Agency name	Central Intelligence Agency
Abbreviation	CIA
Seal	CIA.svg|140px
Seal width	200px
Seal caption	Official Seal of the CIA
Formed
Preceding1	Central Intelligence Group
Headquarters	Langley, Virginia United States
Employees	Classified
Budget	Classified
Chief1 name	Leon Panetta
Chief1 position	Director
Chief2 name	Michael J. Morell
Chief2 position	Deputy Director
Chief3 name	Stephanie O'Sullivan
Chief3 position	Associate Deputy Director
Website	www.cia.gov

s]] The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government, reporting to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior United States policymakers. The CIA also engages in covert activities at the request of the President of the United States.

It is the successor of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) formed during World War II to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for the branches of the United States military. The National Security Act of 1947 established the CIA, affording it "no police or law enforcement functions, either at home or abroad". One year later, this mandate was expanded to include "sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures...subversion [and] assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation movements, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world".

The CIA's primary function is to collect information about foreign governments, corporations, and individuals, and to advise public policymakers. The agency conducts covert operations and paramilitary actions, and exerts foreign political influence through its Special Activities Division. The CIA and its responsibilities changed markedly in 2004. Before December 2004, the CIA was the main intelligence organization of the US government; it was responsible for coordinating the activities of the US Intelligence Community (IC) as a whole. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 created the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which took over management and leadership of the IC.

Today, the CIA still has a number of functions in common with other countries' intelligence agencies; see Relationships with foreign intelligence agencies. The CIA's headquarters is in Langley in McLean, unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia, a few miles west of Washington, D.C. along the Potomac River.

Sometimes, the CIA is referred to euphemistically in government and military parlance as Other Government Agencies (OGA), particularly when its operations in a particular area are an open secret. Other terms include The Company, and The Agency.

Organization

The CIA has an executive office and several agency-wide functions, and four major directorates: :*The Directorate of Intelligence, responsible for all-source intelligence research and analysis :*The National Clandestine Service, formerly the Directorate of Operations, which does clandestine intelligence collection and covert action :*The Directorate of Support :*The Directorate of Science and Technology

Budget

The overall US intelligence budget has been considered classified until recently. There have been numerous attempts to obtain general information about the budget and there have also been accidental disclosures: for instance, Mary Margaret Graham, a former CIA official and deputy director of national intelligence for collection in 2005, said the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion.

Executive Office

The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DCIA) reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI); in practice, he deals with the DNI, Congress (usually via the Office of Congressional Affairs), and the White House, while the Deputy Director is the internal executive. The CIA has varying amounts of Congressional oversight, although that is principally a guidance role.

The Executive Office also facilitates CIA’s support of the US military by providing it with information it gathers, receiving information from military intelligence organizations, and cooperating on field activities. Two senior executives have responsibility, one CIA-wide and one for the National Clandestine Service. The Associate Director for Military Support, a senior military officer, manages the relationship between CIA and the Unified Combatant Commands, who produce regional/operational intelligence and consume national intelligence; he is assisted by the Office of Military Affairs in providing support to all branches of the military.

In the National Clandestine Services, an Associate Deputy Director for Operations for Military Affairs deals with specific clandestine human-source intelligence and covert action in support of military operations.

The CIA also makes national-level intelligence available to tactical organizations, usually to their all-source intelligence group.

Executive staff

Staff offices with several general responsibilities report to the Executive Office. The staff also gather information and then report such information to the Executive Office.

General publications

The CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence maintains the Agency's historical materials and promotes the study of intelligence as a legitimate discipline.

In 2002, the CIA's Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis began publishing the unclassified Kent Center Occasional Papers, aiming to offer "an opportunity for intelligence professionals and interested colleagues—in an unofficial and unfettered vehicle—to debate and advance the theory and practice of intelligence analysis."

General counsel and inspection

Two offices advise the Director on legality and proper operations. The Office of General Counsel advises the Director of the CIA on all legal matters relating to his role as CIA director and is the principal source of legal counsel for the CIA.

The Office of Inspector General promotes efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability in the administration of Agency activities, and seeks to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. The Inspector General, whose activities are independent of those of any other component in the Agency, reports directly to the Director of the CIA.

Public Affairs

The Office of Public Affairs advises the Director of the CIA on all media, public policy, and employee communications issues relating to his role. This office, among other functions, works with the entertainment industry.

Directorate of Intelligence

The Directorate of Intelligence produces all-source intelligence analysis on key foreign issues. It has four regional analytic groups, six groups for transnational issues, and two support units.

Regional groups

There is an Office dedicated to Iraq, and regional analytical Offices covering: :*The Office of Middle East and North Africa Analysis (MENA) :*The Office of South Asia Analysis (OSA) :*The Office of Russian and European Analysis (OREA) :*The Office of Asian Pacific, Latin American and African Analysis (APLAA)

Transnational groups

The Office of Terrorism Analysis supports the National Counterterrorism Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. See CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities.

The Office of Transnational Issues assesses perceived existing and emerging threats to US national security and provides the most senior policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support.

The CIA Crime and Narcotics Center researches information on international crime for policymakers and the law enforcement community. As the CIA has no legal domestic police authority, it usually sends its analyses to the FBI and other law enforcement organizations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

The Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center provides intelligence support related to national and non-national threats, as well as supporting threat reduction and arms control. It receives the output of national technical means of verification.

The Counterintelligence Center Analysis Group identifies, monitors, and analyzes the efforts of foreign intelligence entities, both national and non-national, against US government interests. It works with FBI personnel in the National Counterintelligence Executive of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Information Operations Center Analysis Group. deals with threats to US computer systems. This unit supports DNI activities.

Support and general units

The Office of Collection Strategies and Analysis provides comprehensive intelligence collection expertise to the Directorate of Intelligence, to senior Agency and Intelligence Community officials, and to key national policymakers.

The Office of Policy Support customizes Directorate of Intelligence analysis and presents it to a wide variety of policy, law enforcement, military, and foreign liaison recipients.

National Clandestine Service

In 2004, the CIA was given charge of all US human intelligence, which many consider the core of the agency. As such, the National Clandestine Service (NCS; formerly the Directorate of Operations) is responsible for collecting foreign intelligence, mainly from clandestine HUMINT sources, and covert action. The new name reflects its having absorbed some Department of Defense HUMINT assets. The NCS was created in an attempt to end years of rivalry over influence, philosophy and budget between the United States Department of Defense and the CIA. The Department of Defense had organized the Defense HUMINT Service, under the Defense Intelligence Agency which, with the Presidential decision, became part of the NCS.

The precise present organization of the NCS is classified.

Directorate of Science and Technology

The Directorate of Science & Technology was established to research, create, and manage technical collection disciplines and equipment. Many of its innovations were transferred to other intelligence organizations, or, as they became more overt, to the military services.

For example, the development of the U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft was done in cooperation with the United States Air Force. The U-2's original mission was clandestine imagery intelligence over denied areas such as the Soviet Union. It was subsequently provided with signals intelligence and measurement and signature intelligence capabilities, and is now operated by the Air Force.

Imagery intelligence collected by the U-2 and reconnaissance satellites was analyzed by a DS&T; organization called the National Photointerpretation Center (NPIC), which had analysts from both the CIA and the military services. Subsequently, NPIC was transferred to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

The CIA has always shown a strong interest in how to use advances in technology to enhance its effectiveness. This interest has historically had two primary goals:

harnessing techniques for its own use

countering any new intelligence technologies the Soviets might develop.

In 1999, the CIA created the venture capital firm In-Q-Tel to help fund and develop technologies of interest to the agency. It has long been the IC practice to contract for major development, such as reconnaissance aircraft and satellites.

Directorate of Support

The Directorate of Support has organizational and administrative functions to significant units including:

:* The Office of Security :* The Office of Communications :* The Office of Information Technology

Training

The Office of Training begins with the Junior Officer Training program for new employees, but it also conducts courses in a wide range of specialized professional disciplines. So that the initial course might be taken by employees who had not received final security clearance and thus were not permitted unescorted access to the Headquarters building, a good deal of basic training has been given at office buildings in the urban areas of Arlington, Virginia.

For a later stage of training of student operations officers, there is at least one classified training area at Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Virginia. Students are selected, and their progress evaluated, in ways derived from the OSS, published as the book Assessment of Men, Selection of Personnel for the Office of Strategic Services.

