Page 115 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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Central Intelligence Agency———89

The damaged U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, after a truck bombing that killed 63. The attack, on April 18, 1983, wiped
out the entire Central Intelligence Agency Middle East contingent, including station chief Kenneth Haas.
Source: Defense Visual Information Center.

Security Act, which established the NSC and the be sponsored by a foreign state. Revelations about
CIA. The CIA grew out of the World War II Office of brutal CIA activities in Vietnam and assassination plots
Strategic Services (OSS), run by General William against several leaders, including Fidel Castro and
“Wild Bill” Donavan, who recruited from Wall Street Patrice Lumumba, also marred the agency’s reputation
and Ivy League schools to form an elite intelligence and indicated a need for reform.
group based on the East Coast, with an emphasis on In the post-Watergate 1970s, the U.S. Congress
covert action abroad. Originally, the CIA operated authorized the Church and Pike Committee to inves-
only outside the United States and was prohibited tigate the CIA; its findings led to a series of direc-
from collecting intelligence about domestic activities tives. In 1976, President Gerald Ford prohibited CIA
of its citizens. Domestic intelligence was the respon- assassinations of political leaders. In 1978, President
sibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Jimmy Carter signed the Foreign Intelligence
Most CIA operations during its early years involved Surveillance Act, which curtailed the CIA’s ability to
supporting anticommunist forces in foreign countries. gather foreign intelligence within the United States.
By the 1970s, however, the CIA was working inside the Some restrictions were lifted, however, by Executive
United States. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Order No. 12333, signed by President Ronald Reagan
the CIA, through Operation CHAOS, assembled moun- in December 1981. This order allowed domestic
tains of intelligence, domestically, on war protestors electronic surveillance and physical searches in
and black nationalists. The CIA justified its actions by response to a growing threat of Soviet spies within
maintaining that such antigovernment activities must U.S. borders.