CIA: seventy years of evil
In the life of the modern world, beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, the CIA plays a huge role. Many wars, ethnic conflicts, the "orange revolutions" and coups d'état were planned and carried out with the direct involvement of American foreign intelligence. For seventy years of its existence, the US Central Intelligence Agency has become a powerful intelligence service with agents around the world.
The US Central Intelligence Agency was created after the signing and entry into force of the National Security Act. This happened September 18 1947. Interestingly, until that time the United States had been long enough, especially for a country of this level, that existed without a single and centralized foreign intelligence control system. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, authorized agencies of the US Department of State, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Military Intelligence of the army and naval forces were engaged in collecting intelligence data, planning and carrying out intelligence operations. But the beginning of the Second World War demanded from the American leadership more serious measures to coordinate the conduct of intelligence abroad. Miscalculations in the organization of foreign intelligence cost the United States very expensive. Large human casualties and equipment losses in the attack of Japan on Pearl Harbor - one of the main evidence of this.
Already 13 June 1942, by decision of the leadership of the United States, the Office of Strategic Services was created, which was then part of the Chiefs of Staff of the United States military. In fact, it was then, 75 years ago, that a single American intelligence agency was born. By the way, the initiator of its creation was the British resident in the United States, William Stephenson. It was he who advised Franklin Roosevelt to create a single agency to coordinate the actions of the separate intelligence structures of civilian and military ministries. Roosevelt commissioned William Donovan, an old friend of William Stephenson, to develop the plan and strategy for the development of the new administration.
William Joseph Donovan (1883-1959) was known in the USA by the nickname “Wild Bill”. A lawyer graduated from Columbia University, in 1916, Donovan volunteered for the US National Guard. During the First World War, he fought on the Western Front, was promoted to lieutenant colonel and rose to the rank of commander of the 165 Infantry Regiment. Interestingly, during the Civil War in Russia, Donovan served as a liaison officer for Admiral Kolchak's headquarters in Siberia. After returning to the US, Donovan became one of the most famous lawyers. 11 July 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Donovan as Personal Information Coordinator (intelligence), and in 1942, Donovan was officially enrolled in the rank of colonel and soon 13 June 1942 of the year headed the Office of Strategic Services of the United States, simultaneously receiving the title of General major Thus, it is Donovan that can be considered the first head of the united American intelligence.
In the shortest possible time, Donovan succeeded in turning the Office of Strategic Services into a powerful structure, which included secret intelligence, analytical and research departments, secret operations, psychological warfare, counterintelligence. The success of the OSS finally turned Donovan, who proposed to turn intelligence into a special kind of armed forces. But this project has caused sharp opposition from the American military elite, as well as the leadership of the FBI, who feared the emergence of a new powerful competitor. Therefore, 20 September 1945, almost immediately after the war, the Office of Strategic Services was dissolved by President Harry Truman, and its functionality is divided between military intelligence services of the armed forces and the FBI.
However, after a short time, it became obvious to Truman and his entourage that without a centralized intelligence service, the United States would not be able to exist in a new geopolitical situation. It was decided to restore the structure of a single foreign intelligence, for which Truman created the Central Intelligence Group and introduced the post of Director of Central Intelligence. Rear Admiral Sidney William Soers (1892-1973) was appointed the first director of central intelligence. A former entrepreneur, Soers was not naval an officer, but in 1940 he was called up for active military service, and in 1944 became an assistant director of the Office of Naval Intelligence. In 1945, he was awarded the title of Rear Admiral and was appointed deputy head of the Office of Naval Intelligence. From this position, Sidney Soers came to the post of director of central intelligence. However, he remained in office for only six months - in June 1946 he was replaced by Lieutenant General aviation Hoyt Senford Vandenberg (1899-1954), who, unlike Sawers, was a regular officer in the Air Force, and from January 1946 led the military intelligence. Vandenberg served as director of central intelligence for almost a year - until May 1947, when he was appointed new director of central intelligence - Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillencotter. On September 18, 1947, the United States Central Intelligence Agency was created, the post of director of which was combined with the post of director of central intelligence.
Roscoe Hillenkotter (1897-1982) entered history as the first director of the CIA.
