Word: cia
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...have been a case of hitting the target but missing the opportunity. Reports last week said Saad bin Laden, Osama bin Laden's fourth son and a midranking al-Qaeda operative, was killed by a recent CIA Predator strike. But six years ago, the U.S. had an opportunity to get him alive - and lost it when the Bush Administration decided to pull away from cooperation with Iran. (Read "Obama's Unlikely Ally: Iran Signs On to Afghan Plan...
...Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower. Memarian is an Iranian journalist and blogger who received Human Rights Watch's highest honor...
They shouldn't be shocked. Secret overseas operations are nothing new for the CIA, which was created in 1947 with the broad authority to conduct foreign intelligence missions. In 1953 the agency orchestrated a coup against Iranian Premier Mohammed Mossadegh that returned the pro-American Shah to power. Over the ensuing decade, it supported coups and assassinations in places such as Guatemala and the Dominican Republic to install leaders considered sympathetic to U.S. interests. Despite this legacy, many Americans were unaware of the CIA's clandestine operations until May 1960, when a U-2 spy plane was downed over...
...1970s, Congress and the Ford Administration sought to rein in the CIA by creating oversight committees and instituting a ban on assassinations. Some restrictions were eased in the '80s, when the agency backed Afghan mujahedin fighting against the Soviets and meddled in Central America. And since 9/11, the agency has attracted a new load of critics, this time for matters such as "extraordinary renditions" and the harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists in secret overseas prisons known as black sites. Poor Langley--praise is a scarce commodity for an agency whose missions, as President George W. Bush put it, remain "secret...
...Read TIME's special report: "Why the CIA Turned Down Dick Cheney...