List of CIA controversies
The Central Intelligence Agency has been the subject of a number of controversies, both in and outside of the United States. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner accuses the CIA of covert actions and human rights abuses. Jeffrey T. Richelson of the National Security Archive has been critical of its claims. Intelligence expert David Wise faulted Weiner for portraying Allen Dulles as "a doddering old man" rather than the "shrewd professional spy" he knew and for refusing "to concede that the agency's leaders may have acted from patriotic motives or that the CIA ever did anything right", but concluded: "Legacy of Ashes succeeds as both journalism and history, and it is must reading for anyone interested in the CIA or American intelligence since World War II." The CIA itself has responded to the claims made in Weiner's book, and has described it as "a 600-page op-ed piece masquerading as serious history."
Project MKUltra
Project MKUltra was a CIA human experimentation program aimed at developing techniques and drugs for interrogation, brainwashing, and psychological torture. The program, conducted without consent, used methods like administering high doses of LSD, hypnosis, electroshock, sensory deprivation, and other forms of abuse. It violated individual rights and has been widely condemned as a grave abuse of power.Operating through the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence and front organizations, MKUltra involved over 80 institutions, including universities, hospitals, and prisons, often using unwitting subjects in the U.S. and Canada. It was revealed in 1975 by the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission, though investigations were hindered by the destruction of most records in 1973. A 1977 FOIA request uncovered 20,000 documents, leading to Senate hearings. Some details were declassified in 2001.
Domestic wiretapping
In 1969, at the height of the antiwar movement in the US, CIA Director Helms received a message from Henry Kissinger ordering him to spy on the leaders of the groups requesting a moratorium on Vietnam. "Since 1962, three successive presidents had ordered the director of central intelligence to spy on Americans".Psychological operations in the Philippines
During the early 1950s, the CIA operative Edward Lansdale and the U.S. military advisers supported the Philippine government's fight against the communist Hukbalahap insurgency. According the Lansdale's own writings and subsequent historical reports, part of the CIA effort involved psychological operations exploiting local superstitions, notably, the Filipino belief in the aswang, a vampire-like creature.In one incident, the operatives spread rumors that an aswang was living on a hill where the Huks were stationed. Two nights later, special forces ambushed a Huk guerrilla, punctured his neck with two holes to simulate a vampire bite, drained his blood, and displayed his corpse to suggest he was killed by an aswang. This operation spread fear among Huk fighters and their supporters, causing some to leave the area.
Extraordinary rendition
Extraordinary rendition is the apprehension and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another.The term "torture by proxy" is used by some critics to describe situations in which the CIA and other US agencies have transferred suspected terrorists to countries known to employ torture, whether they meant to enable torture or not. It has been claimed, though, that torture has been employed with the knowledge or acquiescence of US agencies, although Condoleezza Rice stated that:
Whilst the Obama administration has tried to distance itself from some of the harshest counterterrorism techniques, it has also said that at least some forms of renditions will continue. The administration continued to allow rendition only "to a country with jurisdiction over that individual " when there is a diplomatic assurance "that they will not be treated inhumanely".
The US program has also prompted several official investigations in Europe into alleged secret detentions and unlawful inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states. A [|June 2006 report] from the Council of Europe estimated 100 people had been kidnapped by the CIA on EU territory, and rendered to other countries, often after having transited through secret detention centres used by the CIA, some located in Europe. According to the separate [|European Parliament report of February 2007], the CIA has conducted 1,245 flights, many of them to destinations where suspects could face torture, in violation of article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
Following the September 11 attacks the United States, in particular the CIA, has been accused of rendering hundreds of people suspected by the government of being terrorists—or of aiding and abetting terrorist organisations—to third-party states such as Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Uzbekistan. Such "ghost detainees" are kept outside judicial oversight, often without ever entering US territory, and may or may not ultimately be devolved to the custody of the United States.
On October 4, 2001, a secret arrangement was made in Brussels, by all members of NATO. Lord George Robertson, British defence secretary and later NATO's secretary-general, would later explain that NATO members agree to provide "blanket overflight clearances for the United States and other allies' aircraft for military flights related to operations against terrorism."
