A Yak is a derogatory term that refers to the Yakuza. The term is used by Japanese young people and foreign persons familiar with Japanese culture.

Today, the Yakuza are among the largest crime organizations in the world. In Japan, as of 2005, there are some 86,300 known members. In Japanese legal terminology, yakuza organizations are referred to as bōryokudan, literally “violence groups”, which Yakuza members consider an insult as it can be applied to any violent criminal.

History
Origins

The “kabuki-mono” were a group that dressed in a somewhat peculiar style and spoke in vulgar specialized vernacular that matched their often abrasive and outrageous behavior.
Despite their notoriety in modern Japan, the precise origin of the Yakuza is still somewhat the subject of debate. The first historical interpretation of their derivation is from the hatamoto-yakko or Kabuki-mono of the 17th century Genroku Era, who were derivative classes of the low-rank hatamoto, lower salaried samurai who constituted a quarter of the shogun’s retainers.

Other theories, suggested by the Yakuza members themselves claim their origins are from the machi-yokko, who policed villages by protecting them from the hatamoto-yakko that tried to steal from them, despite their being outmatched by the Hatamoto-yakko in training and strength.

Despite their shortcomings, the machi-yakko were regarded as folk heroes similar to those in the stories of Robin Hood, with some groups being made the feature of plays and dramas. The derivation from the hatamoto-yakko or Kabuki-mono known for their adoption of strange hair styles and outrageous dress manner refers to a relevant era of the Genroku Period in which kabuki plays, and onnagata were prominent.

Despite the different groups, the majority of the events which led to their inception occurred during the Edo period. As peacetime brought about by the destruction of the Toyotomi Clan ensured the Tokugawa shogunate’s role of maintaining peace, shogun retainers were no longer required in their role as soldiers and moved from their own catchment areas to live in feudal castles where their income was determined by their daimyō.

Due to the isolation of Japan and restriction of foreign trade, Japan’s agricultural production and domestic trade greatly improved which resulted in the increase of power in the merchant class and the financial dependency of the samurai upon them — samurai retainers were paid with rice by their daimyō, and then sold it in markets as a means of generating their salary.
As natural disasters, famine and tax increases led to the destabilization of the social hierarchy and the decline of morals due to public dissatisfaction with the government, factions of wayward, leaderless samurai known as ronin began to focus their attention from community service towards generating money through theft and violence towards smaller mercantile villages with disparate policing and little feudal control as they presented less-dangerous means of achieving iniquitous money. However, Yakuza that claim origin from the machi-yakko refute their origins from the hatamoto-yakko due to its association with thievery, which is supposedly unpracticed amongst modern Yakuza.

In larger towns, several of these groups often existed simultaneously, and they often fought for territory, money and influence much like modern gangs, disregarding any civilians caught in the crossfire. Again, this is the origin of a popular theme of Japanese film and television, made famous in the West by an Akira Kurosawa film called Yojimbo in which a wandering ronin sets two such gangs against each other and eventually destroys them.

Yakuza derived some practices from both machi-yakko and kabukimono. Their protection rackets can be seen as originating from machi-yakko, but their more colorful fashion and language are derived from the kabukimono tradition.

Divisions of origin

Despite uncertainty about the single origin of Yakuza organizations, most modern Yakuza derive from two classifications which emerged in the mid-Edo Period : tekiya, those who primarily peddled illicit, stolen or shoddy goods; and bakuto, those who were involved in or participated in gambling.

Tekiya (peddlers) were considered one of the lowest of Edo castes. As they began to form organizations of their own, they took over some administrative duties relating to commerce, such as stall allocation and protection of their commercial activities. During Shinto festivals, these peddlers opened stalls and some members were hired to act as security. Each peddler paid rent in exchange for a stall assignment and protection during the fair.

The Edo government eventually formally recognized such tekiya organizations and granted the “oyabun” (servants) of tekiya a surname as well as permission to carry a sword. This was a major step forward for the traders, as formerly only samurai and noblemen were allowed to carry swords.

Bakuto (gamblers) had a much lower social standing even than traders, as gambling was illegal. Many small gambling houses cropped up in abandoned temples or shrines at the edge of towns and villages all over Japan. Most of these gambling houses ran loan sharking businesses for clients, and they usually maintained their own security personnel.

The places themselves, as well as the bakuto, were regarded with disdain by society at large, and much of the undesirable image of the yakuza originates from bakuto; This includes the name “yakuza” itself.

Because of the economic situation during the mid-period and the predominance of the merchant class, developing Yakuza groups were composed of misfits and delinquents that had joined or formed Yakuza groups to extort customers in local markets by selling fake or shoddy goods.
The roots of the Yakuza can still be seen today in initiation ceremonies , which incorporate tekiya or bakuto rituals. Although the modern yakuza has diversified, some gangs still identify with one group or the other; For example, a gang whose primary source of income is illegal gambling may refer to themselves as bakuto.

Burakumin

The Burakumin are a group that is socially discriminated against in Japanese society. The burakumin are descendants of outcast communities of the feudal era, which mainly comprised those with occupations considered “tainted” with death or ritual impurity, such as executioners, undertakers or leather workers. They traditionally lived in their own secluded hamlets and ghettos. Discrimination against the Burakumin continues into the present day, a legacy of the Japanese feudal/caste system.

According to David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro in Yakuza: The Explosive Account of Japan’s Criminal Underworld (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1986), burakumin account for about 70 percent of the members of Yamaguchi-gumi, the biggest yakuza syndicate in Japan.

Mitsuhiro Suganuma, the ex-member of Public Security Intelligence Agency, testified that burakumin account for about 60 percent of the members of the entire yakuza.

Postwar Yakuza

Certain public Japanese bathhouses (sentō) and gymnasiums often openly ban those bearing large or graphic tattoos in an attempt to prevent Yakuza from entering.

As Japan began to industrialize and urbanization got underway, a third group of yakuza called gurentai (愚連隊) began to emerge (though the name gurentai was not given until after World War II). Whether they fall into the traditional definition of yakuza is still open to debate, but they certainly gave birth to another kind of yakuza, the bōryokudan (violence group).

In short, a gurentai is a gang in a much more traditional sense, a group of young unruly thugs who peddle their violence for profit. They often engaged in the suppression of unions and other workers’ organizations and such activities brought them much closer to the conservative elements of the Japanese power structure. During the militarisation of Japan, some of them became the militant wing of Japanese politics known as uyoku (right wing, 右翼), i.e. ultra-nationalists.

Unlike more traditional yakuza, uyoku did not maintain territories—they leveraged their violence for political gain. The most famous group before World War II was the Kokuryū-kai (黒龍会), or Black Dragon Society. The Kokuryu-kai was a secret ultra-nationalist umbrella organization whose membership was composed of government officials and military officers as well as many martial artists and members of the Japanese underworld who engaged in political terrorism and assassination.

They also provided espionage services for the Japanese colonial government. Kokuryū-kai engaged in contraband operations including the Chinese opium trade, as well as prostitution and gambling overseas which provided them with funds as well as information.

During the post-War rationing, the yakuza controlled the black market much in line with traditional tekiya operations. At the same time, they also moved into controlling major sea ports as well as the entertainment industry. The biggest yakuza umbrella group, the Yamaguchi-gumi, emerged in the Kansai region, which had a large entertainment industry in the city of Osaka as well as a major sea port in Kobe.

American occupation forces fought against them in vain and conceded defeat in 1950. Yakuza also adapted to a more western style, including wearing clothing reminiscent of US gangsters, and began to use firearms. At this point, tekiya and bakuto no longer confined themselves to their traditional activities and expanded into any venture they found profitable.

At the same time gurentai began to adopt traditional roles of tekiya and bakuto. They also began to feud among themselves, jockeying for power and prestige.

In the 1960s, Yoshio Kodama, an ex-nationalist, began to negotiate treaties with various groups, first with the Yamaguchi-gumi of Kazuo Taoka and Tōsei-kai of Hisayuki Machii and eventually with the Inagawa-kai. Fights between individual gangs, however, are ongoing.

Ethnic Korean Yakuza

While Koreans in Japan comprise only 0.05% of the population, they are a prominent part of yakuza, despite or perhaps because Koreans suffer severe discrimination in Japanese society along with burakumin. In early 1990s, 18 of 90 top bosses of Inagawa-kai were ethnic Koreans. National Police Agency (Japan) suggested Koreans comprised 10% along with 70% of burakumin in Yamaguchi-gumi. Some of the representatives of the designated Bōryokudan are also. The Korean significance had been an untouchable taboo in Japan and one of the reasons that the Japanese version of Kaplan and Dubro’s Yakuza (1986) had not been published until 1991 with deletion of Korean-related description such as the component of Yamaguchi-gumi.
Although Japanese-born people of Korean ancestry are a significant segment of the Japanese population, they are still considered resident aliens because of their nationality. But Koreans, who are often shunned in legitimate trades, are embraced by the Japanese yakuza precisely because they fit the group’s “outsider” image.

The man who paved the way for Korean-Japanese in Japan by organizing Tōsei-kai was the Korean-Japanese yakuza godfather Hisayuki Machii. Born Chong Gwon Yong in 1923 in Korea under Japanese rule, Machii was an ambitious street hood who saw opportunity in Japan and seized it.

After the Japanese surrender, Machii worked with the United States Counter Intelligence Corps, which valued his staunch anti-communist beliefs. While leaders of the Japanese yakuza were imprisoned or under close scrutiny by the American occupying forces, the Korean yakuza were free to take over the lucrative black markets. But rather than trying to rival the Japanese godfathers, Machii made alliances with them, and throughout his career, he remained close to both Kodama and Taoka.

In 1948 Machii established the Tosei-kai (Voice of the East Gang) and soon took over Tokyo’s Ginza district, the Times Square of Japan’s capital. The Tosei-kai became so powerful in Tokyo that they were known as the “Ginza police,” and even the Yamaguchi-gumi’s all-powerful Taoka had to cut a deal with Machii to allow that group to operate in Tokyo.
Machii’s vast empire included tourism, entertainment, bars and restaurants, prostitution, and oil importing. He and Kodama made a fortune on real estate investments alone. More importantly, he brokered deals between the Korean government and the yakuza that allowed Japanese criminals to set up rackets in Korea, a country that had been victimized by the Japanese for many years.
Thanks to Machii, Korea became the yakuza’s home away from home. Befitting his role as fixer between the underworlds of both countries, Machii was allowed to acquire the largest ferry service between Shimonoseki, Japan, and Busan, South Korea—the shortest route between the two countries.
In the mid-1960s, pressure from the police forced Machii to officially disband the Tosei-kai. He formed two supposedly legitimate organizations around this time, the Toa Sogo Kigyo (East Asia Enterprises Company) and Toa Yuai Jigyo Kumiai (East Asia Friendship Enterprises Association), which became fronts for his criminal activities.
He was widely believed to have helped the Korean Central Intelligence Agency kidnap then-leading Korean opposition leader Kim Dae Jung from a Tokyo hotel (see kidnapping of Kim Dae-Jung). Kim was whisked out to sea where he was bound, gagged, blindfolded and fitted with weights so that his body would never surface.
The execution by drowning was abruptly cancelled when an aircraft buzzed the ship, and Kim was mysteriously delivered to his neighborhood in Seoul. American intervention is said to have saved his life. A police investigation revealed that Machii’s people had rented every other room on the floor of the hotel where Kim had been staying, but Machii was never charged with any crime in connection with kidnapping. Machii “retired” in his 80s and was frequently seen vacationing in Hawaii. He died on September 14, 2002.

Also, Tokutaro Takayama was the kaicho of the Fourth Aizukotetsu yakuza gang. An ethnic Korean, he rose to power as the head of the Kyoto-based gang until his retirement in the 1990s.

Organization and activities
Structure

Yakuza hierarchy
During the formation of the yakuza, they adopted the traditional Japanese hierarchical structure of oyabun-kobun where kobun (子分; lit. foster child) owe their allegiance to the oyabun (親分; lit. foster parent). In a much later period, the code of “jingi” (仁義, justice and duty) was developed where loyalty and respect are a way of life.

The oyabun-kobun relationship is formalized by ceremonial sharing of sake from a single cup. This ritual is not exclusive to the yakuza — it is also commonly performed in traditional Japanese Shinto weddings, and may have been a part of “sworn brotherhood” relationships.

During the World War II period in Japan, the more traditional tekiya/bakuto form of organization declined as the entire population was mobilised to participate in the war effort and society came under strict military government. However, after the war, the yakuza adapted again.

Prospective yakuza come from all walks of life. The most romantic tales tell how yakuza accept sons who have been abandoned or exiled by their parents. Many yakuza start out in junior high school or high school as common street thugs or members of bōsōzoku gangs. Perhaps because of its lower socio-economic status, numerous yakuza members come from Burakumin and ethnic Korean backgrounds.

The leadership levels of yakuza gangs usually consist of very sharp, cunning, intelligent men, as the process to rise to the top-levels in the yakuza can be very competitive and Machiavellian.
Yakuza groups are headed by an Oyabun or Kumichō (組長, family head) who gives orders to his subordinates, the kobun. In this respect, the organization is a variation of the traditional Japanese senpai-kōhai (senior-junior) model. Members of yakuza gangs cut their family ties and transfer their loyalty to the gang boss. They refer to each other as family members - fathers and elder and younger brothers. The Yakuza is populated almost entirely by men, and there are very few women involved who are called “o-nee-san” (お姉さん older sister). When the Yamaguchi-gumi (Family) boss was shot in the late nineties, his wife took over as boss of Yamaguchi-gumi, albeit for a short time.

The Yakuza have a very complex organizational structure. There is an overall boss of the syndicate, the kumicho, and directly beneath him are the saiko komon (senior advisor) and so-honbucho (headquarters chief). The second in the chain of command is the wakagashira, who governs several gangs in a region with the help of a fuku-honbucho who is himself responsible for several gangs. The regional gangs themselves are governed by their local boss, the shateigashira.

Each member’s connection is ranked by the hierarchy of sakazuki (sake sharing). Kumicho are at the top, and control various saikō-komon (最高顧問, senior advisors). The saikō-komon control their own turfs in different areas or cities. They have their own underlings, including other underbosses, advisors, accountants and enforcers.

Those who have received sake from oyabun are part of the immediate family and ranked in terms of elder or younger brothers. However, each kobun, in turn, can offer sakazuki as oyabun to his underling to form an affiliated organisation, which might in turn form lower ranked organisations. In the Yamaguchi-gumi, which controls some 2500 businesses and 500 yakuza groups, there are even 5th rank subsidiary organisations.

Rituals

Yubitsume, or finger-cutting, is a form of penance or apology. Upon a first offense, the transgressor must cut off the tip of his left little finger and hand the severed portion to his boss. Sometimes an underboss may do this in penance to the oyabun if he wants to spare a member of his own gang from further retaliation.

Its origin stems from the traditional way of holding a Japanese sword. The bottom three fingers of each hand are used to grip the sword tightly, with the thumb and index fingers slightly loose. The removal of digits starting with the little finger moving up the hand to the index finger progressively weakens a person’s sword grip.

The idea is that a person with a weak sword grip then has to rely more on the group for protection — reducing individual action. In recent years, prosthetic fingertips have been developed to disguise this distinctive appearance.

Many Yakuza have full-body tattoos. These tattoos, known as irezumi in Japan, are still often “hand-poked,” that is, the ink is inserted beneath the skin using non-electrical, hand-made and hand held tools with needles of sharpened bamboo or steel. The procedure is expensive and painful and can take years to complete.

Yakuza in prison sometimes perform pearlings: for each year spent in prison one pearl is inserted under the skin of the penis.

When yakuza members play Oicho-Kabu cards with each other, they often remove their shirts or open them up and drape them around their waists. This allows them to display their full-body tattoos to each other. This is one of the few times that yakuza members display their tattoos to others, as they normally keep them concealed in public with long-sleeved and high-necked shirts.

Another prominent yakuza ritual is the sake-sharing ceremony. This is used to seal bonds of brotherhood between individual yakuza members, or between two yakuza groups. For example, in August 2005, the Godfathers Kenichi Shinoda and Kazuyoshi Kudo held a sake-sharing ceremony, sealing a new bond between their respective gangs, the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Kokusui-kai.

Principal families

Although yakuza membership has declined following an antigang law aimed specifically at yakuza and passed by the Japanese government in 1992, there are thought to be more than 87,000 active yakuza members in Japan today. Although there are many different Yakuza groups, together they form the largest organized crime group in the world.

Current activities
In Japan

Much of the current activities of the yakuza can be understood in the light of their feudal origin. First, they are not a secret society like their counterparts of the Italian mafia and Chinese triads. Yakuza organizations often have an office with a wooden board on the front door, openly displaying their group name or emblem.

Members often wear sunglasses and colourful suits so that their profession can be immediately recognized by civilians (katagi). Even the way many Yakuza walk is markedly different from ordinary citizens. Their arrogant, wide gait is markedly different from the quiet, unassuming way many Japanese go about their business. Alternatively, Yakuza can dress more conservatively and flash their tattoos to indicate their affiliation when the need arises.
On occasion they also sport insignia pins on their lapels. One Yakuza family even printed a monthly newsletter with details on prisons, weddings, funerals, murders, and poems by leaders.
Until recently, the majority of yakuza income came from protection rackets in shopping, entertainment and red-light districts within their territory. This is mainly due to the reluctance of such businesses to seek help from the police. The Japanese police are also reluctant to interfere in internal matters in recognized communities such as shopping arcades, schools/universities, night districts and so on.

In this sense, yakuza are still regarded as semi-legitimate organizations. For example, immediately after the Kobe earthquake, the Yamaguchi-gumi, whose headquarters are in Kobe, mobilised itself to provide disaster relief services (including the use of a helicopter), and this was widely reported by the media as a contrast to the much slower response by the Japanese government. For this reason, many yakuza regard their income and hustle (shinogi) as a collection of a feudal tax.