Relationship with other sources of intelligence

The CIA acts as the primary American HUMINT, HUMan INTelligence, and general analytic agency, under the Director of National Intelligence, who directs or coordinates the 16 member organizations of the United States Intelligence Community. In addition, it obtains information from other US government intelligence agencies, commercial information sources, and foreign intelligence services.

Other US intelligence agencies

A number of intelligence organizations are fully or partially under the budgetary control of the United States Secretary of Defense or other cabinet officers such as the United States Attorney General.

As do other analytic members of the US intelligence community, such as the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the analytic division of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), CIA's raw input includes imagery intelligence (IMINT) collected by the air and space systems of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), processed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), signals intelligence (SIGINT) of the National Security Agency (NSA), and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) from the DIA MASINT center.

Open Source Intelligence

Until the 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community, one of the "services of common concern" that CIA provided was Open Source Intelligence from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). FBIS, which had absorbed the Joint Publication Research Service, a military organization that translated documents, which moved into the National Open Source Enterprise under the Director of National Intelligence.

CIA still provides a variety of unclassified maps and reference documents both to the intelligence community and the public.

As part of its mandate to gather intelligence, CIA is looking increasingly online for information, and has become a major consumer of social media. "We're looking at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence," said Doug Naquin, director of the DNI Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters. "We're looking at chat rooms and things that didn't exist five years ago, and trying to stay ahead."

Outsourcing

Many of the duties and functions of Intelligence Community activities, not the CIA alone, are being outsourced and privatized. Mike McConnell, former Director of National Intelligence, was about to publicize an investigation report of outsourcing by US intelligence agencies, as required by Congress. However, this report was then classified. Hillhouse speculates that this report includes requirements for the CIA to report:}}

Congress has required an outsourcing report by March 30, 2008.

Part of the contracting problem comes from Congressional restrictions on the number of employees in the IC. According to Hillhouse, this resulted in 70% of the de facto workforce of the CIA's National Clandestine Service being made up of contractors. "After years of contributing to the increasing reliance upon contractors, Congress is now providing a framework for the conversion of contractors into federal government employees--more or less."

Some of the cost problems associated with intelligence come from one agency, or even a group within an agency, not accepting the compartmented security practices for individual projects, requiring expensive duplication.

Foreign intelligence services

Many intelligence services cooperate. There may even be a deniable communications channel with ostensibly hostile nations.

The role and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (the SIS or MI6), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki) (SVR), the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the French foreign intelligence service Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE) and Israel's Mossad. While the preceding agencies both collect and analyze information, some like the US State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research are purely analytical agencies.

The closest links of the US IC to other foreign intelligence agencies are to Anglophone countries: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. There is a special communications marking that signals that intelligence-related messages can be shared with these four countries. An indication of the United States' close operational cooperation is the creation of a new message distribution label within the main US military communications network. Previously, the marking of NOFORN (i.e., No Foreign Nationals) required the originator to specify which, if any, non-US countries could receive the information. A new handling caveat, USA/AUS/CAN/GBR/NZL Eyes Only, used primarily on intelligence messages, gives an easier way to indicate that the material can be shared with Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and New Zealand.

Organizational history

The Central Intelligence Agency was created by Congress with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It is the descendant of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, which was dissolved in October 1945 and its functions transferred to the State and War Departments. Eleven months earlier, in 1944, William J. Donovan, the OSS's creator, proposed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create a new organization directly supervised by the President: "which will procure intelligence both by overt and covert methods and will at the same time provide intelligence guidance, determine national intelligence objectives, and correlate the intelligence material collected by all government agencies." Under his plan, a powerful, centralized civilian agency would have coordinated all the intelligence services. He also proposed that this agency have authority to conduct "subversive operations abroad," but "no police or law enforcement functions, either at home or abroad." in the Original Headquarters building.]] CIA personnel have died on duty, some in accidents and some by deliberate hostile action. On the memorial wall at CIA headquarters, some of the stars have no name attached, because it would reveal the identity of a clandestine officer. Both the OSS and its British counterparts, as do other agencies worldwide, struggle with finding the right organizational balance among clandestine intelligence collection, counterintelligence, and covert action.

Immediate predecessors, 1946–47

The Office of Strategic Services, which was the first independent US intelligence agency, created for World War II, was broken up shortly after the end of the war, by President Harry S. Truman, on September 20, 1945 when he signed an Executive Order which made the breakup 'official' as of October 1, 1945. The rapid reorganizations that followed reflected the routine sort of bureaucratic competition for resources, but also trying to deal with the proper relationships of clandestine intelligence collection and covert action (i.e., paramilitary and psychological operations). In October 1945, the functions of the OSS were split between the Departments of State and War: This division lasted only a few months. The first mention of the “Central Intelligence Agency” concept and term appeared on a US Army and Navy command-restructuring proposal presented by Jim Forrestal and Arthur Radford to the U.S. Senate Military Affairs Committee at the end of 1945. Despite opposition from the military establishment, the United States Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), The CIG was an interim authority established under Presidential authority. The assets of the SSU, which now constituted a streamlined "nucleus" of clandestine intelligence was transferred to the CIG in mid-1946 and reconstituted as the Office of Special Operations (OSO).

Early CIA, 1947–1952

In September 1947, the National Security Act of 1947 established both the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was appointed as the first Director of Central Intelligence. The National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1948 (NSC 10/2) further gave the CIA the authority to carry out covert operations "against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons."

In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act (Public law 81-110) authorized the agency to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures, and exempting it from most of the usual limitations on the use of Federal funds. It also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its "organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed." It also created the program "PL-110", to handle defectors and other "essential aliens" who fall outside normal immigration procedures, as well as giving those persons cover stories and economic support.

The structure stabilizes, 1952

Then-DCI Walter Bedell Smith, who enjoyed a special degree of Presidential trust, having been Dwight D. Eisenhower's primary Chief of Staff during World War II, insisted that the CIA or at least only one department had to direct the OPC and OSO. Those organization, as well as some minor functions, formed the euphemistically named Directorate of Plans in 1952.

Also in 1952, United States Army Special Forces were created, with some missions overlapping those of the Department of Plans. In general, the pattern emerged that the CIA could borrow resources from Special Forces, although it had its own special operators.

Early Cold War, 1953–1966

"Dragon Lady", the first generation of near-space reconnaissance aircraft.]] Allen Dulles, who had been a key OSS operations officer in Switzerland during World War II, took over from Smith, at a time where US policy was dominated by intense anticommunism. Various sources existed, the most visible being the investigations and abuses of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the more quiet but systematic containment doctrine developed by George Kennan, the Berlin Blockade and the Korean War. Dulles enjoyed a high degree of flexibility, as his brother, John Foster Dulles, was simultaneously Secretary of State.

Concern regarding the Soviet Union and the difficulty of getting information from its closed society, which few agents could penetrate, led to solutions based on advanced technology. Among the first success was with the Lockheed U-2 aircraft, which could take pictures and collect electronic signals from an altitude above Soviet air defenses' reach. After Gary Powers was shot down by an SA-2 surface to air missile in 1960, causing an international incident, the SR-71 was developed to take over this role. was developed from the CIA's A-12 OXCART.]]

During this period, there were numerous covert actions against resource nationalism and socialism. The CIA overthrew a democratically elected government for the first time during Operation Ajax, after Iran moved to take control of its petroleum reserves. Some of the largest operations were aimed at Cuba after the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship, including assassination attempts against Fidel Castro and the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. There have been suggestions that the Soviet attempt to put missiles into Cuba came, indirectly, when they realized how badly they had been compromised by a US-UK defector in place, Oleg Penkovsky.

The CIA, working with the military, formed the joint National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to operate reconnaissance aircraft such as the SR-71 and later satellites. "The fact of" the United States operating reconnaissance satellites, like "the fact of" the existence of NRO, was highly classified for many years.

Indochina and the Vietnam War (1954–1975)

:''See also: Vietnam War and Phoenix Program The OSS Patti mission arrived in Vietnam near the end of World War II, and had significant interaction with the leaders of many Vietnamese factions, including Ho Chi Minh. While the Patti mission forwarded Ho's proposals for phased independence, with the French or even the United States as the transition partner, the US policy of containment opposed forming any government that was communist in nature.

The first CIA mission to Indochina, under the code name Saigon Military Mission arrived in 1954, under Edward Lansdale. US-based analysts were simultaneously trying to project the evolution of political power, both if the scheduled referendum chose merger of the North and South, or if the South, the US client, stayed independent. Initially, the US focus in Southeast Asia was on Laos, not Vietnam.

