CIA Seal
TOP SECRET // CODEWORD // NOFORN

Central Intelligence Agency

From OSS guerrillas in wartime Europe to drone strikes in the Hindu Kush — the full hidden history of America's most powerful and controversial secret service.

1947
Founded
23,000+
Employees (est.)
$15B+
Annual Budget (est.)
21
Directors of Central Intelligence
150+
Countries of Operation
File Index // Declassified Chapters
Navigate the Full History
Chapters I – II
OSS Origins & Birth of the CIA
1941 — 1953
From Wild Bill Donovan's wartime spy network to Truman's National Security Act — how America built its permanent secret service.
Chapter III
Allen Dulles & the Coup Factory
1953 — 1961
Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Indonesia — the covert action era when regime change was cheaper than war and the CIA replaced elected governments.
Chapters IV & VII
U-2 & Cold War Spy Games
1956 — 1994
Francis Gary Powers shot down over Sverdlovsk, the Berlin Tunnel betrayed from day one, Aldrich Ames selling agents to the KGB.
Chapter V
MKUltra
1953 — 1973
Mind control, LSD experiments on unwitting civilians, electroshock therapy at McGill, and the 1973 file destruction that buried most of the evidence.
Chapter VI
Bay of Pigs & JFK
1961 — 1963
The CIA trained 1,400 Cubans, Kennedy refused air cover, and 1,189 men were captured. Then Dallas — and what the CIA knew about Oswald.
Chapters VIII – X
The Reckoning
1975 — 1987
The Church Committee exposes assassination plots and drug experiments. Bush as DCI. Iran-Contra and the secret government inside the NSC.
Chapters XI – XII
Soviet Collapse & Post-9/11
1985 — present
The CIA failed to predict the USSR's end. Then 9/11 — rendition, black sites, waterboarding, and a Senate torture report the CIA tried to suppress.
Reference
Directors & Langley
1947 — present
All 24 Directors of Central Intelligence, the CIA's Langley campus, and the legacy of 77 years operating in the space between democracy and secret power.