Yakuza are heavily involved in sex-related industries, such as smuggling uncensored pornography from Europe and America into Japan (as the local pornography is censored in ways Western pornography is not). They also control large prostitution rings throughout the country. In China, where the law restricts the number of children per household and the cultural preference is for boys, the yakuza can buy unwanted girls for as little as $5,000 and put them to work in the mizu shōbai, which means ‘water trade’ and refers to the night entertainment business, in yakuza-controlled bars, nightclubs and restaurants.

The Philippines are another source of young women. Yakuza trick girls from impoverished villages into coming to Japan, where they are promised respectable jobs with good wages. Instead, they are forced into becoming prostitutes and strippers. Often the girls succumb to the demands of their pimps, since they are earning more money than they ever could in the Philippines.

Yakuza frequently engage in a uniquely Japanese form of extortion, known as sōkaiya (総会屋). In essence, this is a specialized form of protection racket. Instead of harassing small businesses, the yakuza harasses a stockholders’ meeting of a larger corporation. They simply scare the ordinary stockholder with the presence of yakuza operatives, who obtain the right to attend the meeting by a small purchase of stock.

They also engage in simple blackmail, obtaining incriminating or embarrassing information about a company’s practices or leaders. Once the yakuza gain a foothold in these companies, they will work for them to protect the company from having such internal scandals exposed to the public. Some companies still include payoffs as part of their annual budget.

The Yakuza have a strong influence in Japanese professional wrestling, or puroresu. Most of their interest in wrestling activities and promotions is purely financial. The Yakuza have mostly gotten involved by financially supporting wrestling promotions with fading fortunes, or simple business loans.

Many venues used by wrestling (arenas, stadiums, and so forth) are owned by or connected to the Yakuza, and as such, when a promotion uses one of their sites, the Yakuza receive a percentage of the gate. The Yakuza as a whole is regarded as a great supporter of both puroresu and MMA.

It’s not unusual for wrestlers to receive specific instructions on what to do in their matches so as to appeal just to Yakuza members in the crowd. It is thought in Japan that it is safe to say that none of the large wrestling promotions in Japan would fold, because they would be rescued by the Yakuza.

The pioneer of wrestling in Japan, Rikidōzan, was killed by the Yakuza. Former WWE wrestler Yoshihiro Tajiri was asked to start a Yakuza gimmick, an offer he quickly refused, fearing that he would be targeted by the real Yakuza. Professional wrestler Yoshiaki Fujiwara is often referred to as “Kumicho” (i.e, “Godfather”) and his wrestling promotion was called the Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi. He often portrays Yakuza figures as an actor on Japanese television comedies and dramas.

Yakuza also have ties to the Japanese realty market and banking, through jiageya (地上げ屋). Jiageya specialize in inducing holders of small real estate to sell their property so that estate companies can carry out much larger development plans. Japan’s bubble economy of the 1980s is often blamed on real estate speculation by banking subsidiaries. After the collapse of the Japanese property bubble, a manager of a major bank in Nagoya was assassinated, and much speculation ensued about the banking industry’s indirect connection to the Japanese underworld.

Yakuza have been known to make large investments in legitimate, mainstream companies. In 1989 Susumu Ishii, the Oyabun of the Inagawa-kai (a well known Yakuza group) bought US$ 255 million worth of Tokyo Kyuko Electric Railway’s stock. Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission has knowledge of more than 50 listed companies with ties to organized crime, and in March 2008 the Osaka Securities Exchange decided to review all listed companies and expel those with Yakuza ties.

As a matter of principle, theft is not recognised as a legitimate activity of yakuza. This is in line with the idea that their activities are semi-open; theft by definition would be a covert activity. More importantly, such an act would be considered a trespass by the community. Also, yakuza usually do not conduct the actual business operation by themselves. Core business activities such as merchandising, loan sharking or management of gambling houses are typically managed by non-yakuza members who pay protection fees for their activities.

There is much evidence of Yakuza involvement in international crime. There are many tattooed Yakuza members imprisoned in various Asian prisons for such crimes as drug trafficking and arms smuggling. In 1997, one verified Yakuza member was caught smuggling 4 kilograms (8.82 pounds) of heroin into Canada.

In 1999, Italian-American Mafia Bonnano family member, Mickey Zaffarano, was overheard talking about the profits of the pornography trade that both families could profit from. Another Yakuza racket is bringing women of other ethnicities/races, especially East European and Asian to Japan under the lure of a glamourous position, then forcing the women into prostitution.
Yakuza often take part in local festivals such as Sanja Matsuri - they often carry the shrine through the streets proudly showing off their elaborate tattoos.

Because of their history as a legitimate feudal organization and their connection to the Japanese political system through the uyoku (extreme right-wing political groups), yakuza are somewhat a part of the Japanese establishment. In the early 80s in Fukuoka, a yakuza war spiraled out of control and a few civilians were hurt.

The police stepped in and forced the yakuza bosses on both sides to declare a truce in public. At various times, people in Japanese cities have launched anti-yakuza campaigns with mixed and varied success. In March 1995, the Japanese government passed the “Act for Prevention of Unlawful Activities by Criminal Gang Members” which made traditional racketeering much more difficult.

In America

Yakuza activity in the United States is mostly relegated to Hawaii, but have made their presence known in other parts of the country. The Yakuza are said to use Hawaii as a way station between Japan and mainland America, smuggling crystal methamphetamine into the country and smuggling back firearms to Japan.

They easily fit into the local population, since many tourists from Japan and other Asian countries visit the islands on a regular basis. The Yakuza were estimated to control around 99.9% of the methamphetamine trade in Hawaii as of 1988. They also work with local gangs, funneling Japanese tourists to gambling parlors and brothels.

In California, the Yakuza have made alliances with local Vietnamese and Korean gangs as well as Chinese triads. Yakuza gangsters have also been spotted in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Las Vegas, Houston, Florida and New York City, where they appear to collect finders fees from American mafiosos and businessmen for guiding Japanese tourists to gambling establishments, both legal and illegal.

The FBI suspects that the Yakuza use various operations to launder money in the U.S.
In 2001, the FBI’s representative in Tokyo arranged for Tadamasa Goto, the head of the group Goto-gumi, to receive a liver transplant in the United States, in return for information of Yamaguchi-gumi operations in the U.S. This was done without prior consultation of the NPA.
The journalist who uncovered the deal received threats by Goto and was given police protection in the US and in Japan.

In Australia

Yakuza presence in Australia at present is minimal, being restricted mainly to the Gold Coast, Queensland, where Yakuza members go to launder money in Gold Coast Casinos, or to extort money from Japanese businesses (mainly tourism). As it stands, the Yakuza have no known permanent stakes in Australia.

In Mexico

Yakuza in Mexico are most notably involved in illegal immigration. There were cases in the 1990s of Yakuza recruiting young women (mainly with diplomas and good English knowledge) with promises of legitimate work in Japan. When the women arrived in Japan they were forced into prostitution. Some women were able to escape their employers and return home to Mexico and alert authorities. In some incidents Mexican authorities were able to apprehend the Yakuza members and deported them as illegal immigrants.

Similar incidents have also occurred in Peru where women have been enticed to work in Japan. The Association of Hispanic Women Against Discrimination and Gender Violence or “Women in Action” estimates nearly 3,000 Mexican women recruited by the various Yakuza clans prostitute themselves in Japan.

The Mossad is responsible for intelligence collection, counter-terrorism, covert operations such as paramilitary activities and political assassinations and the facilitation of aliyah where it is banned. It is one of the main entities in the Israeli Intelligence Community (along with Aman (military intelligence), OADNA and Shin Bet (internal security), but its director reports directly to the Prime Minister. Its role and function is similar to that of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).

Prior to Israel’s formation

The “Mossad Le’aliyah Bet” was a small, unorthodox Zionist organization whose mission in 1938 was to bring Jews to Israel. This was done to subvert the British quotas on Jewish immigration. The Mossad’s modes of operation, its ideology, and politics resulted in the creation of the intelligence agency for the Israeli government once it was established in 1948. The agency consisted of several of the existing members who had worked to establish Israel as a Jewish nation and to bring the Jewish people to it.

Organization

Executive offices

From its headquarters in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, the Mossad oversees a staff estimated at 1,200 personnel, although it may have numbered up to 2,000 in the late 1980s. The Mossad does not use military ranks, although most of its staff have served in the Israel Defense Forces as part of Israel’s compulsory draft system, and many of them are officers. It is assumed to consist of eight different departments.

The largest is Collections, tasked with many aspects of conducting espionage overseas. Employees in the Collections Department operate under a variety of covers, including diplomatic and unofficial. Their field intelligence officers, called katsas, are similar to case officers of the CIA. Thirty to forty operate at a time, mainly in Europe and the Middle East.

The Political Action and Liaison Department is responsible for working both with allied foreign intelligence services, and with nations that have no normal diplomatic relations with Israel.
Among the departments of the Mossad is the Special Operations Division or ‘”Metsada” (see Kidon), which is involved in assassination, paramilitary operations, sabotage, and psychological warfare.

Psychological warfare is also a concern of the Lochamah Psichologit Department, which conducts propaganda and deception activities as well.
Additionally, the Mossad has a Research Department, tasked with intelligence production, and a Technology Department concerned with the development of tools for Mossad activities.

Directors of Mossad
• Reuven Shiloah, 1949-1952
• Isser Harel, 1952-1963
• Meir Amit, 1963-1968
• Zvi Zamir, 1968-1974
• Yitzhak Hofi, 1974-1982
• Nahum Admoni, 1982-1989
• Shabtai Shavit, 1989-1996
• Danny Yatom, 1996-1998
• Efraim Halevy, 1998-2002
• Meir Dagan, 2002-present

Organizational history

The Mossad was formed on December 13, 1949 as the “Central Institute for Coordination”, at the recommendation of Reuven Shiloah to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Shiloah wanted a central body to coordinate and improve cooperation between the existing security services – the army’s intelligence department (AMAN), the General Security Service (GSS or “Shin Bet”) and the foreign office’s “political department”. In March 1951, it was reorganized and made a part of the prime minister’s office, reporting directly to the prime minister. Its current staff is estimated at 1,200.
Mossad’s former motto: be-tachbūlōt ta`aseh lekhā milchāmāh (Hebrew: בתחבולות תעשה לך מלחמה‎, can be translated in various ways. Babylon, the online translator translates the first word - the method of waging war - as by “trick, plot, scheme, guile, ploy, ruse, sleight, subterfuge, wile, chicanery, contrivance,” etc. Some translate it with softer words as “For by wise counsel thou shalt wage thy war,” and claim it is a quote from the bible (Proverbs XXIV,6).
The motto was changed recently as part of the Mossad’s public ‘coming out’ to another Proverbs passage: be-’éyn tachbūlōt yippol `ām; ū-teshū`āh be-rov yō’éts (Hebrew: באין תחבולות יפול עם, ותשועה ברוב יועץ‎). The word תחבולות is the same as in the original motto and according to Babylon still means trick, etc. However, some translate it as, “Where no counsel is, the people fall, but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.” (Proverbs XI, 14).

Activities

North America
United States of America

The Mossad informed the FBI and CIA in August 2001 that as many as 200 terrorists were slipping into the United States and planning “a major assault on the United States.” The Israeli intelligence agency cautioned that it had picked up indications of a “large-scale target” in the United States and that Americans would be “very vulnerable.” A month later, the terrorists struck at the twin towers.

South America
Argentina

In 1960, the Mossad discovered that Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was in Argentina and through surveillance, they confirmed that he had been living there under the name of Ricardo Klement. He was captured by a team of Mossad agents on May 11, 1960, and subsequently smuggled to Israel where he was tried and executed. Argentina protested what it considered as the violation of its sovereignty, and the United Nations Security Council noted that “repetition of acts such as [this] would involve a breach of the principles upon which international order is founded, creating an atmosphere of insecurity and distrust incompatible with the preservation of peace” while also acknowledging that “Eichmann should be brought to appropriate justice for the crimes of which he is accused” and that “this resolution should in no way be interpreted as condoning the odious crimes of which Eichmann is accused.” Mossad aborted a second operation to capture Josef Mengele.

Western Europe
Germany

• Operation Plumbat (1968) was an operation by Lekem-Mossad to further Israel’s nuclear program. The German freighter “Scheersberg A”, disappeared on its way from Antwerp to Genoa along with its cargo of 200 tons of yellowcake, after supposedly being transferred to an Israeli ship.
• The sending of letter bombs during the Operation Wrath of God campaign. Some of these attacks were not fatal, although their purpose might not have been to kill the receiver. Some of the more famous examples of the Mossad letter bombs were those sent to Nazi war-criminal Alois Brunner.

Italy

The abduction of nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu in 1986 after American-Israeli agent Cheryl Bentov lured him from the United Kingdom.

Malta

The assassination of Fathi Shiqaqi, a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in 1995 in front of the Diplomat Hotel in Sliema, Malta.

Norway

Lillehammer affair. On July 21, 1973, Mossad agents in Lillehammer murdered Moroccan busboy, Ahmed Bouchikhi, whom they mistakenly believed to have been involved in the Munich Olympics massacre.

Balkans
Bosnia and Herzegovina

Assisted in air and overland evacuations of the Jews from war-torn Sarajevo to Israel in 1992.

Middle East
Egypt

• Directed missions for Israeli spy Wolfgang Lotz in Egypt 1957-1965.
• Directed missions for Israeli spy Eli Cohen(was born and worked in his youth in Egypt but spied on Syria) in 1964, who provided vast amounts of valuable intelligence. Eli Cohen was, however, caught in 1965 in Syria while he was monitoring radio frequencies.
• Provision of key intelligence on the Egyptian Air Force for Operation Focus, the opening airstrike of the Six-Day War.
• Operation Bulmus 6 - Intelligence assistance in the Commando Assault on Green Island, Egypt during the War of Attrition.

Iran
Iran 1960s

Prior to the Iranian Revolution of 1978–79 in Iran, SAVAK (Organization of National Security and Information), the Iranian secret police and intelligence service was created under the guidance of United States and Israeli intelligence officers in 1957 to protect the regime of the shah by arresting, torturing, and executing the dissidents (especially Leftists). After security relations between the United States and Iran grew more distant in the early 1960s which led the CIA training team to leave Persia, Mossad became increasingly active in Iran, training SAVAK personnel and carry¬ing out a broad variety of joint operations with SAVAK.

Iran 2007

It was alleged by private intelligence agency Stratfor, based on “sources close to Israeli intelligence”, that Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour, a scientist involved in the Iranian nuclear program, was killed by the Mossad on January 15, 2007.
A US intelligence official told The Washington Post that Israel orchestrated the defection of Iranian general Ali Reza Askari on February 7, 2007. This has been denied by Israeli spokesman Mark Regev. The Sunday Times reported that Askari had been a Mossad asset since 2003, and left only when his cover was about to be blown.

Iraq

Assistance in the defection and rescuing of the family of Munir Redfa, an Iraqi pilot who defected and flew his MiG 21 to Israel in 1966.
Operation Sphinx - Between 1978 and 1981, obtained highly sensitive information about Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor by recruiting an Iraqi nuclear scientist in France. On April 5, 1979, the Mossad destroyed 60 percent of the Iraqi reactor components being built in France; “[An] environmental organization named Groupe des écologistes français, unheard of before this incident, claimed credit for the blast.”The reactor was subsequently destroyed by an Israeli air strike in 1981.

The alleged assassination of Canadian scientist Gerald Bull, developer of the Iraqi supergun, in 1990. The most common theory is that the Mossad was responsible, and its representatives have all but claimed responsibility for his assassination. Others, including Bull’s son, believe that the Mossad is taking credit for an act they did not commit to scare off others who may try to help enemy regimes. The alternative theory is that Bull was killed by the CIA. Iraq and Iran are also candidates for suspicion.
Palestinian territories
• The assassination of members of Black September, which was responsible for the Munich massacre at the 1972 Olympic Games, called “Operation Wrath of God”.
• In July 1973, Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, was killed while walking with his pregnant wife. He had been mistaken for Ali Hassan Salameh, one of the leaders of Black September, the Palestinian group responsible for the Munich massacre, who had been given shelter in Norway. The Mossad agents had used fake Canadian passports, which angered the Canadian government. Six Mossad agents were arrested, and the incident became known as the Lillehammer affair.
• The assassination of PFLP and PFLP-EO leader Wadie Haddad in 1978.
• The assassination of As-Sa’iqa leader Zuhayr Muhsin in 1979.
• Tunis Raid - The assassination of Abu Jihad from the Fatah in 1988.
• The assassination of Fathi Shqaqi, the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in 1995.
• In 1997, two Mossad agents were caught in Jordan, which had signed a peace treaty with Israel, on a mission to assassinate Sheikh Khaled Mashal, a leader of Hamas, by spraying him with poison at a pro-Hamas rally in Amman. Again, they were using fake Canadian passports. This led to a diplomatic row with Canada and Jordan. Israel was forced to provide the antidote to the poison and to release around 70 Palestinian prisoners, in particular the Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in exchange for the Mossad agents, who would otherwise have faced the death penalty for attempted murder.
• The assassination of Hamas leader Izz El-Deen Sheikh Khalil in Damascus in 2004.
• The sending of letter bombs to PFLP member Bassam Abu Sharif.

Lebanon
The provision of intelligence and operational assistance in 1973’s Operation Spring of Youth.

Africa
Ethiopia
Assistance in Operation Moses, the immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1984, and has a relationship with the Ethiopian government.

Morocco
According to Time, the Mossad was involved in what is known as the Ben Barka Affair (see Mehdi Ben Barka).

Uganda
The provision of intelligence regarding Entebbe International Airport and grant of refueling rights in Kenya for Operation Entebbe in 1976.

Oceania
New Zealand
In July 2004, New Zealand imposed diplomatic sanctions on Israel over an incident in which two Australian based Israelis, Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara, who were allegedly working for the Mossad (Israel denied it), attempted to obtain New Zealand passports fraudulently by claiming the identity of a severely disabled man. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom later apologized to New Zealand for their actions. New Zealand cancelled several other passports believed to have been obtained by Israeli agents. Both Kelman and Cara served half of their 6 month sentences and, upon release, were deported to Israel. Two others, an Israeli, Ze’ev Barkan, and a New Zealander, David Reznick, are believed to have been the third and 4th men involved in the passport affair but managed to leave New Zealand before being traced.

