# The secret agencies: CIA, FBI, and NSA The founding and documented history of America's intelligence and security state: the FBI under Hoover, the CIA's coups and covert wars, the NSA's global surveillance, and the scandals that exposed them, from COINTELPRO and MKUltra to Iran-Contra and the Snowden revelations. *The Russian oligarchs and the rise of Putin parallel this story* *MI5, MI6, and British intelligence parallel this story* *Official secrecy: the classification of state knowledge parallel this story* *DARPA, Silicon Valley, and the security state parallel this story* *The surveillance state part of this story* *The watchers of empire: surveilling the leaders it would hand power to parallel this story* *The cultural Cold War: the CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom parallel this story* *Military and security parallel this story* ## 26 July 1908 — Bureau of Investigation founded Attorney General Charles Bonaparte creates a force of special agents inside the Department of Justice, without waiting for congressional approval. It is renamed the Bureau of Investigation in 1909 and becomes the FBI in 1935. This is the direct ancestor of today's Federal Bureau of Investigation. ## 10 May 1924 — J. Edgar Hoover named Bureau director J. Edgar Hoover is appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation at age 29. He reshapes it into a professionalized federal police force with standardized training, fingerprint files, and a crime laboratory. He remains director for 48 years, until his death in 1972. ## 1 July 1935 — Bureau renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation The agency is officially renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Under Hoover, the FBI expands its jurisdiction over kidnapping, bank robbery, and organized crime, and cultivates a heavily promoted public image through radio, film, and press relationships Hoover personally managed. ## c. 1945 — Project SHAMROCK collects cable traffic Predating and later absorbed by the NSA, Project SHAMROCK obtains copies of international telegrams entering and leaving the United States through arrangements with major telegraph companies. It runs for roughly three decades until exposed and terminated in 1975, revealed by the Church Committee as one of the longest-running warrantless surveillance programs against Americans. ## 18 September 1947 — National Security Act creates the CIA President Truman signs the National Security Act, establishing the Central Intelligence Agency as the successor to the wartime Office of Strategic Services and the Central Intelligence Group. The act also creates the Department of Defense and the National Security Council, restructuring US national security institutions for the Cold War. ## 4 November 1952 — National Security Agency founded President Truman signs a classified memorandum establishing the National Security Agency, consolidating the country's signals intelligence and cryptologic activities under a single agency. Its existence remains officially unacknowledged by the government for years, leading to the joke that NSA stood for No Such Agency. ## 13 April 1953 — MKUltra begins CIA director Allen Dulles authorizes MKUltra, a program researching mind control and behavior modification, including covert dosing of unwitting subjects with LSD. The program runs for about 20 years across universities, hospitals, and prisons. Most records were destroyed in 1973 on orders from director Richard Helms, though surviving documents were reviewed by the Church Committee in 1975. ## 19 August 1953 — CIA-backed coup overthrows Iran's Mossadegh In Operation Ajax, the CIA works with British intelligence to orchestrate the overthrow of Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, after he nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The operation restores the Shah's full authority. The CIA publicly acknowledged its role in an internal history declassified in 2013. ## 27 June 1954 — CIA-backed coup overthrows Guatemala's Árbenz In Operation PBSuccess, the CIA arms and directs a small exile force and a psychological warfare campaign that forces the resignation of Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz, whose land reforms had threatened United Fruit Company holdings. The coup installs a military government and is followed by decades of civil conflict in Guatemala. ## c. 1956 — COINTELPRO begins The FBI launches COINTELPRO, a set of covert programs to surveil, infiltrate, and disrupt domestic political groups, initially targeting the Communist Party USA. It later expands to civil rights organizations, the Socialist Workers Party, Black nationalist groups, and the anti-war movement. Documented tactics include forged letters, informants, and anonymous disinformation meant to sow internal distrust. ## 17 April 1961 — Bay of Pigs invasion A CIA-trained and financed force of Cuban exiles lands at the Bay of Pigs intending to trigger an uprising against Fidel Castro. The invasion collapses within three days against Cuban forces, embarrassing the Kennedy administration. Kennedy subsequently forces the resignation of CIA director Allen Dulles. ## 29 November 1961 — Allen Dulles resigns as CIA director Allen Dulles, CIA director since 