During the period of US combat involvement in the Vietnam War, there was considerable argument about progress among the Department of Defense under Robert McNamara, the CIA, and, to some extent, the intelligence staff of Military Assistance Command Vietnam.

Hastening the CIA's fall from grace were the burglary of the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic Party by ex-CIA agents, and President Richard Nixon's subsequent attempt to use the CIA to impede the FBI's investigation of the burglary. In the famous "smoking gun" recording that led to President Nixon's resignation, Nixon ordered his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, to tell the CIA that further investigation of Watergate would "open the whole can of worms" about the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba. In this way Nixon and Haldemann ensured that the CIA's #1 and #2 ranking officials, Richard Helms and Vernon Walters, communicated to FBI Director L. Patrick Gray that the FBI should not follow the money trail from the burglars to the Committee to Re-elect the President, as it would uncover CIA informants in Mexico. The FBI initially agreed to this due to a long standing agreement between the FBI and CIA not to uncover each other's sources of information. Though within a couple of weeks the FBI demanded this request in writing, and when no such formal request came, the FBI resumed its investigation into the money trail. Nonetheless, when the smoking gun tapes were made public, damage to the public's perception of CIA's top officials, and thus to the CIA as a whole, could not be avoided.

In 1973, then-DCI James R. Schlesinger commissioned reports known as the "Family Jewels" on illegal activities by the Agency. In December 1974, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh broke the news of the "Family Jewels" in a front-page article in The New York Times, claiming that the CIA had assassinated foreign leaders, and had illegally conducted surveillance on some 7,000 US citizens involved in the antiwar movement (Operation CHAOS). amending Executive Order 12333 to strengthen the role of the DNI.

Previously, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) oversaw the Intelligence Community, serving as the president's principal intelligence advisor, additionally serving as head of the CIA. The DCI's title now is "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" (DCIA), serving as head of the CIA.

Currently, the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence. Prior to the establishment of the DNI, the CIA reported to the President, with informational briefings to congressional committees. The National Security Advisor is a permanent member of the National Security Council, responsible for briefing the President with pertinent information collected by all US intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, etc. All 16 Intelligence Community agencies are under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence.

Mission-related issues and controversies

The history of CIA deals with several things, certainly including covert action, but also clandestine and overt intelligence collection, intelligence analysis and reporting, and logistical and technical support of its activities. Prior to the December 2004 reorganization of the intelligence community (IC), it also was responsible for coordinations of IC-wide intelligence estimates.

These articles are organized in two different ways: By geographical region (for state actors or non-state actors limited to a country or region) and by transnational topic (for non-state actors).

CIA operations by region, country and date are discussed in detail in the following articles:

CIA activities in Africa

CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific

CIA activities in Russia and Europe

CIA activities in the Americas

CIA activities in the Near East, North Africa, South and Southwest Asia

CIA analyses of issues such as the effect of emerging infectious diseases, and the detection of Weapons of mass destruction, are inherently transnational, and are discussed in the following articles. CIA operations and, where appropriate, authorizations for covert operations (for example, NSDD 138 authorizing direct action against opponents) by transnational topic are discussed in the following Wikipedia articles:

*CIA transnational activities in counterproliferation

CIA transnational anti-crime and anti-drug activities

CIA transnational anti-terrorism activities

CIA transnational health and economic activities

CIA transnational human rights actions

In addition, a view of covert US activity specifically oriented towards regime change actions is given in the following Wikipedia article:

CIA sponsored regime change

Major sources for this section include the Council on Foreign Relations of the United States series, the National Security Archive and George Washington University, the Freedom of Information Act Reading Room at the CIA, US Congressional hearings, Blum's book and Weiner's book Note that the CIA has responded to the claims made in Weiner's book, and that Jeffrey Richelson of the National Security Archive has also been critical of it.

Areas of controversy about inappropriate, often illegal actions include experiments, without consent, on human beings to explore chemical means of eliciting information or disabling people. Another area involved torture and clandestine imprisonment. There have been attempted assassinations under CIA orders and support for assassinations of foreign leaders by citizens of the leader's country, and, in a somewhat different legal category that may fall under the customary laws of war, assassinations of militant leaders.

Security and counterintelligence failures

While the names change periodically, there are two basic security functions to protect the CIA and its operations. There is an Office of Security in the Directorate for Support, which is responsible for physical security of the CIA buildings, secure storage of information, and personnel security clearances. These are directed inwardly to the agency itself.

In what is now the National Clandestine Service, there is a counter-intelligence function, called the Counterintelligence Staff under its most controversial chief, James Jesus Angleton. This function has roles including looking for staff members that are providing information to foreign intelligence services (FIS) as moles. Another role is to check proposals for recruiting foreign HUMINT assets, to see if these people have any known ties to FIS and thus may be attempts to penetrate CIA to learn its personnel and practices, or as a provocateur, or other form of double agent.

This agency component may also launch offensive counterespionage, where it attempts to interfere with FIS operations. CIA officers in the field often have assignments in offensive counterespionage as well as clandestine intelligence collection.

Security failures

The "Family Jewels" and other documents reveal that the Office of Security violated the prohibition of CIA involvement in domestic law enforcement, sometimes with the intention of assisting police organizations local to CIA buildings.

On December 30, 2009, a suicide attack occurred in the Forward Operating Base Chapman attack, a major CIA base in the province of Khost, Afghanistan. Seven CIA officers, including the chief of the base, were killed and six others seriously wounded in the attack. The CIA is consequently conducting an investigation into how the suicide bomber managed to avoid the base's security measures.

Counterintelligence failures

Perhaps the most disruptive period involving counterintelligence was James Jesus Angleton's search for a mole, based on the statements of a Soviet defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn. A second defector, Yuri Nosenko, challenged Golitsyn's claims, with the two calling one another Soviet double agents. Many CIA officers fell under career-ending suspicion; the details of the relative truths and untruths from Nosenko and Golitsyn may never be released, or, in fact, may not be fully understood. The accusations also crossed the Atlantic to the British intelligence services, who also were damaged by molehunts.

On February 24, 1994, the agency was rocked by the arrest of 31-year veteran case officer Aldrich Ames on charges of spying for the Soviet Union since 1985.

Other defectors have included Edward Lee Howard, a field operations officer, and William Kampiles, a low-level worker in the CIA 24-hour Operations Center. Kampiles sold the Soviets the detailed operational manual for the KH-11 reconnaissance satellite.

Failures in intelligence analysis

The agency has also been criticized for ineffectiveness as an intelligence gathering agency. Former DCI Richard Helms commented, after the end of the Cold War, "The only remaining superpower doesn't have enough interest in what's going on in the world to organize and run an espionage service." The CIA has come under particular criticism for failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union.

See the information technology section of the intelligence analysis management for discussion of possible failures to provide adequate automation support to analysts, and A-Space for a IC-wide program to collect some of them. Cognitive traps for intelligence analysis also goes into areas where CIA has examined why analysis can fail.

Agency veterans have lamented CIA's inability to produce the kind of long-range strategic intelligence that it once did in order to guide policymakers. John McLaughlin, who was deputy director and acting director of central intelligence from October 2000 to September 2004, said that CIA is drowned by demands from the White House and Pentagon for instant information, "intelligence analysts end up being the Wikipedia of Washington." In the intelligence analysis article, orienting oneself to the consumers deals with some of ways in which intelligence can become more responsive to the needs of policymakers.

For the media, the failures are most newsworthy. A number of declassified National Intelligence Estimates do predict the behavior of various countries, but not in a manner attractive to news, or, most significantly, not public at the time of the event. In its operational role, some successes for the CIA include the U-2 and SR-71 programs, and anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s.

Among the first analytic failures, before the CIA had its own collection capabilities, it assured President Harry S Truman on October 13, 1950 that the Chinese would not send troops to Korea. Six days later, over one million Chinese troops arrived. See an analysis of the failure; also see surrounding text for the two Koreas and China, and the time period before the Korean War. Earlier, the intelligence community failed to detect the North Korean invasion, in part because resources were not allocated to SIGINT coverage of the Korean peninsula.

The history of US intelligence, with respect to French Indochina and then the two Vietnams, is long and complex. The Pentagon Papers often contain pessimistic CIA analyses that conflicted with White House positions. It does appear that some estimates were changed to reflect Pentagon and White House views. See CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific for detailed discussions of intelligence and covert operations from 1945 (i.e., before the CIA) onwards.

