46 Fun Facts About CIA

The CIA's headquarters is in which Virginia community, whose name is shorthand for the agency itself?

Langley, in McLean in unincorporated Fairfax County, is shorthand for the CIA itself; Fort Meade is the NSA's home and Quantico the FBI's academy.

The CIA was established by which 1947 law?

The National Security Act of 1947 created the CIA alongside the National Security Council; the separate CIA Act of 1949 then let the agency keep its budget, staffing and organisation out of public disclosure.

Which wartime organisation, abolished by Truman in 1945, was the CIA's predecessor?

The Office of Strategic Services, the wartime spy and sabotage agency, was dissolved in October 1945; Truman set up the short-lived Central Intelligence Group in January 1946 before creating the CIA in 1947.

Which 'Wild Bill' headed the OSS and drafted the plan for a US intelligence service modelled on MI6?

William 'Wild Bill' Donovan led the OSS from 1942 to 1945; Roosevelt had first made him Coordinator of Information in July 1941, and British officer Dick Ellis is credited with drafting the blueprint.

Since 2004 the head of the CIA has reported to which official?

The 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act created the Director of National Intelligence, to whom the CIA director reports; before that the Director of Central Intelligence ran both the agency and the whole community.

Unlike the FBI, the CIA has no power to do what?

The CIA has no law-enforcement powers or domestic policing role; it focuses on foreign intelligence and has only limited authority to collect intelligence at home.

The CIA headquarters was named in 1999 after which former director who became president?

George H. W. Bush ran the agency for just 357 days in 1976-77; the Langley compound was dedicated as the George Bush Center for Intelligence in 1999.

The Old Headquarters Building's marble wall bears a Biblical quotation about what setting you free?

'And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free' (John 8:32) is carved in the lobby, chosen at the request of Allen Dulles.

Kryptos, the encrypted sculpture in the headquarters courtyard, was created by which artist in 1990?

Jim Sanborn's Kryptos, dedicated in 1990, carries four encrypted passages; the first three were cracked in the 1990s, and the fourth became one of the world's most famous unsolved ciphers.

Which venture-capital arm did the CIA set up in 1999 to invest in technology start-ups?

In-Q-Tel, founded in 1999 under director George Tenet, is a non-profit venture fund backing start-ups whose technology the CIA wants; Keyhole, later Google Earth, was one early bet.

Who was the CIA's first civilian director and its longest-serving?

Allen Dulles ran the CIA from 1953 to 1961, the longest tenure of any director; his brother John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower's Secretary of State and the namesake of Dulles airport.

The CIA codename for the 1953 coup that overthrew Iran's prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was what?

Operation Ajax (TPAJAX) was the CIA's name for the August 1953 coup; the MI6 side was Operation Boot, and Mosaddegh had nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, later BP.

The 1954 CIA-backed coup codenamed PBSuccess overthrew which Central American president?

Jacobo Árbenz resigned on 27 June 1954 after a CIA-backed force under Carlos Castillo Armas invaded; the 'Voice of Liberation' radio station convinced Guatemalans the rebel victory was already a done deal.

In which country had the CIA trained Brigade 2506 before the Bay of Pigs invasion?

The CIA trained the exile Brigade 2506 at camps in Guatemala; the ships sailed from Nicaragua, and Castro's forces crushed the landing within three days after Kennedy withheld further air support.

In Cuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion is known by the name of which beach where the fighting took place?

Cubans call it the Battle of Playa Girón, after the beach where the main force came ashore in the early hours of 17 April 1961; Playa Larga saw a secondary landing.

Which president forced the CIA director to resign after the Bay of Pigs?

Kennedy accepted Allen Dulles's resignation in November 1961; Dulles was later appointed to the Warren Commission investigating Kennedy's own assassination.

What was the codename of the post-Bay of Pigs sabotage campaign against Castro led by Lansdale and Harvey?

Operation Mongoose, run by Edward Lansdale with William Harvey's Task Force W, began in late 1961; by 1963 Desmond FitzGerald was tasking Rolando Cubela to kill Castro even as Kennedy explored peace overtures.

The U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, developed with the Air Force, was designed to fly above what altitude?

The idea was to stay beyond the reach of Soviet fighters, missiles and radar; a missile eventually proved otherwise.

Which CIA pilot was shot down in a U-2 over the Soviet Union in 1960?

Francis Gary Powers was shot down near Sverdlovsk on 1 May 1960 and swapped for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel on Berlin's Glienicke Bridge in February 1962.

The U-2's nickname is what?

Dragon Lady is the U-2's nickname; Blackbird, Warthog and Aardvark belong to the SR-71, A-10 and F-111 respectively.

Who headed Project MKUltra, the CIA's mind-control programme?

Sidney Gottlieb, head of the Technical Services Staff, ran MKUltra from its start on Allen Dulles's order in April 1953; the programme dosed unwitting subjects with drugs for over a decade.

What symbol marks each fallen officer on the Memorial Wall in the CIA headquarters lobby?

Each star carved into the white marble Memorial Wall of the Original Headquarters Building honours a CIA officer who died in the line of duty; many names are withheld from the accompanying Book of Honor.

Which CIA director ordered all MKUltra files destroyed in 1973, badly hampering later investigations?

Richard Helms ordered the MKUltra records destroyed in January 1973, shortly before leaving; he also wiped the secret tapes of meetings in his own office, and only a cache of financial records survived.

