June 13, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt creates the Office of Strategic Services and makes WILLIAM (WILD BILL) DONOVAN director; during World War II, roughly 1,500 OSS agents sneak into occupied Europe and Asia before Allied armies, organizing resistance groups. The office is dissolved after the war
July 26, 1947 President Harry S Truman signs the National Security Act, creating the Central Intelligence Agency. Five months later, he authorizes covert operations. Most early operations target Eastern Europe, supporting dissidents and disseminating propaganda. During the Korean War, the agency organizes paramilitary forces in the North
August 1953 In Operation Ajax, CIA officers in Iran engineer a coup against Premier Mohammed Mossadegh, restoring SHAH REZA PAHLAVI to the throne. The agency’s role soon becomes widely known
June 1954 The CIA organizes a coup in Guatemala by COLONEL CARLOS CASTILLO ARMAS and other officers against leftist President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman
1958 The CIA supports a rebellion against Indonesian President Achmed Sukarno. The rebels fail, and an American mercenary pilot working for the agency is shot down and captured with papers revealing his employer
April 17, 1961 A brigade of 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles lands at the Bay of Pigs and is quickly defeated. Seven months later, President John F. Kennedy authorizes Operation Mongoose, a series of sabotage attacks on Cuba. The agency also develops several schemes to assassinate Castro, including two involving the Mafia
May 30, 1961 Dominican dissidents assassinate dictator Rafael Trujillo. The CIA has encouraged their revolt and supplied weapons
1962 Kennedy puts the CIA in charge of all paramilitary operations in Vietnam. In neighboring Laos, the agency builds an army of 47,000 Meo tribesmen, Laotians and Thai mercenaries
Sept. 11, 1973 GENERAL AUGUSTO PINOCHET, left, deposes Chile’s socialist President Salvador Allende, right, who commits suicide. The CIA, which had organized a failed coup in 1970, encouraged Pinochet but denies direct involvement to this day
1975-76 The Senate’s Church committee holds lengthy hearings on the agency’s covert operations and demands new congressional oversight. President Gerald Ford lays down new rules, and the agency loses its taste for paramilitary missions
January 1980 The CIA begins supplying money and weapons to Afghan mujahedin fighting the Soviets, using Pakistani intelligence as a conduit. The U.S. also urges Saudi Arabia to donate money and volunteers
1981 President Ronald Reagan appoints Bill Casey as Director of Central Intelligence. Casey re-energizes covert operations, supporting paramilitary efforts in Angola, Cambodia and El Salvador. His biggest operation: funding and training the Nicaraguan contras
1995 The agency pulls the plug on efforts to mobilize Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq, convinced that Saddam Hussein is on to the operation
1998 After the African embassy bombings, the CIA begins an urgent campaign against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Agents rebuild contacts with the NORTHERN ALLIANCE and hire armed tribesmen to gather intelligence and try to capture Osama bin Laden –By Mitch Frank
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