Digging for Hard Facts on a Shadowy Agency: The CIA

By Russ Gifford

Join Russ Gifford for a look at the known history of an agency purposely shrouded in secrecy. We will trace the early years of the CIA, the highs of the 1950s to 1960s, and the massive changes following 9/11. As the story is literally America's Past, Present, and Future, this is a topic that discusses facts in the face of fantasy and brings you the reality of the world of the 21st century.

"I needed… the President needed a central organization that would bring all the various intelligence reports we were getting in those days - and there must have been a dozen of them - so the President would get one report on what was going on in various parts of the world. That made sense and that's why I went ahead and set up what they call the Central Intelligence Agency.

"Now, as far as I can make out, those fellows in the CIA don't just report on wars and the like - they go out and make their own." -- Harry Truman, shortly after the Bay of Pigs.

 

 

Part 1: How - and Why - the CIA Developed

Truman’s initial intention was not an action agency but simply someone to provide the President with a concise, considered evaluation of what was happening in the world. Why and how did that change?

Well, we can’t know the answer to that unless we get some hard intel, so in this session, we will dig for the facts on the creation of the CIA and how it developed. The key to this journey will be numerous details we did not know as they happened due to the secretive nature of an agency where nothing is public, including its budget. We will look at the first stage of "the Agency” as it became known to insiders. Truman’s successors had much different expectations for the spy agency.

Yes, we will hear tales of secret agents, shady developments, and operations where the Secretary would certainly have disavowed any knowledge of their existence. But their excesses - and the ease in which they were taken in by a clearly political operation.

But within a decade, the cowboys were back in control at the agency. The laws that prevented a public alignment with another political operation held, however. Until 9/11, when the operation changed dramatically.

Part 2: Intelligence Agencies in the Post 9/11 World

The CIA missed alerting everyone to the biggest event of their lifetime - the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. The result was a massive reorganization of the Intelligence agency. What were the new roles for the CIA? Who do they report to now? What successes have they posted in the almost quarter century since.