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. military could not have a presence in under the Geneva Convention. 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.įrom the 1950s through the 1970s, 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.S. While the CIA has certainly expanded America’s intelligence apparatus-the agency currently has some 50,000 staffers-it has not always been successful in its operations around the world.įor example, declassified government records suggest that the CIA was behind the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The CIA headquarters are in Langley, Virginia. Current Deputy Director Gina Haspel is a career-long intelligence officer. The current CIA Director is Mike Pompeo, a former four-term Congressman from Kansas and CEO of an aerospace firm. Panetta was in charge when the agency’s “harsh interrogation” techniques-used in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks-were publicly revealed. The post of CIA Director has been held by a number of important figures, including former Democratic Congressman Leon Panetta, who was President Barack Obama’s first CIA Director. Consider, for example, Benedict Arnold’s failed plot to turn the American fort at West Point, New York, over to the British during the Revolutionary War. The United States government has always had spies working against foreign interests, just as our enemies have used espionage against America. Though shrouded in secrecy, some CIA activities-such as covert military and cybersecurity operations-have drawn public scrutiny and criticism. efforts to combat the Axis powers during that conflict, and in the Cold War that followed. The controversial spy agency’s history dates back to World War II, and it played a key role in U.S. government agency tasked primarily with gathering intelligence and international security information from foreign countries. The CIA, or Central Intelligence Agency, is the U.S.
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