Throughout its history, the CIA has been the subject of numerous controversies, both at home and abroad.
- Operation Condor – a United States-backed campaign of repression and state terrorism involving intelligence operations, CIA-backed coup d'états and assassinations against left-wing socialist leaders in South America from 1968 to 1989. By the Operation's end in 1989, up to 80,000 people had been killed.[1]
- Project Mockingbird – a wiretapping operation initiated by that eavesdropped on multiple journalists as a means of identifying sources of government leaks. Its existence was made public in 2007 when the CIA released a report referred as Family Jewels.[2][3]
- Allegations of drug trafficking – The CIA has been accused of working with numerous illicit drug trafficking groups. Several notable journalistic works about the topic have gained general notice. The United States government has conducted multiple investigations and hearings resulting from the allegations. Although they have generally not led to the conclusion that the CIA was directly involved in drug trafficking, some reports found that there may have been instances of indirect complicity in the activities of others.[4]
- ^ Bevins, Vincent (2020). The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World. PublicAffairs. pp. 266–267. ISBN 978-1-5417-4240-6.
- ^ Pines, Daniel (2009-04-01). "The Central Intelligence Agency's "Family Jewels": Legal Then? Legal Now?". 84 Indiana Law Journal 637 (2009). 84 (2). ISSN 0019-6665.
- ^ Mitchell, Greg. "Before Nixon: When JFK tapped the phone of a New York Times reporter". Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved 2024-02-21.
- ^ Rothberg, Donald (November 9, 1996). "Investigation Absolves CIA in Alleged Drug Smuggling". Associated Press. Archived from the original on May 2, 2014.