Soviet Union

In February 1956, a friendly member of the Politburo provided the Mossad with a copy of Nikita Khrushchev’s speech denouncing Josef Stalin. The Mossad passed it on to the United States, which published the speech, embarrassing the USSR. This was a major intelligence coup that raised the prestige of the organization.

U.S. investigators and the controlled media have ignored a preponderance of evidence pointing to Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, being involved in the terror attacks of 9/11.

From the very morning aircraft smashed into the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon, news reports have indicated Israeli intelligence being involved in the events of 9/11 - and the planting of “false flags” to blame Arab terrorists and mold public opinion to support the pre-planned “war on terror.”

Shortly after the destruction of the twin towers, radio news reports described five “Middle Eastern men” being arrested in New Jersey after having been seen videotaping and celebrating the explosive “collapses” of the WTC.

These men, from a phony moving company in Weehawken, N.J., turned out to be agents of Israeli military intelligence, Mossad. Furthermore, their “moving van” tested positive for explosives.

Dominic Suter, the Israeli owner of Urban Moving Systems, the phony “moving company,” fled in haste, or was allowed to escape, to Israel before FBI agents could interrogate him. The Israeli agents were later returned to Israel on minor visa violations.

The Assistant Attorney General in charge of criminal investigations at the time was Michael Chertoff, the current head of the Dept. of Homeland Security. Chertoff, the son of the first hostess of Israel’s national air carrier, El Al, is thought to be an Israeli national.

One of the Israeli agents later told Israeli radio that they had been sent to “document the event” - the event which took the lives of some 3,000 Americans.

Despite the fact that the Israelis arrested in New Jersey evidently had prior knowledge or were involved in the planning of 9/11, the U.S. mainstream media has never even broached the question of Israeli complicity in the attacks.

ISRAELIS FOREWARNED

On September 12, 2001, the Internet edition of The Jerusalem Post reported, “The Israeli foreign ministry has collected the names of 4,000 Israelis believed to have been in the areas of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon at the time of the attack.”

Yet only one Israeli was killed at the WTC and two were reportedly killed on the “hijacked” aircraft.

Although a total of three Israeli lives were reportedly lost on 9/11, speechwriters for President George W. Bush grossly inflated the number of Israeli dead to 130 in the president’s address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001.

The fact that only one Israeli died at the WTC, while 4,000 Israelis were thought to have been at the scene of the attacks on 9/11 naturally led to a widespread rumor, blamed on Arabic sources, that Israelis had been forewarned to stay away that day.

“Whether this story was the origin of the rumor,” Bret Stephens, the Post’s editor-in-chief wrote in 2003, “I cannot say. What I can say is that there was no mistake in our reporting.”

ODIGO INSTANT MESSAGES

Evidence that Israelis had been forewarned several hours before the attacks surfaced at an Israeli instant messaging service, known as Odigo. This story, clear evidence of Israeli prior knowledge, was reported only briefly in the U.S. media - and quickly forgotten.

At least two Israel-based employees of Odigo received warnings of an imminent attack in New York City more than two hours before the first plane hit the WTC. Odigo had its U.S. headquarters two blocks from the WTC. The Odigo employees, however, did not pass the warning on to the authorities in New York City, a move that could have saved thousands of lives.

Odigo has a feature called People Finder that allows users to seek out and contact others based on certain demographics, such as Israeli nationality.

Two weeks after 9/11, Alex Diamandis, Odigo’s vice president, reportedly said, “It was possible that the attack warning was broadcast to other Odigo members, but the company has not received reports of other recipients of the message.”

The Internet address of the sender was given to the FBI, and two months later it was reported that the FBI was still investigating the matter. There have been no media reports since.

Odigo, like many Israeli software companies, is based and has its Research and Development (R&D) center in Herzliya, Israel, the small town north of Tel Aviv, which happens to be where Mossad’s headquarters are located.

Shortly after 9/11, Odigo was taken over by Comverse Technology, another Israeli company. Within a year, five executives from Comverse were reported to have profited by more than $267 million from “insider trading.”

Through Israeli “venture capital” (VC) investment funds, Mossad spawns and sponsors scores of software companies currently doing business in the United States. These Israel-based companies are sponsored by Mossad funding sources such as Cedar Fund, Stage One Ventures, Veritas Venture Partners, and others.

As one might expect, the portfolios of these Mossad-linked funding companies contain only Israeli-based companies, such as Odigo.

Reading through the strikingly similar websites of these Israeli “VC” funds and their portfolio companies, one can’t help but notice that the key “team” players share a common profile and are often former members of “Israel’s Intelligence Corps” and veterans of the R&D Department of the Israel Air Force or another branch of the military. Most are graduates of Israel’s “Technion” school in Haifa, Mossad’s Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, or a military program for software development.

The IDC, a private, non-profit university, is closely tied to the Mossad. The IDC has a “research institute” headed by Shabtai Shavit, former head of the Mossad from 1989 to 1996, called the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism.

The IDC also has a “Marc Rich Center for the Study of Commodities, Trading and Financial Markets” and a “Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy.” The cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder, who is a supporter of Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his far-right Likud Party, founded the Lauder school.

Lauder, president of the Jewish National Fund and former chairman of New York Governor George Pataki’s Commission on Privatization, is the key individual who pushed the privatization of the WTC and former Stewart AFB, where the flight paths of the two planes that hit the twin towers oddly converged. Ronald Lauder played a significant, albeit unreported, role in the preparation for 9/11.

Pataki’s wife, Libby, has been on Lauder’s payroll since at least 2002 and reportedly earned $100,000 as a consultant in 2004. According to The Village Voice, between 1994 and 1998, Gov. Pataki earned some $70,000 for speaking to groups affiliated with Lauder.

THE PTECH CUTOUT

Ptech, a mysterious software company has been tied with the events of 9/11. The Quincy, Massachusetts-based company was supposedly connected to “the Muslim Brotherhood” and Arab financiers of terrorism.

The firm’s suspected links with terrorism resulted in a consensual examination by the FBI in December 2002, which was immediately leaked to the media. The media reports of the FBI “raid” on Ptech soon led to the demise of the company.

Ptech “produced software that derived from PROMIS, had an artificial intelligence core, and was installed on virtually every computer system of the U.S. government and its military agencies on September 11, 2001,” according to Michael Ruppert’s From the Wilderness (FTW) website.

“This included the White House, Treasury Dept. (Secret Service), Air Force, FAA, CIA, FBI, both houses of Congress, Navy, Dept. of Energy, IRS, Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, Enron and more,” FTW reported.

“Whoever plotted 9/11 definitely viewed the FAA as the enemy that morning. Overriding FAA systems would be the most effective way to ensure the attacks were successful,” FTW reported. “To do this, the FAA needed an evolution of PROMIS software installed on their systems and Ptech was just that; the White House and Secret Service had the same software on their systems - likely a superior modified version capable of ’surveillance and intervention’ systems.”

But did the U.S. government unwittingly load software capable of “surveillance and intervention” operations and produced by a company linked to terrorism onto its most sensitive computer networks, or was Ptech simply a Mossad “cutout” company?

Oussama Ziade, a Lebanese Muslim immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1985, founded Ptech in 1994. But the company’s original manager of marketing and information systems was Michael S. Goff, whose PR firm, Goff Communications, currently represents Guardium, a Mossad-linked software company.

And Goff comes from a well-to-do line of Jewish Masons who have belonged to Worcester’s Commonwealth Lodge 600 of B’nai Brith for decades. So, why would a recently graduated Juris Doctor in Law leave a promising law career to join forces with a Lebanese Muslim’s upstart company sponsored with dodgy funders in Saudi Arabia?

“As information systems manager [for Ptech], Michael handled design, deployment and management of its Windows and Macintosh, data, and voice networks,” Goff’s website says. “Michael also performed employee training and handled all procurement for software, systems and peripherals.”

AFP asked Goff, who left the Worcester law firm of Seder & Chandler in 1994, how he wound up working at Ptech. “Through a temp agency,” Goff said. Asked for the name of the agency, Goff said he could not remember.

Could it be Mossad Temps, or maybe Sayan Placement Agency?

Goff, the original marketing manager for Ptech software, said he did not know who had written the code that Ptech sold to many government agencies. Is this believable?

Goff leaves a legal practice in his home town to take a job, through a temp agency, with a Lebanese Muslim immigrant who is selling software, and he doesn’t know who even wrote the code?

AFP contacted the government agencies that reportedly have Ptech software on their computers, and IBM, to ask if they could identify who had written the source code of the Ptech software.

By press time, only Lt. Commander Ron Steiner of the U.S. Navy’s Naval Network Warfare Command had responded. Steiner said he had checked with an analyst and been told that none of the Ptech software has been approved for the Navy’s enterprise networks.

History

The Navy Underwater Demolition Teams (UDTs) were a precursor to the current Navy SEALs. The Under-Water Demolition Teams began training in June 1943 at Fort Pierce, Florida in preparation for the D-Day invasion. In World War II, UDT’s saw action at Normandy and at various locations in the South Pacific. The UDT’s refined and developed their commando tactics during the Korean War, with their efforts initially focused on demolitions and mine disposal.
President John F. Kennedy, aware of the situations in Southeast Asia, recognized the need for unconventional warfare and special operations as a measure against guerrilla warfare.

In a speech to Congress on May 25 1961, Kennedy spoke of his deep respect for the United States Army Special Forces (Green Berets). He announced the government’s plan to put a man on the moon, and, in the same speech, allocated over $100 million toward the strengthening of the special operations forces in order to expand the strength of the American conventional forces.
Realizing the administration’s favor of the Green Berets, the Navy needed to determine its role within the special operations arena. In March 1961, the Chief of Naval Operations recommended the establishment of guerrilla and counter-guerrilla units. These units would be able to operate from sea, air or land. This was the beginning of the official Navy SEALs. Many SEAL members came from the Navy’s UDT units, who had already gained experience in commando warfare in Korea; however, the UDTs were still necessary to the Navy’s amphibious force.

The first two teams were on opposite coasts: Team One at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, California and Team Two at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, Virginia. The men of the newly formed SEAL Teams were educated in such unconventional areas as hand-to-hand combat, high-altitude parachuting, safe-cracking, demolition, and languages. Among the varied tools and weapons required by the teams was the AR-15 assault rifle, a new design that evolved into today’s M16. The SEALs attended UDT Replacement training and they spent some time training in UDTs. Upon making it to a SEAL team, they would undergo a three-month SEAL Basic Indoctrination (SBI) training class at Camp Kerry in the Cuyamaca Mountains. After SBI training class, they would enter a platoon and train in platoon tactics (especially for the conflict in Vietnam).

The Pacific Command recognized Vietnam as a potential hot spot for conventional forces. At the beginning of 1962, the UDT started hydrographic surveys and Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) was formed. In March 1962, SEALs were deployed to South Vietnam for the purpose of training Army of the Republic of Vietnam commandos in the same methods they were trained themselves.

The Central Intelligence Agency began SEAL covert operations in early 1963. At the outset of the war, operations consisted of ambushing supply movements and locating and capturing North Vietnamese officers. Due to poor intelligence information, these operations were not very successful. When the SEALs were given the resources to develop their own intelligence, the information became much more timely and reliable.[citation needed] The SEALs and Special Operations in general started showing an immense success rate, earning their members a great number of citations.

The SEALs were initially deployed in and around Da Nang, training the South Vietnamese in combat diving, demolitions, and guerrilla/anti-guerrilla tactics. As the war continued, the SEALs found themselves positioned in the Rung Sat Special Zone where they were to disrupt the enemy supply and troop movements and in the Mekong Delta to fulfill riverine (fighting on the inland waterways) operations.

Combat with the Viet Cong was direct. Unlike the conventional warfare methods of firing artillery into a coordinate location, the SEALs operated within inches of their targets. Into the late 1960s, the SEALs were successful in a new style of warfare, effective in anti-guerrilla and guerrilla actions. The Viet Cong referred to them as “the men with green faces,” due to the camouflage face paint the SEALs wore during combat missions.

SEALs continued to make forays into North Vietnam and Laos, and unofficially into Cambodia, controlled by the Studies and Observations Group. An organization that was solely comprised of SEALs. The SEALs from Team Two started a unique deployment of SEAL team members working alone with South Vietnamese Commandos (ARVN). In 1967, a SEAL unit named Detachment Bravo (Det Bravo) was formed to operate these mixed US and ARVN units, which were called South Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRU).

At the beginning of 1968, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong orchestrated a major offensive against South Vietnam: the “Tet Offensive.” The North hoped it would prove to be America’s Dien Bien Phu, attempting to break the American public’s desire to continue the war. As propaganda, the Tet Offensive was successful in adding to the American protest of the Vietnam war. However, North Vietnam suffered tremendous casualties, and from a purely military standpoint, the Tet Offensive was a major disaster for the Communists.
By 1970, President Richard Nixon initiated a Plan of Vietnamization, which would remove the US from the Vietnam conflict and return the responsibility of defense back to the South Vietnamese. Conventional forces were being withdrawn; however, SEAL operations continued.
On 6 June 1972, Lt. Melvin S. Dry was killed entering the water after jumping from a helicopter at least 35 feet above the surface. Part of an aborted SDV operation to retrieve prisoners of war, Lt. Dry was the last Navy SEAL killed in the Vietnam conflict.

Training
Pipeline

Entering training to become a Navy SEAL is voluntary and officers and enlisted men train side by side. In order to volunteer for and enter SEAL training must meet certain criteria:
• be a male on active duty in the United States Navy or Coast Guard
• be 28 or younger (although waivers for 29- and 30-year-olds are possible)
• have uncorrected vision no worse than 20/200 in both eyes correctable to 20/20 through contacts or glasses (Corrective surgery PRK is also possible.)
• be a U.S. citizen
• obtain a GT score of 110 or higher on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB)
SEAL Training consists of the following:
• 1-8 weeks Naval Special Warfare Preparatory School (new recruits) [2]
• 5 weeks Indoctrination Course at Naval Amphibious Base Coronado
• 24 weeks Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) selection at the Naval Special Warfare Center, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado
• 15 weeks SEAL Qualification Training (SQT)[3]
o including 4 weeks Cold Weather Survival Training at Kodiak, Alaska[4]
• 2 weeks level C SERE School[citation needed]
• 1 week Static and 3 weeks HALO parachute training at San Diego [1][citation needed]
• 12-18 months SEAL Platoon Training

Screening

Assignment to BUD/S is conditional on passing the PST. The minimum requirements of the PST are:
• 500 yd (460 m) swim using breast or side stroke in under 12:30
• At least 42 push-ups in 2 minutes
• At least 50 sit-ups in 2 minutes
• At least 6 pull-ups from a dead hang (no time limit)
• Run 1.5 mi (2.4 km) in boots and trousers in under 11:30
• Members’ vision must be no worse than 20/200 in both eyes. Vision must be correctable to 20/20. SEAL candidates may qualify for PRK surgery to correct their vision.
Prospective trainees are expected to exceed the minimums. “Competitive” scores are:
• 500-yard swim using breast or combat side stroke in 10:00 minutes or less
• 79 push-ups in 2 minutes
• 79 sit-ups in 2 minutes
• 11 pull-ups from a dead hang (no time limit)
• Run 1.5 miles in boots and trousers in under 10:20
The most competitive candidates for selection to attend BUD/S as officers have a combined run and swim time under 18 minutes, as well as scores far exceeding the minimum on the other events.

Basic Underwater Demolitions/SEAL (BUD/S)

Upon arrival at Naval Special Warfare Command, check-ins for BUD/S are immediately placed into a pre-indoctrination phase of training known as ‘PTRR’, or Physical Training Rehabilitation and Remediation. PTRR is also where all of the ‘roll-backs’ are placed while waiting to be put into a class. Once additional medical screening is given, and after enough BUD/S candidates arrive for the same class, organized physical training begins.

BUD/S consists of a three-week ‘Indoctrination Course’, known as INDOC, followed by three phases, covering physical conditioning (seven weeks), diving (eight weeks), and land warfare (nine weeks) respectively. Officer and enlisted personnel go through the same training program. It is designed to develop and test their stamina, leadership, and ability to work as a team.

In the first phase, BUD/S students are divided into ‘Boat Crews’ which can consist of six to eight men. Although some exercises will be undertaken as boat crews (such as ‘log PT’, which requires boats crews to exercise with logs that weigh 150 lb (68 kg) each, and ‘Surf Passage’, where boat crews must navigate the Pacific surf in inflatable boats), the first phase of BUD/S also consists of a series of demanding individual physical tests including frequent sets of push-ups and sit-ups, ocean swims and timed 4 mi (6.4 km) runs in boots and long trousers, in soft sand (to be completed in 32 minutes). The first phase is most well known for ‘Hell Week’, 132 hours of continuous physical activity, which usually occurs during week four. A student may at any time drop on request (DOR) from the course. The tradition of DOR consists of dropping one’s helmet liner next to a pole with a brass ship’s bell attached to it and ringing the bell three times (the bell was taken away for a few years in the 1990s, then later brought back).

Classes typically lose around 70–80% of their trainees, either due to DORs or injuries sustained during training, but it is not always easy to predict which of the trainees will DOR during BUD/S. Winter class drop out rates are usually higher due to the cold. SEAL instructors say that in every class, approximately 10 percent of the students simply do not have the physical ability to complete the training. Another 10–15 percent will definitely make it through unless they sustain a serious physical injury. The other 75–80 percent is ‘up for grabs’ depending on their motivation. There has been at least one BUD/S class where no one has completed the program. Most trainees are eliminated prior to completion of Hell Week, but trainees will continue to DOR in the second phase or be forced to leave because of injuries, or failing either the diving tests or the timed runs and swims. In fact, the instructors tell the students at the very start of BUD/S that the vast majority of them will not successfully complete the course and that they are free at any time to drop out (via the bell) if they do not believe they can complete the course. A trainee who DORs from First Phase before the completion of Hell Week and reapplies to the BUD/S program must start from the beginning of INDOC (if they are accepted). Any BUD/S trainee who drops on request after Hell Week goes through the same out-processing as a trainee who quits before or during Hell Week. If they reapply to BUD/S they would stand a very good chance of being accepted, but they must complete Hell Week again.

However, those who have completed Hell Week, but cannot continue training due to injury are usually rolled back into the next BUD/S class after Hell Week, or the respective phase in which they were rolled. There are many SEALs who have attempted BUD/S two or even perhaps three or more times before successfully completing training.

SEAL Qualification Training (SQT)

After BUD/S, graduates attend SEAL Qualification Training (SQT), which is the NEC 5326 awarding schoolhouse of NSW. SQT is an arduous 15 week program consisting of the basic and advanced skill sets required to be a SEAL. The BUD/S graduates attend a sequential course consisting of: SERE, Tactical Air Operations (Static Line/Freefall) Tactical Combat Medicine, Communicatons Advanced Special Operations, Cold Weather/Mountaineering, Maritime Operations, Combat Swimmer, Tactical Ground Mobility, Land Warfare (small unit tactics, light and heavy weapons, demolitions), Close Quarters Combat.

The emphasis in SQT is building and developing individual operator skills with the concentration being on junior officer and non-commissioned officers. Students are assigned to a 5-man fire team with an officer or enlisted (NCO) leader. Each fireteam leader is responsible for his subordinate students and many are dropped from the program for failure to lead.

The course teaches current and standardized Naval Special Warfare Tactics, Techniques and Proceedures (TTPs) as they pertain to NSW mission sets. The goal of SQT is to send qualified, deployable new operators to the SEAL Teams. Attrition in SQT is still somewhat high, but is due to failure to grasp tactics or lead men, as opposed to being able to take the punishment of BUD/S Selection. Current attrition is roughly three drops and five rolls for every class. Most rolls are performance based with some medical rolls as well.

SQT staff consist of three troops of cadre in each of the core training sets (Mobility, Land Warfare, Assaults). Each cell is run by a post platoon Chief Petty Officer (E7/E8) and consist of two platoons of speacialty training. The Headquarters element consist of a OIC (Post Platoon O3), a Training Officer (CWO3/4), a Senior Enlisted Advisor/Curriculum Manager (Post Troop SEA), a Operations and Training Chief (Post Platoon Chief E7/E8) and a civilian deputy operations manager. SQT also employes former SOF operators in civilian weapons and tactics instructor positions. The civilian instructors come from all USSOCOM branches and help introduce the students to other US SOF units and doctrine.

Upon completion of SQT the students are awarded the Navy SEAL Trident, assigned to a SEAL Team, and are deployable. 20% of graduates deploy immediately to combat with their assigned team.

Enlisted members of the SEAL community are identified with the occupational rating of Special Warfare Operator (SO) and the (SEAL) warfare designator. For example, SO1(SEAL/FPJ) John Smith is identified as Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Petty Officer John Smith and is both SEAL and Free Fall Parachutist qualified.

SEAL Platoon Training

Once at a SEAL Team, operators are put into a platoon and begin an 18 month work up prior to deployment. The work up is divided into three phases. Phase one of a work-up is called the Professional Development Phase (PRODEV). PRODEV is a 6-month block where individual operators attend a number of schools and courses. These schools lead to required qualifications and designations that collectively allow the platoon to perform as an operational combat team. Depending on the team’s and platoon’s needs, operators can expect to acquire some of the following skills:
• Sniper
• Breaching
• Surreptitious Entry
• Electronic and Media Exploitation
• Technical Surveillance
• High Threat Protective Security (PSD)
• Advanced Weapons Training
• Advanced Driving Skills (Urban/Rural/Security)
• Advanced Climbing/Rope Skills
• Advanced Air Operations: HALO/HAHO/Jumpmaster/Parachute Rigger and Packer
• Diving Supervisor
• Range Safety Officer
• Instructor School
• Leadership School
• Foreign Weapons
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicle/Precision bombing Operator
• Language School
• Advanced Special Operations
Phase two of a work-up is called Unit Level Training (ULT). ULT is a 6-month block where the platoons train in their core mission areas (Land Warfare, Close Quarters Combat, Urban Warfare, Maritime Interdiction, Combat Swimmer, Long Range Interdiction, Air Operations, Special Reconnaissance and Maritime Operations).
Phase three of a work-up is called Squadron Integration Training (SIT). SIT is the last 6-month block where six platoons conduct advanced training with the supporting attachments of a SEAL Squadron, Special Boat Squadrons, Medical Teams, EOD, Interpreters, Intelligence/HUMINT Teams, Cryptological Support Teams, etc.). A final Certification Exercise is conducted with the entire SEAL team to synchronize platoon operations under the Task Group umbrella. Following CERTEX, a SEAL Team becomes a SEAL Squadron and would deploy for six months.

Navy SEAL teams and structure

Naval Special Warfare Command is organized into the following configuration:
• Naval Special Warfare Group ONE/TWO: Contains the SEAL Teams 1-10;
• Naval Special Warfare Group THREE: Consisting of Undersea Mobility (SDV Teams);
• Naval Special Warfare Group FOUR: Consisting of Special Boat Squadrons/Teams;
• Naval Special Warfare Logsistics Support Group ONE/TWO: Consisting of all Combat Service Support;
• Naval Special Warfare Support Activity ONE / TWO: Consisting of all Intelligence collection (HUMINT/SIGINT), cryptological support as well as linguist, canine teams and environmental assessment teams.

SEAL teams are organized into two groups: Naval Special Warfare Group One (West Coast), and Naval Special Warfare Group Two (East Coast), which come under the command of Naval Special Warfare Command, stationed at NAB Coronado, California. As of 2006, there are eight confirmed Navy SEAL Teams. The original SEAL Teams in the Vietnam War were separated between West Coast (Team ONE) and East Coast (Team TWO) SEALs. The current SEAL Team deployments include Teams 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 10. The Teams deploy as Naval Special Warfare Squadron’s or Special Operations Task Forces and can deploy anywhere in the world. Squadrons will normally be deployed and fall under a Joint Task Force (JTF) or a Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force (CJSOTF) as a Special Operations Task Force (SOTF)
A SEAL Team has a Staff Headquarters element and three 40-man Troops. Each Troop consist of a Headquarters element consisting of a Troop Commander (O-5), a Troop Senior Enlisted (E-8), a Targeting/Operations Officer (O-2/3) and a Targeting/Operations Leading/Chief Petty Officer (E-6/7). Under the HQ element are two SEAL platoons of 16 men (2 officers, 14 enlisted SEALs and sometimes 2 enlisted EOD Operators making a platoon of 18); a company-sized combat service support (CSS) consisting of staff N-codes (the Army and Marine Corps use S-codes); N1 Administrative support, N2 Intelligence, N3 Operations, N4 Logistics, N5 Plans and Targeting, and N8 Air/Medical. Each Troop can be easily task organized into 4 squads or eight 4-man fire teams for operational purposes. The size of each SEAL “Team” with Troops and support staff is approx. 300 personnel. The typical SEAL platoon has an OIC (Officer in Charge, usually an O-3), an AOIC (Assistant Officer in Charge, usually an O-2), a platoon chief (E-7), an LPO (Leading Petty Officer, E-6) and others ranging from E-6 to E-4 (most are E-5). Occasionally there is a “third O”. Usually the third O is an O-1 on his first operational deployment. This makes the platoon consist of 3 officers and 13 enlisted personnel. The core leadership in the Troop and Platoon are the Commander/OIC and the Senior Enlisted NCO (Senior Chief/Chief).

Troop core skills consist of: Sniper, Breacher, Communicator, Maritime/Engineering, Close Air Support, Corpsman, Point-man/Navigator, Primary Driver/Navigator (Rural/Urban/Protective Security), Heavy Weapons Operator, Sensitive Site Exploitation, Air Operations Master, Lead Climber, Lead Diver/Navigator, Interrogator, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, Technical Surveillance, and Advanced Special Operations.

Each SEAL Team is commanded by a Navy Commander (O-5), and has a number of operational SEAL platoons and a headquarters element. In 1987, SEAL Team 6 was renamed to the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, although members are still frequently referred to informally as “SEAL Team 6″. Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, a naval base in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is home to SEAL Teams 2, 4, 8, and 10. Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, a naval base in Coronado, CA, is home to SEAL Teams 1, 3, 5, and 7.[citation needed]There are also two SDV units, SDVT-1 located in Pearl Harbor, HI, and SDVT-2 in Virginia. SDV Teams are SEAL teams with an added underwater delivery capability.
A memorandum was signed of understanding with the U.S. Navy and U.S. Special Operations Command that will allow Coast Guard Personnel to train and serve in the Naval Special Warfare Community. The memorandum will allow selected Coast Guard personnel to be assigned to the SEAL training pipeline and possible duty as a Navy SEAL. The program is intended to give Coast Guard personnel the opportunity to gain experience in the execution of special operations.
Insignia Team Deployment Number of Platoons HQ Notes
SEAL Team ONE Southeast Asia 8 Platoons Coronado, CA
SEAL Team TWO Europe 8 Platoons Little Creek, Virginia
SEAL Team THREE Southwest Asia 8 Platoons Coronado, CA
SEAL Team FOUR Central and South America 10 Platoons Little Creek, Virginia Required valuable speaking language: Spanish.
SEAL Team FIVE 8 Platoons Coronado, CA
SEAL Team SIX 8 Platoons Dam Neck, Virginia Disestablished in 1987. The operators of SEAL Team Six established the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, also known as DEVGRU.
SEAL Team SEVEN 8 Platoons Coronado, CA
SEAL Team EIGHT Africa 8 Platoons Little Creek, Virginia
SEAL Team TEN South central Asia 8 Platoons Little Creek, Virginia

Highlighted Navy SEALs

• Roy Boehm — first commanding officer of SEAL Team Two, considered godfather of all SEALs
• Rudy Boesch — competitor in the TV reality shows Survivor and Survivor: All-Stars
• Brian J Bovill — Vietnam War veteran, author, BUD/s Class 45 in 1969
• Michael Brown — SEAL Team SIX Intel Operator. Supported Team 6 as Intel Unit responsible for tracking Achille Lauro Cruisliner Hijackers in the Mediterranean in 1985.
Received a Presidential Unit Citation from Ronald Reagan. 1985 6th Fleet Intel Advisor to Vice Admiral Frank Kelso (CDR Sixth Fleet) during conflicts with Libya - “Line of Death” incident. Stationed on the USS Yorktown (CG-48)Template:WP Ships USS instances during the sinking of two Libyan Patrol Boats.
• James F. Cahill — first person to scuba dive in New England waters, founder of first retail scuba diving chain, one of the first UDT members
• Christopher Cassidy - NASA Astronaut
• Dennis Chalker — plankowner of SEAL Team SIX and Red Cell
• Hershel Davis — Grandfather of SEALs during the 1980s and 1990s; Master Chief of Blackwater USA (PSC).
• Dick Couch — Author of several books on the Navy SEALs including The Warrior Elite: Forging of SEAL Class 228, The Finishing School, and Down Range: Navy SEALs in the War on Terrorism. Couch is a graduate of the US Naval Academy (Class of 1967) and BUD/S Class 45 (1969).
• Frank Cucci — Certified Jeet Kune Do instructor and founder of the Linxx Academy of Martial Arts Virginia Beach, VA.
• John Gay — Bronze Star with Valor recipient. One of four Navy SEAL members from SEAL Team 6 to have participated in The First Battle of Mogadishu who was wounded in action with the Lost Convoy and notable for having a Randall knife deflect a stray bullet from inflicting serious injury[9]
• Bob Gormly — Commanding officer of SEAL Team 6 during the invasion of Grenada, author of Combat Swimmer
• Eric Greitens — Chairman of the Center for Citizen Leadership, Public Speaker, and Senior Fellow at the University of Missouri’s Truman School of Public Affairs [10][11]
• Scott Helvenston — known as the youngest SEAL in history to complete BUD/S, age 17; while working as a private military contractor, he was killed during an ambush in Fallujah, Iraq on March 31, 2004.
• Charles Hoelzel — SEAL Team 2, DEVGRU, NASCAR, private military contractor in Iraq
• Harry Humphries — Hollywood actor and technical advisor for films.
• Gary Jackson — president Blackwater USA, a private military contractor
• Bob Kerrey — Medal of Honor recipient; Democratic U.S. Senator from Nebraska (1989–2001); and president of The New School since 2001.
• Gerhard Klann — SEAL Team SIX Operator; claims he, along with Bob Kerrey committed war crimes in Thanh Phong, Vietnam.
• Marcus Luttrell — The sole survivor of Operation Red Wing, the deadliest single day in the history of SOCOM. Nineteen Special Operations Forces soldiers died during the operation; three from the original four man SEAL team and sixteen others when a QRF helicopter that had been sent to rescue the SEAL team was shot down by a RPG.
• Richard Machowicz — aka “Mack,” former Navy SEAL and founder of Bukido training system and host of Discovery Channel’s Futureweapons
• Richard Marcinko — founder of SEAL Team SIX and Red Cell; and co-author of New York Times bestseller Rogue Warrior
• Tom McGrath — commander of SEAL Team Four during the Operation Just Cause, which suffered four killed and eleven wounded at Patilla Airfield.
• Alden Mills — Inventor of The Perfect Pushup and The Perfect Pullup exercise products.
• Michael A. Monsoor — Awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor for jumping on an enemy hand grenade during a firefight in Iraq to save fellow SEALs.
• Fred “Tiz” Morrison — 1st African American Navy SEAL UDT Team 12 (Bronze Star Korean War).
• Michael P. Murphy — Medal of Honor recipient, exposed himself to fire while calling in support during Operation Red Wing in Afghanistan
• Thomas R. Norris — Vietnam War MACV-SOG Medal of Honor recipient and retired FBI agent.
• Eric T. Olson — The first SEAL to go on to become a three-star and four-star admiral. Also the first Navy officer to become the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command.
• DCC (SEAL/DV/SW/AW) Brian K. Connell SEAL TEAM 2 Operation Just Cause 1988 to 1991 injured during first ever attack on vessel from under water.
• Chuck Pfarrer — SEAL Team SIX operator; screenwriter with credits including The Jackal, Darkman, Red Planet, Virus, Hard Target, Navy SEALs; and author of the New York Times bestseller Warrior Soul and the reality-thriller Killing Ché
• Erik Prince - Founder and CEO of Blackwater Worldwide (formerly known as Blackwater USA)
• Theodore Roosevelt IV — Vietnam-era SEAL great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, BUD/s class 36
• William Shepherd — first American commander of the International Space Station
• Stew Smith — personal trainer, and author
• Doug Sofranko — Martial arts world champion
• Michael Thornton — Vietnam War and Medal of Honor recipient.
• Jesse Ventura — served with UDT 12, became a professional wrestler, actor, and served as the 38th governor of Minnesota
• Phil Pitchford - Author, Journalist, and Blogger.
• K. Dahlke - Longest sniper shot.

The first SWAT team was established in the Los Angeles Police Department in the 1960s. Since then, many American police departments, especially in major cities and at the federal and state-levels of government, have established their own elite units under various names; these units, despite their official name, are referred to collectively as SWAT units in colloquial usage.

History

The development of SWAT in its modern incarnation is usually given as beginning in 1967, with reference in particular to then-inspector Daryl Gates of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).

As far as the LAPD SWAT team’s beginning, Gates’ explained in his autobiography Chief: My Life in the LAPD, that he neither developed SWAT tactics nor its distinctive equipment. Gates wrote that he supported the concept, tried to empower his people to develop the concept, and lent them moral support.

Gates wrote explaining that he originally wanted to name the platoon “Special Weapons Assault Team” or “Special Weapons Attack Team”. However, this name was turned down by his boss, then-deputy police chief Ed Davis. Wanting to keep the name “SWAT”, Gates changed the acronym to Special Weapons And Tactics.

While the public face of SWAT was made known through the LAPD, perhaps because of its proximity to the mass media and the size and professionalism of the Department itself, the first SWAT operations were conducted far north of Los Angeles in the farming community of Delano, California on the border between Kern and Tulare Counties in the great San Joaquin Valley. César Chavez’ United Farm Workers were staging numerous protests in Delano, both at cold storage facilities and in front of non-supportive farm workers’ homes on the city streets. Delano Police Department answered the issues that arose by forming the first-ever units using special weapons and tactics. Television news stations and print media carried live and delayed reportage of these events across the nation. Personnel from the LAPD, having seen these broadcasts, contacted Delano PD and inquired about the program. One officer then obtained permission to observe Delano Police Department’s special weapons and tactics in action, and afterwards took what he’d learned back to Los Angeles where his knowledge was used and expanded on to form their first SWAT unit.

John Nelson was the officer who came up with the idea to form a specially trained and equipped unit in the LAPD, intended to respond to and manage critical situations involving shootings while minimizing police casualties. Inspector Gates approved this idea, and he formed a small select group of volunteer officers. This first SWAT unit initially consisted of fifteen teams of four men each, for a total staff of sixty. These officers were given special status and benefits. They were required to attend special monthly training. This unit also served as a security unit for police facilities during civil unrest. The LAPD SWAT units were organized as “D Platoon” in the Metro division.

A report issued by the Los Angeles Police Department, following a shootout with the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, offers one of the few firsthand accounts by the department regarding SWAT history, operations, and organization.

On page 100 of the report, the Department cites four trends which prompted the development of SWAT. These included riots such as the Watts Riots, which in the 1960s forced police departments into tactical situations for which they were ill-prepared, the emergence of snipers as a challenge to civil order, the appearance of the political assassin, and the threat of urban guerrilla warfare by militant groups. “The unpredictability of the sniper and his anticipation of normal police response increase the chances of death or injury to officers. To commit conventionally trained officers to a confrontation with a guerrilla-trained militant group would likely result in a high number of casualties among the officers and the escape of the guerrillas.” To deal with these under conditions of urban violence, the LAPD formed SWAT, notes the report.

The report states on page 109, “The purpose of SWAT is to provide protection, support, security, firepower, and rescue to police operations in high personal risk situations where specialized tactics are necessary to minimize casualties.”

On February 7, 2008 a siege and subsequent fire fight with a gunman in Winnetka, California led to the first line-of-duty death in the 41 years of the LAPD’s SWAT team.
SWAT duties
SWAT duties include:
• Hostage rescue.
• Crime suppression.
• Perimeter security against snipers for visiting dignitaries.
• Providing superior assault firepower in certain situations, e.g. barricaded suspects.
• Rescuing officers and citizens captured or endangered by gunfire.
• Countering terrorist operations in U.S. cities.
• Resolve high-risk situations with a minimum loss of life, injury or property damage.
• Resolve situations involving barricaded subjects, (specifically covered by a Hostage Barricade Team).
• Stabilize situations involving high-risk suicidal subjects.
• Provide assistance on drug raids, arrest warrant and search warrant service.
• Provide additional security at special events.
• Stabilizing dangerous situations dealing with violent criminals (such as rapists, serial killers or gangs).

Notable events

The first significant deployment of LAPD’s SWAT unit was on December 9, 1969, in a four-hour confrontation with members of the Black Panthers. The Panthers eventually surrendered, with three Panthers and three officers being injured. By 1974, there was a general acceptance of SWAT as a resource for the city and county of Los Angeles.

On the afternoon of May 17, 1974, elements of a group which called itself the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a group of heavily-armed Left-Wing Activists, barricaded themselves in a residence on East 54th Street at Compton Avenue in Los Angeles. Coverage of the siege was broadcast to millions via television and radio and featured in the world press for days after. Negotiations were opened with the barricaded suspects on numerous occasions, both prior to and after the introduction of tear gas. Police units did not fire until the SLA had fired several volleys of semi-automatic and automatic gunfire at them. In spite of the 3,772 rounds fired by the SLA, no uninvolved citizens or police officers sustained injury from gunfire.

During the gun battle, a fire erupted inside the residence. The cause of the fire is officially unknown, although police sources speculated that an errant round ignited one of the suspects’ Molotov cocktails. Others suspect that the repeated use of tear gas grenades, which function by burning chemicals at high temperatures, started the structure fire. All six of the suspects suffered multiple gunshot wounds and perished in the ensuing blaze.

By the time of the SLA shoot-out, SWAT teams had reorganized into six 10-man teams, each team consisting of two five-man units, called elements. An element consisted of an element leader, two assaulters, a scout, and a rear-guard. The normal complement of weapons was a sniper rifle (apparently a .243-caliber bolt-action, judging from the ordnance expended by officers at the shootout), two .223-caliber semi-automatic rifles, and two shotguns. SWAT officers also carried their service revolvers in shoulder holsters. The normal gear issued them included a first aid kit, gloves, and a gas mask. In fact it was a change just to have police armed with semi-automatic rifles, at a time when officers were usually issued six-shot revolvers and shotguns. The encounter with the heavily-armed Symbionese Liberation Army, however, sparked a trend towards SWAT teams being issued body armor and automatic weapons of various types.

The Columbine High School massacre on April 20, 1999 was another seminal event in SWAT tactics and police response. As noted in an article in the Christian Science Monitor, “Instead of being taught to wait for the SWAT team to arrive, street officers are receiving the training and weaponry to take immediate action during incidents that clearly involve suspects’ use of deadly force.”

The article further reported that street officers were increasingly being armed with rifles, and issued heavy body armor and ballistic helmets, items traditionally associated with SWAT units. The idea is to train and equip street officers to make a rapid response to so-called active-shooter situations. In these situations, it was no longer acceptable to simply set up a perimeter and wait for SWAT.

As an example, in the policy and procedure manual of the Minneapolis, Minnesota, Police Department, it is stated, “MPD personnel shall remain cognizant of the fact that in many active shooter incidents, innocent lives are lost within the first few minutes of the incident. In some situations, this dictates the need to rapidly assess the situation and act quickly in order to save lives.”

With this shift in police response, SWAT units remain in demand for their traditional roles as hostage rescue, counter-terrorist operations, and serving high-risk warrants.
Organization

The relative infrequency of SWAT call-outs means these expensively-trained and equipped officers cannot be left to sit around, waiting for an emergency. In many departments the officers are normally deployed to regular duties (such as the Manteca Police Department in California), but are available for SWAT calls via pagers, mobile phones or radio transceivers. Even in the larger police agencies, such as the Los Angeles PD, SWAT personnel would normally be seen in crime suppression roles — specialized and more dangerous than regular patrol, perhaps, but the officers wouldn’t be carrying their distinctive armor and weapons.

By illustration, the LAPD’s website shows that in 2003, their SWAT units were activated 255 times, for 133 SWAT calls and 122 times to serve high-risk warrants.

The New York Police Department’s Emergency Service Unit “New York Police Department Statistics”. Archived from the original on 2007-06-11. is one of the few civilian police special-response units that operate autonomously 24 hours a day. However, this unit also provides a wide range of services, including search and rescue functions, and vehicle extraction, normally handled by fire departments or other agencies.

The need to summon widely-dispersed personnel, then equip and brief them, makes for a long lag between the initial emergency and actual SWAT deployment on the ground. The problems of delayed police response at the 1999 Columbine High School shooting has led to changes in police response, mainly rapid deployment of line officers to deal with an active shooter, rather than setting up a perimeter and waiting for SWAT to arrive.

Training

SWAT officers are selected from volunteers within their law enforcement organization. Depending on the department’s policy, officers generally have to serve a minimum tenure within the department before being able to apply for a specialist section such as SWAT. This tenure requirement is based on the fact that SWAT officers are still law enforcement officers and must have a thorough knowledge of department policies and procedures.

SWAT applicants undergo rigorous selection and training, similar to the training some special operations units in the military receive. Applicants must pass stringent physical agility, written, oral, and psychological testing to ensure they are not only fit enough but also psychologically suited for tactical operations.

In addition, applicants must successfully pass a stringent background investigation and job performance review. Emphasis is placed on physical fitness so an officer will be able to withstand the rigors of tactical operations. After an officer has been selected, the potential member must undertake and pass numerous specialist courses that will make him or her a fully qualified SWAT operator. Officers are trained in marksmanship for the development of accurate shooting skills. Other training that could be given to potential members includes training in explosives, sniper-training, defensive tactics, first-aid, negotiation, handling K9 units, rappelling and roping techniques and the use of specialized weapons and equipment.

They may also be trained specifically in the handling and use of special ammunition such as bean bags, flash bang grenades, tasers, and the use of crowd control methods, and special less-than-lethal munitions. Of primary importance is close-quarters defensive tactics training, as this will be the primary mission upon becoming a full-fledged SWAT officer.

SWAT equipment

SWAT teams use equipment designed for a variety of specialist situations including close quarters combat (CQC) in an urban environment. The particular pieces of equipment vary from unit to unit, but there are some consistent trends in what they wear and use.

Clothing and tools

Individual clothing and equipment usually consists of fire-resistant Nomex coveralls or jumpsuits, or BDUs (battle dress uniform), if need be, a body armor vest with Aramid or HMPE, an outer tactical load bearing vest (Omega style vest, LBV, or Plate Carrier [picture to right: Omega vests are being used]) for carrying ammunition and specialist gear and equipment, Nomex or other tactical gloves, balaclava or protective face covering (not always), protective eye goggles, Twaron/Kevlar helmet (PASGT) and/or gas mask, flashlight, steel reinforced boots, flexi-cuffs, and thigh ammo/utility pouches and/or holsters. They often use drop leg holsters, while some officers prefer hip holsters.

Weapons

While a wide variety of weapons are used by SWAT teams, the most common weapons include submachine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles.

Tactical aids include K9 Units, flash bang, Stinger and tear gas grenades.
Semi-automatic handguns are the most popular sidearms. Examples may include, but are not limited to: M1911 pistol series, Sig Sauer series (especially the Sig P226 and Sig P229) Beretta 92 series, Glock pistols, and H&K USP series.

Popular submachine guns used by SWAT teams include the 9 mm and 10mm Heckler & Koch MP5, with or without suppressors. The H&K UMP has begun to replace the MP5 due to its lower cost and larger caliber, though albeit at the cost of a somewhat shorter effective range and more recoil.

Common types of shotguns used are the Benelli M3, SPAS-12, Remington 870 and 1100, Mossberg 500 and 590.

Common carbines include the Colt CAR-15 & M4 and H&K G36 & HK416. While affording teams increased penetration at the cost of accuracy, for dealing with well-protected criminals, the compact size of these weapons is essential as SWAT units frequently operate in CQB environments. The Colt M16A2 can be found used by marksmen or SWAT officers when a longer ranged weapon is needed. The Heckler & Koch G3 series is also common among marksmen or snipers, as well as the M14 rifle and the Remington 700P. Many different variants of bolt action rifles are used by SWAT, with a few occasions of the usage of a .50 caliber sniper rifle.

To breach doors quickly, battering rams, shotguns, or explosive charges can be used to break the lock or hinges, or even demolish the door frame itself. SWAT teams also use many less-lethal munitions and weapons. These include tasers, pepper spray canisters, shotguns loaded with bean bag rounds, and Pepper ball guns. Pepper ball guns are essentially paint ball markers loaded with balls containing Oleoresin Capsicum (”pepper spray”).

Vehicles

Well-funded SWAT units may also employ ARV’s, (Armored Rescue Vehicle[9] ) for insertion, maneuvering, or during tactical operations such as the rescue of civilians/officers pinned down by gunfire. Helicopters may be used to provide aerial reconnaissance or even insertion via rappelling or fast-roping. To avoid detection by suspects during insertion in urban environments, SWAT units may also use modified buses, vans, trucks, or other seemingly normal vehicles.

Units such as the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s Special Response Team (SRT) used a vehicle called a B.E.A.R, made by Lenco Engineering which is a very large armored vehicle with a ladder on top to make entry into the second and third floors of buildings. Numerous other agencies such as the LAPD, LASD and NYPD use both the B.E.A.R and the smaller “Bearcat” variant.
The Tulsa Police Department’s SOT (Special Operations Team) uses an Alvis Saracen, a British-built armoured personnel carrier. The Saracen was modified to accommodate the needs of the SOT. A Night Sun was mounted on top and a ram was mounted to the front. The Saracen has been used from warrant service to emergency response. It has enabled team members to move from one point to another safely.

The well funded Beijing SWAT Team of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) uses a specially designed Hummer in addition to other armored vehicles.

SWAT in popular culture

This kind of police unit quickly became well known with the premiere of the short-lived television series S.W.A.T. in the 1970s, which was criticized as overly violent and unrealistic, as characters regularly undergoing missions that happen rarely for actual teams. However, the violence is mild by today’s standards. In 2003, the movie S.W.A.T. starring Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Farrell was released in theaters as an update of the TV series.
The SWAT Series of computer games by Sierra Entertainment and developed by Vivendi Universal and Irrational Games started off as an interactive movie followup of the Police Quest series which was narrated by retired Chief Daryl Gates, and was continued as a real-time strategy game and two first person shooters in the vein of Rainbow Six. All but one featured endorsements by the LAPD.

In 2005, a television show debuted on A&E entitled Dallas SWAT, documenting the personal and professional lives of SWAT officers of the Dallas, Texas Police Department. The television show is now being shown on Court TV and in 2006 A&E is debuting both Kansas City and Detroit SWAT.

Up to and including the 1980s, movies that featured SWAT units (such as Die Hard and Die Hard 2) portrayed them as carrying M16 Rifles and wearing black armour and clothing but not wearing protective helmets, goggles, or visors. By the 1990s, SWAT officers were typically depicted in full protection with helmets and goggles/visors, balaclavas, and carrying MP5 submachine guns, with the occasional member carrying a rifle/carbine or shotgun (such as in Face/Off). Since the 2000s, movies less regularly show SWAT wearing balaclavas (such as Swordfish and S.W.A.T.), as it would have made them completely anonymous.
SWAT units are frequently portrayed as inappropriately deployed, notably in Die Hard and Die Hard 2 where they are sent into traps or ambushes set by terrorists. The SWAT officers themselves are not inept, but their superiors are often aggressive or overconfident, notably in John Q when the police chief orders a unit to infiltrate while negotiations are underway.

Controversies

The use of SWAT teams in non-emergency situations has been criticized. In 2006, a SWAT team served a warrant on Salvatore Culosi, a 37-year old optometrist in the Fair Oaks section of Fairfax County, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C., who was accused of sports gambling; the attempted arrest ended with his accidental death. The officer who was responsible, Deval V. Bullock, was suspended for three weeks without pay. One notable critic is Radley Balko, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, author of Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America. Another interesting studies are Warrior Cops: The Ominous Growth of Paramilitarism in American Police Departments by Diane Cecilia Weber from the same institute and Militarizing American Police: The Rise and Normalization of Paramilitary Units by Dr. Peter Kraska and his colleague Victor Kappeler, professors of criminal justice at Eastern Kentucky University, who surveyed police departments nationwide and found that their deployment of paramilitary units had grown tenfold since the early 1980s.

SWAT and other units in the United States

Though initially confined to metropolitan cities, today virtually every city with a police force in excess of a handful of officers has a paramilitary tactical unit. A variety of abbreviations and acronyms are used for these organizations, which operate at federal, state, and local levels. Most known examples are:
• Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives Special Response Teams (SRT)
• Drug Enforcement Administration Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams (FAST).
• Federal Bureau of Investigation Hostage Rescue Team (HRT)
• Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Weapons and Tactics Teams
• Federal Bureau of Prisons Special Operations and Response Teams (SORT)
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Response Teams
• United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Special Response Teams
• United States Department of Energy Office of Safety and Security (OSS) Special Response Teams (SRT)
• United States Department of Energy Special Response Force (SRF)
• United States Marshals Service Special Operations Group (SOG)
• Felony Investigative Assistance Team SWAT Unit, DuPage County, IL
• United States Army Military Police Corps Military Police Special Reaction Team (SRT)
• United States Marine Corps Military Police Special Reaction Team (SRT)
• United States Air Force Security Forces Emergency Services Team (EST)
• United States Border Patrol Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC)
• United States Coast Guard Maritime Security Response Team (MSRT)

Similar units outside the United States

Other law enforcement agencies, both in the US and around the world, also have similar paramilitary units. However, SWAT usually refers to tactical units attached at the municipal level. The term “special weapons and tactics” unit has also become somewhat generic, and sometimes includes some patrol officers trained and equipped to respond to violent threats.
Europe
• (JÖH)), Police Counter-Teror Department, Turkey
• Forcat RENEA, Albania
• EKO Cobra, Austria
• Esquadron Spécial d’Intervention/Speciaal Interventie Eskadron (ESI/SIE), Belgium
• SIPA, Bosnia and Herzegovina
• ATJ Lučko, Croatia
• Gendarmery (BG: Жандармерия), Bulgaria
• Útvar rychlého nasazení (URNA), Czech republic
• Politiets Aktionsstyrke (AKS), Denmark
• K-Commando, Estonia
• Karhuryhmä, Readiness Unit of the Finnish Police, Finland
• Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN), National Gendarmerie, France
• Groupe d’Intervention de la Police Nationale (GIPN), intervention units operated by the Direction Centrale de la Sécurité Publique (”Central Directorate of Public Security”, DCSP), similar to the RAID team (which is directly under orders of the Direction Générale de la Police Nationale), France
• Recherche Assistance Intervention Dissuasion (RAID), French National Police, France
• Spezialeinsatzkommando, Grenzschutzgruppe 9 (GSG 9), Bundespolizei, Germany (it is similar to FBI HRT)
• Terrorelhárító Szolgálat, Készenléti Rendőrség (TESZ), Hungary
• Víkingasveitin, Viking Squad, Iceland
• Gruppo di Intervento Speciale (GIS), Carabinieri, Italy
• Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza (NOCS), Polizia di Stato, Italy
• Emergency Response Unit (ERU), Republic of Ireland
• Dienst Speciale Interventies (DSI) Netherlands
• Beredskapstroppen (DELTA), Norway
• Samodzielny Pododdział Antyterrorystyczny Policji, Poland
• Grupo de Operações Especiais (GOE), part of Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP), Portugal
• Companhia de Operações Especiais (COE), part of Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR), Portugal
• SOBR, Ministry of the Interior (MVD), Russia
• OMON, Ministry of the Interior (MVD), Russia
• Žandarmerija, Ministry of the Interior (MUP), Serbia
• SAJ (Special Anti-terrorist Unit), Ministry of the Interior (MUP), Serbia
• PTJ (Anti-Terrorist Unit), Ministry of the Interior (MUP), Serbia
• Útvar osobitného určenia (ÚOU) of Ministry of Interior, Slovakia
• Grupo Especial de Operaciones (G.E.O), Unidad Especial de Intervención (U.E.I), Grupo de Acción Rápida (G.A.R) Spain
• National Task Force Nationella Insatsstyrkan, Sweden
• Piketen Piketen, Sweden
• MAT MAT, Greece
• Aras, Lithuania
• Detaşamentul Poliţiei pentru Intervenţii Rapide (D.P.I.R), Romania
• Special Assignment Group (S.A.G), Malta
• CO19 United Kingdom
Middle East
• Sa’iya, Egypt
• Hilla SWAT Team, Iraq
• Yamam Special Police Unit, Israel
• Al Fouhoud Special Police Intervention Unit, Lebanon
• Yegaan-e-vijhe, Iran
Africa
• Groupe Special d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Royale (GSIGR), Morocco
United Nations Mission in DR Congo Special Intervention Team (United Nations Security)
Asia-Pacific
• Special Action Group (SAG) component of the National Security Guards, India
• Special Task Force (STF) Special Team of the Kolkata Police, Department of Home, West Bengal, India
• Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) component of the Maharashtra State Police, Department of Home, Maharashtra, India, India
• Special Task Force (STF) Special Team of the Uttar Pradesh Police, Department of Home, Uttar Pradesh, India
• Special Operation Group (SOG) District Police Team of the Uttar Pradesh Police, Department of Home, Uttar Pradesh, India
• Hunter Force component of Mizoram Armed Police, Department of Home, Mizoram, India, India
• Detachment 88, Republic of Indonesian Police (POLRI), Indonesia
• Pasukan Gerakan Khas (PGK) and Police Combat Diving Unit (UST), Royal Malaysian Police, Malaysia
• Tactical Assault Group, Australia
• Armed Offenders Squad and Special Tactics Group, New Zealand Police, New Zealand
• SDU, Hong Kong
• SWAT, People’s Republic of China (PRC)
• Special Action Force, Philippines
• Special Assault Team, Japan
• Thunder Squad, Taiwan National Police, Republic of China (Taiwan)
• Special Tactics and Rescue, Singapore
• Arintharat 26, Royal Thai Police, Thailand
• State Protection Group, New South Wales Police Force, Australia
• Police Intervention Tactical Unit, Macau Police
South America
• Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais (BOPE) (Special Police Operations Battalion), Brazil
• Grupo de Operaciones Policiales Especiales (GOPE), Chile
North America
Canada
• Emergency Response Team (RCMP)
o Barrie Police
o Brockville Police Service
o Delta Police Department
o Fredericton Police
o Halifax Regional Police
o Vancouver Police Department
o Victoria Police Department
o Emergency Response Team (RCMP) - Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Tactical Unit
• Tactical and Explosives Unit - Ottawa Police Service
• Emergency Task Force (TPS) - Toronto Police Service
• Tactical Support Unit - Durham Regional Police Service
• Tactical Rescue Unit - Halton Regional Police Service
• Emergency Task Unit - Niagara Regional Police Service
• Tactical Unit - Edmonton Police Service
• Tactical Response Unit - Peel Regional Police
• Special Response Unit - Waterloo Regional Police
• Emergency Response - York Regional Police
• Critical Incident Response Team and Tactical Team - Guelph Police Service
• Tactics and Rescue Unit - Ontario Provincial Police
• Technical Response - Service de police de la Ville de Montréal
Central America
• Equipo de Tareas Especiales Division of the Panamanian police department. Perform the same operations as American SWAT teams.

