The Central Intelligence Agency: 11 Reasons Why It Cannot Be Trusted
10 Secret CIA facts You’ll Want To Read Right Away
By Reagan M.
BogglingFacts.com
The CIA is an organization built on secrecy. Many of its own members don’t even know the true inner workings. Still, that doesn’t stop people from being interested in the secrets that the CIA know. Here are the 10 secret CIA facts we have just found out:
10 Its first covert operation occurred in 1947, influencing an Italian election to prevent Communists from gaining a foothold in the country.
9 Their covert spy planes were instrumental in the Cuban Missile Crisis, revealing missile locations within Cuba.
8 The overarching U.S. intelligence budget, part of which is the classified CIA budget, is also rather secretive; the most recent released figures of 1998 show a total budget of $26.7 billion.
7 They are forbidden to be directly or indirectly involved with assassination per Executive Order 12333 signed by President Reagan in 1981.
6 John F. Kennedy threatened to abolish the institution and “scatter it to the winds” after the embarrassing Bay of Pigs Invasion failed in 1961.
5 The only person capable of directing the CIA to conduct covert activities is the President of the United States.
4 They tried and failed numerous attempts on the life of Cuban leader Fidel Castro prior to the 1981 Executive Order, including planting bombs in his cigars.
3 The CIA has gone to extreme lengths in terms of propaganda; they once created fake pornography of Indonesian President Sukarno to discredit him among his people.
2 They used a fake blood drive to gather intelligence before the 2011 raid that allegedly killed Osama Bin Laden.
1 They helped train Afghanistan rebels in the late 1970s to fight the Soviet Union, many of whom would later form the backbone of Al-Qaeda.
+ Bonus Knowledge Nuts
The CIA has maintained some strong ties to the United States media throughout the years, making many uneasy over their influence over the public. Though they use journalists abroad to gather intelligence on other countries, the Church Committee in 1976 revealed the CIA had been bribing journalists on the home front for years as well.