Another criticism is the failure to predict India's nuclear tests in 1974. A review of the various analyses of did predict some aspects of the test, such as a 1965 report saying, correctly, that if India did develop a bomb, it would be explained as "for peaceful purposes".

A major criticism is failure to forestall the September 11 attacks. The 9/11 Commission Report identifies failures in the IC as a whole. One problem, for example, was the FBI failing to "connect the dots" by sharing information among its decentralized field offices. The report, however, criticizes both CIA analysis, and impeding their investigation.

The executive summary of a report which was released by the office of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson on August 21, 2007 concluded that former DCI George Tenet failed to adequately prepare the agency to deal with the danger posed by Al-Qaeda prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001. The report had been completed in June, 2005 and was partially released to the public in an agreement with Congress, over the objections of current DCI General Michael Hayden. Hayden said its publication would "consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed.” Tenet disagreed with the report's conclusions, citing his planning efforts vis-a-vis al-Qaeda, particularly from 1999.

Questionable/controversial tactics

The CIA has been called into question on several occasions for some of the tactics it employs to carry out its missions. At times these tactics have included torture, funding and training of groups and organizations that would later participate in killing of civilians and other non-combatants and would try or succeed in overthrowing democratically elected governments, human experimentation, and targeted killings and assassinations.

In understanding the CIA's role in human rights, there are challenging problems of ethics. John Stockwell, a CIA officer who left the Agency and became a public critic, said of the CIA field officers: "They don't meet the death squads on the streets where they're actually chopping up people or laying them down on the street and running trucks over their heads. The CIA people in San Salvador meet the police chiefs, and the people who run the death squads, and they do liaise with them, they meet them beside the swimming pool of the villas. And it's a sophisticated, civilized kind of relationship. And they talk about their children, who are going to school at UCLA or Harvard and other schools, and they don't talk about the horrors of what's being done. They pretend like it isn't true".

The CIA has been criticized for ineffectiveness in its basic mission of intelligence gathering. A variant of this criticism is that allegations of misconduct are symptomatic of lack of attention to basic mission in the sense that controversial actions, such as assassination attempts and human rights violations, tend to be carried out in operations that have little to do with intelligence gathering. The CIA has been charged with having more than 90% of its employees living and working within the United States, rather than in foreign countries, which is in violation of its charter. The CIA has also been accused of a lack of financial and whistleblower controls which has led to waste and fraud.

External investigations and document releases

At various times since the creation of the CIA, the US Government has produced comprehensive reports on CIA actions that marked historical watersheds in how CIA went about trying to fulfill its vague charter purposes from 1947. These reports were the result of internal/presidential studies, external investigations by Congressional committees or other arms of the US Government, or even the simple releases and declassification of large quantities of documents by the CIA.

Several investigations (e.g., the Church Committee, Rockefeller Commission, Pike Committee, etc.), as well as released declassified documents, reveal that the CIA, at times, operated outside its charter. In some cases, such as during Watergate, this may have been due to inappropriate requests by White House staff. In other cases, there was a violation of Congressional intent, such as the Iran-Contra affair. In many cases, these reports provide the only official discussion of these actions available to the public.

Influencing public opinion and law enforcement

This is an area with many shades of gray. There is little argument, for example, that the CIA acted inappropriately in providing technical support to White House operatives conducting both political and security investigations, with no legal authority to do so. Things become much more ambiguous when law enforcement may expose a clandestine operation, a problem not unique to intelligence but also seen among different law enforcement organizations, where one wants to prosecute and another to continue investigations, perhaps reaching higher levels in a conspiracy.

Al-Qaeda and the War on Terror

The CIA had long been dealing with terrorism originating from abroad, and in 1986 had set up a Counterterrorist Center to deal specifically with the problem. At first confronted with secular terrorism, the Agency found Islamist terrorism looming increasingly large on its scope.

The network that became known as al-Qaeda (The Base) grew out of Arab volunteers who fought the Soviets and their puppet regimes in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In 1984 Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden set up an organization known as the Office of Services in Peshawar, Pakistan, to coordinate and finance the "Afghan Arabs", as the volunteers became known.

The CIA also channeled US aid to Afghan resistance fighters via Pakistan in a covert operation known as Operation Cyclone. It denied dealing with non-Afghan fighters, or having direct contact with bin Laden. However, various authorities relate that the Agency brought both Afghans and Arabs to the United States for military training. Azzam and Bin Laden set up recruitment offices in the US, under the name "Al-Khifah", the hub of which was the Farouq Mosque in Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue. This was "a place of pivotal importance for Operation Cyclone".

Among notable figures at the Brooklyn center was the Egyptian "double agent" Ali Mohamed, who worked for the CIA, the Green Berets, Egyptian Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda at various times in the 1980s and 1990s. FBI special agent Jack Cloonan called him "bin Laden's first trainer". Another was "Blind Sheikh" Abdel Rahman, a leading recruiter of mujaheddin, who obtained US entry visas with the help of the CIA in 1987 and 1990.

Around 1988, Bin Laden set up al-Qaeda from the more extreme elements of the Services Office. But it was not a large organization. When Jamal al-Fadl (who had been recruited through the Brooklyn center in the mid 1980s) joined in 1989, he was described as Qaeda's "third member".

In January 1996 the CIA created an experimental "virtual station", the Bin Laden Issue Station, under the Counterterrorist Center, to track Bin Laden's developing activities. Al-Fadl, who defected to the CIA in spring 1996, began to provide the Station with a new image of the Qaeda leader: he was not only a terrorist financier, but a terrorist organizer too. FBI special agent Dan Coleman (who together with his partner Jack Cloonan had been "seconded" to the Bin Laden Station) called him Qaeda's "Rosetta Stone".

In 1999 CIA chief George Tenet launched a grand "Plan" to deal with al-Qaeda. The Counterterrorist Center, its new chief Cofer Black and the center's Bin Laden unit were the Plan's developers and executors. Once it was prepared Tenet assigned CIA intelligence chief Charles E. Allen to set up a "Qaeda cell" to oversee its tactical execution. In 2000 the CIA and USAF jointly ran a series of flights over Afghanistan with a small remote-controlled reconnaissance drone, the Predator; they obtained probable photos of Bin Laden. Cofer Black and others became advocates of arming the Predator with missiles to try to assassinate Bin Laden and other Qaeda leaders. After the Cabinet-level Principals Committee meeting on terrorism of September 4, 2001, the CIA resumed reconnaissance flights, the drones now being weapons-capable.

The CIA set up a Strategic Assessments Branch in 2001 to remedy the deficit of "big-picture" analysis of al-Qaeda, and apparently to develop targeting strategies. The branch was formally set up in July 2001, but it struggled to find personnel. The branch's head took up his job on September 10, 2001.

After 9/11, the CIA came under criticism for not having done enough to prevent the attacks. Tenet rejected the criticism, citing the Agency's planning efforts especially over the preceding two years. He also considered that the CIA's efforts had put the Agency in a position to respond rapidly and effectively to the attacks, both in the "Afghan sanctuary" and in "ninety-two countries around the world". The new strategy was called the "Worldwide Attack Matrix".

Palestinian Liberation Organization

Between the 1970s and 1980s, the CIA forged a relationship with individual members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The CIA secretly brought Hanan Ashrawi, Hanna Seniora, Saeb Erakat, and Sari Nusseibeh to the United States for intensive briefings on integrating their politics with the United States.

Israeli intelligence did not know part of the PLO was being funded and trained by the CIA at the same time that the Agency was pretending to work with Israel against the PLO. According to agents involved in the operation: "One of the PLO leaders argued that unless his fighters....were allowed to commit some actions against Israel, they would not be taken seriously. The CIA encouraged attacks on non-civilian targets in Israel." John Loftus argues the CIA was doing "everything possible to destroy the Mossad's counter-terrorist network." Loftus says, by the 1980s, oil company policy was CIA policy. Oil companies could bribe the PLO, but they could not bribe the Mossad.

2003 War in Iraq

Whether or not the intelligence available, or presented by the Bush Administration justified the 2003 invasion of Iraq or allowed proper planning, especially for the occupation, is quite controversial. However, there were more than one CIA employee that asserted the sense that Bush administration officials placed undue pressure on CIA analysts to reach certain conclusions that would support their stated policy positions with regard to Iraq.

