User:TeeTylerToe/sandbox16

Traitors

Between 1985 and 1986 the CIA lose every spy it had in Eastern Europe. The details of the investigation into the cause was obscured from the new Director, and the investigation had little success, and has been widely criticized. In June 1987, Major Florentino Aspillaga Lombard, the chief of Cuban Intelligence in Czechoslovakia drove into Vienna, and walked into the American Embassy to defect. He revealed that every single Cuban spy on the CIA payroll was a double agent, pretending to work for the CIA, but secretly still being loyal to Castro. On February 21, 1994, FBI agents pulled Aldrich Ames out of his Jaguar. If there was a posterboy for failing upwards inside the CIA, he was it. In the investigation that ensued, the CIA discovered that many of the sources for it's most important analyses of the USSR were based on soviet disinformation fed to the CIA by controlled agents. On top of that, it was discovered that, in some cases, the CIA suspected at the time that the sources were compromised, but the information was sent up the chain as genuine. This prompted a congressional committee in 1994 to address what was widely seen as a fundamentally broken institution. The committee quickly became a quagmire. When the committee submitted it's toothless report, the CIA had 25 recruits entering it's 2 year training program. The smallest class of recruits ever. The CIA was dying a slow death on life support. As it had for most of it's existence, the CIA suffered from poor management, poor morale, and a lack of employees familiar with the people they were spying on.

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

On December 22 1979, as over 100,000 Soviet troops were entering Afghanistan, Carter signed an order authorizing the CIA to arm the Afghanistan resistance.

Reagan

National Security Planning Group.

Congressional oversight of the CIA eventually evolved into a select intelligence committee in the House, and Senate supervising covert actions authorized by the President.

Counter-Espionage Against the USSR

In 1981, French President Mitterrand told Reagan to look at the product from Vladimir Vetrov, the Farewell Dossier. This detailed information from Line X of the KGB's Science and Technology Directorate. This detailed the Russian's technological espionage efforts, including the agents involved. The CIA started feeding the KGB flawed designs for chips, Space Shuttles, and software. One of the highest profile successes was the explosion of the Siberian oil pipeline.

Iran Contra

Under President Carter, the CIA was conducting covertly funding pro-American opposition against the Sandinista. In March, 1981, Reagan told Congress that the CIA would protect El Salvador by preventing the shipment of Nicaraguan arms into the country to arm Communist rebels. This was a ruse. The CIA was actually arming and training Nicaraguans Contras in Honduras in hopes that they could depose the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Through William J. Casey's tenure as DI little of what he said in the National Security Planning Group, or to President Reagan was supported by the intelligence branch of the CIA, so Casey formed the Central American Task Force, staffed with yes men from Covert Action. On December 21, 1982, Congress passed a law restricting the CIA to it's stated mission, restricting the flow of arms from Nicaragua to El Salvador, prohibiting the use of funds to oust the Sandinistas. Reagan testified before Congress, assuring them that the CIA was not trying to topple the Nicaraguan government.

During this time, with funding increases, the CIA would hire 2,000 new employees, but these new recruits lacked the experience of the WW2 vets they replaced, living in the theaters where the war was fought, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. During Casey's tenure, CIA management would become experts at lying to, and deceiving Congress, and even to one another.

Chad

Chad's neighbor Libya was a major source of weaponry to communist rebel forces. The CIA seized the opportunity to arm and finance Chad's Prime Minister, Hissène Habré after he created a breakaway government in Western Sudan, even giving him Stinger missiles.

Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, the CIA funneled a billion dollars worth of weapons to Pakistani Intelligence, which funneled them through Pakistani tribes, which funneled them to Afghan resistance groups, notably the Mujahideen. At each step, some of the weapons were held back.

Hostage Taking

For more than a decade, hostage taking had plagued the middle east. The CIA's best source of information there was Hassan Salameh The PLO's Chief of Intelligence, until Israel assassinated him. Through Salameh, the CIA gained a foothold in the world of Muslim extremism, and had entered a bargain where Americans would be safe, and the PLO and CIA would share information on mutual enemies.

