• Inside SIGNA: A look at CIA’s secret society of (not-so-retired) officers Part 1

    Inside SIGNA: A look at CIA’s secret society of (not-so-retired) officers Part 1

    The SIGNA Society, whose name means “written seal” and whose motto translates as “To have Served is the Greatest Virtue,” is the Central Intelligence Agency’s barely acknowledged secret society of retired security officers. Also, its members are - according to CIA files - not entirely retired.

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  • FOIA FAQ: The ultimate guide to searching CIA's declassified archives

    FOIA FAQ: The ultimate guide to searching CIA’s declassified archives

    This guide will tell you everything you need to know to dive into CIA’s CREST archive and start searching like a pro.

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  • CIA’s 60 year war with the Government Accountability Office: the new millennium Part 2

    CIA’s 60 year war with the Government Accountability Office: the new millennium Part 2

    As a result of the failure by the Senate Intelligence Committee to restore the GAO’s authority to audit or review the Central Intelligence Agency, by the next year that immunity had spread to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which had assumed some of the Agency’s responsibilities in coordinating the Intelligence Community. Like CIA, the ODNI cited a legally dubious position in a 1988 letter from the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel stating that the GAO had no authority to look at anything relating to “intelligence activities.” Also like CIA, the ODNI used a such a broad definition of intelligence activities so that “by definition” they were categorically exempt.

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  • CIA’s 60 year war with the Government Accountability Office: the new millennium Part 1

    CIA’s 60 year war with the Government Accountability Office: the new millennium Part 1

    While the 25-year declassification review program hasn’t reached the new millennium yet, contemporary public records still provide some insight into the GAO’s efforts to audit the Intelligence Community in general and Central Intelligence Agency in particular. After its creation and taking on some of the duties that had previously laid with CIA, the ODNI would pay lip service to the GAO and seem to cooperate on some issues. At the same time, it manifested the same problems, ignoring its own guidance and, like the Agency, claim that almost anything was protected as an intelligence source or method.

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  • The CIA college tour: Boston

    The CIA college tour: Boston

    As part of back-to-school week, we combed through the Central Intelligence Agency archives to find connections between colleges and the Agency, starting with our home turf: Boston.

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  • Robert Blum, the spy who shaped the world Part 1

    Robert Blum, the spy who shaped the world Part 1

    Even for students of the history of the Intelligence Community (IC), Robert Blum is all but forgotten except as a bureaucrat, a professor, and the head of a philanthropic foundation with ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. In reality, he was a counterintelligence chief who worked for several agencies, built large pieces of the United States’ foreign economic policies, had the Director of Central Intelligence fired, and redesigned a significant portion of the IC, including its mechanisms for covert action and propaganda.

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  • CIA’s 60 year war with the Government Accountability Office: the '80s Part 1

    CIA’s 60 year war with the Government Accountability Office: the ‘80s Part 1

    During the ’80s, CIA’s efforts to shut down the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) access to the Agency not only went on unchecked, but reached a new level of success when the Agency convinced Congress to further consolidate Oversight within the intelligence committees. Not only did this nearly cut the GAO out entirely, but it allowed the CIA to spread its exemption to other agencies eager to avoid an audit.

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  • CIA’s 60 year war with the Government Accountability Office: 1975 Part 2

    CIA’s 60 year war with the Government Accountability Office: 1975 Part 2

    Whether because of the restrictive guidelines or, as Central Intelligence Agency’s own historian suggests, because of the censorship of the Pike Report, the Government Accountability Office continued to be denied any meaningful ability to audit CIA or aid in Congressional oversight. Several years later, a CIA memo would refer to this as them successfully “holding the GAO and their armies of auditors at bay.”

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  • CIA’s 60 year war with the Government Accountability Office: the '40s to the '60s Part 1

    CIA’s 60 year war with the Government Accountability Office: the ‘40s to the ‘60s Part 1

    For nearly sixty years, the CIA has resisted the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) efforts to perform a full audit of the Agency, even going so far as to not only render themselves exempt, but to spread this exemption throughout the rest of the Intelligence Community. When the GAO got fed up and quit, the CIA tried to have the letters detailing their frustrations classified.

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  • The CIA's private press pool was a secret even inside the Agency

    The CIA’s private press pool was a secret even inside the Agency

    On September 17th in 1965, an odd memo was sent within the CIA praising nearly a decade’s worth of unofficial briefings with the press. Seemingly out of the blue, numerous contacts between Ray Cline, CIA’s Deputy Director for Intelligence, and the press were suddenly admitted and enumerated. When the memo was first discovered, it was unclear what prompted it, however another, recently unearthed memo implies that it came about because of a threat from a member of the Agency’s private press pool.

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