Intelligence and Espionage

Washington, D.C., September 10, 2001 – Mention of the Central Intelligence Agency generally elicits visions of espionage and covert action operations. It may also produce images of the multitude of finished intelligence products the agency turns out – from the tightly controlled President's Daily Brief, available only to the president and a select circle of advisers, to a number of less restricted intelligence assessments. The CIA's role in the application of science and technology to the art of intelligence is far less appreciated.

Related Postings

Torture Report Finally Released
December 9, 2014

The Pentagon’s Counterspies
September 17, 2007

The Interrogation Documents
July 13, 2004

More Archive Resources on U.S. Intelligence:

U.S. Intelligence Project

Operation Desert Storm: Ten Years After

The NRO Declassified

The National Security Agency Declassified

U.S. Satellite Imagery, 1960-1999

The US Intelligence Community By Jeffrey T. Richelson
The US Intelligence Community By Jeffrey T. Richelson
 

Washington, D.C., May 23, 2001 – A key part of the Central Intelligence Agency’s mission, since its creation in 1947, has been the conduct of human intelligence operations – which have included the recruitment of foreign nationals to conduct espionage as well the debriefing of defectors and other individuals with access to information of value. The primary focus of such HUMINT operations has been strategic – the collection of information relevant to national policymakers.

Washington, D.C., April 23, 2001 – On Friday, April 20, 2001, a Peruvian Air Force jet, acting on intelligence supplied by a U.S. intelligence plane, shot down a civilian aircraft that was mistakenly suspected of being part of a drug trafficking operation. An American missionary and her infant daughter were killed in a hail of gunfire, and the Bush administration immediately suspended all U.S. drug interdiction flights over Peru.

Washington, D.C., April 9, 2001 –The ongoing Chinese-American controversy over the EP-3 aircraft that landed on Hainan Island on 31 March 2001 is the latest moment in a long and complex history of U.S. aerial reconnaissance activity over and near Chinese territory. During the Cold War days of the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA flew U-2 and other aircraft over Chinese territory, with many of the flights piloted by Taiwanese airmen.1 Other military agencies, the U.S. Navy and the U.S.

Washington, D.C. -- During the early morning hours (Baghdad time) of January 17, 1991, the United States and its allies initiated Operation Desert Storm in accord with United Nations resolutions and U.S. government policy directives that authorized the use of force to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The National Security Archive is today placing a collection of declassified and unclassified documents concerning Desert Storm on its web site. The documents primarily focus on the intelligence, space support, Scud-hunting, and stealth (F-117A) elements of the conflict.

Washington, D.C., November 29, 2000 – The CIA history of operation TPAJAX excerpted below was first disclosed by James Risen of The New York Times in its editions of April 16 and June 18, 2000, and posted in this form on its website at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html This extremely important document is one of the last major pieces of the puzzle explaining American and British roles in the August 1953 coup against Iranian Premier Mohammad Mossadeq.

Washington D.C.: The National Security Archive today hailed the release of more than 16,000 secret U.S. records on the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, and Washington’s role in the violent overthrow of the Allende government and the advent of the military regime to power. The release, totaling over 50,000 pages of State Department, CIA, White House, Defense and Justice Department records, represents the fourth and final “tranche” of the Clinton Administration’s special Chile Declassification Project.

Washington D.C.: Under pressure from the Clinton White House and human rights groups, the CIA has agreed to release more than 700 documents on covert operations in Chile that the Directorate of Operations had refused to declassify last August, according to the non-profit foreign policy center, the National Security Archive. The CIA documents have already been turned over to the Department of State for final processing and are slated to be publicly released on November 13.

On Friday, October 6, the National Security Archive at The George Washington University published a newly declassified United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID). This version of USSID 18, issued in July 1993, currently governs the National Security Agency’s interception of communications involving U.S. persons. Until publication of the directive, which was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act on September 20, 2000, the only version of USSID 18 available to the public dated back to 1980.