| # | Name | Years | President(s) | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Roscoe Hillenkoetter | 1947–1950 | Truman | First DCI; failed to predict Soviet A-bomb, Korean invasion |
| 2 | Walter Bedell Smith | 1950–1953 | Truman | "Beetle" Smith rebuilt CIA after Korea failures; imposed military discipline |
| 3 | Allen Dulles | 1953–1961 | Eisenhower, Kennedy | Longest-serving DCI; Iran, Guatemala, Bay of Pigs; fired by JFK |
| 4 | John McCone | 1961–1965 | Kennedy, Johnson | Industrialist; correctly predicted Soviet missiles in Cuba; opposed Vietnam escalation |
| 5 | William Raborn | 1965–1966 | Johnson | Navy admiral; widely considered ineffective; shortest full-term DCI |
| 6 | Richard Helms | 1966–1973 | Johnson, Nixon | Only career officer to serve as DCI; ordered MKUltra files destroyed; convicted of lying to Congress |
| 7 | James Schlesinger | 1973 | Nixon | 165 days; commissioned the "Family Jewels" report documenting CIA abuses |
| 8 | William Colby | 1973–1976 | Nixon, Ford | Testified fully to Church Committee; forced out by Ford; died in mysterious boating accident 1996 |
| 9 | George H.W. Bush | 1976–1977 | Ford | Later VP and President; saw "Team B" process; 357 days as DCI |
| 10 | Stansfield Turner | 1977–1981 | Carter | Naval admiral; fired 800 clandestine officers ("Halloween Massacre"); emphasized SIGINT over HUMINT |
| 11 | William Casey | 1981–1987 | Reagan | Iran-Contra architect; ran CIA as personal fiefdom; died before testifying on Iran-Contra |
| 12 | William Webster | 1987–1991 | Reagan, Bush | Former FBI director; cleaned up Iran-Contra damage; oversaw Gulf War intelligence |
| 13 | Robert Gates | 1991–1993 | Bush | First analyst to become DCI; confirmed despite allegations of politicizing Soviet intelligence estimates |
| 14 | R. James Woolsey | 1993–1995 | Clinton | Failed to get meetings with Clinton; resigned after not punishing CIA failures over Ames |
| 15 | John Deutch | 1995–1996 | Clinton | Took classified files home on insecure laptop; investigated; received pardon |
| 16 | George Tenet | 1997–2004 | Clinton, Bush | "Slam dunk" on Iraq WMD; Medal of Freedom; oversaw 9/11 intelligence failure and torture program |
| 17 | Porter Goss | 2004–2006 | Bush | Former congressman; mass resignation of senior officers; pushed out after disputes with DNI |
| 18 | Michael Hayden | 2006–2009 | Bush | NSA director who ran warrantless wiretapping; defended torture program as DCI |
| 19 | Leon Panetta | 2009–2011 | Obama | Authorized and oversaw the Bin Laden raid (Operation Neptune Spear) |
| 20 | David Petraeus | 2011–2012 | Obama | Resigned after sharing classified notebooks with biographer/mistress; pleaded guilty to mishandling classified material |
| 21 | John Brennan | 2013–2017 | Obama | Architect of drone program; CIA spied on Senate Intelligence Committee's own computers during torture report investigation |
| 22 | Mike Pompeo | 2017–2018 | Trump | Congressman; later Secretary of State; resumed CIA covert programs curtailed under Obama |
| 23 | Gina Haspel | 2018–2021 | Trump | First female DCI; ran CIA black site in Thailand where detainees were waterboarded |
| 24 | William Burns | 2021–2025 | Biden | Career diplomat; first DCI without military or congressional background; Ukraine intelligence support |
The CIA's original headquarters in a collection of wooden "tempos" in Washington was always supposed to be temporary. Planning for a permanent campus began in the early 1950s. The site chosen was in Langley, Virginia — close enough to Washington for quick access to the White House, remote enough for security, wooded enough to obscure aerial photography.
President Eisenhower broke ground in 1959. The main building opened in 1961 — just months after the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy attended the dedication but notably chose not to speak. Allen Dulles, who had overseen its construction and whom Kennedy had just fired, gave the dedicatory address.
The lobby of the Original Headquarters Building contains two of the most famous icons of the CIA: a large mosaic of the CIA seal on the floor, and a wall bearing stars for every officer killed in the line of duty. As of 2024, there are 140 stars. Roughly half of the names associated with those stars remain classified.
Founded: July 26, 1947
Headquarters: Langley, Virginia (McLean, VA postal address)
Budget: Classified (~$15–20B estimated)
Employees: Classified (~21,000–22,000 estimated)
Four Directorates:
— DA: Analysis
— DO: Operations (clandestine service)
— DS&T: Science & Technology
— DS: Support
Mission: "Preempt threats and further US national security objectives by collecting intelligence that matters, producing objective all-source analysis, conducting effective covert action as directed by the President, and safeguarding the secrets that help keep our Nation safe."
Stars on Memorial Wall: 140 (as of 2024)
Named (public): 67 | Classified: 73
The Central Intelligence Agency has operated for 77 years in a space between the American ideal of democratic accountability and the operational reality of secret power. It has helped win wars, prevented nuclear escalation (in 1962), assassinated leaders, drugged citizens, imprisoned and tortured people in black sites around the world, destabilized democracies, armed insurgencies that became America's next enemies, and produced intelligence assessments that were sometimes the most important information a President received.
Its record is not a story of simple villainy or simple heroism. It is something more troubling: a story of what happens when a democracy creates an institution powerful enough to act in secret, without oversight, in its own name — and discovers, over and over again, that the institution uses that power in ways the democracy would never have authorized if asked directly.
The files remain classified. The stars on the wall remain nameless. The operations continue.
Declassify On: 2049-01-01
Derived From: Multiple Sources
Reason: 1.4(a)(b)(c)(d)(e)(f)(g)
Handling: NOFORN / ORCON / PROPIN