MKUltra's 'Subproject 68', involving 'psychic driving', took place at the Allan Memorial Institute in which city?

The Allan Memorial Institute is McGill University's psychiatric hospital in Montreal; there Donald Ewen Cameron played recorded messages to drugged patients for days on end.

In which country did the CIA's Phoenix Program of 1968-72 operate?

Phoenix ran in South Vietnam with the Saigon government, targeting what the agency called the Viet Cong Infrastructure, the political and administrative arm of the insurgency.

The internal 1973 compilation of the CIA's illegal activities is known by what nickname?

The Family Jewels, compiled on director James Schlesinger's order in 1973, catalogued illegal domestic surveillance, assassination plots and drug tests; Seymour Hersh's December 1974 exposé of them set off the Church and Pike inquiries.

The 1975 Senate committee that exposed MKUltra was chaired by a senator from which state?

Idaho senator Frank Church chaired the committee; with the House's Pike Committee and the Rockefeller Commission it made 1975 the 'Year of Intelligence'.

Operation CHAOS, exposed by the Church Committee, involved CIA officers infiltrating what?

CHAOS, begun in 1967 under Johnson, had CIA officers pose as radicals to infiltrate the American antiwar movement, hunting for foreign funding that was never found.

Project Azorian used the ship Hughes Glomar Explorer in 1974 to try to raise what from the Pacific floor?

The target was the Soviet submarine K-129, lost in March 1968 some 1,560 miles north-west of Hawaii; a section of the hull was recovered before the rest broke away.

What was the public cover story for the Glomar Explorer's mission?

Howard Hughes's company said the Glomar Explorer was mining manganese nodules from the deep seabed; the later refusal to 'confirm or deny' its true purpose gave the world the term 'Glomar response'.

In the 1980s the CIA sent roughly 2,300 of which missile to the Afghan mujahideen via Pakistan's ISI?

The CIA sent some 2,300 Stingers through Pakistan's ISI from 1986; a black market followed, the agency later ran a cash buyback programme, and some missiles reached Iran.

The CIA armed and trained the Contras in Honduras to fight which government?

The covert funding had begun under Jimmy Carter before the Reagan-era scandal made the Contras famous.

The April 1983 bombing that killed 63 people struck the US embassy in which city?

The Beirut embassy bombing of 18 April 1983 killed 63 people, among them Robert Ames, one of the agency's leading Middle East experts, and most of the CIA's Beirut station.

Argo dramatises the CIA's rescue of six Americans from Tehran using a fake production in what genre?

The fake film 'Argo' was pitched as a science-fiction epic needing desert locations; Tony Mendez led the 'Canadian Caper', and Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor had hidden the six.

What is the official name of the CIA training site near Williamsburg known as 'the Farm'?

Camp Peary, a 9,000-acre base near Williamsburg, Virginia, is 'the Farm' where case officers train; Harvey Point in North Carolina handles further paramilitary training.

Which director founded CIA University in 2002?

George Tenet, director from 1997 to 2004, founded CIA University in 2002; it runs 200 to 300 courses a year and houses the Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis.

In January 1996 the CIA created an experimental 'virtual station' to track which individual?

The Bin Laden Issue Station sat under the Counterterrorist Center; a Predator drone photographed him over Afghanistan in 2000.

The May 2011 CIA operation that killed al-Qaeda's leader took place in which Pakistani city?

Bin Laden was killed in a compound in Abbottabad, near Pakistan's military academy, on 2 May 2011 local time; Obama announced that 'a small team of Americans' had carried out the raid.

The CIA directorate formally launched in October 2015 is the Directorate of what?

The Directorate of Digital Innovation, stood up on 1 October 2015 under John Brennan's reorganisation, joined Analysis, Operations, Support, and Science and Technology as the agency's fifth major directorate.

Who was the first woman to serve as director of the CIA?

Gina Haspel, a career clandestine officer, became the first woman to lead the CIA in May 2018 after serving as deputy director under Mike Pompeo.

Which CIA station chief was shot dead outside his Athens home in December 1975?

Richard Welch, the Athens station chief, was shot by the 17 November group on 23 December 1975 after CounterSpy magazine and an Athens paper had named him; his death spurred the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

Which GRU colonel, run by the CIA and MI6, passed Soviet missile secrets in 1961-62?

Oleg Penkovsky, a GRU colonel, fed the CIA and MI6 thousands of pages on Soviet missiles in 1961-62; he was arrested in October 1962 and executed in 1963.

Which CIA-owned airline flew covert missions in Laos during the Vietnam War?

Air America, owned by the CIA, flew supplies, agents and Hmong fighters around Laos in the 'secret war'; the airline was wound up in 1976.

According to the 2013 surveillance disclosures, what was the CIA's fiscal 2013 budget?

The Snowden-leaked 'black budget' put the CIA's fiscal 2013 request at $14.7 billion, 28% of all national intelligence spending, with $2.6 billion going to covert action programmes including the drone fleet.

Which Counterterrorist Center chief helped develop George Tenet's 1999 plan against al-Qaeda?

Cofer Black took over the Counterterrorist Center in 1999 and helped Tenet draft 'the Plan' to penetrate al-Qaeda; he later ran the CIA's post-9/11 Afghan campaign.

At the outbreak of the Korean War, roughly how many CIA employees worked in analysis?

Around one thousand of the CIA's few thousand staff worked in analysis in 1950; their intelligence came mostly from State Department telegrams and military dispatches.