Secrets of the CIA

A common enough search phrase has some individuals questioning the CIA's existence. While it would be quite the feat for a secret organization to pull off 60 years of fictional covert operations and intelligence gathering, the CIA is in fact very real and certainly most real in the countries in which it operates. One could always request files from the Agency itself to verify many of the operations of the past, but for most, if the information can't be found in a quick Google search then it's not worth finding.

The Central Intelligence Agency for all of its history has remained an instrument of the Executive Branch (i.e., the President of the United States). Its mandate is to implement policy, not to formulate it. Details of CIA covert actions are usually decided through the President's National Security Council, the current structure of which is as follows: Chair Barack Obama (President of the United States) Statutory Attendees Joe Biden (Vice President of the United States) Hillary Clinton (Secretary of State) Robert M. Gates (Secretary of Defense) Military Advisor ADM Michael Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Intelligence Advisor Dennis C. Blair (Director of National Intelligence) Regular Attendees James L. Jones (National Security Advisor) Rahm Emanuel (Chief of Staff to the President) Thomas E. Donilon (Deputy National Security Advisor) Howard Schmidt (White House Cybersecurity Coordinator) Additional Participants Tim Geithner (Secretary of the Treasury) Eric Holde...

There is no single answer to this question and the CIA has been known to employ any number of regular pistols. However, in 1975, Director of Central Intelligence William Colby showed Congress an electric pistol that was specifically designed for the CIA. It used a poison dart that was intended to disintegrate upon contact with a body and not leave a trace as to the source beyond a small mark on human flesh. Remarking on the Colt .45, TIME magazine reported "the gun fires a toxin-tipped dart, almost silently and accurately up to 250 ft. Moreover, the dart is so tiny--the width of a human hair and a quarter of an inch long--as to be almost undetectable, and the poison leaves no trace in a victim's body." Committee chairman Frank Church remarked that it was an efficient method for killing people, to which Colby replied, "It is a very serious weapon."

Documentary filmmaker Allan Francovich explains in this interview the type of people the CIA tends to recruit and expounds on the nature and overall ethic of the CIA. Allan Francovich (1941 - April 24, 1997) was an American film producer and director who made a series of films purporting to expose Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covert operations. Francovich suffered a heart attack while going through U.S. customs at Houston airport, Texas on April 17, 1997, and died at the age of 56.

John R. Stockwell explains in the video clips that follow. Stockwell, a former CIA case officer, became a critic of United States government policies after serving in the Agency for thirteen years serving seven tours of duty. After managing U.S. involvement in the Angolan Civil War as Chief of the Angola Task Force during its 1975 covert operations, he resigned and wrote In Search of Enemies , a book which remains the only detailed, insider's account of a major CIA "covert action."