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 created the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who took over some of the government and intelligence community (IC)-wide function that had previously been under the CIA. The DNI manages the United States Intelligence Community and in so doing it manages the intelligence cycle. Among the functions that moved to the DNI were the preparation of estimates reflecting the consolidated opinion of the 16 IC agencies, and preparation of briefings for the President. On July 30, 2008, President Bush issued Executive Order 13470 amending Executive Order 12333 to strengthen the role of the DNI.

When discussing the CIA, it is critical to distinguish whether one is speaking of the agency as it was during the period that it bore IC-wide responsibilities, or as it is today, given its present set of responsibilities. The IC still has internal politics, although an increasing number of interagency “centers”, as well as the Intellipedia information sharing mechanism, are hoped to be improvements.

The current CIA still has a number of functions in common with other countries’ intelligence agencies; see relationships with foreign intelligence agencies. The agency both collects and analyzes intelligence. The CIA’s headquarters is in the community of Langley in the McLean CDP of Fairfax County, Virginia, a few miles west of Washington, D.C. along the Potomac River.
Sometimes, the CIA is referred to euphemistically in government and military parlance as Other Government Agencies (OGA), particularly when its operations in a particular area are an open secret. Other terms include The Company and The Agency.

Organization

The heraldic symbol that composes the CIA seal consists of three representative parts: the “right”-facing bald eagle head atop,( “right” facing, since the eagle looks over its “right” shoulder, not the left shoulder ) the compass star (or compass rose), and the shield. The eagle is the national bird, standing for strength and alertness. The 16-point compass star represents the CIA’s worldwide search for intelligence outside the United States, which is then reported to the headquarters for analysis, reporting, and re-distribution to policymakers. The compass rests upon a shield, symbolic of defense.

The CIA has an executive office, four major directorates, and a variety of specialized offices. Prior to the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligences, it had some additional responsibilities for the IC as a whole.

Executive offices

Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community (IC), serving as the president’s principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 amended the National Security Act to provide for a Director of National Intelligence who would assume some of the roles formerly fulfilled by the DCI, with a separate Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DCI’s title now is “Director of the Central Intelligence Agency” (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.

Currently, the Central Intelligence Agency answers directly to the Director of National Intelligence, although the CIA Director may brief the President directly. The CIA has its budget approved by the Congress, a subset of which do see the line items. The intelligence community, however, does not take direct orders from the Congress. The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the National Security Council, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all 16 U.S. Intelligence Community agencies are under the policy, but not necessarily budgetary, authority of the Director of National Intelligence.

The effect of the personalities of the DCIs on the structure and behavior of the Agency and indeed the IC is analyzed in Painter’s dissertation on “Early Leader Effects” of Donovan, Dulles and Hoover.

Until the creation of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the Director of the CIA met regularly with the President to issue daily reports on ongoing operations. After the creation of the post of DNI, currently Mike McConnell, the report is now given by the DNI—who oversees all US Intelligence activities, including intelligence community operations outside of CIA jurisdiction. Former CIA Director Porter Goss, who had been a CIA officer, denied this has had a diminishing effect on morale, but promoted his mission to reform the CIA into the lean and agile counter-terrorism focused force he believes it should be.

A Deputy Director of the CIA (DDCIA) Assists the Director in his duties as head of the CIA and exercises the powers of the Director when the Director’s position is vacant or in the Director’s absence or disability. Either the Director or Deputy Director may be a military officer, but both positions may not be filled, at the same time, by military officers.

On July 5, 2006, the position of Executive Director, who managed day-to-day operations and budget, was replaced with an Associate Deputy Director of the CIA (ADD).

Support to Military Operations

As the DCIA’s principal adviser and representative on military issues, the Associate Director for Military Support (AD/MS), a senior general officer, coordinates CIA efforts to provide Joint Force commanders, who are principally consumers of national-level intelligence but producers of operational intelligence. The AD/MS also supports Department of Defense officials who oversee military intelligence training and the acquisition of intelligence systems and technology. John A. Gordon was the first AD/MS, before the creation of ODNI. There is also an Associate Deputy Director for Operations for Military Affairs (ADDO/MA).
The Office of Military Affairs provides intelligence and operational support to the US armed forces.

President George W. Bush, in creating the National Clandestine Service (NCS), made it clear policy that the CIA would be in charge of all human intelligence (HUMINT) operations. NCS, (formerly the Directorate of Operations, and earlier the “Directorate of Plans”), collects clandestine human intelligence collection, and conducts deniable psychological operations (psyops) and paramilitary operations. See, Psychological Operations (United States). Creation of the NCS was the culmination of a years old turf war regarding influence, philosophy and budget between the United States Department of Defense and the CIA. The Pentagon, through the DIA, wanted to take control of the CIA’s paramilitary operations and many of its human assets. DoD had organized the Defense HUMINT Service, which, with the Presidential decision, became part of the NCS.

The CIA, which has for years held that human intelligence is the core of the agency, successfully argued that the CIA’s decades long experience with human resources and civilian oversight made it the ideal choice. Thus, the CIA was given charge of all US human intelligence, but as a compromise, the Pentagon was authorized to include increased paramilitary capabilities in future budget requests. The military is also authorized to run Counterintelligence Force Protection Source Operations, which are directly related to the protection of military forces and facility. Another HUMINT area that remains with DoD is direct support to special operations, by an organization, originally called the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), which is a special access program (i.e., separate from sensitive compartmented intelligence activities that must be reported to the Congressional intelligence committees). ISA and its successors transferred to the United States Special Operations Command, where their classified names and special access program designations are changed frequently.

The Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities (TENCAP) program is a system of making national intelligence available to warfighters. TENCAP information most commonly comes from space-based and national-level aircraft programs, where CIA’s responsibilities have moved, in many cases, to NRO, NSA, NGA, and DIA. Nevertheless, CIA still can serve such information, with the emphasis on HUMINT, and on technical sensors that need to be emplaced clandestinely in denied areas.

The C.I.A. has a secretive group called the Special Activities Division, prior to 1997 the group was called the special activities staff, little is known about the group.

Proposed support to Homeland Security

A great sensitivity remains about CIA having domestic responsibilities, but it clearly will, on occasions, collect information outside the US that relates directly to domestic security. CIA, for example, is more likely to obtain HUMINT on terrorists than the very limited foreign resources of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

While DHS, like the military, is seen principally as a consumer of national intelligence, but its border and transportation security functions will produce intelligence. At present, however, there is no well-defined way for DHS to task intelligence collection agencies with its requirements. One proposal suggests using the AD/MS as a prototype, to create an AD/Homeland Security in the CIA, and possibly an equivalent position in the Justice Department, which, through the FBI and other agencies, legally collects domestic intelligence. This proposal is one of many to improve coordination and avoid intelligence failures caused by not “connecting the dots”, when the dots are held by different agencies.

National estimates

Prior to 2004, CIA had two analytic roles: the main effort based in the Directorate of Intelligence, which used internal experts to analyze data collected by the CIA, National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the military collection organizations, and other parts of the intelligence community. Many of these reports were on current subjects, such as the status of a revolutionary group, or the technical details of a new Chinese factory.

Another function, however, was preparing “estimates”, which try to predict the future. Estimates are a product of the intelligence community as a whole. National Intelligence Estimates were the most extensively coordinated documents, often that could be scheduled on a regular basis, such as a regular report on Soviet intentions. Special National Intelligence Estimates (SNIE) were quick-response publications, often providing guidance in a crisis, but were still interagency consensus rather than CIA alone.

CIA had a separate and prestigious office, going by different names and organizations, such as the Office of National Estimates, Board of National Estimates, or a set of National Intelligence Officers, which would seek out the consensus of all the intelligence agencies, and then have some of the most senior analysts write a draft. The idea of such estimates is often credited to Sherman Kent, sometimes called the father of US intelligence analysis, with special emphasis on the production of estimates. This function is now in the National Intelligence Council of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Originally defined in 1950, this responsibility stated “CIA is now in the business of producing what are called National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) along the lines laid down in NSC 50.

These papers are interdepartmental in character, designed to focus all available intelligence on a problem of importance to the national security.” In the early days of the process, CIA used the State Department’s intelligence staff for drafting the NIEs, but a “small top level Office of National Estimates” was set up to integrate the departmental drafts. A senior CIA analyst responsible for the document would work out differences. There is also a process by which an agency can disagree with a comment called a “reclama”, which is a footnote expressing an alternate position. For an example of such dissents, see Special National Intelligence Estimate 10-9-65 in CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific#Vietnam 1965: Viet Cong and DRV Reactions, where there are dissents to various parts from all or part of the military, and from the Department of State.

Upon approval by an interagency review committee, the paper becomes a NIE and is sent by the Director of Central Intelligence to the President, appropriate officers of Cabinet level, and the NSC.

Directorate of Intelligence

The “DI” is the analytical branch of the CIA, responsible for the production and dissemination of all-source intelligence analysis on key foreign issues.. While it has, like most government agencies, reorganized over the years, its current structure has four regional analytic groups, six groups for transnational issues, and two support units. Prior to the formation of the office of the Director of National Intelligence, the President’s Daily Brief was prepared by the CIA Office of Current Intelligence.

Some open source intelligence (OSINT), such as the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, were, at different times, part of the Directorate of Intelligence or the Directorate of Science & Technology. Along with other OSINT functions, the National Open Source Enterprise is now in the ODNI.

Regional groups

There is an Office dedicated to Iraq. In addition, there are regional analytical Offices covering:
• Near East, North Africa and South Asia: The Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis (NESA)
• Russia and Europe: The Office of Russian and European Analysis (OREA)
• Asian-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa: The Office of East Asian, Pacific, Latin American and African Analysis (APLAA)

Transnational groups

The Office of Terrorism Analysis, which supports the National Counterterrorism Center, in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Office of Transnational Issues applies unique functional expertise to assess existing and emerging threats to US national security and provides the most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support.
The CIA Crime and Narcotics Center researches information on international narcotics trafficking and organized crime for policymakers and the law enforcement community. Since the CIA has no domestic police authority, it sends its analytic information to the FBI and other law enforcement organizations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
The Weapons, Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center provides intelligence support deals with national and non-national threats, as well as supporting threat reduction/arms control. This works with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Again cooperating with the FBI for domestic activity, the Counterintelligence Center Analysis Group identifies, monitors, and analyzes the efforts of foreign intelligence entities, both national and non-national, against US interests.

The Information Operations Center Analysis Group\\ evaluates foreign threats to US computer systems, particularly those that support critical infrastructures. It works with critical infrastructure protection organizations in the United States Department of Defense (e.g., CERT Coordination Center) and the Department of Homeland Security (e.g., United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team).

Support and general units

The Office of Collection Strategies and Analysis provides comprehensive intelligence collection expertise to the DI, a wide range of senior Agency and Intelligence Community officials, and key national policymakers.

The Office of Policy Support customizes DI analysis and presents it to a wide variety of policy, law enforcement, military, and foreign liaison recipients.

National Clandestine Service

The National Clandestine Service, a semi-independent service which was formerly the Directorate of Operations, is responsible for collection of foreign intelligence, principally from clandestine HUMINT sources, and covert action. The new name reflects its having absorbed the Defense HUMINT Service, which did strategic human intelligence HUMINT collection for the Department of Defense (DoD). HUMINT directly related to military missions remains under the DoD. Note that there is an open source function in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, which may be taking over certain legal interviews in the US that previously were the Domestic Contact Division (or Domestic Contact Service).

While the NCS organization chart has not been published, although there have been prior descriptions of the Directorate of Plans or the Directorate of Operations, a fairly recent organization chart of the Defense HUMINT Service will indicate functions transferred into the NCS, and may well be fairly close to the overall NCS organizational structure.

The Special Activities Division (SAD) is a division of the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Clandestine Service, responsible for covert action paramilitary operations, the collection of intelligence in hostile and/or denied areas and all high threat military and/or intelligence operations when the U.S. Government does not wish to be overtly associated with such activities. As such, members of the unit, when on missions, normally do not carry any objects or clothing (e.g., military uniforms) that would associate them with the United States. If compromised during a mission, the government of the United States may legally deny their status and all knowledge of their mission.

SAD officers are a majority of the recipients of the coveted Distinguished Intelligence Cross and the Intelligence Star. These are the two highest medals for valor in the CIA. Not surprisingly, SAD officers also make up the majority of those memorialized on the Wall of Honor at CIA headquarters. These Paramilitary Operations Officers were the first Americans into Afghanistan and Iraq.

There are references to earlier structures in various historical documents. For example, in a CIA paper on the internal probe into the Bay of Pigs, there are several comments on the Directorate of Plans organizational structure in 1962. Even though any large organization will constantly reorganize, the basic functions will stay and can be a clue to future organization.
At the top level, Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell had two Assistant Deputy Directors, C. Tracy Barnes and Richard Helms. Warner explains “operational details fell to Branch 4 (Cuba) of the DDP’s Western Hemisphere Division (WH)”, with some exceptions. Jacob Esterline, chief of the Cuba Branch, reported directly to Bissell and Barnes rather than to his division chief, J.C. King “although King was regularly informed and often consulted. To confuse matters still further, Branch 4 had no direct control over the Brigade’s aircraft, which were managed by a separate DDP division that also took some orders directly from Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) Charles P. Cabell, a US Air Force general who liked to keep his hand in the planning of airdrops and other missions,” Air operations, therefore, were in a separate division either for covert support, paramilitary operations, or both.

Cuba Branch had a “Foreign Intelligence Section,” foreign intelligence being a term of art for HUMINT. The branch, however, established “a separate “G-2″ unit subordinate to its Paramilitary Section, which planned the actual invasion. This gives us the model of a geographic branch with subordinate sections, at least, for intelligence collection and paramilitary actions.
Warner’s paper also mentions that certain DDP groups were outside the scope of the post-mortem by Executive Director Lyman Kirkpatrick, but their mention tells us that these were representative components of the DDP: “… the Havana station or the Santiago base, the development of foreign intelligence assets and liaison contacts, Division D’s technical collection programs, or counter-intelligence work against the Cuban services.” CIA “stations” are the parts of the embassy with officers under diplomatic cover, in a typical diplomatic office building.

“Bases”, however, are large facilities for supporting operations, typically with an airfield, secure warehouses, barracks and training areas. Division D was the joint CIA-NSA collection effort, where CIA would use clandestine operations personnel to emplace NSA SIGINT sensors. The reference to counter-intelligence work appears to refer to a main counterintelligence division, presumably the Counterintelligence Staff under James Jesus Angleton.

Directorate of Science and Technology

The Directorate of Science & Technology creates and applies innovative technology in support of the intelligence collection mission. The CIA has always shown a strong interest in how to use advances in technology to enhance its effectiveness. This interest in modern technology came from two main aims: firstly, to harness these techniques its own use, and second to counter any new technologies the Soviets might develop. This effort gained impetus in the fifties with the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the USSR. The agency was also extremely interested in computer and information technology. In 1999, CIA created the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel to help fund and develop technologies of interest to the agency.
Its website mentions its priorities being in:
• Application Software and Analytics
• Bio, Nuclear, and Chemical Technologies
• Communications and Infrastructure
• Digital Identity and Security
• Embedded Systems and Power
In January 2008, its featured collaboration was with Streambase Systems, makers of a “high-performance Complex Event Processing (CEP) software platform for real-time and historical analysis of high-volume intelligence data,” using a new processing paradigm for Structured Query Language (SQL), allowing queries against multiple real-time data streams still updating the data base.

Directorate of Support

The Directorate of Support provides necessary “housekeeping” administration functions, but in a manner consistent with the need to keep their details protected. These functions include personnel, security, communications, and financial operations. Most of this Directorate is sub-structured into smaller offices based on role and purpose, such as the Office of Security, which is concerned both with personnel and physical security. Other major offices include the Office of Communications and the Office of Information Technology.

Logistics and proprietaries

Under the original NSC 10/2 authorization, CIA was made responsible not just for covert action during the cold war, but for such action during major wars, in collaboration with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. When DCI Smith created the Directorate of Plans and ended the autonomy of the OPC and OSO, he recognized it was necessary to establish logistical support for these operations before the start of a hot war. Smith did not want to duplicate existing military support systems, and proposed, in 1952, that the CIA should be able to draw, on a reimbursable basis, on military supply stocks. In many respects, this was the beginning of the idea that what was to become the Directorate of Support had a far wider scope than the OSS and initial CIA term, Directorate of Administration.