CIA Special Activities Division paramilitary teams were the first teams in Iraq arriving in July 2002. Once on the ground they prepared the battle space for the subsequent arrival of US military forces. SAD teams then combined with US Army Special Forces (on a team called the Northern Iraq Liaison Element or NILE). This team organized the Kurdish Peshmerga for the subsequent US-led invasion. They combined to defeat Ansar al-Islam, an ally of Al-Qaeda. If this battle had not been as successful as it was, there would have been a considerable hostile force behind the US/Kurdish force in the subsequent assault on Saddam's Army. The US side was carried out by Paramilitary Operations Officers from SAD/SOG and the Army's 10th Special Forces Group.

SAD teams also conducted high risk special reconnaissance missions behind Iraqi lines to identify senior leadership targets. These missions led to the initial strikes against Saddam Hussein and his key generals. Although the initial strike against Hussein was unsuccessful in killing the dictator, it was successful in effectively ending his ability to command and control his forces. Other strikes against key generals were successful and significantly degraded the command's ability to react to and maneuver against the US-led invasion force.

NATO member Turkey refused to allow its territory to be used by the US Army's 4th Infantry Division for the invasion. As a result, the SAD, US Army Special Forces joint teams and the Kurdish Peshmerga were the entire northern force against Saddam's Army during the invasion. Their efforts kept the 1st and 5th Corps of the Iraqi Army in place to defend against the Kurds rather than their moving to contest the coalition force coming from the south. This combined US Special Operations and Kurdish force soundly defeated Saddam's Army, a major military success, similar to the victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Drug trafficking

Two offices of CIA Directorate of Intelligence have analytical responsibilities in this area. The Office of Transnational Issues applies unique functional expertise to assess existing and emerging threats to US national security and provides the most senior US policymakers, military planners, and law enforcement with analysis, warning, and crisis support.

CIA Crime and Narcotics Center researches information on international narcotics trafficking and organized crime for policymakers and the law enforcement community. Since CIA has no domestic police authority, it sends its analytic information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other law enforcement organizations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the United States Department of the Treasury (OFAC).

Another part of CIA, the National Clandestine Service, collects human intelligence (HUMINT) in these areas.

Research by Dr. Alfred W. McCoy, Gary Webb, and others has pointed to CIA involvement in narcotics trafficking across the globe, although the CIA officially denies such allegations. During the Cold War, when numerous soldiers participated in transport of Southeast Asian heroin to the United States by the airline Air America, the CIA's role in such traffic was reportedly rationalized as "recapture" of related profits to prevent possible enemy control of such assets. Gary Webb and other researchers have reported about similar operations during Reagan's Contra War against the democratically elected government of Nicaragua, US involvement in Afghanistan during the Cold War, and current CIA involvement with Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency, which allegedly has links to the refining of Afghan heroin in Pakistan.

Lying to Congress

Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has stated that the CIA repeatedly misled the Congress since 2001 about waterboarding and other torture, though Pelosi admitted to being told about the programs. Six members of Congress have claimed that Director of CIA Leon Panetta admitted that over a period of several years since 2001 the CIA deceived Congress, including affirmatively lying to Congress. Some congressmen believe that these "lies" to Congress are similar to CIA lies to Congress from earlier periods.

Covert programs hidden from Congress

On July 10, 2009, House Intelligence subcommittee Chairwoman Representative Jan Schakowsky (D, IL) announced the termination of an unnamed CIA covert program described as "very serious" in nature which had been kept secret from Congress for eight years.

CIA Director Panetta had ordered an internal investigation to determine why Congress had not been informed about the covert program. Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Representative Silvestre Reyes announced that he is considering an investigation into alleged CIA violations of the National Security Act, which requires with limited exception that Congress be informed of covert activities. Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee Chairwoman Schakowsky indicated that she would forward a request for congressional investigation to HPSCI Chairman Silvestre Reyes.

As mandated by Title 50 of the United States Code Chapter 15, Subchapter III, when it becomes necessary to limit access to covert operations findings that could affect vital interests of the US, as soon as possible the President must report at a minimum to the Gang of Eight (the leaders of each of the two parties from both the Senate and House of Representatives, and the chairs and ranking members of both the Senate Committee and House Committee for intelligence). The House is expected to support the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Bill including a provision that would require the President to inform more than 40 members of Congress about covert operations. The Obama administration threatened to veto the final version of a bill that included such a provision. On July 16, 2008 the fiscal 2009 Intelligence Authorization Bill was approved by House majority containing stipulations that 75% of money sought for covert actions would be held until all members of the House Intelligence panel were briefed on sensitive covert actions. Under the George W. Bush administration, senior advisers to the President issued a statement indicating that if a bill containing this provision reached the President, they would recommend that he veto the bill.

The program was rumored vis-a-vis leaks made by anonymous government officials on July 23, to be an assassinations program, but this remains unconfirmed. "The whole committee was stunned....I think this is as serious as it gets," stated Anna Eshoo, Chairman, Subcommittee on Intelligence Community Management, U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).

Allegations by Director Panetta indicate that details of a secret counterterrorism program were withheld from Congress under orders from former US Vice President Dick Cheney. This prompted Senator Feinstein and Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to insist that no one should go outside the law. "The agency hasn't discussed publicly the nature of the effort, which remains classified," said agency spokesman Paul Gimigliano.

Wall Street Journal reported, citing former intelligence officials familiar with the matter, that the program was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives.

Intelligence Committee investigation

On July 17, 2009, The House Intelligence Committee said it was launching a formal investigation into the secret program. Representative Silvestre Reyes announced the probe will look into "whether there was any past decision or direction to withhold information from the committee".

Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D, IL), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, who called for the investigation, stated that the investigation was intended to address CIA failures to inform Congress fully or accurately about four issues: C.I.A. involvement in the downing of a missionary plane mistaken for a narcotics flight in Peru in 2001, and two "matters that remain classified", as well as the rumored-assassinations question. In addition, the inquiry is likely to look at the Bush administration’s program of eavesdropping without warrants and its detention and interrogation program. U.S. Intelligence Chief Dennis Blair testified before the House Intelligence Committee on February 3, 2010 that the U.S. intelligence community is prepared to kill U.S. citizens if they threaten other Americans or the United States. The American Civil Liberties Union has said this policy is "particularly troubling" because U.S. citizens "retain their constitutional right to due process even when abroad." The ACLU also "expressed serious concern about the lack of public information about the policy and the potential for abuse of unchecked executive power."

See also

, James Risen

, George Tenet

National Intelligence Board

Reagan Doctrine

References

Further reading

External links

CIA official site

CIA official Freedom of Information Act (foia) site

George Washington University National Security Archive

Proposed and finalized federal regulations from the Central Intelligence Agency

Other links

The World Factbook, published by the CIA. CIA.gov

Managing and Teaching New Analysts by Martin Petersen

Central Intelligence Agency Meeting Notices and Rule Changes from The Federal Register RSS Feed

Inside the Company: CIA Diary. Third World Traveler: Excerpt from a book by Philip Agee.

Interview of a former CIA operative

The Center for Intelligence and Security Studies trains new analysts in intelligence analysis

David Wise: "The CIA, Licensed to Kill" – video report by Democracy Now!

Category:Government agencies established in 1947 Category:United States intelligence agencies Category:McLean, Virginia

Name	Robert F. Kennedy
Caption	Robert F. Kennedy at the White House, 1964
Order	United States Senator from New York
Term start	January 3, 1965
Term end	June 6, 1968
Predecessor	Kenneth Keating
Successor	Charles E. Goodell
Order2	64th
Title2	United States Attorney General
President2	John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson
Term start2	January 20, 1961
Term end2	September 3, 1964
Predecessor2	William P. Rogers
Successor2	Nicholas Katzenbach
Birth date	November 20, 1925
Birth place	Brookline, Massachusetts
Death date	June 06, 1968
Death place	Los Angeles, California
Resting place	Arlington National Cemetery Arlington, Virginia
Resting place coordinates
Spouse	Ethel (née Skakel)
Children	Kathleen H. (b.1951) Joseph P. II (b.1952) Robert F., Jr. (b.1954) David A. (1955–84) M. Courtney (b.1956) Michael L. (1958–97) M. Kerry (b.1959) Christopher G. (b.1963) M. Maxwell T. (b.1965) Douglas H. (b.1967) Rory E.K. (b.1968)
Nationality	American
Religion	Roman Catholic
Signature	Robert Kennedy Signature.svg
Party	Democratic
Alma mater	Harvard College (A.B.) University of Virginia School of Law (LL.B.)
Branch	United States Navy Reserve
Unit	USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr.
Battles	World War II
Serviceyears	1944-1946
Rank	Seaman Apprentice

Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968), also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic Senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F. Kennedy and acted as one of his advisors during his presidency. From 1961 to 1964, he was the U.S. Attorney General.

