CIA

[[File:CIA.svg|thumb|165px|Knowledge is power. Power means security.]]{{uspolitics}}{{conspiracynav}}
{{hatnote|"CIA" can also refer to Christians In Action. This article is about a U.S. government agency.}}
<center><big>'''Release version (Declassified)'''</big></center>

<center><small><small><small><span style = "color: #aaaaaa">Psst! You can reveal the blacked-out text by highlighting it.</span></small></small></small></center>

The '''CIA''', or <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">Central [[Intelligence (government)|Intelligence]] Agency</span>  is the arm of the <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">United States</span> [[government]] in charge of intelligence gathering for military and other purposes.

Piece of advice: Never refer to a <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">CIA</span> employee as an "agent." They are an "officer."  The agents are the ones <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">giving information to the officers.</span>  

The <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">CIA</span> is charged with providing all decision makers in the <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">US</span> with <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">the intelligence needed to do so</span>.  It was set up to be ''the'' foreign <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">intelligence agency</span> for the <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">United States</span>; however, due to the fragmentary nature of the <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">US</span> political system, there were soon many, many others.  Today, the <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">CIA</span> is just one of many <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">intelligence services</span> vying for resources and the attention of policy makers.  Until this decade, however, the <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">DCI</span> (Director of <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">Central Intelligence</span>) was still considered the top figure in the <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">intelligence</span> field; after <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">9/11, Congress passed a law</span> creating a <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">new post above the DCI</span>, the "Director of <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">National Intelligence."</span>  In theory, the <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">DNI</span> is above all <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">intelligence</span> agencies, but is instead a (slightly) more glorified and (vastly) more removed <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">Director of Central Intelligence</span>, one more beholden to the <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">White House</span> than the actual <span style="color: #000000; background: #000000; padding: 1px;">CIA</span>; the latter was pissed about this.

==Questionable things they did==
{{cquote|Where else could a red-blooded American boy [[lie]], [[Extrajudicial punishment|kill]], cheat, steal, [[rape]], and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?|||Private letter from retired MKULTRA leader George Hunter White to retired MKULTRA head {{wpl|Sid Gottlieb}}<ref>''Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science'' by Benjamin Breen (2024) Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 1538722372.</ref>{{rp|289}}}}
While the CIA is in charge of gathering intelligence and conducting covert operations to defend the United States, not all of the things they did are justifiable.

