Tim Weiner

and has been that way just shortly after its creation.

Now, when the CIA was created back in 1947, the mission was espionage.

It wasn't to fight the Cold War.

That came later, but not much later.

The following year, when the people who were at the State Department told the CIA to fight fire with fire,

against the Soviet Union.

The Soviets were marching west, seizing half of Europe, and war was not an option.

A Third World War was not something anybody wanted.

So the CIA then embarked on a barrage of paramilitary operations, which was unqualified to do.

It recruited hundreds upon hundreds of foreigners all over Eastern Europe, and then after the Korean War started, all over Asia, and trained them up to parachute behind enemy lines to conduct espionage and sabotage.

Well, these were suicide missions because the other side, the Russians and the North Koreans, had completely penetrated in CIA's operation.

The CIA then turned to a different kind of political warfare operation, and in the name of anti-communism, organized coups against the Democratic elected leaders of Iran and Guatemala in 1953 and 1954.

And these were seen as, by the president at the time, Dwight Eisenhower, as faintly miraculous, when in reality, they were very close-run things.

And the idea that the CIA could change the course of history was all the rage until the Bay of Pigs operation to overthrow Castro in Cuba in 1961, which was a disaster.

I mean, Bay of Pigs is synonymous with disaster.

But then there was more overreaching.

The Vietnam War was, of course, the source of great political upheaval in the United States.

And Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, between 1967 and 1973, ordered the CIA to spy on Americans.

in violation of its charter.

This guy has no police powers in this country.