Central Intelligence

By intelligence officials for intelligent people

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is one of the most fascinating yet least understood intelligence gathering organizations in the world

Explores the Central Intelligence Agency, including operation, history, and functions.

The Central Intelligence Agency is essential in the fight to keep America safe from foreign attacks. This two-volume work traces through facts and documents the history of the CIA, from the people involved to the operations conducted for national security. This two-volume reference work offers both students and general-interest readers a definitive resource that examines the impact the CIA has had on world events throughout the Cold War and beyond. From its intervention in Guatemala in 1954, through the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam War, the Iran-Contra Affair, and its key role in Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, this objective, apolitical work covers all of this controversial intelligence agency's most notable successes and failures. The content focuses on describing how a U.S. government organization that is unlike any other conducts covert warfare, surreptitiously collects information, and conducts espionage. The work allows for easy reference of former CIA operations and spies, looking at the positive and negative aspects of each operation and the "why" and "how" of its execution. The second volume provides documentation that supports and amplifies more than 200 cross-referenced entries. Readers will be able to understand the reasons behind the CIA's various actions, perceive how the agency's role has evolved across its 75-year history, and intelligently consider the viability and future of the CIA.

The book is about the history of the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) from the foundation in 1947 to the ultimate events. U.S. President Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 establishing the CIA. The National Security Act charged the CIA with coordinating the nation's intelligence activities and correlating, evaluating and disseminating intelligence affecting national security.

President Harry Truman created the job of director of central intelligence (DCI) in 1946 so that he and other senior administration officials could turn to one person for foreign intelligence briefings. The DCI was the head of the Central Intelligence Group until 1947, when he became the director of the newly created Central Intelligence Agency. This book profiles each DCI and explains how they performed in their community role, that of enhancing cooperation among the many parts of the nation's intelligence community and reporting foreign intelligence to the president. The book also discusses the evolving expectations that U.S. presidents through George W. Bush placed on their foreign intelligence chiefs. Although head of the CIA, the DCI was never a true national intelligence chief with control over the government's many arms that collect and analyze foreign intelligence. This limitation conformed to President Truman's wishes because he was wary of creating a powerful and all-knowing intelligence chief in a democratic society. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress and President Bush decided to alter the position of DCI by creating a new director of national intelligence position with more oversight and coordination of the government's myriad programs. Thus this book ends with Porter Goss in 2005, the last DCI. Douglas Garthoff's book is a unique and important study of the nation's top intelligence official over a roughly fifty-year period. His work provides the detailed historical framework that is essential for all future studies of how the U.S. intelligence community has been and will be managed.