 | |
| Author | Christopher Robbins |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Putnam (publisher) |
Publication date | 1978 |
Air America is a 1978 non-fiction book by journalist Christopher Robbins. The book is a history of Air America, an airline covertly owned by the United States Central Intelligence Agency from 1950 to 1976.
From the 1950s to the early 1970s, Indochina had been the landscape of major drug and military operations, conducted by many actors including European and communist countries. When US military involvement started, costs rose and new resources, especially for covert operations, were needed.
Air America's pilots flew dangerous missions, those no one else would fly, frequently under enemy fire. Many missions were in fact aid-oriented missions to provide logistical support and food to allies who were fighting the war along with the South Vietnamese and the US. Most of the time, pilots did not know what they were delivering, just when and where, no matter what the weather was like, or whether it was day or night. [1]
Clear and Present Danger is a political thriller novel, written by Tom Clancy and published on August 17, 1989. A sequel to The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988), main character Jack Ryan becomes acting Deputy Director of Intelligence in the Central Intelligence Agency, and discovers that he is being kept in the dark by his colleagues who are conducting a covert war against a drug cartel based in Colombia. It debuted at number one on The New York Times bestseller list. A film adaptation, featuring Harrison Ford reprising his role as Ryan, was released on August 3, 1994.
Air America was an American passenger and cargo airline established in 1946 and covertly owned and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1950 to 1976. It supplied and supported covert operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, including providing support for drug smuggling in Laos.
On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while conducting photographic aerial reconnaissance deep inside Soviet territory. Flown by American pilot Francis Gary Powers, the aircraft had taken off from Peshawar, Pakistan, and crashed near Sverdlovsk, after being hit by a surface-to-air missile. Powers parachuted to the ground and was captured.
The director of central intelligence (DCI) was the head of the American Central Intelligence Agency from 1946 to 2004, acting as the principal intelligence advisor to the president of the United States and the United States National Security Council, as well as the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various US intelligence agencies.
The Special Activities Center (SAC) is a division of the United States Central Intelligence Agency responsible for covert and paramilitary operations. The unit was named Special Activities Division (SAD) prior to 2015. Within SAC there are two separate groups: SAC/SOG for tactical paramilitary operations and SAC/PAG for covert political action.
Civil Air Transport (CAT) was a Nationalist Chinese airline, later owned by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), that supported United States covert operations throughout East and Southeast Asia. During the Cold War, missions consisted in assistance to "Free World" allies according to the Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1949.
The Cuban Project, also known as Operation Mongoose, was an extensive campaign of terrorist attacks against civilians, and covert operations, carried out by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Cuba. It was officially authorized on November 30, 1961, by U.S. President John F. Kennedy. The name "Operation Mongoose" was agreed to at a White House meeting on November 4, 1961.
The Directorate of Operations (DO), less formally called the Clandestine Service, is a component of the US Central Intelligence Agency. It was known as the Directorate of Plans from 1951 to 1973; as the Directorate of Operations from 1973 to 2005; and as the National Clandestine Service (NCS) from 2005 to 2015.
The Intelligence Star is an award given by the Central Intelligence Agency to its officers for "voluntary acts of courage performed under hazardous conditions or for outstanding achievements or services rendered with distinction under conditions of grave risk". The award citation is from the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and specifically cites actions of "extraordinary heroism". It is the third-highest award given by the Central Intelligence Agency, behind the Distinguished Intelligence Cross and Distinguished Intelligence Medal, and is analogous to the Silver Star, the US military award for extraordinary heroism in combat. Only a few dozen people have received this award, making it one of the rarest valor awards awarded by the US government.
The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been accused of involvement in the trafficking of illicit drugs. Books and journalistic investigations on the subject that have received general notice include works by the historian Alfred McCoy, professor and diplomat Peter Dale Scott, journalists Gary Webb and Alexander Cockburn, and writer Larry Collins. These claims have led to investigations by the United States government, including hearings and reports by the United States House of Representatives, Senate, Department of Justice, and the CIA's Inspector General. The various investigations have generally not led to clear conclusions that the CIA itself has directly conducted drug trafficking operations, although there may have been instances of indirect complicity in the activities of others.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), known informally as the Agency, metonymously as Langley and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action through its Directorate of Operations. The agency is headquartered in the George Bush Center for Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.
