Harold D. Neuland, May 6, , with attached newspaper articles Congressman Harold F. Youngblood, R-Detroit to Harry S. Truman, March 8, , with attached petition reply from Matthew J. Truman by Merle Miller. CIA Background Information opens in a new window. CIA Documents to Examine opens in a new window. CIA Discussion Questions opens in a new window. CIA Graphic Organizer opens in a new window.
Download Handouts. CIA report on Iran, October opens in a new window. Letter from Susan Lester to Harry S. The Council itself included the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, and other members such as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency , who met at the White House to discuss both long-term problems and more immediate national security crises. A small NSC staff was hired to coordinate foreign policy materials from other agencies for the President.
Each President has accorded the NSC with different degrees of importance and has given the NSC staff varying levels of autonomy and influence over other agencies such as the Departments of State and Defense. President Dwight D. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson preferred to work more informally through trusted associates. Under President Richard M. However, what was sorely lacking was a centralized agency within the government that could sort through information gathered from spies working on behalf of the country, analyze it and report it to relevant officials.
With that in mind, President Franklin D. Donovan to head the fledgling agency. The agency had some 12, staffers in Washington , D. Within a year of that decision—and after the beginning of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union—the new president had a change of heart, though. This position was generally filled by leaders from various fields, including the military, politics or business.
A number of notable people held this post, including the first, Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, and former President George H. Bush , who served for two years in George Tenet was the DCI from to , and some hold him, and the agency under his leadership, responsible for intelligence failures in the lead-up to the terrorist attacks of September 11, In , Congress passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which overhauled the leadership structure of the intelligence services and placed all of them—including the Department of Homeland Security and the CIA—under the auspices of the newly created position of Director of National Intelligence.
Current Deputy Director Gina Haspel is a career-long intelligence officer. For example, declassified government records suggest that the CIA was behind the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The agency recruited Cuban exiles living in the United States and trained them in military tactics for an invasion of the island nation that had come under the leadership of communist Fidel Castro following a revolution.
From the s through the s, a CIA-operated cargo and passenger airline company—called Air America—was created to enable the agency to access the areas in Southeast Asia that the U.
Air America was developed to provide a means for the CIA to track the influence of Communist China in the region, including countries such as Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. However, reports suggest that agency operatives became involved with groups engaged in the Asian opium and heroin trade, and that Air America was used to ship drugs around the region.
MK-Ultra was a clandestine CIA project in place from to about , during which the agency conducted hundreds of illicit experiments—sometimes on unwitting U. Details of MK-Ultra and other Cold War-era programs became public in , during a series of investigations into widespread illegal CIA activities—including assassinations of foreign leaders—around the world and within the United States.
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