Following his brother John's assassination on November 22, 1963, Kennedy continued to serve as Attorney General under President Lyndon B. Johnson for nine months. In September 1964, Kennedy resigned to seek the U.S. Senate seat from New York, which he won in November. Within a few years, he publicly split with Johnson over the Vietnam War.

In March 1968, Kennedy began a campaign for the presidency and was a front-running candidate of the Democratic Party. In the California presidential primary on June 4, Kennedy defeated Eugene McCarthy, a fellow U.S. Senator from Minnesota. Following a brief victory speech delivered just past midnight on June 5 at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan. Mortally wounded and unconscious, he survived for nearly 26 hours, dying early in the morning of June 6.

Early life, education, and military service

Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the seventh child of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose E. Fitzgerald.

In September 1927 the Kennedy family moved to Riverdale, New York, then two years later, moved northeast to Bronxville, New York. Kennedy spent summers with his family at their home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and Christmas and Easter holidays with his family at their winter home in Palm Beach, Florida, purchased in 1933. He attended public elementary school in Riverdale from kindergarten through second grade; then Bronxville School, the public school in Bronxville, from third through fifth grade, repeating the third grade; then Riverdale Country School, a private school for boys in Riverdale, for sixth grade.

In March 1938, when he was 12, Kennedy sailed on abroad on the with his mother and his four youngest siblings to England where his father had begun serving as U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom. Kennedy attended the private Gibbs School for Boys at 134 Sloane Street in London for seventh grade, returning to the U.S. just before the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

In September 1939, for eighth grade, Kennedy was sent away from home to St. Paul's School, an elite private preparatory school for boys in Concord, New Hampshire. However, he did not like it and his mother thought it too Episcopalian. It was for these reasons that – after two months at St. Paul's – Kennedy transferred to Portsmouth Priory School, a Benedictine boarding school for boys in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, for eighth through tenth grades. In September 1942, Kennedy transferred to Milton Academy, a third boarding school in Milton, Massachusetts, for eleventh and twelfth grades.

Six weeks before his eighteenth birthday, Kennedy enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve as an apprentice seaman, released from active duty until March 1944 when he left Milton Academy early to report to the V-12 Navy College Training Program at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His V-12 training was at Harvard (March–November 1944); Bates College in Lewiston, Maine (November 1944–June 1945); and Harvard (June 1945–January 1946). On December 15, 1945, the U.S. Navy commissioned the destroyer USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. and shortly thereafter granted Kennedy's request to be released from naval-officer training to serve starting on February 1, 1946, as an apprentice seaman on the ship's shakedown cruise in the Caribbean. On May 30, 1946, he received his honorable discharge from the Navy.

In September 1946, Kennedy entered Harvard as a junior, having received credit for his two and a half years in the V-12 program. Kennedy worked hard to make the Harvard varsity football team as an end, was a starter and scored a touchdown in the first game of his senior year before breaking his leg in practice, earning his varsity letter when his coach sent him in for the last minutes of the Harvard-Yale game wearing a cast. Kennedy graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in government in March 1948 and immediately sailed off on with a college friend for a six-month tour of Europe and the Middle East, accredited as a correspondent of the Boston Post, for which he filed six stories. Four of these stories, filed from Palestine shortly before the end of the British Mandate, provided a first-hand view of the tensions. He was critical of the British policy in Palestine. Further, he praised the Jewish people he met there "as hardy and tough". Kennedy held out some hope after seeing Arabs and Jews working side by side but, in the end felt the "hate" in Palestine was too strong and would lead to a war. His prediction came to pass with the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

In September 1948, Kennedy enrolled at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. On June 17, 1950, Kennedy married Ethel Skakel at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenwich, Connecticut. Kennedy graduated from law school in June 1951 and flew with Ethel to Greenwich to stay in his father-in-law's guest house. Kennedy's first child, Kathleen, was born on July 4, 1951, and Kennedy spent the summer studying for the Massachusetts bar exam.

In September 1951, Kennedy went to San Francisco as a correspondent of the Boston Post to cover the convention concluding the Treaty of Peace with Japan. In October 1951, Kennedy embarked on a seven-week Asian trip with his brother John (then Massachusetts 11th district congressman) and his sister Patricia to Israel, India, Vietnam, and Japan. Because of their eight-year separation in age, the two brothers had previously seen little of each other. This trip was the first extended time they had spent together and served to deepen their relationship.

Early career until 1960

In November 1951, Kennedy moved with his wife and daughter to a townhouse in Georgetown in Washington, D.C., and started work as a lawyer in the Internal Security Section (which investigated suspected Soviet agents) of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. In February 1952, he was transferred to the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn to prosecute fraud cases. On June 6, 1952, Kennedy resigned to manage his brother John's successful 1952 U.S. Senate campaign in Massachusetts.

In December 1952, at the behest of his father, he was appointed by Republican Senator Joe McCarthy as assistant counsel of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He resigned in July 1953, but "retained a fondness for McCarthy." After a period as an assistant to his father on the Hoover Commission, Kennedy rejoined the Senate committee staff as chief counsel for the Democratic minority in February 1954. When the Democrats gained the majority in January 1955, he became chief counsel. Kennedy was a background figure in the televised McCarthy Hearings of 1954 into the conduct of McCarthy.

Kennedy soon made a name for himself as the chief counsel of the 1957–59 Senate Labor Rackets Committee under chairman John L. McClellan. In a dramatic scene, Kennedy squared off with Teamsters union President Jimmy Hoffa during the antagonistic argument that marked Hoffa's testimony. Kennedy left the Rackets Committee in late 1959 in order to run his brother John's successful presidential campaign.

In 1960, he published the book The Enemy Within, describing the corrupt practices within the Teamsters and other unions which he had helped investigate; the book sold very well.

Attorney general

building on June 14, 1963.]] John F. Kennedy's choice of Robert Kennedy as Attorney General following his election victory in 1960 was controversial, with The New York Times and The New Republic calling him inexperienced and unqualified. There was precedent, however, in an Attorney General being appointed because of his role as a close adviser to the President,

Kennedy was relentless in his pursuit of Teamsters union President Jimmy Hoffa, resulting from widespread knowledge of Hoffa's corruption in financial and electoral actions, both personally and organizationally. The enmity between the two men was something of a cause célèbre during the period, with accusations of personal vendetta being exchanged between Kennedy and Hoffa. Hoffa was eventually to face open, televised hearings before Kennedy, as Attorney General, which became iconic moments in Kennedy's political career and earned him both praise and criticism from the press. When a key witness surfaced, Edward Grady Partin of Baton Rouge, Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering.

Civil rights

As attorney general

Kennedy expressed the administration's commitment to civil rights during a 1961 speech at the University of Georgia Law School:

In 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who hated civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and viewed him as an upstart troublemaker, presented Kennedy with allegations that some of King's close confidants and advisers were communists. Concerned that the allegations, if made public, would derail the Administration's civil rights initiatives, Kennedy warned King to discontinue the suspect associations, and later felt compelled to issue a written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King's civil rights organization. Although Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so", Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy. The wire tapping continued through June 1966 and was revealed in 1968, days before Kennedy's death. No evidence of communist activity or influence was uncovered.

Kennedy remained committed to civil rights enforcement to such a degree that he commented, in 1962, that it seemed to envelop almost every area of his public and private life—from prosecuting corrupt southern electoral officials to answering late night calls from Coretta Scott King concerning the imprisonment of her husband for demonstrations in Alabama. During his tenure as Attorney General, he undertook the most energetic and persistent desegregation of the administration that Capitol Hill had ever experienced. He demanded that every area of government begin recruiting realistic levels of black and other ethnic workers, going so far as to criticize Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson for his failure to desegregate his own office staff.