National governments deal in both intelligence and military special operations functions that either should be completely secret, or simply cannot be linked to the sponsor. It is a continuing and unsolved question for governments whether clandestine intelligence collection and covert action should be under the same agency. The arguments for doing so include having centralized functions for monitoring covert action and clandestine HUMINT and making sure they do not conflict, as well as avoiding duplication in common services such as cover identity support, counterespionage, and secret communications. The arguments against doing so suggest that the management of the two activities takes a quite different mindset and skills, in part because clandestine collection almost always is on a slower timeline than covert action.
The Memorial Wall is a memorial at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia. It honors 140 CIA employees who died in service to their nation.
The Congo, short for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is an equatorial country located in central Africa. As of July 2018, the CIA World Factbook lists the Congo containing over 85 million inhabitants representing over 200 African ethnic groups. French is the country's official language, and Catholics comprise the largest religious group at fifty percent. The Congo was colonized by King Leopold II of Belgium in 1885, and known as Belgian Congo until it gained independence. Both the Soviet Union and United States had kept a close watch on the mineral-rich country until on June 30, 1960, the Congo finally gained independence under the democratically elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba was a charismatic nationalist who led the only party in parliament with a nationwide base, rather than a regional or ethnic base.
CIA activities in Laos started in the 1950s. In 1959, U.S. Special Operations Forces began to train some Laotian soldiers in unconventional warfare techniques as early as the fall of 1959 under the code name "Erawan". Under this code name, General Vang Pao, who served the royal Lao family, recruited and trained his Hmong and Iu-Mien soldiers. The Hmong and Iu-Mien were targeted as allies after President John F. Kennedy, who refused to send more American soldiers to battle in Southeast Asia, took office. Instead, he called the CIA to use its tribal forces in Laos and "make every possible effort to launch guerrilla operations in North Vietnam with its Asian recruits." General Vang Pao then recruited and trained his Hmong soldiers to ally with the CIA and fight against North Vietnam. The CIA itself claims that the CIA air operations in Laos from 1955 to 1974 were the "largest paramilitary operations ever undertaken by the CIA."
CIA activities in Vietnam were operations conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in Vietnam from the 1950s to the late 1960s, before and during the Vietnam War. After the 1954 Geneva Conference, North Vietnam was controlled by communist forces under Ho Chi Minh's leadership. South Vietnam, with the assistance of the U.S., was anti-communist under Ngo Dinh Diem's leadership. The economic and military aid supplied by the U.S. to South Vietnam continued until the 1974. The CIA participated in both the political and military aspect of the wars in Indochina. The CIA provided suggestions for political platforms, supported candidates, used agency resources to refute electoral fraud charges, manipulated the certification of election results by the South Vietnamese National Assembly, and instituted the Phoenix Program. It worked particularly closely with the ethnic minority Montagnards, Hmong, and Khmer. There are 174 National Intelligence Estimates dealing with Vietnam, issued by the CIA after coordination with the U.S. intelligence community.
With Europe stabilizing along the Iron Curtain, the CIA attempted to limit the spread of Soviet influence elsewhere around the world. Much of the basic model came from George Kennan's "containment" strategy from 1947, a foundation of US policy for decades.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a United States intelligence agency that "provides objective intelligence on foreign countries", also informally referred to as the Agency. The CIA is part of the United States Intelligence Community, is organized into numerus divisions. The divisions include directors, deputy directors, and offices. The CIA board is made up of five distinct entitles called Directorates. The CIA is overseen by the Director of Central Intelligence. Under the Director of Central Intelligence is the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence. Under this the CIA is divided into four directorates. These directorates are as follows:
Operation Millpond, which operated from 13 March 1961 through August 1961, was an American covert operation designed to introduce air power into the Laotian Civil War. A force of 16 B26s, 16 Sikorsky H-34s, and other military materiel was hastily shipped in from Okinawa and held ready to operate from the Kingdom of Thailand. After this hasty preparation for bombing in Laos, the debacle at the Bay of Pigs invasion resulted in the cancellation of Millpond. The B-26s were returned to Okinawa. However, the precedent had been set for covert Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored air operations in Laos.
The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) dates from September 18, 1947, when President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 into law. A major impetus that has been cited over the years for the creation of the CIA was the unforeseen attack on Pearl Harbor, but whatever Pearl Harbor's role, at the close of World War II government circles identified a need for a group to coordinate government intelligence efforts, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the State Department, the War Department, and even the Post Office were all jockeying for that new power.