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Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers through means of covert psychological, cyber, and social warfare using non-military...
Timeline of Events
1946
1.22.1946
Creation of the ''Central Intelligence Group'', forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.
1947
7.26.1947
Cold War: U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947 into United States law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, United States Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States National Security Council.
1953
4.13.1953
CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program MKULTRA.
1961
4.17.1961
Bay of Pigs Invasion: A group of CIA financed and trained Cuban refugees lands at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.
1968
7.1.1968
The CIA's Phoenix Program is officially established.
1972
6.23.1972
Watergate Scandal: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon and White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman are taped talking about using the Central Intelligence Agency to obstruct the Federal Bureau of Investigation's investigation into the Watergate break-ins.
1977
7.20.1977
The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind control experiments.
1981
11.23.1981
Iran-Contra Affair: Ronald Reagan signs the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the Central Intelligence Agency the authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
1994
4.28.1994
Former Central Intelligence Agency counter-intelligence officer and analyst Aldrich Ames pleads guilty to giving U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia.
1996
5.6.1996
The body of former CIA director William Colby is found washed up on a riverbank in southern Maryland, eight days after he disappeared.