Although it has become commonplace to assert the phrase "The Kennedy Administration" or even "President Kennedy" when discussing the legislative and executive support of the civil rights movement, between 1960 and 1963, a great many of the initiatives that occurred during President Kennedy's tenure were as a result of the passion and determination of an emboldened Robert Kennedy, who through his rapid education in the realities of Southern racism, underwent a thorough conversion of purpose as Attorney General. Asked in an interview in May 1962, "What do you see as the big problem ahead for you, is it Crime or Internal Security?" Robert Kennedy replied, "Civil Rights." The President came to share his brother's sense of urgency on the matters at hand to such an extent that it was at the Attorney General's insistence that he made his famous address to the nation.

During the attack and burning, by a vast white mob, of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama, at which Martin Luther King, Jr. was in attendance with protesters, the Attorney General telephoned King to ask his assurance that they would not leave the building until the U.S. Marshals and National Guard had secured the area. King proceeded to berate Kennedy for "allowing the situation to continue". King later publicly thanked Robert Kennedy for his commanding of the force dispatched to break up an attack that might otherwise have ended King's life. The relationship between the two men was to undergo great change over the years that they would know each other—from a position of mutual suspicion to one of shared aspirations. For King, Robert Kennedy initially represented the "softly softly" approach that in former years had disabled the movement of blacks against oppression in the U.S. For Robert Kennedy, King initially represented what was then considered the unrealistic militancy that many in the white-liberal camp had regarded as the cause of so little governmental progress.

In September 1962, he sent U.S. Marshals to Oxford, Mississippi, to enforce a federal court order allowing the admittance of the first African American student, James Meredith, to the University of Mississippi. Kennedy had hoped that legal means, along with the escort of U.S. Marshals, would be enough to force the Governor to allow the school admission. He also was very concerned there might be a "mini-civil war" between the U.S. Army troops and armed protesters. President John F. Kennedy reluctantly sent federal troops after the situation on campus turned violent. Ensuing riots during the period of Meredith's admittance resulted in hundreds of injuries and two deaths. Yet Kennedy remained adamant concerning the rights of black students to enjoy the benefits of all levels of the educational system. The Office of Civil Rights also hired its first African-American lawyer and began to work cautiously with leaders of the civil rights movement. Robert Kennedy saw voting as the key to racial justice, and collaborated with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to create the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which helped bring an end to Jim Crow laws.

As U.S. senator and presidential candidate

He was to maintain his commitment to racial equality into his own presidential campaign, extending his firm sense of social justice to all areas of national life and into matters of foreign and economic policy. During a speech at Ball State University, Kennedy questioned the student body on what kind of life America wished for herself; whether privileged Americans had earned the great luxury they enjoyed and whether such Americans had an obligation to those, in U.S. society and across the world, who had so little by comparison. It has been argued that although this speech has been largely overlooked and ignored, because of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, it was one of most powerful and heartfelt speeches Kennedy delivered.

After the assassination of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy undertook a 1966 tour of South Africa in which he championed the cause of the anti-Apartheid movement. The tour was greeted with international praise at a time when few politicians dared to entangle themselves in the politics of South Africa. Kennedy spoke out against the oppression of the native population and was welcomed by the black population as though a visiting head of state. In an interview with Look Magazine he had this to say:

In South Africa, a group of foreign press representatives chartered an aircraft, after the National Union of South African Students failed to make sufficient travel arrangements. Kennedy not only accommodated a suspected Special Branch policeman on board, but took with good grace the discovery that the aircraft had once belonged to Fidel Castro.

Civil liberties

Kennedy also used the power of federal agencies to influence US Steel not to institute a price increase. The Wall Street Journal wrote that the administration had set prices of steel "by naked power, by threats, by agents of the state security police." Yale law professor Charles Reich wrote in The New Republic that the Justice Department had violated civil liberties by calling a federal grand jury to indict US Steel so quickly, then disbanding it after the price increase did not occur. and Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General, represented the Government in this case.

In 1968, Kennedy expressed his strong willingness to support a bill then under consideration for the abolition of the death penalty.

Cuba

As his brother's confidant, Kennedy oversaw the CIA's anti-Castro activities after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. He also helped develop the strategy to blockade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis instead of initiating a military strike that might have led to nuclear war. Kennedy had initially been among the more hawkish elements of the administration on matters concerning Cuban insurrectionary aid. His initial strong support for covert actions in Cuba soon changed to a position of removal from further involvement once he became aware of the CIA's tendency to draw out initiatives and provide itself with almost unchecked authority in matters of foreign covert operations.

Allegations that the Kennedys knew of plans by the CIA to kill Fidel Castro, or approved of such plans, have been debated by historians over the years. John F. Kennedy's friend and associate, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., for example, expressed the opinion that operatives linked to the CIA were among the most reckless individuals to have operated during the period—providing themselves with unscrutinized freedoms to threaten the lives of Castro and other members of the Cuban revolutionary government regardless of the legislative apparatus in Washington—freedoms which, unbeknownst to those at the White House attempting to prevent a nuclear war, placed the entire US/Soviet relationship in perilous danger.

The "Family Jewels" documents, declassified by the CIA in 2007, state that before the Bay of Pigs invasion Robert Kennedy personally authorized one such assassination attempt, which involved the boss of the Chicago Outfit, Salvatore Giancana, and Tampa crime boss Santos Trafficante.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis Kennedy proved himself to be a gifted politician, with an ability to obtain compromises tempering aggressive positions of key figures in the hawk camp. The trust the President placed in him on matters of negotiation was such that Robert Kennedy's role in the crisis is today seen as having been of vital importance in securing a blockade, which averted a full military engagement between the US and Soviet Russia. His clandestine meetings with members of the Soviet government continued to provide a key link to Khrushchev during even the darkest moments of the Crisis, in which the threat of nuclear strikes was considered a very present reality.

On the last night of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy was so grateful for his brother's work in averting nuclear war that he summed it up by saying, "Thank God for Bobby".

Assassination of his brother, President John F. Kennedy

The assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963 was a brutal shock to the world, the nation and, of course, Robert and the rest of the Kennedy family. Robert was absolutely devastated, and was described by many as being a completely different man after his brother's death.

During the two days after the assassination, Kennedy wrote letters to his two eldest children, Kathleen and Joseph II, telling them about the tragedy, as well as to follow what their uncle started, as his son, Max, who was born in 1965, said in Make Gentle the Life of This World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy and the Words That Inspired Him.

Robert Kennedy was asked by Democratic Party leaders to introduce a film about his late brother John F. Kennedy at the 1964 party convention. When Bobby Kennedy was introduced, the crowd (including party bosses, elected officials and delegates) applauded thunderously and tearfully for a full 22 minutes before they would let Bobby speak. He was close to breaking down before he spoke about his brother's vision for both the party and the nation, and recited a quote from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (3.2) that Jacqueline Kennedy had given him:

Senator from New York

Nine months after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, Robert Kennedy left the Cabinet to run for a seat in the U.S. Senate, representing New York.

President Johnson and Robert Kennedy were often at severe odds with each other, both politically and personally, yet Johnson gave considerable support to Robert Kennedy's campaign, as he was later to recall in his memoir of the White House years.

His opponent in the 1964 race was Republican incumbent Kenneth Keating, who attempted to portray Kennedy as an arrogant carpetbagger. Kennedy emerged victorious in the November election, helped in part by Johnson's huge victory margin in New York.

In 1965 Robert Kennedy became the first person to summit Mount Kennedy.

During his years as a senator, Kennedy also helped to start a successful redevelopment project in poverty-stricken Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn in New York City, visited the Mississippi Delta as a member of the Senate committee reviewing the effectiveness of 'War on Poverty' programs and, reversing his prior stance, called for a halt in further escalation of the Vietnam War.

As Senator, Robert endeared himself to African Americans, and other minorities such as Native Americans and immigrant groups. He spoke forcefully in favor of what he called the "disaffected," the impoverished, and "the excluded," thereby aligning himself with leaders of the civil rights struggle and social justice campaigners, leading the Democratic party in a pursuit of a more aggressive agenda to eliminate perceived discrimination on all levels. Kennedy supported desegregation busing, integration of all public facilities, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and anti-poverty social programs to increase education, offer opportunities for employment, and provide health care for African-Americans.

The administration of President Kennedy had backed U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world in the frame of the Cold War. Robert Kennedy vigorously supported President Kennedy's earlier efforts, but, like President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy never publicly advocated commitment of ground troops. Senator Kennedy had cautioned President Johnson against commitment of U.S. ground troops as early as 1965, but Lyndon Johnson chose to commit ground troops on recommendation of the rest of brother John F. Kennedy's still intact staff of advisers. Kennedy did not strongly advocate withdrawal from Vietnam until 1967, within a week of Martin Luther King taking the same public stand. Consistent with President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, Senator Kennedy placed increasing emphasis on human rights as a central focus of U.S. foreign policy.