At the time of his appointment, he was 50 years old. The personnel officer of the Navy, Rear Admiral Hillenkotter, first commanded the battleship, and then transferred to the military-diplomatic and intelligence service. In 1930 - 1940 - s. He repeatedly served as Assistant Naval Attache in France, then led the intelligence of the Pacific Fleet, receiving the rank of Rear Admiral in November 1946. 8 December 1947, the Senate approved Hillenkotter as director of the CIA. Then, in December 1947, the CIA received the official right to carry out intelligence and special operations throughout the globe. The Cold War began and the CIA was to play a very important role in it.
However, the first years of the existence of a joint intelligence agency began with trouble. So, North Korea started a war with South Korea, which American intelligence did not foresee and did not prepare for such a development of events. It cost the position of the CIA's first director, Rear Admiral Hillenkotter, who resigned in 1950 and returned to the Navy as commander of the 1st Cruiser Division—a notable demotion from command of all American foreign intelligence. On August 21, 1950, Army Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, a veteran of the First and Second World Wars who served as Eisenhower's chief of staff and later the US ambassador to the USSR, became the new director of the CIA. In the first post-war five-year plan, the formation and strengthening of the anti-Soviet paradigm of the activities of American intelligence took place. The USSR became the main strategic adversary of the United States and in opposition to the growing influence of the Soviet Union, the CIA was ready to resort to any means. For example, the US CIA worked closely with many former Nazi henchmen and collaborators from Russian, Ukrainian, Baltic, Caucasian and Central Asian nationalists. Some of them even became career employees of the CIA, such as Ruzi Nazar, a native of Soviet Uzbekistan, who during the Second World War went over to the side of Nazi Germany, and then, after the war, began to cooperate with American intelligence.
The CIA achieved even greater influence and power with its third leader, Allen Dulles. Allen Welch Dulles (1893-1969), a lawyer and diplomat, led American intelligence in 1953 and served as director until 1961. It was Allen Dulles who was one of the main ideologists of the confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union during the years of the Cold War. At the same time, although Dulles is called one of the most talented leaders of American intelligence, the history of the CIA during his leadership years is not only victories, but also failures. American intelligence has succeeded in overthrowing Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh, President of Guatemala Arbens. A great achievement of American intelligence was the start of flights of U-2 aircraft over the territory of the USSR - at a height unattainable for air defense assets. 1956 to 1960 U-2 aircraft were shooting the Soviet territory, but in 1960, the lafa ended. Soviet air defense shot down a U-2 aircraft piloted by Francis Gary Powers, a former captain of the Air Force, an experienced pilot who transferred from the army to the CIA in 1956. Powers fell into the hands of Soviet counterintelligence officers and 19 on August 1960 was sentenced to 10 years in prison. True, 10 February 1962, he was exchanged for the Soviet intelligence officer William Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel).
Unconditional failure of the CIA was the Cuban Revolution. For the first time, right next door, the United States had an openly hostile state, focused on the socialist path of development and working closely with the Soviet Union. In 1961, an attempted invasion of Cuba, prepared directly by the US CIA, failed. This failure led to the resignation of Allen Dulles from the post of director of a special intelligence service. Full of failures was the work of the CIA in Southeast Asia. Despite numerous efforts, an unprecedented campaign in Vietnam entailed enormous human casualties — including among the US military, the United States by the middle of the 1970s. lost control of all of East Indochina including Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The work of the CIA in the Arab countries was not sufficiently effective. But the CIA has perfectly proved itself in eliminating politicians disliked by Washington and organizing coups d'état, above all in Latin America. Not without the participation of the CIA, the authoritarian regime of Stroessner continued to exist in Paraguay, General Augusto Pinochet came to power in Chile.
In 1979-1989 The US CIA actively participated in the events in Afghanistan, organizing and supplying the radical organizations and individual field commanders acting against the DRA and the Soviet Union who came to the aid of the Soviet Union. The Afghan war is, among other things, the history of the confrontation between the Soviet and American intelligence services, the latter, unfortunately, managed to win a victory in this confrontation.
