.

In the 1960's, MKULTRA became MKSEARCH to reflect the project's new focus on seeking out a new truth drug to be used in interrogations.

Robertson Panel

After the Washington Nationals UFO Incident the CIA was concerned with the UFO phenomenon. The Robertson Panel was set up to determine the actual threat of UFO's to national security. The committee concluded that while UFOs posed no physical threat to national security, the psychological threat was real, and that the Soviets could use false UFO reports to clog up communication channels and interfere with a proper response to an invasion.

The panel also recommended surveillance and infiltration of citizen UFO groups, as they were considered to be easy tools of KGB operatives for provoking public panic.

Bay of Pigs Invasion

The CIA, focused on removing Fidel Castro, the communist leader of Cuba, began to recruit Cuban exiles and immigrants to launch an invasion of Cuba to topple Castro and set up a pro-U.S. regime. The CIA then funded and trained this army for an invasion of mainland Cuba.

The invasion was a disaster.












External Links

Offical CIA Website
CIA Freedom of Information
ARTICLES ABOUT THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Secrets of the CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
UC Santa Barbara Students Drive Out CIA - California IndyMedia, Nov 16th, 2007
The CIA's favorite form of torture - by Mark Benjamin, Salon News, June 7, 2007
CIA dissenters aided secret prisons report: author - Marcin Grajewski, Reuters, Jul 17, 2007
Washington abuzz with talk of dragonfly spies - The Sidney Morning Herald, October 12, 2007

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