The Agency: Inside the CIA

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[radio chatter]

[music plays]

It is one the most secretive

organizations on the planet

unjustified interference

in the internal affairs

of other nations.

Atomic bomb has been

successfully detonated.

Their budget is secret,

as is their roster.

This means that we

must have knowledge

of military forces

and preparations

around the world. It is

a covert organization

in a country that prides

itself on transparency.

There are certain things

that should remain secret

for very good diplomatic

and other reasons.

The CIA had a role in

qin the overthrow

of an elective government.

A small undoing

of those human rights.

... to send a new signal

of openness to the world

by t tring down that wall.

And now it is faced

with a new enemy,

more dangerous than ever before.

It's the biggest spy exchange

since the Cold War. He

described his abduction

as a total failure

for the U.S.

We are the largest, most

capable intelligence

enterprise on the planet.

It is

the Central Intelligence Agency.

[music plays]

Ten people were arrested in

Boston and Northern Virginia,

accused of being part

of a Russian spy ring.

Almost two decades since

the Cold War had finished,

here was a stark reminder that

perhaps it had never ended.

The spies had blended into

American life for years,

The Russian government

was prepared

for upwards of ten years

to mount these operations,

put these people into

American society,

and run them. Have

secret communications

with them, have

them in contact

with Russian

intelligence officers

in the Russian Mission of the

UN over this extended period

of time. What was fascinating

to professional

intelligence officers

was we'd never seen a

network like this.

Now, the public looks

at this and says,

Because none of them were trying

to get into the government,

none of them had clearances,

they were just entering

American society. I think

we should look at them

as talent scouts, as spotters.

In other words, they were moving

into circles of interest.

Financial circles, political

circles, and so forth.

Are we going back

to the Cold War?

We shouldn't think

of it as Cold War.

The Cold War sort

of officiallylynded

when the Soviet Union

dissolved itself,

but Russian espipiage

efforts have never ended.

Only 12 days after

their arrests

and subsequent convictions,

the spy ring was gone,

traded to Russia in a

prisoner exchange.

As part of the swap, ten

people pleaded guilty

and were subsequently deported.

Among them is Igor Sutyagin,

jailed since 1999 for passing

military information

to the CIA, a charge

he's continued to d dy.

The incident was a

reminder of our need

for this covert world, run

by agencies like the CIA.

Of course, spying isn't

a new invention.

It's been with us

for quite a while.

Espionage, or spying, uh,

is, really is as... as old

as recorded history, and

certainly before that.

I mean, I have to believe

the first caveman who saw

the guy down the road getting

better nuts and berries

than he did, climbed

a tree to find out

where he was going.

That's espionage.

But for t t US, prior

to World War II,

the idea of

intelligence gathering

was considered less

than appealing.

This was a time when

espionage was still very new

to thehemerican vocabulary.

America,

by that time in our history, I

think, felt that espionage was

somehow un-American. State

Department tried to start,

uh, it's own

cryptography center,

"The Black Chamber,"

and the famous quote

from the then-secretary

of state, Henry Stimson,

was that, you know,

And he shut it down. Uh, and

then, with the outbreak

of, uh, of World War II, and

the bombing of Pearl Harbor,

it was immediately recognized

that we needed this capability.

In other words, Pearl Harbor,

on December 7th, 1941,

was a surprise attack.

It was all done

with intelligence.

They had the spies

in Pearl Harbor,

uh, that were, you know,

taking photographs

and communicating

back to Tokyo.

The attack was

intended to cripple

the United States'

ability to wage war

before the war in the

Pacific had even begun.

A total of 353 Japanese

aircraft were launched

from six aircraft

carriers in the morning

of December 7th, 1941,

inflicting massive damage.

The US populace,

until the point,

was unconvinced that

war was necessary.

The attacks sparkedd. a

massive mobilization

of all the weapons

required to wage war,

inclcling spies. There was

uh, after Pearl Harbor

in the... in the whole

intelligence community.

...the direct

predecessor to the CIA,

under the leadership of

Donovan is today remembered as

But in those days,

intelligence gathering was

anything but organized.

America, I think,

has a, sort of a long

history of espionage,

rerely dating back to

the Revolutionary War,

that we seemed to

have forgotten,

time and time again.

We have this sort

of schizophrenic relationship

with intelligence where,

when we need it, we have it,

and when we don't need it,

we don't have it. So, um,

we didn't have it. I mean,

essentially there... there

was no centralized

intelligence service, uh,

when World War II broke out,

there were sort of individual

government agencies doing

what you might describe

whether it was the office of...

...but it was done on sort of

a very, uh, informal ad hoc

and not terribly

professional way.

Donovan realized that

if America was going

to win the war, it needed

to have a centralized

intelligence organization

that could react quickly

and preemptively to threats.

And I think

he also understood that America

lacked this capability,

and that World War II was

gonna be a different kinin

of war. It was gonna

really require

uh conventional warfare,

which is really what OSS

engaged in. The drive

for an American

brand of espionage

came right from the top. It

wouldn't have been created

without, uh, Franklin Roosevelt.

Um, who really, I think,

understood the threat

that Nazi Germany posed

to the United States,

even though many

in... in the United States

didn't feel that way.

And although he and

General Donovan

were polls apart politically,

Roosevelt, of course,

being a Liberal Democrat,

and Donovan being

a very Conservative Republican,

they shared this uncommon view.

The v vw was simple. The

OSS would be a new type

of organization, one that

could inflict damage

behind enemy lines. OSS was

the wartime intelligence

arm of the US government,

the covert intelligence

arm, uh, responsible both

for collecting intelligence,

carrying out sabotage,

behind the lines

operations, and so forth.

It was then tasked to Donovan

to recruit members to make

up this new American spy unit.

General Donovan,

him... once, once said himself

that the major part

of the success of

OSS was the result

of good old-fashioned

intellectual sweat.

So they, he really sought out

the greatest intellectuals

of the day. The

popular conception is

that it was sort of

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