Lebanon

The CIA's prime source in Lebanon was Bashir Gemayel, a member of the Christian Maronite sect. The CIA was blinded by the uprising against the Maronite minority. Israel invaded Lebanon, and, along with the CIA, propped up Gemayel, this got Gemayel's assurance that Americans would be protected in Lebanon. 13 days later he was assassinated. Imad Mughniyah, a Hezbollah assassin would target Americans in retaliation for the Israeli invasion, the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and the US Marines of the Multi-National Force for their role in opposing the PLO in Lebanon. On April 18, 1983 a 2,000 lb car bomb exploded in the lobby of the American embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people including 17 Americans, and 7 CIA officers, including Bob Ames, one of the CIA's best Middle East experts. America's fortunes in Lebanon would only suffer more as America's poorly directed retaliation for the bombing was interpreted by many as support for the Christian Maronite minority. On October 23, 1983, two bombs were Beirut in Beirut, including a 10 ton bomb at a US military barracks that killed 242 people. Both attacks are believed to have been planned by Iran by way of Mughniyah.

The Embassy bombing had taken the life of the CIA's Beirut Station Chief, Ken Haas. Bill Buckley was sent in to replace him. Eighteen days after the US Marines left Lebanon Bill Buckley was kidnapped. On March 7, 1984, Jeremy Levin, CNN Bureau Chief in Beirut. 12 more Americans would be kidnapped in Beirut during the Reagan Administration. Manucher Ghorbanifar, a former Savak agent. He was an information seller, and the subject of a rare CIA burn notice for his track record of misinformation. He reached out to the Agency offering a back channel to Iran, suggesting a trade of Missiles that would be lucrative to the intermediaries.

Nicaragua

With the CIA's paramilitary forces overextended in Central America, they turned to former Special Forces soldiers, one of whom had an old comic book that had, in Vietnam, been used to teach natives how to take control of a village by assassinating the Mayor, Chief of Police, and Militia. The CIA translated this into Spanish, and distributed it to the Contras. This shortly became public. The CIA also mined the port of Corinto, an act of war that resulted in a public trial in the International Court of Justice. These two public incidents triggered Congress to clamp down on CIA funding even more, banning them from soliciting funds from third parties to fund the Contras.

Hostage Trades

At Reagan's second inaugural, the two most pressing issues for the CIA were the Contras and the hostages. On June 14, 1985 Hezbollah took TWA Flight 847, and executed an American Navy diver on the tarmac of Beirut airport. Reagan negotiated a trade of prisoners for hostages. This paved the way for a trade of 504 TOW Missiles to Iran for $10,000 each, and the release of Benjamin Weir, a captive of Islamic Jihad, the group that claimed responsibility for the Beirut bombings which would later become Hezbollah. This broke two of the public pillars of Reagan's foreign policy, no deals with terrorists, and no arms to Iran.

Ghorbanifar sent word that the 6 remaining hostages in exchange for thousands of Hawk missiles. A Boeing 707 with 18 Hawk missiles landed at Tehran from Tel Aviv with Hebrew markings on the crates. The CIA realized on that day, October 25 that they needed a signed presidential order to authorize the shipment. A month later Reagan would sign an order retroactively authorizing it. $850,000 of the transaction went to Contras. In July 1986, Hezbollah was holding 4 American hostages, trading them for arms. Six months later, they had 12 American hostages. On October 5, 1986, an American C-123 full of weapons was shot down by a Nicaraguan soldier. The sole survivor was an American cargo handler who said that he was working for the CIA. On November 3, anonymous leaflets were scattered in Tehran revealing the Iran connection. The Iran Contra Affair broke. Oliver North and John Poindexter had been shredding documents for weeks, but a memo about suspicions that Secord was taking more than his agreed cut surfaced. DI Bill Casey had a seizure and was hospitalized, to be replaced by Judge Webster, clearly brought in to clean house.

Ethiopia

Tom Wells, CIA Agent is caught by the Stassi meeting with members of a resistance movement, he's interrogated for weeks, the people captured that night name names, and there are dozens of subsequent arrests and executions, the entire Ethopia station is declared publicly Persona Non Grata.