The most important activity of the CIA throughout the second half of the twentieth century was work against the Soviet Union. Enormous resources were used to destabilize the political and economic situation in the USSR. American intelligence worked with numerous enemies of the Soviet state from among the representatives of nationalist and separatist organizations in Ukraine, the Baltic States, the Caucasus and the North Caucasus, Central Asia, who found themselves in emigration. With their help, the dissemination of anti-Soviet views on Soviet territory was carried out, and personnel were trained for illegal intelligence. A special role was assigned to work with the Soviet intelligentsia, cultural and art workers. Even then, in 1960 - 1970 - s, the CIA perfectly understood the powerful force of mass culture and its influence on the mass consciousness. Therefore, the destruction of Soviet society with the help of literary works, cinema, music of the CIA was given great attention. Now we can say with confidence that the CIA has directly or indirectly worked with many anti-Soviet cultural figures.
It is obvious that the US CIA was one of the most important actors involved in the collapse of the Soviet state and destabilization of the situation in the post-Soviet space. Although Allen Dulles left the post of head of the CIA thirty years before the collapse of the USSR, and in 1969 he died safely, his plan continues to be implemented almost half a century after his death. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a great victory for the United States as a whole, and for the CIA in particular, in comparison with which all the failures of American intelligence during the Cold War fade. Now, after a while, it is possible not only to guess, but also to assert that the collapse of the Union became possible thanks to the “work” of American intelligence with many prominent Soviet government and party leaders, with the leaders of the Soviet special services. Of course, it is hardly possible to reliably prove the facts of cooperation between specific Soviet and Russian leaders with the CIA of the United States, but all of the late Soviet and post-Soviet history suggests that the destruction of the Soviet state was methodically and subtly, and the destabilization of the post-Soviet space was almost open, without encountering much resistance from elite newly emerging independent states.
The collapse of the Soviet state allowed the United States to establish control over all of Eastern Europe - the former zone of influence of the USSR, which was part of the Organization of the Warsaw Pact. Moreover, in 1990-s. The United States began to advance into the territory of the former USSR. First, all the Baltic countries came under US control, then Georgia, now the United States controls the political situation in Ukraine, where the CIA also played a big role in overthrowing Viktor Yanukovych and establishing the current anti-Russian regime in Kiev.
The US Central Intelligence Agency was created after the signing and entry into force of the National Security Act. This happened September 18 1947. Interestingly, until that time the United States had been long enough, especially for a country of this level, that existed without a single and centralized foreign intelligence control system. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, authorized agencies of the US Department of State, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Military Intelligence of the army and naval forces were engaged in collecting intelligence data, planning and carrying out intelligence operations. But the beginning of the Second World War demanded from the American leadership more serious measures to coordinate the conduct of intelligence abroad. Miscalculations in the organization of foreign intelligence cost the United States very expensive. Large human casualties and equipment losses in the attack of Japan on Pearl Harbor - one of the main evidence of this.
Already 13 June 1942, by decision of the leadership of the United States, the Office of Strategic Services was created, which was then part of the Chiefs of Staff of the United States military. In fact, it was then, 75 years ago, that a single American intelligence agency was born. By the way, the initiator of its creation was the British resident in the United States, William Stephenson. It was he who advised Franklin Roosevelt to create a single agency to coordinate the actions of the separate intelligence structures of civilian and military ministries. Roosevelt commissioned William Donovan, an old friend of William Stephenson, to develop the plan and strategy for the development of the new administration.
William Joseph Donovan (1883-1959) was known in the USA by the nickname “Wild Bill”. A lawyer graduated from Columbia University, in 1916, Donovan volunteered for the US National Guard. During the First World War, he fought on the Western Front, was promoted to lieutenant colonel and rose to the rank of commander of the 165 Infantry Regiment. Interestingly, during the Civil War in Russia, Donovan served as a liaison officer for Admiral Kolchak's headquarters in Siberia. After returning to the US, Donovan became one of the most famous lawyers. 11 July 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Donovan as Personal Information Coordinator (intelligence), and in 1942, Donovan was officially enrolled in the rank of colonel and soon 13 June 1942 of the year headed the Office of Strategic Services of the United States, simultaneously receiving the title of General major Thus, it is Donovan that can be considered the first head of the united American intelligence.