Smith presented the concept that the CIA would need a worldwide system of support bases, which usually could be tenant organizations on military bases. According to Smith’s memo,
A major logistical support base will consist of a CIA base headquarters, training, communications, medical accommodation for evacuees and storage for six months’ hot war requirements as well as provide logistical support for CIA operational groups or headquarters… Informal planning along the lines indicated has been carried out by elements of CIA with … the Joint Chiefs of Staff …
The CIA was expected to reimburse “extraordinary expenses” incurred by the military services.

While military transportation might be appropriate for some purposes, there would be cases where the arrival of a military aircraft at a location other than a military base might draw undue attention. This was the origin of the idea of the CIA operating proprietary airlines, whose relationship to the US government would not be public. Among these organizations were airlines that provided covert logistical support, such as Civil Air Transport, Southern Air Transport, and consolidated them into Air America. The latter was heavily involved in support with the war in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam in the 1960s.

Training

This directorate includes the Office of Training, which starts with a Junior Officer Training program for new employees. So that the initial course might be taken by employees who had not received final security clearance and thus were not permitted unescorted access to the Headquarters building, a good deal of basic training has been given at office buildings in the urban areas of Arlington, Virginia.

It is known, although not acknowledged by the U.S. Government, that the CIA runs at least two operations training facilities. One is known as The Farm, at Camp Peary, Virginia. The other is known as The Point at Harvey Point, North Carolina. While the course outline has never been revealed, it is believed to include such things as surveillance, countersurveillance, cryptography, paramilitary training as well as other tradecraft. The course is believed to be slightly less than a year and runs at irregular intervals depending on circumstances. Operations training is delivered by experienced operations officers.

Student progress is monitored by experienced evaluators that meet to discuss a recruit’s progress and have the power to dismiss a recruit even before his or her training is complete. Evaluation techniques for the CIA’s World War II predecessor, the OSS, were published as the book Assessment of Men, Selection of Personnel for the office of Strategic Services. See Roger Hall’s You’re Stepping on my Cloak and Dagger for an accurate but amusing account of Hall’s OSS duty, which included finding unexpected solutions to things in the assessment process as well as his experience in real operations. He described a specific assessment period at a rural facility called “Station S”. Hall said he tried to find out why it was called Station S, and finally decided the reason was that “assess” has more “S” letters than any other.

Psychological stress is part of operations training, but of a different type than military special operations force evaluation, such as the Navy SEAL Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course or Army Special Forces Assessment and Selection. For instance, an operations training officer will often lie to a recruit saying they have evidence that will result in the recruit to be arrested and tried for felony crimes. This is a test of the recruit’s ability to maintain a cover under stress.
Contrary to popular belief or what is seen in film and television series, American-born, professional employees trained to work for the National Clandestine Service (CIA) are never referred to as “secret agents”, “spies”, “agents” or “special agents”, they are known as ‘Operations Officers’ or ‘Case Officers’, or Officer for short. To highlight this point: within the intelligence community, the equivalent of an FBI Special Agent is a CIA Officer. Within the law enforcement community, the equivalent of a CIA ‘agent’ is an FBI informant. There does not exist any working title or job position known as ‘CIA Agent’, agents of the CIA are usually always foreigners who pass along secret information to the government through CIA Case Officers, who are posted at U.S. embassies worldwide.

These CIA Case Officers recruit foreign agents, known as ‘assets’, to give information to the CIA. There are a wide range of motivations for a person to become an asset; CIA Case Officers are normally sent abroad under a cover identity, most commonly as a diplomat but sometimes under “nonofficial cover” using an assumed identity and having no immunity.

Other offices
General Publications

One of the CIA’s best-known publications, The World Factbook, is in the public domain and is made freely available without copyright restrictions because it is a work of the United States federal government.

CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence maintains the Agency’s historical materials and promotes the study of intelligence as a legitimate and serious discipline. The CIA since 1955 has published an in-house professional journal known as Studies in Intelligence that addresses historical, operational, doctrinal, and theoretical aspects of the intelligence profession. The Center also publishes unclassified and declassified Studies articles, as well as other books and monographs. A further annotated collection of Studies articles was published through Yale University Press under the title Inside CIA’s Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency’s Internal Journal, 1955-1992.

In 2002, CIA’s Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis began publishing the unclassified Kent Center Occasional Papers, aiming to offer “an opportunity for intelligence professionals and interested colleagues—in an unofficial and unfettered vehicle—to debate and advance the theory and practice of intelligence analysis.”

General Counsel and Inspector General

Two offices advise the Director on legality and proper operations. The Office of the General Counsel advises the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on all legal matters relating to his role as CIA director and is the principal source of legal counsel for the CIA.

The Office of Inspector General promotes efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability in the administration of Agency activities. OIG also seeks to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. The Inspector General is nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Inspector General, whose activities are independent of those of any other component in the Agency, reports directly to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

OIG conducts inspections, investigations, and audits at Headquarters and in the field, and oversees the Agency-wide grievance-handling system. The OIG provides a semiannual report to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency which the Director is required by law to submit to the Intelligence Committees of Congress within 30 days.

In February 2008, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael V. Hayden, sent a message to employees that Inspector General John L. Helgerson will accept increased control over the investigations by that office, saying “John has chosen to take a number of steps to heighten the efficiency, assure the quality and increase the transparency of the investigation process”.The Washington Post suggested this was a response to senior officials who believe the OIG has been too aggressive in looking into counterterrorism programs, including detention programs. The changes were the result of an investigation, begun in April 2007, by one of Hayden’s assistants, Robert L. Deitz. There was congressional concern that restrictions on the OIG might have a chilling effect on its effectiveness. Senator Ron Wyden , a Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, did not disagree with any of Hayden’s actions, said the inquiry “should never have happened and can’t be allowed to happen again.”…“I’m all for the inspector general taking steps that help C.I.A. employees understand his processes, but that can be done without an approach that can threaten the inspector general’s independence.

Public Affairs

The Office of Public Affairs advises the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on all media, public policy, and employee communications issues relating to his role as CIA director and is the CIA’s principal communications focal point for the media, the general public and Agency employees. See CIA influence on public opinion.

Relationship with other sources of intelligence

The CIA acts as the primary American HUMINT, HUMan INTelligence, and general analytic agency, under the Director of National Intelligence, who directs or coordinates the 16 member organizations of the United States Intelligence Community. It obtains information from other U.S. government intelligence agencies, commercial information sources, and foreign intelligence services.

Other U.S. intelligence agencies

A number of those organizations are fully or partially under the budgetary control of the United States Secretary of Defense or other cabinet officers such as the Attorney General of the United States.

As do other analytic members of the U.S. intelligence community such as the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the analytic division of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), its raw input includes imagery intelligence IMINT collected by air and space systems of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) processed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), signal intelligence SIGINT of the National Security Agency (NSA), and measurement and signature intelligence MASINT from the DIA MASINT center.

Open Source Intelligence

Until the 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community, one of the “services of common concern” that CIA provided was OSINT from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). FBIS, which had absorbed the Joint Publication Research Service, a military organization that translated documents, which moved into the National Open Source Enterprise under the Director of National Intelligence.

CIA still provides a variety of unclassified maps and reference documents both to the intelligence community and the public.
As part of its mandate to gather intelligence, CIA is looking increasingly online for information, and has become a major consumer of social media. “We’re looking at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence,” said Doug Naquin, director of the DNI Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA. “We’re looking at chat rooms and things that didn’t exist five years ago, and trying to stay ahead.”

Outsourcing

In a trend some find disturbing, many of duties and functions of Intelligence Community activities, not the CIA alone, are being “outsourced” and “privatized.” Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, was about to publicize an investigation report of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies, as required by Congress. However, this report was then classified. Hillhouse speculates that this report includes requirements for the CIA to report :
• different standards for government employees and contractors;
• contractors providing similar services to government workers;
• analysis of costs of contractors vs. employees;
• an assessment of the appropriateness of outsourced activities;
• an estimate of the number of contracts and contractors;
• comparison of compensation for contractors and government employees,
• attrition analysis of government employees;
• descriptions of positions to be converted back to the employee model;
• an evaluation of accountability mechanisms;
• an evaluation of procedures for “conducting oversight of contractors to ensure identification and prosecution of criminal violations, financial waste, fraud, or other abuses committed by contractors or contract personnel; and
• an “identification of best practices of accountability mechanisms within service contracts.”
According to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, “…what we have today with the intelligence business is something far more systemic: senior officials leaving their national security and counterterrorism jobs for positions where they are basically doing the same jobs they once held at the CIA, the NSA and other agencies - but for double or triple the salary, and for profit. It’s a privatization of the highest order, in which our collective memory and experience in intelligence - our crown jewels of spying, so to speak - are owned by corporate America. Yet, there is essentially no government oversight of this private sector at the heart of our intelligence empire. And the lines between public and private have become so blurred as to be nonexistent.”
Congress has required an outsourcing report by March 30, 2008.
The Director of National Intelligence has been granted the authority to increase the number of positions (FTEs) on elements in the Intelligence Community by up to 10% should there be a determination that activities performed by a contractor should be done by a US government employee.

Part of the contracting problem comes from Congressional restrictions on the number of employees in the IC. According to Hillhouse, this resulted in0% of the de facto workforce of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service being made up of contractors. “After years of contributing to the increasing reliance upon contractors, Congress is now providing a framework for the conversion of contractors into federal government employees–more or less.”
As with most government agencies, building equipment often is contracted. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), responsible for the development and operation of airborne and spaceborne sensors, long was a joint operation of the CIA and the United States Department of Defense. NRO had been significantly involved in the design of such sensors, but the NRO, then under DCI authority, contracted more of the design that had been their tradition, and to a contractor without extensive reconnaissance experience, Boeing.

The next-generation satellite Future Imagery Architecture project, which missed objectives after $4 billion in cost overruns, was the result of this contract.
Some of the cost problems associated with intelligence come from one agency, or even a group within an agency, not accepting the compartmented security practices for individual projects, requiring expensive duplication.

Foreign intelligence services

Many intelligence services cooperate. There may even be a deniable communications channel with ostensibly hostile nations.
The role and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki) (SVR), the French foreign intelligence service Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) and Israel’s Mossad. While the preceding agencies both collect and analyze information, some like the US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research are purely analytical agencies. See List of intelligence agencies.

The closest links of the US IC to other foreign intelligence agencies are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. There is a special communications marking that signals that intelligence-related messages can be shared with these four countries. An indication of the United States’ close operational cooperation is the creation of a new message distribution label within the main US military communications network. Previously, the marking of NOFORN (i.e., No Foreign Nationals) required the originator to specify which, if any, non-US countries could receive the information. A new handling caveat, USA/AUS/CAN/GBR/NZL Eyes Only, used primarily on intelligence messages, gives an easier way to indicate that the material can be shared with Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and New Zealand.

Organizational history

The Central Intelligence Agency was created by Congress with National Security Act of 1947, signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It is the descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which was dissolved in October 1945 and its functions transferred to the State and War Departments. Eleven months earlier, in 1944, William J. Donovan, the OSS’s creator, proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt creating a new organization directly supervised by the President: “which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies.” Under his plan, a powerful, centralized civilian agency would have coordinated all the intelligence services. He also proposed that this agency have authority to conduct “subversive operations abroad,” but “no police or law enforcement functions, either at home or abroad.”
CIA personnel have died on duty, some in accidents and some by deliberate hostile action. On the memorial wall at CIA headquarters, some of the stars have no name attached, because it would reveal the identity of a clandestine officer. Both the OSS and its British counterparts, as do other agencies worldwide, struggle with finding the right organizational balance among clandestine intelligence collection, counterintelligence, and covert action.

See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for a historical perspective on this problem. These issues also bear on the reasons that, in the history below, some “eras” overlap. Also see the Wikipedia article Director of Central Intelligence, which contains an expanded history of CIA by director; the priorities and personalities of individual directors have had a strong influence on Agency operations.

Immediate predecessors, 1946–1947

The Office of Strategic Services, which was the first independent US intelligence agency, created for the Second World War, was broken up shortly after the end of the war, by President Harry S. Truman, on September 20, 1945. The rapid reorganizations that followed reflected the routine sort of bureaucratic competition for resources, but also trying to deal with the proper relationships of clandestine intelligence collection and covert action (i.e., paramilitary and psychological operations). See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for a more detailed history of this problem, which was not unique to the US during and after World War II. This division lasted only a few months.Despite opposition from the military establishment, the United States Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) in January 1946 which was the direct predecessor to the CIA. The CIG was an interim authority established under Presidential authority. The assets of the SSU, which now constituted a streamlined “nucleus” of clandestine intelligence was transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO).

Early CIA, 1947–1952

In September 1947, the National Security Act of 1947 established both the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was appointed as the first Director of Central Intelligence.

The National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1948 (NSC 10/2) further gave the CIA the authority to carry out covert operations “against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons.”

In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act (Public Law 81-110) authorized the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures, and exempting it from most of the usual limitations on the use of Federal funds. It also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its “organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed.” It also created the program “PL-110″, to handle defectors and other “essential aliens” who fall outside normal immigration procedures, as well as giving those persons cover stories and economic support.

The structure stabilizes, 1952

Then-DCI Walter Bedell Smith, who enjoyed a special degree of Presidential trust, having been Dwight D. Eisenhower’s primary Chief of Staff during World War II, insisted that the CIA – or at least only one department – had to direct the OPC and OSO. Those organization, as well as some minor functions, formed the euphemistically named Directorate of Plans in 1952.
Also in 1952, United States Army Special Forces were created, with some missions overlapping those of the Department of Plans. In general, the pattern emerged that the CIA could borrow resources from Special Forces, although it had its own special operators.

Early Cold War, 1953–1966

Allen Dulles, who had been a key OSS operations officer in Switzerland during the Second World War, took over from Smith, at a time where US policy was dominated by intense anticommunism. Various sources were involved, the most visible being the investigations and abuses of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the more quiet but systematic containment doctrine developed by George Kennan, the Berlin Blockade and the Korean War. Dulles enjoyed a high degree of flexibility, as his brother, John Foster Dulles, was simultaneously Secretary of State. Concern regarding the Soviet Union and the difficulty of getting information from its closed society, which few agents could penetrate, led to solutions based on advanced technology. Among the first success was with the Lockheed U-2 aircraft, which could take pictures and collect electronic signals from an altitude above Soviet air defenses’ reach. After Gary Powers was shot down by an SA-2 surface to air missile in 1960, causing an international incident, the SR-71 was developed to take over this role.
During this period, there were numerous covert actions against perceived Communist expansion. Some of the largest operations were aimed at Cuba after the overthrow of the Batista government, including assassination attempts against Fidel Castro and the dubiously deniable Bay of Pigs Invasion. There have been suggestions that the Soviet attempt to put missiles into Cuba came, indirectly, when they realized how badly they had been compromised by a US-UK defector in place, Oleg Penkovsky.

The CIA, working with the military, formed the joint National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to operate reconnaissance aircraft such as the SR-71 and later satellites. “The fact of” the United States operating reconnaissance satellites, like “the fact of” the existence of NRO, was highly classified for many years.

Complications from Indochina and the Vietnam War (1954–1975)

As the US military and electorate were affected by Vietnam, so was the CIA. The OSS Patti mission had arrived near the end of the Second World War, and had significant interaction with the leaders of many Vietnamese factions, including Ho Chi Minh. While the Patti mission forwarded Ho’s proposals for phased independence, with the French or even the United States as the transition partner, the US policy of containment opposed forming any government that might be Communist.

The first CIA mission to Indochina, under the code name Saigon Military Mission arrived in 1954, under Edward Lansdale. US-based analysts were simultaneously trying to project the evolution of political power, both if the scheduled referendum chose merger of the North and South, or if the South, the US client, stayed independent. Initially, the US focus in Southeast Asia was on Laos, not Vietnam.

During the period of American combat involvement in the Vietnam War, there was considerable arguments about progress among the Department of Defense under Robert S. McNamara, the CIA, and, to some extent, the intelligence staff of the Military Assistance Command Vietnam. In general, the military was consistently more optimistic than the CIA. Sam Adams, a junior CIA analyst with responsibilities for estimating the actual damage to the enemy, eventually resigned from the CIA, after expressing concern, to Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms with estimates that were changed for interagency and White House political reasons, writing the book War of Numbers.

Abuses of CIA authority, 1970s–1990s

Things came to a head in the mid-1970s, around the time of the Watergate political burglary affair. A dominant feature of political life during that period were the attempts of Congress to assert oversight of U.S. Presidency, the executive branch of the U.S. Government. Revelations about past CIA activities, such as assassinations and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders and illegal domestic spying on U.S. citizens (the CIA has no authority to conduct any domestic activities whatsoever), provided the opportunities to execute Congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence operations. Hastening the Central Intelligence Agency’s fall from grace were the burglary of the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic Party by ex-CIA agents, and President Richard Nixon’s subsequent use of the CIA to impede the FBI’s investigation of the burglary. In the famous “smoking gun” recording that led to President Nixon’s resignation, Nixon ordered his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, to tell the CIA that further investigation of Watergate would “open the whole can of worms” about the Bay of Pigs of Cuba, and, therefore, that the CIA should tell the FBI to cease investigating the Watergate burglary, due to reasons of “national security”.

In 1973, then-DCI James R. Schlesinger commissioned reports – known as the “Family Jewels” – on illegal activities by the Agency. In December 1974, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the news of the “Family Jewels” in a front-page article in The New York Times, revealing that the CIA had assassinated foreign leaders, and had conducted surveillance on some 7,000 American citizens involved in the antiwar movement (Operation CHAOS). The CIA had also experimented on the public, who unknowingly took LSD.

Congress responded to the disturbing charges in 1975, investigating the CIA in the Senate via the Church Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), and in the House of Representatives via the Pike Committee, chaired by Congressman Otis Pike (D-NY). In addition, President Gerald Ford created the Rockefeller Commission, and issued an executive order prohibiting the assassination of foreign leaders. As the CIA fell out of favor with the public, Ford assured Americans that his administration was not involved: “There are no people presently employed in the White House who have a relationship with the CIA of which I am personally unaware.”