Security failures
On December 30, 2009, a suicide attack occurred in the Forward Operating Base Chapman attack in the province of Khost, Afghanistan. Seven CIA officers, including the chief of the base, were killed and six others seriously wounded in the attack.The September 11 attacks have been viewed by some as an example of shortcomings for the United States' various intelligence agencies. George W Bush's administration has openly stated they did not foresee the possibility of airliners being used as weapons, despite regular briefings from intelligence agencies and prior incidents of airliners being hijacked domestically and abroad.
Counterintelligence failures
Perhaps the most disruptive incident involving counterintelligence was CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton's search for a mole or moles, based on GRU Colonel Pyotr Popov's allegedly having told his Russia-born CIA handler, George Kisevalter in April 1958 that he had recently heard a drunken GRU colonel brag that the Kremlin knew all about the Lockheed U-2 spy plane, and the December 1961-on statements of a Soviet defector, KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn. A second defector, putative KGB officer Yuri Nosenko, who contacted the CIA in Geneva six months after Golitsyn's defection, challenged Golitsyn's claims, with the two calling one another Soviet double agents. Many CIA officers fell under career-ending suspicion; the details of the relative truths and untruths from Nosenko and Golitsyn may never be released, or, in fact, may not be fully understood. The accusations also crossed the Atlantic to the British intelligence services, which also were damaged by molehunts.Edward Lee Howard, David Henry Barnett, both field operations officers, sold secrets to Russia. William Kampiles, a low-level worker in the CIA 24-hour Operations Center, sold the Soviets a detailed operational manual for the KH-11 reconnaissance satellite.
Human rights concerns
The CIA has been called into question for, at times, using torture, funding and training of groups and organizations that would later participate in killing of civilians and other non-combatants and would try or succeed in overthrowing democratically elected governments, human experimentation, and targeted killings and assassinations. The CIA has also been accused of a lack of financial and whistleblower controls which has led to waste and fraud.During Bush's year in charge of the CIA, the U.S. national security apparatus actively supported Operation Condor operations and right-wing military dictatorships in Latin America. According to John Dinges, author of The Condor Years , documents released in 2015 revealed a CIA report dated April 28, 1978 that showed the agency by then had knowledge that U.S.-backed Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet ordered the assassination of Orlando Letelier, a leading political opponent living in exile in the United States.
The Institute on Medicine as a Profession and the non-profit organization Open Society Foundations reviewed public records into the medical professions alleging complicity in the abuse of prisoners suspected of terrorism who were held in U.S. custody during the years after 9/11. The reports found that health professionals "Aided cruel and degrading interrogations; Helped devise and implement practices designed to maximize disorientation and anxiety so as to make detainees more malleable for interrogation; and Participated in the application of excruciatingly painful methods of force-feeding of mentally competent detainees carrying out hunger strikes" are not all that surprising. Medical professionals were sometimes used at black sites to monitor detainee health. Whether or not the physicians were compelled is an open question.
Other human rights issues that are controversial include the case of Edward Snowden. However, the significance of human right does not fall into this case regarding whether Snowden received his fair trial or not. Rather, the human rights associated with the Snowden leaks are regarding the types of document Snowden released. Snowden released a significant amount of information on the U.S. government's surveillance program of its citizens to The Washington Post as well as foreign news reporters.
Particularly, "between on or about June 5, 2013, and June 9, 2013, classified information was published on the internet and in print by multiple newspapers, including The Washington Post and The Guardian. The articles and internet postings by The Washington Post and The Guardian included classified documents that were marked TOP SECRET. The Washington Post and The Guardian later revealed that SNOWDEN was the principal source for the classified information on or about June 9, 2013, in a videotaped interview with The Guardian, admitted that he was the person who illegally provided those documents to reporters. Evidence indicates that SNOWDEN had access to the classified documents in question; accessed those documents; and, subsequently, provided those documents to media outlets without authorization and in violation of U.S. law."
Furthermore, the leaks included documents at many levels of the National Security Agency electronic surveillance activities. "The Snowden leaks have generated broad public debate over issues of security, privacy, and legality inherent in the NSA's surveillance of communications by American citizens." The records include: "White House and ODNI efforts to explain, justify, and defend the programs; Correspondence between outside critics and executive branch officials; Fact sheets and white papers distributed by the government; Key laws and court decisions ; Documents on the Total Information Awareness program, an earlier proposal for massive data collection Manuals on how to exploit the Internet for intelligence."