In the shortest possible time, Donovan succeeded in turning the Office of Strategic Services into a powerful structure, which included secret intelligence, analytical and research departments, secret operations, psychological warfare, counterintelligence. The success of the OSS finally turned Donovan, who proposed to turn intelligence into a special kind of armed forces. But this project has caused sharp opposition from the American military elite, as well as the leadership of the FBI, who feared the emergence of a new powerful competitor. Therefore, 20 September 1945, almost immediately after the war, the Office of Strategic Services was dissolved by President Harry Truman, and its functionality is divided between military intelligence services of the armed forces and the FBI.
However, after a short time, it became obvious to Truman and his entourage that without a centralized intelligence service, the United States would not be able to exist in a new geopolitical situation. It was decided to restore the structure of a single foreign intelligence, for which Truman created the Central Intelligence Group and introduced the post of Director of Central Intelligence. Rear Admiral Sidney William Soers (1892-1973) was appointed the first director of central intelligence. A former entrepreneur, Soers was not naval an officer, but in 1940 he was called up for active military service, and in 1944 became an assistant director of the Office of Naval Intelligence. In 1945, he was awarded the title of Rear Admiral and was appointed deputy head of the Office of Naval Intelligence. From this position, Sidney Soers came to the post of director of central intelligence. However, he remained in office for only six months - in June 1946 he was replaced by Lieutenant General aviation Hoyt Senford Vandenberg (1899-1954), who, unlike Sawers, was a regular officer in the Air Force, and from January 1946 led the military intelligence. Vandenberg served as director of central intelligence for almost a year - until May 1947, when he was appointed new director of central intelligence - Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillencotter. On September 18, 1947, the United States Central Intelligence Agency was created, the post of director of which was combined with the post of director of central intelligence.
Roscoe Hillenkotter (1897-1982) entered history as the first director of the CIA.
At the time of his appointment, he was 50 years old. The personnel officer of the Navy, Rear Admiral Hillenkotter, first commanded the battleship, and then transferred to the military-diplomatic and intelligence service. In 1930 - 1940 - s. He repeatedly served as Assistant Naval Attache in France, then led the intelligence of the Pacific Fleet, receiving the rank of Rear Admiral in November 1946. 8 December 1947, the Senate approved Hillenkotter as director of the CIA. Then, in December 1947, the CIA received the official right to carry out intelligence and special operations throughout the globe. The Cold War began and the CIA was to play a very important role in it. However, the first years of the existence of a joint intelligence agency began with trouble. So, North Korea started a war with South Korea, which American intelligence did not foresee and did not prepare for such a development of events. It cost the position of the CIA's first director, Rear Admiral Hillenkotter, who resigned in 1950 and returned to the Navy as commander of the 1st Cruiser Division—a notable demotion from command of all American foreign intelligence. On August 21, 1950, Army Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, a veteran of the First and Second World Wars who served as Eisenhower's chief of staff and later the US ambassador to the USSR, became the new director of the CIA. In the first post-war five-year plan, the formation and strengthening of the anti-Soviet paradigm of the activities of American intelligence took place. The USSR became the main strategic adversary of the United States and in opposition to the growing influence of the Soviet Union, the CIA was ready to resort to any means. For example, the US CIA worked closely with many former Nazi henchmen and collaborators from Russian, Ukrainian, Baltic, Caucasian and Central Asian nationalists. Some of them even became career employees of the CIA, such as Ruzi Nazar, a native of Soviet Uzbekistan, who during the Second World War went over to the side of Nazi Germany, and then, after the war, began to cooperate with American intelligence.