1953, resigns at President Kennedy's request following the Bay of Pigs failure. He is later appointed to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of Kennedy, a dual role critics have noted as a conflict of interest given the CIA's own record of that period was never fully disclosed to the commission. ## c. 1963 — FBI surveillance and harassment of Martin Luther King Jr. Under Hoover, the FBI wiretaps Martin Luther King Jr. and sends him an anonymous letter, later confirmed by Senate investigators, urging him toward suicide and threatening to expose alleged affairs. The campaign was authorized as part of COINTELPRO's effort to discredit civil rights leadership. Congressional investigators in 1975-76 documented the operation from FBI files. ## 8 March 1971 — Media, Pennsylvania FBI office burglary A group calling itself the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI breaks into a small FBI office and steals hundreds of internal documents. Files leaked to journalists reveal the word COINTELPRO for the first time, forcing the program into public view. The burglars are never identified until several came forward decades later. ## c. 1971 — COINTELPRO terminated Hoover formally ends COINTELPRO operations after the Media burglary exposes the program to the press. Congressional and Justice Department review later finds the programs included illegal surveillance and disruption tactics against groups that posed no violent threat. The full scope only becomes public through the 1975-76 Church Committee investigation. ## c. 1971 — ECHELON signals interception network develops The NSA and its UKUSA intelligence partners, including the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, build out ECHELON, a global system for intercepting satellite and other communications traffic. Its existence was long denied before being confirmed in a 2000 European Parliament investigative report and subsequent official acknowledgments. ## 2 May 1972 — J. Edgar Hoover dies in office Hoover dies at age 77, still serving as FBI director after 48 years. Congress subsequently passes a law limiting future directors to a single 10-year term, a direct response to concerns about the concentration of power under his long tenure. ## c. May 1973 — CIA compiles the Family Jewels report CIA director James Schlesinger orders senior staff to compile a report of all agency activities that may have violated its charter, later known as the Family Jewels. The roughly 700-page document catalogs domestic spying on journalists and activists, assassination plots, and drug testing on unwitting subjects. It remained classified until the CIA released most of it in 2007. ## 1974 — Seymour Hersh exposes CIA domestic spying The New York Times published Seymour Hersh's front-page story revealing the CIA had spied on antiwar Americans at home. The disclosure triggered a year of congressional investigations into the agency. > "The story ran December 22, 1974, on page one of the Sunday paper." > — Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA ## January 1975 — Church Committee begins investigating US intelligence agencies The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church, begins a sweeping investigation into the FBI, CIA, and NSA. Over the following year it documents COINTELPRO, CIA assassination plots, and NSA surveillance programs including SHAMROCK and MINARET. ## 4 January 1975 — Rockefeller Commission investigates CIA abuses President Ford creates a commission led by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to investigate domestic CIA activities following Hersh's reporting. Its June 1975 report confirms illegal domestic surveillance and details of MKUltra, though critics at the time argued it minimized findings on assassination plots later detailed by the Church Committee. ## c. 1975 — Project MINARET exposed The Church Committee reveals Project MINARET, an NSA program that compiled watch lists of American citizens, including civil rights leaders and antiwar activists, and monitored their communications without warrants. The disclosure is a central piece of evidence behind the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. ## April 1976 — Church Committee final report published The Church Committee releases its final reports, documenting decades of domestic surveillance abuses, CIA involvement in assassination plots against foreign leaders, and warrantless NSA interception of American communications. The findings lead directly to the creation of the House and Senate intelligence committees and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. ## 25 October 1978 — Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act enacted Congress passes FISA in direct response to the Church Committee's findings, creating a secret court to approve warrants for domestic surveillance conducted for foreign intelligence purposes. It is intended to prevent the kind of warrantless spying on Americans documented at the FBI, CIA, and NSA during the prior decades. ## 3 November 1986 — Iran-Contra affair revealed A Lebanese magazine first reports, and US officials soon confirm, that the Reagan administration secretly sold arms to Iran and diverted proceeds to fund Nicaragua's Contra rebels, in violation of a