50 Fun Facts About CIA

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

Fort Meade is the NSA's home and Quantico the FBI's academy; the CIA compound sits in unincorporated Fairfax County.

The CIA was established by which 1947 law?

The separate CIA Act of 1949 then exempted the agency from most congressional oversight.

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

Truman replaced it with the short-lived Central Intelligence Group in 1946 before creating the CIA a year later.

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

Roosevelt first appointed him 'Coordinator of Information' in July 1941; the British officer Dick Ellis has been credited with writing the blueprint.

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

Before that reform the Director of Central Intelligence ran both the agency and the whole intelligence community.

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

The agency focuses on foreign intelligence and has only limited authority to collect intelligence at home.

The CIA coordinates all US activities in the discipline abbreviated HUMINT. What does the H stand for?

The Directorate of Operations runs clandestine human sources and covert action.

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

He ran the agency for just 357 days in 1976-77.

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

The verse from John's Gospel was engraved at the request of Allen Dulles.

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

Three of its four messages have been solved; the fourth remains one of the world's most famous unbroken codes.

How many of Kryptos's four encrypted messages remain unsolved?

The artist has hinted that a fifth message will reveal itself once all four are cracked.

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

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?

The British MI6 side was Operation Boot; Mosaddegh had nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now part of BP.

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

A radio station called 'The Voice of Liberation' convinced Guatemalans the rebel victory was already a done deal; the plan had leaked after an agent left papers in a hotel room.

The Bay of Pigs invasion was launched from which country, where the CIA had trained Brigade 2506?

Castro's forces defeated the exile brigade 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?

The main force landed there on the night of 17 April 1961.

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

Dulles was later appointed to the Warren Commission investigating that same president's assassination.

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

In 1963 the CIA official Desmond Fitzgerald tasked the Cuban agent Rolando Cubela with killing 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?

He was swapped for the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel on Berlin's Glienicke Bridge in February 1962.

The U-2's nickname is what?

The others are the SR-71, A-10 and F-111 respectively.

Project MKUltra, the CIA's mind-control programme, was headed by which chemist?

It began on Allen Dulles's order in April 1953 and dosed unwitting subjects with LSD, mescaline and morphine.

Which drug was MKUltra especially notorious for administering covertly to unwitting subjects?

The Navy's Project CHATTER had first tested it on humans back in 1947.

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

He also destroyed the secret tapes of meetings in his own office before leaving; only a few documents survived.

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

The psychiatrist 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?

The targets were what the agency called the 'Infrastructure', the political and administrative arm of the insurgency.

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

Director Schlesinger ordered it after Watergate; his successor Colby leaked it, triggering eight congressional investigations.

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

Frank Church's committee, the House's Pike Committee and the Rockefeller Commission made 1975 the 'Year of Intelligence'.

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

Eleven officers grew their hair long and learned New Left jargon to test Johnson's hunch that Moscow was funding the protests.

During James Schlesinger's 17-week tenure as director in 1973, roughly how many employees did he fire?

Nixon wanted him to cut 'the prominence of CIA operations' around the world.

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

The cover story was mining manganese nodules; the sub was K-129, lost in 1968 some 1,560 miles north-west of Hawaii.

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

The refusal to 'confirm or deny' the ship's 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?

A black market followed, and the agency later ran a cash buyback programme; perhaps 100 ended up in 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, including seven CIA officers, struck the US embassy where?

Among the dead was Robert Ames, one of the agency's leading Middle East experts.

Aldrich Ames, the CIA counterintelligence officer arrested in 1994, had been spying since 1985 for whom?

FBI agents pulled him out of his Jaguar; he served life without parole until his death in 2026.

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

The 'Canadian Caper' was led by Tony Mendez; the six had been hidden by Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor.

Argo won which top prize at the 85th Academy Awards?

Ben Affleck directed and starred but was famously not even nominated for Best Director.

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

Selection methods there still derive from the OSS handbook 'Assessment of Men'; Harvey Point in North Carolina handles further mission training.

Which director 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?

President 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?

It joined Analysis, Operations, Support, and Science and Technology as the agency's fifth major directorate.

The CIA director was elevated to Cabinet-level status in February 2017 under which president?

The Biden administration ended the arrangement, then restored it in July 2023.

What body did President Truman create in 1946, the year before the CIA was established?

It filled the gap left when Truman abolished the wartime OSS in 1945; the National Security Act then created the CIA amid the deepening Cold War.

Which 1949 law exempted the CIA from most Congressional oversight?

It also created the 'PL-110' programme for handling defectors and other 'essential aliens' outside normal immigration rules.

How many major directorates does the CIA have alongside its executive office?

They cover Digital Innovation, Analysis, Operations, Support, and Science and Technology.

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

That was 28% of all non-military intelligence spending and almost 50% more than the NSA's, with $2.6 billion going to covert action including the drone fleet.

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

In 2000 the CIA and Air Force flew a small Predator drone over Afghanistan and got probable photos of bin Laden, spurring calls to arm it.

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

The whole agency still had only a few thousand staff, and its intelligence came mostly from State Department telegrams and military dispatches.