Here is a list of actions known to have been done by the CIA:
*Orchestrating the 1949 [[Syria]]n coup, installing a client regime in the interest of constructing the Trans-Arabian Pipeline.<ref>Higgins, Patrick (2023). "Gunning for Damascus". Middle East Critique: 220.</ref>
*Conducting unethical and involuntary human experimentation on men, women and children under Project [[MKULTRA]] (1953-1973), with such methods as psychological [[torture]], bizarre [[medical]] experiments, [[rape]] and physical abuse, driving many of them permanently [[insane]].
*Removing the democratically elected (although increasingly authoritarian) [[Mohammad Mossadegh]], replacing him with the [[Shah]] in [[Iran]] (1953), and creating SAVAK (Pahlavi's [[secret police]]). The [[blowback|subsequent]] (26 years later) Iranian Revolution resulted in Pahlavi's defeat and the rule of the [[Ayatollah]] [[Ruhollah Khomeini]], thereby turning Iran into an Islamic [[theocracy]].
*Staging a military coup in Guatemala in 1954 against the democratically elected president Jacobo Árbenz. Human rights groups estimate 200,000 were killed and 40-50,000 "disappeared" under successive US-backed regimes. The CIA supported and worked inside a Guatemalan army intelligence unit called G-2 which operated a network of torture centers with crematoriums to dispose of the victims.<ref>Allan Nairn. The Nation, 4/17/1995</ref>
*Failing to eliminate Fidel Castro (1960-1965). ({{wpl|CIA assassination attempts on Fidel Castro|Over 600 times!}})
*[[Dwight Eisenhower]] directly ordered CIA Director Allen Dulles to "eliminate" Patrice Lumumba, Congolese politician fighting for independence from [[Belgium]], and Allen Dulles sent one of its scientists to the Congo in September 1960 "with a vial of deadly poison that could be injected into something Lumumba might eat." They failed to even get the vial to Lumumba, but Lumumba was assassinated anyway by Mubutu Seso Seko, Lumumba's army chief who the CIA directly supported and propped up.<ref>https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol-58-no-3/pdfs-vol-58-no-3/Robarge-FRUS%20and%20the%20US%20in%20Congo-1960-68-12Sep2014.pdf</ref><ref>https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/08/08/did-ike-authorize-a-murder/62252bba-24ea-4290-a316-69bf647c0a94/?utm_term=.de2d524f5142</ref>
*The {{wpl|Phoenix Program}} (1967-1972), a covert torture, assassination and terrorism campaign in Vietnam. 
*Helping [[Richard Nixon]] spy on the government (including [[Henry Kissinger]]), c. 1969-1973. Nixon's Plumbers were former CIA spooks like Howard Hunt, Jim McCord, and Eugenio Martinez .
*Assisting in the rise of [[Augusto Pinochet]] by ousting [[Salvador Allende]] in [[Chile]] in 1973. This is after spending more in 1964 in support of Allende's electoral opponent than was spent on [[LBJ|Johnson]]'s and [[Barry Goldwater|Goldwater]]'s 1964 electoral campaigns combined.<ref>[http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/pdfs94th/94intelligence_activities_VII.pdf As per Karl Inderfurth]</ref> The CIA also trained Pinochet's secret police (D.I.N.A.) who tortured and murdered thousands of Chileans.<ref>http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20000919/</ref>
**Giving covert support to Operation Condor, a mass murder campaign initiated by Pinochet in which six South American regimes participated. 400,000 were imprisoned and 80,000 killed or "disappeared". Latin intelligence chiefs communicated through a CIA telecommunications database (CONDORTEL) and were on the CIA payroll.<ref>http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010306/</ref>
*At least collaborating with and funding right-wing terrorist groups in [[NATO]] member states ([[Italy]] in particular), 1978-1982, if not running them entirely.<ref>[https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85S00316R000100120006-2.pdf Italian Counterterrorism: Policies and Capabilities] (2011/01/31) ''Central Intelligence Agency''.</ref>
*Helping [[Ronald Reagan]] with his sordid [[Iran-Contra|Contra affairs]] (1981-1986).
**Was involved in terrorist activities in [[Nicaragua]] during the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations.<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Nicaragua</ref>
*Training and funding the secret police of Chadian dictator {{wpl|Hissene Habre}} (dubbed "Africa's Pinochet" by human rights groups) and lavishing his regime with covert aid as a bulwark against Libya from 1982-1990.<ref>http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/24/our-man-in-africa/</ref> A UN-sponsored truth commission holds him responsible for systematic torture and up to 40,000 political murders.<ref>http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/09/11/qa-case-hiss-ne-habr-extraordinary-african-chambers-senegal</ref>
*Collaborating with Cuban exile terrorist groups, who attempted to "liberate" Cuba by bombing a night club full of German tourists in 1997 in Havana. Despite all the participants being known, none have been prosecuted.
*Torturing prisoners in the [[War on Terror]] (2001-).<ref>[http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014.html The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on CIA's use of torture.]</ref>
*Spying on the [[US Senate|Senate]] Intelligence Committee (2009), though typical of the agency, denying it first.<ref>[http://www.cnet.com/news/cia-admits-to-spying-on-senate-computers/ CIA admits to spying on Senate committee], CNET</ref>
*Trying to advertise themselves as a [[DEI|"progressive" employer]] (2021): [[Poe's Law]]?<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X55JPbAMc9g Humans of CIA] by the Central Intelligence Agency  (Mar 25, 2021)''YouTube''.</ref> 
*Collaboration (at minimum) with drug traffickers all around the world at various times with varying levels of evidence ({{wpl|CIA drug trafficking allegations}})
<gallery>
File:Rios Montt.png|[[Efraín Ríos Montt]], Guatemalan ruler pictured in 1960
File:Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.png||The Shah seen here cosplaying as a [[czar]]
File:President Ronald Reagan with President Hissène Habré of Chad.jpg|[[Ronald Reagan]] with Habré in the White House
Image:Augusto Pinochet.jpg|Pinochet, here seen dressed as his wrestling persona, "M. Bison"
Image:Luis Posada Carriles - 1963.jpg|Luis Posada Carriles in uniform of the [[United States Army]], during his stay at Fort Benning, [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], in 1962
</gallery>

==Institutional function (plausible deniability)==
Pretty much all of the operations listed above (and many more omitted ones) are in the service of extending the power and influence of the Executive branch of the US government (incl. by proxy that of the corporate elites backing that government). Since the CIA's actions so abundantly often undermine democracy and human rights which the US government publicly professes to promote one of the CIA's main institutional roles within the US power structure may be boiled down to giving the Executive branch plausible deniability to deflect charges of criminality and immorality from the public and shifting the blame for unlawful or immoral activities onto the supposedly independent acting agency or rogue elements within it.<ref>https://books.google.de/books?id=D4ZxhXwx19gC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=cia+function+plausible+deniability&source=bl&ots=XQiypNs5F1&sig=F26MwB0nyW1_WuZVqvLw1k2eyFY&hl=de&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwifqM6DzfPaAhUKB8AKHdntAWU4ChDoAQhSMAU#v=onepage&q=cia%20function%20plausible%20deniability&f=false</ref> This doctrine was very much in full force at the height of the Cold War. Attempts have been made to rein plausible deniability in and to try to put the agencies activities under more direct presidential control after the Watergate Scandal.<ref>http://edition.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/03/31/libya.presidential.finding/index.html</ref>
A couple of CIA lawyers even wanted to do away with that concept completely since to them it reinforced the notion that the agency should be tightly supervised to guarantee it would abide by US and international law. They in essence followed the logic of Jack Nicholson's Col. Jessup: "Hey, our work is dirty, so just look away and don't complain when we come home with dirty hands. Our propaganda operations are for the greater good."<ref>https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/may/02/cia-presidential-plausible-deniablity/</ref>
At least since the W. Bush administration one tactic to elude public scrutiny and prosecution is to invoke a supposed threat to national security if journalists or other branches of government look for paper trails documenting orders and directives that led to unlawful activities, e. g. that of torturers and their superiors in Iraq.