Repercussions from the Iran-Contra Affair arms smuggling scandal included the creation of the Intelligence Authorization Act in 1991. It defined covert operations as secret missions in geopolitical areas where the U.S. is neither openly nor apparently engaged. This also required an authorizing chain of command, including an official, presidential finding report and the informing of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, which, in emergencies, requires only “timely notification”.

2004, DCI takes over CIA top-level functions

Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community, serving as the president’s principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DCI’s title now is “Director of the Central Intelligence Agency” (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.

Currently, the Central Intelligence Agency reports to the Director of National Intelligence. Prior to the establishment of the DNI, the CIA reported to the President, with informational briefings to U.S. Congressional committees The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the National Security Council, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, et cetera; all sixteen Intelligence Community agencies are under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.

Mission-related issues and controversies

The history of CIA deals with several things, certainly including covert action, but also clandestine and overt intelligence collection, intelligence analysis and reporting, and logistical and technical support of its activities. Prior to the December 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community (IC), it also was responsible for coordinations of IC-wide intelligence estimates.

These articles are organized in two different ways: By geographical region (for state actors or non-state actors limited to a country or region) and by transnational topic (for non-state actors).
CIA operations by region, country and date are discussed in detail in the following articles:
• CIA activities in Africa
• CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific
• CIA activities in Russia and Europe
• CIA activities in the Americas
• CIA activities in the Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia
CIA analyses of issues such as the effect of emerging diseases, and the detection of WMDs, are inherently transnational, and are discussed in the following articles. CIA operations and, where appropriate, authorizations for covert operations (for example, NSDD 138 authorizing direct action against terrorists) by transnational topic are discussed in the following Wikipedia articles:
• CIA transnational activities in counterproliferation
• CIA transnational anti-crime and anti-drug activities
• CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities
• CIA transnational health and economic activities
• CIA transnational human rights actions
In addition, a view of covert US activity specifically oriented towards regime change actions is given in the following Wikipedia article:
• Covert U.S. regime change actions

Major sources for this section include the Council on Foreign Relations of the United States series, the National Security Archive and George Washington University, the Freedom of Information Act Reading Room at the CIA, U.S. Congressional hearings, Blum’s book and Weiner’s book Note that the CIA has posted a rebuttal to Weiner’s book, and that Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive has also been sharply critical of it.

Areas of controversy about inappropriate, often illegal actions include experiments, without consent, on human beings to explore chemical means of eliciting information or disabling people. Another area involved torture and clandestine imprisonment. There have been attempted assassinations under CIA orders and support for assassinations of foreign leaders by citizens of the leader’s country, and, in a somewhat different legal category that may fall under the customary laws of war, targeted killing of terrorist leaders.

Security and counterintelligence failures

While the names change periodically, there are two basic security functions to protect the CIA and its operations. There is an Office of Security in the Directorate for Support, which is responsible for physical security of the CIA buildings, secure storage of information, and personnel security clearances. These are directed inwardly to the agency itself.

In what is now the National Clandestine Service, there is a counter-intelligence function, called the Counterintelligence Staff under its most controversial chief, James Jesus Angleton. This function has roles including looking for staff members that are providing information to foreign intelligence services (FIS) as moles. Another role is to check proposals for recruiting foreign HUMINT assets, to see if these people have any known ties to FIS and thus may be attempts to penetrate CIA to learn its personnel and practices, or as a provocateur, or other form of double agent.

This agency component may also launch offensive counterespionage, where it attempts to interfere with FIS operations. CIA officers in the field often have assignments in offensive counterespionage as well as clandestine intelligence collection.

Security failures
In 1993, the headquarters of the CIA was attacked by Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani national. Two CIA employees were killed, Frank Darling and Lansing Bennett, M.D.
The “Family Jewels” and other documents reveal that the Office of Security violated the prohibition of CIA involvement in domestic law enforcement, sometimes with the intention of assisting police organizations local to CIA buildings.

Counterintelligence failures

Perhaps the most disruptive period involving counterintelligence was James Jesus Angleton’s search for a mole, based on the statements of a Soviet defector, Anatoliy Golitsy. A second defector, Yuri Nosenko, challenged Golitsyn’s claims, with the two calling one another Soviet double agents. Many CIA officers fell under career-ending suspicion; the details of the relative truths and untruths from Nosenko and Golitsyn may never be released, or, in fact, may not be fully understood. The accusations also crossed the Atlantic to the British intelligence services, who also were damaged by molehunts.

On February 24, 1994, the agency was rocked by the arrest of 31-year veteran case officer Aldrich Ames on charges of spying for the Soviet Union since 1985.

Other defectors have included Edward Lee Howard, a field operations officer, and William Kampiles, a low-level worker in the CIA 24-hour Operations Center. Kampiles sold the Soviets the detailed operational manual for the KH-11 reconnaissance satellite.

Failures in intelligence analysis

The agency has also been criticized for ineffectiveness as an intelligence gathering agency. Former DCI Richard Helms commented, after the end of the Cold War, “The only remaining superpower doesn’t have enough interest in what’s going on in the world to organize and run an espionage service.” The CIA has come under particular criticism for failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union.

See the information technology section of the intelligence analysis management for discussion of possible failures to provide adequate automation support to analysts, and US intelligence community A-Space for a IC-wide program to collect some of them. Cognitive traps for intelligence analysis also goes into areas where CIA has examined why analysis can fail.
Agency veterans have lamented CIA’s inability to produce the kind of long-range strategic intelligence that it once did in order to guide policymakers. John McLaughlin, who was deputy director and acting director of central intelligence from October 2000 to September 2004, said that drowned by demands from the White House and Pentagon for instant information, “intelligence analysts end up being the Wikipedia of Washington.” In the intelligence analysis article, orienting oneself to the consumers deals with some of ways in which intelligence can become more responsive to the needs of policymakers.

For the media, the failures are most newsworthy. A number of declassified National Intelligence Estimates do predict the behavior of various countries, but not in a manner attractive to news, or, most significantly, not public at the time of the event. In its operational role, some successes for the CIA include the U-2 and SR-71 programs, and anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s.

Among the first analytic failures, before the CIA had its own collection capabilities, it assured President Harry S Truman on October 13, 1950 that the Chinese would not send troops to Korea. Six days later, over one million Chinese troops arrived. See an analysis of the failure; also see surrounding text for the two Koreas and China, and the time period before the Korean War. Earlier, the intelligence community failed to detect the North Korean invasion, in part because resources were not allocated to SIGINT coverage of the Korean peninsula.

The history of US intelligence, with respect to French Indochina and then the two Vietnams, is long and complex. The Pentagon Papers often contain pessimistic CIA analyses that conflicted with White House positions. It does appear that some estimates were changed to reflect Pentagon and White House views.. See CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific for detailed discussions of intelligence and covert operations from 1945 (i.e., before the CIA) onwards.
Another criticism is the failure to predict India’s nuclear tests in 1974. A review of the various analyses of India’s nuclear program did predict some aspects of the test, such as a 1965 report saying, correctly, that if India did develop a bomb, it would be explained as “for peaceful purposes”.

A major criticism is failure to forestall the September 11, 2001 attacks. The 9/11 Commission Report identifies failures in the IC as a whole. One problem, for example, was the FBI failing to “connect the dots” by sharing information among its decentralized field offices. The report, however, criticizes both CIA analysis, and impeding their investigation.

The executive summary of a report which was released by the office of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson on August 21, 2007 concluded that former DCI George Tenet failed to adequately prepare the agency to deal with the danger posed by Al Qaeda prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The report had been completed in June, 2005 and was partially released to the public in an agreement with Congress, over the objections of current DCI General Michael V. Hayden. Hayden said its publication would “consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed.” Tenet disagreed with the report’s conclusions, citing his planning efforts vis-a-vis al-Qaeda, particularly from 1999.

Questionable/controversial tactics

The CIA has been called into question on several occasions for some of the tactics it employs to carry out its missions. At times these tactics have included torture, training of groups and organizations that would later participate in killing of civilians and other non-combatants, human experimentation, and targeted killings and assassinations.

In understanding the CIA’s role in human rights, there are challenging problems of ethics. John Stockwell, a CIA officer who left the Agency and became a public critic, said of the CIA field officers: “They don’t meet the death squads on the streets where they’re actually chopping up people or laying them down on the street and running trucks over their heads. The CIA people in San Salvador meet the police chiefs, and the people who run the death squads, and they do liaise with them, they meet them beside the swimming pool of the villas. And it’s a sophisticated, civilized kind of relationship. And they talk about their children, who are going to school at UCLA or Harvard and other schools, and they don’t talk about the horrors of what’s being done. They pretend like it isn’t true.”

Most recently, in 2007, Red Cross investigators concluded in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level al Qaeda prisoners constituted torture which could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes.

Internal/presidential studies, external investigations and document releases

At various times since the creation of the CIA, the US Government has produced comprehensive reports on CIA actions that marked historical watersheds in how CIA went about trying to fulfill its vague charter purposes from 1947. These reports were the result of internal/presidential studies, external investigations by Congressional committees or other arms of the US Government, or even the simple releases and declassification of large quantities of documents by the CIA.

Several investigations (e.g., the Church Committee, Rockefeller Commission, Pike Committee, etc.), as well as released declassified documents, reveal that the CIA, at times, operated outside its charter. In some cases, such as during Watergate, this may have been due to inappropriate requests by White House staff. In other cases, there was a violation of Congressional intent, such as the Iran-Contra affair. In many cases, these reports provide the only official discussion of these actions available to the public.

Influencing public opinion and law enforcement

This is an area with many shades of gray. There is little argument, for example, that the CIA acted inappropriately in providing technical support to White House operatives conducting both political and security investigations, with no legal authority to do so. Things become much more ambiguous when law enforcement may expose a clandestine operation, a problem not unique to intelligence but also seen among different law enforcement organizations, where one wants to prosecute and another to continue investigations, perhaps reaching higher levels in a conspiracy.
Linkages with former Nazi and Japanese War Criminals.

While the United States was involved in the prosecution of war criminals, US military and intelligence agencies protected some war criminals in the interest of obtaining technical or intelligence information from them, or taking part in ongoing intelligence or engineering (e.g., Operation Paperclip). Multiple US intelligence organizations were involved, and many of these relationships were formed before the creation of the CIA in 1947, but the CIA, in some cases, took over the relationships and concealed them for nearly 60 years.

Al-Qaeda and the War on Terror

The CIA had long been dealing with terrorism originating from abroad, and in 1986 had set up a Counterterrorist Center to deal specifically with the problem. At first confronted with secular terrorism, the Agency found Islamist terrorism looming increasingly large on its scope.

The network that became known as al-Qaeda (”The Base”) grew out of Arab volunteers who fought the Soviets and their puppet regimes in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In 1984 Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden set up an organization known as the Office of Services in Peshawar, Pakistan, to coordinate and finance the “Afghan Arabs”, as the volunteers became known.

The CIA also channeled US aid to Afghan resistance fighters via Pakistan in a covert operation known as Operation Cyclone. It denied dealing with non-Afghan fighters, or having direct contact with bin Laden. However, various authorities relate that the Agency brought both Afghans and Arabs to the United States for military training. Azzam and Bin Laden set up recruitment offices in the US, under the name “Al-Khifah”, the hub of which was the Farouq Mosque in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue. This was “a place of pivotal importance for Operation Cyclone”.

Among notable figures at the Brooklyn center was the Egyptian “double agent” Ali Mohamed, who worked for the CIA, the Green Berets, Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda at various times in the 1980s and 1990s. FBI special agent Jack Cloonan called him “bin Laden’s first trainer”.[ Another was “Blind Sheikh” Abdel Rahman, a leading recruiter of mujaheddin, who obtained US entry visas with the help of the CIA in 1987 and 1990.

In about 1988 Bin Laden set up al-Qaeda from the more extreme elements of the Services Office. But it was not a large organization. When Jamal al-Fadl (who had been recruited through the Brooklyn center in the mid 1980s) joined in 1989, he was described as Qaeda’s “third member”.

In January 1996 the CIA created an experimental “virtual station”, the Bin Laden Issue Station, under the Counterterrorist Center, to track Bin Laden’s developing activities. Al-Fadl, who defected to the CIA in spring 1996, began to provide the Station with a new image of the Qaeda leader: he was not only a terrorist financier, but a terrorist organizer too. FBI special agent Dan Coleman (who together with his partner Jack Cloonan had been “seconded” to the Bin Laden Station) called him Qaeda’s “Rosetta Stone”.

In 1999 CIA chief George Tenet launched a grand “Plan” to deal with al-Qaeda. The Counterterrorist Center, its new chief Cofer Black and the center’s Bin Laden unit were the Plan’s developers and executors. Once it was prepared Tenet assigned CIA intelligence chief Charles E. Allen to set up a “Qaeda cell” to oversee its tactical execution.[112] In 2000 the CIA and USAF jointly ran a series of flights over Afghanistan with a small remote-controlled reconnaissance drone, the Predator; they obtained probable photos of Bin Laden. Cofer Black and others became advocates of arming the Predator with missiles to try to assassinate Bin Laden and other Qaeda leaders. After the Cabinet-level Principals Committee meeting on terrorism of September 4, 2001, the CIA resumed reconnaissance flights, the drones now being weapons-capable.

The CIA set up a Strategic Assessments Branch in 2001 to remedy the deficit of “big-picture” analysis of al-Qaeda, and apparently to develop targeting strategies. The branch was formally set up in July 2001, but it struggled to find personnel. The branch’s head took up his job on September 10, 2001.

After 9/11, the CIA came under criticism for not having done enough to prevent the attacks. Tenet rejected the criticism, citing the Agency’s planning efforts especially over the preceding two years. He also considered that the CIA’s efforts had put the Agency in a position to respond rapidly and effectively to the attacks, both in the “Afghan sanctuary” and in “ninety-two countries around the world”. The new strategy was called the “Worldwide Attack Matrix”.

The 2003 War in Iraq

Whether or not the intelligence available, or presented by the Bush Administration justified the action or allowed proper planning, especially for the occupation, is quite controversial. See Iraq 2003. See CIA activities in Iraq for additional details of these controversies as well as a rather long history of CIA involvement with Iraq.

Drug trafficking

Two offices of CIA Directorate of Intelligence have analytical responsibilities in this area. The Office of Transnational Issues applies unique functional expertise to assess existing and emerging threats to US national security and provides the most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support.
CIA Crime and Narcotics Center researches information on international narcotics trafficking and organized crime for policymakers and the law enforcement community. Since CIA has no domestic police authority, it sends its analytic information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law enforcement organizations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Department of the Treasury (OFAC).

Another part of CIA, the National Clandestine Service, collects human intelligence (HUMINT) in these areas.

The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) was established in 1909 as the Foreign Section of the Secret Service Bureau. The Foreign Section’s responsibility for overseas intelligence collection has been retained ever since by SIS under a variety of names and acronyms. This responsibility was placed on a statutory basis in the Intelligence Services Act 1994.
SIS contributes to the larger inter-departmental national intelligence community, where it works closely with the other two British intelligence and security agencies, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the Security Service.
________________________________________
Statutory Basis

Until 1994 SIS did not have a statutory basis and its existence was not publicly confirmed before it was formally avowed in 1992. The Service was put on a statutory basis with the Intelligence Services Act (ISA) 1994.
Key elements of the ISA for SIS are that it:
• defined SIS functions and responsibilities
• gives the Foreign Secretary authority over SIS
• establishes Parliamentary, Ministerial and legal oversight arrangements
________________________________________
Chief of SIS

SIS is headed by Sir John Scarlett, known as the Chief of SIS or ‘C’ (after the first Chief, Mansfield Cumming who signed himself ‘C’). Sir John took up his post in August 2004. The Chief is the only serving member of the Service who is officially named in public. He is appointed by, and is accountable to, the Foreign Secretary. The Chief is responsible for the control of SIS’s operations and for the efficiency of the Service. He has a duty to ensure that all SIS actions are consistent with its statutory functions. He makes an annual report on the work of SIS to the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary.
________________________________________
SIS HQ

SIS HQ has been at Vauxhall Cross since 1994. The distinctive building is a well known London landmark designed by the architect Terry Farrell. Photographs of it appear throughout this site. It replaced Century House in Lambeth.

Germany
1. H&K PSG-1
2. H&K MSG90
3. H&K SR9
4. Walther WA2000
5. Mauser SP66
6. Mauser 86SR
7. Blaser R93
8. ERMA SR100
9. Unique Alpine TPG-1

U.K.
1. Parker-Hale M85
2. British L96A1
3. Accuracy International Super Magnum
4. British No.4 Mk1(T)

Switzerland
1. Sig Saurer SSG-3000
2. Sig Saurer SG-550 Sniper

Russia (incl. Former U.S.S.R)
1. Russian Dragonov SVD
2. Russian SV-98
3. Russian (USSR) Mosin Nagant 1891/30 Sniper

Canada
1. Canadian C3A1

Austria
1. Steyr-Mannlicher SSG-69 (SSG-PI & PII)
2. Steyr-Mannlicher Scout Tactical Elite

Finland
1. Sako TRG-22/42
2. Tikka Master Sporter
3. Tikka T3 Tactical

Sweden
1. Swedish PSG-90

Israel
1. Israeli Galil Sniper Rifle
2. T.C.I. M89-SR

France
1. French FR-F1 & FR-F2

Norway
1. Norwegian NM149S

Italy
1. Beretta M501

Philippines
1. Filipino MSSR

Belgium
1. FN Special Police
2. FN Patrol Bolt Rifle

Czech Republic
1. CZ 700 M1
2. CZ 527 Varmint Kevlar

Former Yugoslavia - Serbia & Montenegro
1. Yugoslav M76

Japan
1. Japan Howa M1500 Varminter Supreme

1. AO-63
2. Ruger Mini 14
3. Madsen LAR
4. H&K 416
5. SIG 540
6. SIG 550
7. Sturmgewehr 52
8. TAR-21 Tavor
9. TKB-059
10. FARA 83
11. SA80
12. Sterling SAR-87
13. Steyr AUG
14. FAMAS
15. AK-47
16. AK-10X Series
17. FN FNC