The CIA achieved even greater influence and power with its third leader, Allen Dulles. Allen Welch Dulles (1893-1969), a lawyer and diplomat, led American intelligence in 1953 and served as director until 1961. It was Allen Dulles who was one of the main ideologists of the confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union during the years of the Cold War. At the same time, although Dulles is called one of the most talented leaders of American intelligence, the history of the CIA during his leadership years is not only victories, but also failures. American intelligence has succeeded in overthrowing Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh, President of Guatemala Arbens. A great achievement of American intelligence was the start of flights of U-2 aircraft over the territory of the USSR - at a height unattainable for air defense assets. 1956 to 1960 U-2 aircraft were shooting the Soviet territory, but in 1960, the lafa ended. Soviet air defense shot down a U-2 aircraft piloted by Francis Gary Powers, a former captain of the Air Force, an experienced pilot who transferred from the army to the CIA in 1956. Powers fell into the hands of Soviet counterintelligence officers and 19 on August 1960 was sentenced to 10 years in prison. True, 10 February 1962, he was exchanged for the Soviet intelligence officer William Fisher (aka Rudolf Abel). Unconditional failure of the CIA was the Cuban Revolution. For the first time, right next door, the United States had an openly hostile state, focused on the socialist path of development and working closely with the Soviet Union. In 1961, an attempted invasion of Cuba, prepared directly by the US CIA, failed. This failure led to the resignation of Allen Dulles from the post of director of a special intelligence service. Full of failures was the work of the CIA in Southeast Asia. Despite numerous efforts, an unprecedented campaign in Vietnam entailed enormous human casualties — including among the US military, the United States by the middle of the 1970s. lost control of all of East Indochina including Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The work of the CIA in the Arab countries was not sufficiently effective. But the CIA has perfectly proved itself in eliminating politicians disliked by Washington and organizing coups d'état, above all in Latin America. Not without the participation of the CIA, the authoritarian regime of Stroessner continued to exist in Paraguay, General Augusto Pinochet came to power in Chile.
In 1979-1989 The US CIA actively participated in the events in Afghanistan, organizing and supplying the radical organizations and individual field commanders acting against the DRA and the Soviet Union who came to the aid of the Soviet Union. The Afghan war is, among other things, the history of the confrontation between the Soviet and American intelligence services, the latter, unfortunately, managed to win a victory in this confrontation.
The most important activity of the CIA throughout the second half of the twentieth century was work against the Soviet Union. Enormous resources were used to destabilize the political and economic situation in the USSR. American intelligence worked with numerous enemies of the Soviet state from among the representatives of nationalist and separatist organizations in Ukraine, the Baltic States, the Caucasus and the North Caucasus, Central Asia, who found themselves in emigration. With their help, the dissemination of anti-Soviet views on Soviet territory was carried out, and personnel were trained for illegal intelligence. A special role was assigned to work with the Soviet intelligentsia, cultural and art workers. Even then, in 1960 - 1970 - s, the CIA perfectly understood the powerful force of mass culture and its influence on the mass consciousness. Therefore, the destruction of Soviet society with the help of literary works, cinema, music of the CIA was given great attention. Now we can say with confidence that the CIA has directly or indirectly worked with many anti-Soviet cultural figures.
It is obvious that the US CIA was one of the most important actors involved in the collapse of the Soviet state and destabilization of the situation in the post-Soviet space. Although Allen Dulles left the post of head of the CIA thirty years before the collapse of the USSR, and in 1969 he died safely, his plan continues to be implemented almost half a century after his death. The collapse of the Soviet Union was a great victory for the United States as a whole, and for the CIA in particular, in comparison with which all the failures of American intelligence during the Cold War fade. Now, after a while, it is possible not only to guess, but also to assert that the collapse of the Union became possible thanks to the “work” of American intelligence with many prominent Soviet government and party leaders, with the leaders of the Soviet special services. Of course, it is hardly possible to reliably prove the facts of cooperation between specific Soviet and Russian leaders with the CIA of the United States, but all of the late Soviet and post-Soviet history suggests that the destruction of the Soviet state was methodically and subtly, and the destabilization of the post-Soviet space was almost open, without encountering much resistance from elite newly emerging independent states.
The collapse of the Soviet state allowed the United States to establish control over all of Eastern Europe - the former zone of influence of the USSR, which was part of the Organization of the Warsaw Pact. Moreover, in 1990-s. The United States began to advance into the territory of the former USSR. First, all the Baltic countries came under US control, then Georgia, now the United States controls the political situation in Ukraine, where the CIA also played a big role in overthrowing Viktor Yanukovych and establishing the current anti-Russian regime in Kiev.
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