congressional ban on such funding. CIA director William Casey and NSC staff, including Oliver North, are implicated in the operation. ## c. May 1987 — Iran-Contra congressional hearings Joint congressional committees hold televised hearings on the Iran-Contra affair, taking testimony from Oliver North and other officials. Fourteen administration officials are eventually charged; several convictions are later overturned or the defendants pardoned by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. ## 21 August 1992 — Ruby Ridge standoff A standoff between federal agents, including FBI HRT snipers, and the family of Randy Weaver ends with the deaths of Weaver's wife, son, and a deputy US marshal. A Justice Department review finds the FBI's rules of engagement for the operation were unconstitutional, and the government later pays a wrongful-death settlement to the Weaver family. ## 28 February 1993 — Waco siege Following a botched ATF raid on the Branch Davidian compound, the FBI leads a 51-day siege that ends on April 19, 1993, when a fire during the final assault kills about 76 Branch Davidians, including children. Congressional hearings afterward examine the FBI's use of tear gas and tactical decisions during the standoff. ## 18 February 2001 — Robert Hanssen arrested for espionage FBI agent Robert Hanssen is arrested for spying for the Soviet Union and later Russia over more than 20 years, one of the most damaging espionage cases in US history. He pleads guilty and receives a life sentence. The case exposes major gaps in the FBI's internal counterintelligence vetting. ## 26 October 2001 — USA PATRIOT Act signed President Bush signs the USA PATRIOT Act, expanding the surveillance and investigative powers of the FBI and NSA in the wake of the September 11 attacks, including broadened use of national security letters and roving wiretaps. Several provisions face repeated legal and congressional challenges over the following two decades. ## c. October 2001 — Stellar Wind warrantless surveillance program begins Weeks after the September 11 attacks, President Bush authorizes the NSA to intercept international communications of people inside the United States without the warrants ordinarily required under FISA. The program, code-named Stellar Wind, remains secret until reported by the press in 2005. ## c. 2002 — CIA rendition and black site program expands after 9/11 Following the September 11 attacks, the CIA establishes a network of secret overseas detention facilities, or black sites, and expands a program of rendering terrorism suspects to third countries. Detainees at these sites were subjected to interrogation methods including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and stress positions, later documented in the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report. ## 16 December 2005 — New York Times reveals NSA warrantless wiretapping The New York Times publishes an investigation revealing that the NSA has been monitoring international phone calls and emails of people inside the United States without court-approved warrants since shortly after 9/11. The report confirms the existence of the Stellar Wind program and triggers years of litigation and congressional debate over surveillance authority. ## 10 July 2008 — FISA Amendments Act passed Congress passes the FISA Amendments Act, retroactively granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that had cooperated with the NSA's warrantless surveillance program and formally authorizing broader monitoring of foreign communications that pass through US networks, including under what becomes known as Section 702. ## 5 June 2013 — Edward Snowden leaks begin The Guardian publishes the first of a series of stories, sourced from documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, revealing that the NSA collects the phone records of millions of Americans in bulk under a secret court order. Snowden identifies himself as the source days later and is charged with espionage; he remains in exile in Russia. ## 6 June 2013 — PRISM program revealed Leaked documents reveal PRISM, an NSA program that collects internet communications, including emails and chats, directly from the servers of major US technology companies under Section 702 authority. The disclosure, alongside the bulk phone records program, forms the core of the Snowden revelations and prompts a global debate on mass surveillance. ## 9 December 2014 — Senate report on CIA torture program released The Senate Intelligence Committee publishes a declassified 525-page executive summary of its study into the CIA's post-9/11 detention and interrogation program. It concludes the program's methods were more brutal than the CIA had disclosed and did not produce unique intelligence that could not have been obtained through other means, a conclusion the CIA publicly disputed. ## 2 June 2015 — USA Freedom Act ends bulk telephone metadata collection Congress passes the USA Freedom Act, ending the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, a program exposed by the Snowden leaks. Telecommunications companies instead retain records that the NSA can query with case-by-case court approval, a structural change intended to address the surveillance concerns raised in 2013.