Portal:Espionage/Selected article

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Government, responsible for obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the Government. A third function of the CIA is to act as the "hidden hand" of the government by engaging in covert operations, some of questionable legality, at the direction of the President. It is this last function that has caused most of the controversies regarding the CIA over the years. Its headquarters are in the community of Langley in the McLean CDP of Fairfax County, Virginia, a few miles up the Potomac River from downtown Washington, D.C.. The CIA is part of the American Intelligence Community, which is now led by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The roles and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the United Kingdom's MI6 and Israel's Mossad.