==Electronic Reading Room==
The CIA publishes declassified records readable online as scanned PDF documents, often made available via {{w|Freedom of Information Act}} (FOIA) requests.<ref>[https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/what-electronic-reading-room "What is the Electronic Reading Room?"]. ''Central Intelligence Agency''.</ref> Although this can yield significant historical value, one should be discerning because these kinds of programs can also be liable to misuse regarding hosted files that may not have originally been produced by the CIA itself; this can be as insignificant as whatever happened to show up in the agency's mailbox in 1970 or that an agent happened to shove in some filing cabinet. This was put on full display in 2020, when the [[FBI]]'s equivalent "FBI Records Vault" program responded to an FOIA request for mentions of ''[[The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion]]'', which yielded copies of the text (along with other [[antisemitic]] [[propaganda]] plus letters urging the agency to investigate) that had been mailed to the FBI by random citizens.<ref>Yair Rosenberg (August 21, 2020). [https://yair.substack.com/p/why-the-fbi-tweeted-about-the-elders "Why The FBI Tweeted About The Elders of Zion"]. ''Yair's Newsletter'' (Substack).</ref><ref>(August 20, 2020). [https://archive.ph/bQX2x "FBI Archive Tweets Protocols of the Elders of Zion PDF, Sparking Anger and Confusion"]. ''Haaretz''.</ref><ref name="WaPoFBIvault"/> The automated release of a copy of the ''Protocols'' via a [[Twitter]] post became misinterpreted as a statement by the FBI supportive of the [[black propaganda]] text, even though the full release included repudiations by the agency (even by [[J. Edgar Hoover]]) against the hoax.<ref name="WaPoFBIvault">{{Cite news |last=Peiser |first=Jaclyn |date=2020-08-20 |title=‘Wildly irresponsible’: FBI bashed for tweeting link to anti-Semitic ‘Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’ |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/20/fbi-apology-twitter-anti-semitism/ |work=Washington Post |issn=0190-8286}}</ref><ref>(August 19, 2020). [https://www.adl.org/resources/news/fbi-shared-antisemitic-protocols-twitter "The FBI 'Shared' Antisemitic Protocols on Twitter"]. ''Anti-Defamation League''.</ref>

Even documents based on genuine government projects could be [[bullshit]]. As of 2021, [[TikTok]] users had discovered CIA files teaching them how to [[time travel]],<ref>Thom Dunn (March 17, 2021). [https://boingboing.net/2021/03/17/tiktok-users-just-re-discovered-the-cias-telepathic-time-travel-documents.html "TikTok users just re-discovered the CIA's telepathic time travel documents"]. ''Boing Boing''.</ref><ref>Thobey Campion (February 16, 2021). [https://www.vice.com/en/article/how-to-escape-the-confines-of-time-and-space-according-to-the-cia/ "How to Escape the Confines of Time and Space According to the CIA"]. ''Vice News''.</ref> which is how we've recovered all the {{w|Doctor Who missing episodes|lost episodes of ''Doctor Who''}} (probably).

==Further reading==
* ''Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II''. Common Courage Press (1995). [[Special:Booksources/1-56751-052-3|ISBN 1-56751-052-3]]

==See also==
*[[FBI]]
*[[Information Awareness Office]]
*[[Blowback]]
*[[Agent 711]]

==External links==
*[https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/ Ok, at least their World Factbook is pretty good.]
*[http://mashable.com/2014/06/06/cia-first-tweet/ And now they have a Twitter account] to keep up with the young'uns.

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Authoritarianism]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theorist scapegoats]]
[[Category:Coups]]
[[Category:Crimes against humanity]]
[[Category:Government incompetence]]
[[Category:Government surveillance]]
[[Category:Terrorism]]
[[Category:United States government]]

Categories: Authoritarianism, Conspiracy theorist scapegoats, Coups, Crimes against humanity, Government incompetence, Government surveillance, Terrorism, United States government