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CIA's Relationship With The United States Congress
There have been various arrangements to handle the Central Intelligence Agency's relationship with the United States Congress. The formal liaison began some time before the 1960s, with a single position named the 'legislative liaison'. This later became the 'legislative counsel'. In the 1960s, an actual office was created for this purpose - the Office of Legislative Counsel. In the 1970s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ramped up its congressional-liaison staff to deal with the large number of investigations coming from the Congress. It was the era of the Rockefeller Commission, the Church Committee, and the Pike Committee, all of which requested large amounts of information from the agency. In the 1980s, there were several reorganizations and renaming of the office. Near the end of the 1980s, the office was renamed the Office of Congressional Affairs and has kept that name, as of 2009. In the early 2000s (decade), the relationship became more intense, with debates about t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and performing covert actions. As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. President Harry S. Truman had created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a Director of Central Intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946, and this group was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency by implementation of the National Security Act of 1947. Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Senators and representatives are chosen through direct election, though vacancies in the Senate may be filled by a governor's appointment. Congress has 535 voting members: 100 senators and 435 representatives. The U.S. vice president has a vote in the Senate only when senators are evenly divided. The House of Representatives has six non-voting members. The sitting of a Congress is for a two-year term, at present, beginning every other January. Elections are held every even-numbered year on Election Day. The members of the House of Representatives are elected for the two-year term of a Congress. The Reapportionment Act of 1929 establishes that there be 435 representatives and the Uniform Congressional Redistricting Act requires ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Church Committee
The Church Committee (formally the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) was a US Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church ( D- ID), the committee was part of a series of investigations into intelligence abuses in 1975, dubbed the "Year of Intelligence", including its House counterpart, the Pike Committee, and the presidential Rockefeller Commission. The committee's efforts led to the establishment of the permanent US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The most shocking revelations of the committee include Operation MKULTRA involving the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens as part of human experimentation on mind control; COINTELPRO involving the surveillance and infiltration of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pike Committee
The Pike Committee is the common name for the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during the period when it was chaired by Democratic Representative Otis G. Pike of New York. Under Pike's chairmanship, the committee investigated illegal activities by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the National Security Agency (NSA). The Committee conducted much of its investigation, while the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church and informally known as the "Church Committee," conducted its own investigation. Unlike the report of the investigation of the Church Committee, which was eventually released to the public in the face of Executive Branch opposition to its release, the report of the investigation by the Pike Committee was suppressed from release to the American public, although portions of it were leaked and it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Global War On Terror
The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant Islamist and Salafi-Jihadist armed organisations such as Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and their international affiliates; which are waging military insurgencies to overthrow governments of various Muslim countries. The "war on terror" uses war as a metaphor to describe a variety of actions which fall outside the traditional definition of war taken to eliminate international terrorism. 43rd President of the United States George W. Bush first used the term "war on terrorism" on 16 September 2001, and then "war on terror" a few days later in a formal speech to Congress. Bush indicated the enemy of the war on terror as "a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them." The initial conflict was aimed at al-Qaeda, with th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iran–Contra Affair
The Iran–Contra affair ( fa, ماجرای ایران-کنترا, es, Caso Irán–Contra), often referred to as the Iran–Contra scandal, the McFarlane affair (in Iran), or simply Iran–Contra, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan administration. Between 1981 and 1986, senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, a right-wing rebel group, in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress. The official justification for the arms shipments was that they were part of an operation to free seven American hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah, an Islamist paramilitary group with Iranian ties connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The idea to exchange arms for hostages was p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States House Of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the Lower house, lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the United States Senate, Senate being the Upper house, upper chamber. Together they comprise the national Bicameralism, bicameral legislature of the United States. The House's composition was established by Article One of the United States Constitution. The House is composed of representatives who, pursuant to the Uniform Congressional District Act, sit in single member List of United States congressional districts, congressional districts allocated to each U.S. state, state on a basis of population as measured by the United States Census, with each district having one representative, provided that each state is entitled to at least one. Since its inception in 1789, all representatives have been directly elected, although universal suffrage did not come to effect until after ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reagan Doctrine
The Reagan Doctrine was stated by United States President Ronald Reagan in his State of the Union address on February 6, 1985: "We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives—on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth." It was a strategy implemented by the Reagan Administration to overwhelm the global influence of the Soviet Union in the late Cold War. The doctrine was a centerpiece of United States foreign policy from the early 1980s until the end of the Cold War in 1991. Under the Reagan Doctrine, the United States provided overt and covert aid to anti-communist guerrillas and resistance movements in an effort to " roll back" Soviet-backed pro-communist governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The doctrine was designed to diminish Soviet influence in these regions as part of the administration's overall strategy to win the Cold War. Background The Reagan D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlie Wilson (Texas Politician)
Charles Nesbitt Wilson (June 1, 1933 – February 10, 2010) was a United States naval officer and former 12-term Democratic United States Representative from Texas's 2nd congressional district. Wilson is best known for leading Congress into supporting Operation Cyclone, the largest-ever Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) covert operation, which during the Carter and Reagan administrations supplied military equipment to the Afghan Mujahideen during the Soviet–Afghan War. His behind-the-scenes campaign was the subject of the non-fiction book '' Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History'' by George Crile III and the subsequent film '' Charlie Wilson's War'', where he was portrayed by Tom Hanks. Early life and naval career Wilson was born in the small town of Trinity, Texas, to Charles Edwin Wilson, an accountant for a local timber company, and Wilmuth (née Nesbitt), a local florist, on June 1, 1933. Wilson had one younger sis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texas's 2nd Congressional District
Texas's 2nd congressional district of the United States House of Representatives is in the southeastern portion of the state of Texas. It encompasses parts of northern and western Harris County and southern Montgomery County, Texas. From 2002 to 2012 it stretched from Houston's northern suburbs through eastern Harris County, and across Southeast Texas to the Louisiana border. As of the 2000 census, the 2nd district represented 651,619 people. The district's configuration dates from the 2003 Texas redistricting, when most of the old 9th district was split among three neighboring districts. The four-term Democratic incumbent in the 9th district, Nick Lampson, was unseated by Republican Ted Poe, a longtime felony-court judge in Harris County. In November 2017, Poe announced that he would retire from Congress at the end of his current term, and did not seek re-election in 2018. Dan Crenshaw was elected on November 6, 2018 and is currently serving as congressman. 2012 redistric ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gust Avrakotos
Gustav Lascaris Avrakotos (January 14, 1938 – December 1, 2005) was an American case officer and the Afghan Task Force Chief for the Central Intelligence Agency. Avrakotos joined the CIA in August 1962 and was posted to Greece in 1963. Following the 1967 Greek coup d'état and the establishment of a far-right military junta, Avrakotos became the main liaison point for the CIA and the regime. He worked closely with the regime until he returned to a US posting in 1978. He worked for the CIA in the US until late 1982, when he found a position with the CIA's Near East desk, which included oversight of the agency's work in Afghanistan. The following year he became acting Chief of the South Asia Operations Group, which included involvement in Operation Cyclone, the CIA program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in their war against the Soviets. He acquired arms and ammunition from numerous sources, and worked with Texas representative Charlie Wilson to build a coalition of in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
