7 Heinous Things The CIA Has Ever Done In History

The organization you know, the hidden truths you don’t know.

The Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, was established in 1947 and has been involved with controversial events ever since.

They were accused of manipulating elections, assassinating foreign leaders, and even infiltrating the media.

Here is an exhaustive list of the worst things the CIA has done throughout its existence so far.

7. The Bay of Pigs Invasion — Operation Northwoods

Few people know about Operation Northwoods. It was a plan created by the CIA and Department of Defense to fake an attack on an American military base as a pretext for war with Cuba.

They planned to bomb American soldiers, shoot down U.S. planes, and even detonate terrorist attacks against Americans in Washington D.C.

The reason why President Kennedy rejected this plan is that he felt it was too risky and would anger Congress if they found out there would be no way of convincing them otherwise due to tensions between Russia at the time being so high.

6. The Iran — Contra Affair

In the 1980s, during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the CIA helped arm Islamic extremist groups in Afghanistan to fight against Soviet troops.

These extremists would go on to form al-Qaeda and later carry out 9/11.

The Iran-Contra affair was a military scandal in the United States during President Ronald Reagan’s second term.

Senior administration officials secretly aided in trading weapons to Iran, despite it being banned by law under the Arms Export Control Act.

The goal was to use this new revenue stream from weapon sales to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

However, funding for these rebels had already been banned due to Boland Amendment — put forth by Congress.

To justify these illegal exchanges, the Administration sent messages stating that these weapons were being used as leverage to ensure against further hostage-taking.

They hoped that through these weapons trades with Iran, they could influence them into releasing U.S. hostages taken captive by other countries such as Hezbollah (a militarized terrorist organization associated with IRGC).

5. Operation Cyclone

The acronym CYCLONE is widely recognized as symbolic of government funding — in this case, money set aside for covert purposes to help carry out America’s national security objectives.

While several theories abound about the real intent behind such an operation — some believe that it was simply a part of it because at the time, there were grave concerns about ongoing humanitarian abuses committed by Afghanistan’s Marxist-Leninist state against political opponents, religious dissidents, and ethnic minorities.

While others maintain it was necessary due to geopolitical factors outside America’s control; yet another suggests Washington viewed Moscow’s invasion as a form of imperial overreach.

Regardless of where you stand on that issue, it played a pivotal role in shaping U.S. foreign policy during what was then arguably the single most significant international event of the latter half century.

4. The Phoenix Program

The Phoenix Program (also known as Operation Phoenix) was a covert mission conducted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

This program started in 1967 and attempted to identify and eliminate Vietcong members.

The Phoenix Program was modeled after similar efforts by American forces during the Vietnam War; it ran from 1968 to 1972 and resulted in 40,000 deaths of people believed to be Vietcong members or sympathizers.

It led to thousands more deaths due to indiscriminate killing and other causes.

This program involved training South Vietnamese agents for counter-insurgency and interrogation methods — agents would then go into the field and capture suspects who had been determined through intelligence-gathering techniques such as agent infiltration.

3. MK-ULTRA

A still unknown number of Canadians and U.S. citizens were the unsuspecting victims of a covert testing project called M.K. Ultra, which was conducted illegally by the U.S. government without any form of disclosure to their subjects.

While it seems like there have been no fatalities due to this program because they never meant to make it public knowledge, if it had continued unchecked or slipped through, someone would be sure to end up dead.

Several methods, such as electroshock therapy and sleep deprivation, were used against them during interrogations before admitting anything themselves.

It also uses multiple unethical experiments on its subjects, such as memory loss ones, where alcohol abuse would wipe away memories, causing them to come back slowly only when drunk again, and splitting personality tests that made people stop having one stable personality because they wanted something new.

2. The Salvador Option

The Salvador Option is a method for capturing suspected terrorists.

These individuals are then held and interrogated through different methods that many deem torture.

The Bush Administration created these programs to prevent other terrorist attacks against Americans.

In 2003, the U.S. government said they had used this program before.

Human rights organizations have criticized these practices because they can transfer a person from one country to another without following the due process of law or hearing their case first-hand.

1. Extraordinary Rendition

One of the most controversial aspects of the CIA’s history is its decisions regarding Extraordinary Rendition.

It is a term used when someone is abducted and transferred from one country to another without regard for laws or international protocols.

Human rights groups criticize this tactic because this process violates multiple laws set out by the U.N.

The Bush administration was responsible for abducting hundreds of these so-called illegal combatants for indefinite detention in US-controlled sites as part of a comprehensive interrogation program that involved torture — which later carried on during Obama’s presidency, too, albeit at lower rates.

On the other hand, according to a new report published by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC).

Britain was complicit in many renditions made by American forces, enabling them financially, providing intelligence assets, or even just turning a blind eye altogether.

At the same time, they happened right before their eyes.

More from the author: