Facts About The CIA

The CIA or Central Intelligence Agency is an intelligence agency of the United States government similar to the British MI6.

Its objectives include obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons, and reporting such information to the branches of the United States Government.

Another function of the CIA is propaganda or public relations, overt and covert information dissemination, both true and false, and influencing others to decide in favor of the United States Government.

The third function of the CIA is what has widely been referred to "as the hidden hand of the U.S. government." This generally involves engaging in covert operations at the direction of the President.

Interestingly this last function is what has caused most controversy for the CIA, raising questions about the legality, morality, effectiveness, and intelligence of such operations.

The CIA has been successful on thousands of missions that remain secret. We actually only get to hear of the failures. Like the CIA-organized Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba in 1961. The failed para-military invasion embarrassed the CIA and the United States world-wide. Later, the CIA several times tried and failed to assassinate Fidel Castro.

On the propaganda front, since World War II, the CIA has broadened spy and counterspy missions in Europe and around the World. It has also led infiltration, propaganda and “sponsoring” missions in various intellectual circles with the support of important American cultural institutes.

But mostly CIA mission and activities mostly get very dirty and complicated. Several witnesses and persons in the know have insisted that the CIA has been involved in drug trafficking to fund illegal operations. In 1996 for instance, a journalist called Gary Wenn wrote a series of very well-researched articles for a famous American newspaper, the San Jose Mercury where he claimed that US aircrafts that supplied arms to the Contras in Nicaragua brought in cocaine to the United States on their return trips.

Faced with congressional and media criticism over the controversial stories, the San Jose Mercury News refused to stand by the story and retracted it and prevented Webb from doing any more investigative reporting. Webb ended up giving quitting journalism for good.

The CIA has of course come under stinging criticism for failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union and India's nuclear tests. But the biggest failure according to its' critics as the failure to see the September 11, 2001 attacks coming let alone forestalling them.

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