Presidential candidate

In 1968, President Johnson began to run for reelection. In January 1968, faced with what was widely considered an unrealistic race against an incumbent President, Senator Kennedy stated he would not seek the presidency. After the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, in early February 1968, Kennedy received a letter from writer Pete Hamill which said that poor people kept pictures of President Kennedy on their walls and that Robert Kennedy had an "obligation of staying true to whatever it was that put those pictures on those walls." Kennedy traveled to California, to meet with civil rights activist César Chávez who was on a hunger strike. The weekend before the New Hampshire primary, Kennedy announced to several aides that he would attempt to persuade little-known Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota to withdraw from the presidential race. Johnson won a narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary on March 12, 1968, against McCarthy, which boosted McCarthy's standing in the race.

After much speculation and reports leaking out about his plans, and seeing in McCarthy's success that Johnson's hold on the job was not as strong as originally thought, Kennedy declared his candidacy on March 16, 1968 in the Caucus Room of the old Senate office building—the same room where his brother declared his own candidacy eight years earlier. He stated, "I do not run for the Presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all I can."

McCarthy supporters angrily denounced Kennedy as an opportunist, and thus the anti-war movement was split between McCarthy and Kennedy. On March 31, 1968, Johnson stunned the nation by dropping out of the race. Vice President Hubert Humphrey, long a champion of labor unions and civil rights, entered the race with the support of the party "establishment," including most members of Congress, mayors, governors and labor unions. He entered the race too late to enter any primaries, but had the support of the president and many Democratic insiders. Robert Kennedy, like his brother before him, planned to win the nomination through popular support in the primaries.

Kennedy stood on a platform of racial and economic justice, non-aggression in foreign policy, decentralization of power and social improvement. A crucial element to his campaign was an engagement with the young, whom he identified as being the future of a reinvigorated American society based on partnership and equality. A good idea of his proposals come from the following extract of a speech given at the University of Kansas.

Kennedy's policy objectives did not sit well with the business world, in which he was viewed as something of a fiscal liability, opposed as he was to the tax increases necessary to fund such programs of social improvement. When verbally attacked at a speech he gave during his tour of the universities he was asked, "And who's going to pay for all this, senator?", to which Kennedy replied with typical candor, "You are." It was this intense and frank mode of dialogue with which Kennedy was to continue to engage those whom he viewed as not being traditional allies of Democratic ideals or initiatives. He aroused rabid animosity in some quarters, with J. Edgar Hoover's Deputy Clyde Tolson reported as saying, 'I hope that someone shoots and kills the son of a bitch.'

It has been widely commented that Robert Kennedy's campaign for the American presidency far outstripped, in its vision of social improvement, that of President Kennedy; Robert Kennedy's bid for the presidency saw not only a continuation of the programs he and his brother had undertaken during the President's term in office, but also an extension of these programs through what Robert Kennedy viewed as an honest questioning of the historic progress that had been made by President Johnson in the 5 years of his presidency. Kennedy openly challenged young people who supported the war while benefiting from draft deferments, visited numerous small towns, and made himself available to the masses by participating in long motorcades and street-corner stump speeches (often in troubled inner-cities). Kennedy made urban poverty a chief concern of his campaign, which in part led to enormous crowds that would attend his events in poor urban areas or rural parts of Appalachia.

On April 4, 1968, Kennedy learned of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and gave a heartfelt, impromptu speech in Indianapolis's inner city, in which Kennedy called for a reconciliation between the races. Riots broke out in 60 cities in the wake of King's death, but not in Indianapolis, a fact many attribute to the effect of this speech.

Kennedy finally won the Indiana and Nebraska Democratic primaries, but lost the Oregon primary. If he could defeat McCarthy in the California primary, the leadership of the campaign thought, he would knock McCarthy out of the race and set up a one-on-one against Hubert Humphrey (whom he bested in the primary held on the same day as the California primary in Humphrey's birth state, South Dakota) at the Chicago national convention in August.

Assassination

23 September 2005.]]

Kennedy scored a major victory in winning the California primary. He addressed his supporters in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, in a ballroom at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Leaving the ballroom, he went through the hotel kitchen after being told it was a shortcut, despite being advised to avoid the kitchen by his bodyguard, FBI agent Bill Barry. In a crowded kitchen passageway, Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Christian Palestinian, opened fire with a .22-caliber revolver. Kennedy was hit three times and five other people also were wounded. George Plimpton and former decathlete Rafer Johnson are credited with wrestling Sirhan Sirhan to the ground after Sirhan shot the Senator. Following the shooting, Kennedy was first rushed to Los Angeles's Central Receiving Hospital and then to the city's Good Samaritan Hospital where he died early the next morning. Sirhan said that he felt betrayed by Kennedy's support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War which had begun exactly one year before the assassination.

His body was returned to New York City, where it lay in repose at Saint Patrick's Cathedral for several days before the Requiem Mass held there on June 8. His brother, U.S. Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy, eulogized him with the words:

The Requiem Mass concluded with the hymn, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" sung by Andy Williams. Immediately following the Requiem Mass, his body was transported by a special private train to Washington, D.C. Thousands of mourners lined the tracks and stations along the route, paying their respects as the train passed. This slow transport delayed arrival at Arlington National Cemetery, causing it to be the only night burial to have taken place there.

Kennedy was buried near his brother, John, in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia (just outside Washington, D.C.). (coordinates: )

On June 9, President Johnson assigned security staff to all U.S. presidential candidates and declared an official national day of mourning. After the assassination, the mandate of the U.S. Secret Service was altered by Congress to include Secret Service protection of U.S. presidential candidates. ]]

Personal life

Family

, Robert (Bobby) and Edward (Ted)]] In 1950, he married Ethel Skakel. Together, they had eleven children: #Kathleen Hartington (b.1951) #Joseph Patrick II (b.1952) #Robert Francis, Jr. (b.1954) #David Anthony (1955–1984) #Mary Courtney (b.1956) #Michael LeMoyne (1958–1997) #Mary Kerry (b.1959) #Christopher George (b.1963) #Matthew Maxwell Taylor (b.1965) #Douglas Harriman (b.1967) #Rory Elizabeth Katherine (b.1968) The last child, Rory, was born six months after her father's assassination.

Kennedy owned a home at the well-known Kennedy Compound on Cape Cod in Hyannis Port, but spent most of his time at his estate in McLean, Virginia, known as Hickory Hill, located west of Washington, D.C. His widow Ethel and their children continued to live at Hickory Hill after his death. She now lives full time at the Hyannis Port home.

Attitudes and approach

Despite the fact that his father's most ambitious dreams centered around his older brothers,

Religious faith

Central to Kennedy's politics and personal attitude to life and its purpose was his Catholicism, which he inherited from his family. Throughout his life, Kennedy made reference to his faith, how it informed every area of his life, and how it gave him the strength to re-enter politics following the assassination of his elder brother. His was not an unresponsive and staid faith, but the faith of a Catholic Radical—perhaps the first successful Catholic Radical in American political history.

Robert Kennedy was easily the most religious of his brothers. Whereas John maintained an aloof sense of his faith, Robert approached his duties to mankind through the looking glass of Catholicism. In the last years of his life, he found great solace in the metaphysical poets of ancient Greece, especially the writings of Aeschylus. In his Indianapolis speech on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Kennedy quoted these lines from Aeschylus:

"He who learns must suffer. Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, and against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God."

Electoral history

1964 New York United States Senatorial Election {| |Robert F. Kennedy (D) 53.5% |- |Kenneth Keating (R) (inc.) 45.4% |}

Honors

being renamed in honor of Robert Kennedy]] D.C. Stadium in Washington, D.C. was renamed Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in 1969. In 1978, the United States Congress posthumously awarded Kennedy its Gold Medal of Honor. In 1998, the United States Mint released a special dollar coin that featured Kennedy on the obverse and the emblems of the United States Department of Justice and the United States Senate on the reverse.

In Washington, D.C. on November 20, 2001, US President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft dedicated the Department of Justice headquarters building as the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building, honoring Robert F. Kennedy on what would have been his 76th birthday. They both spoke during the ceremony, as did Kennedy's eldest son, Joseph II. Numerous roads, public schools and other facilities across the United States were named in memory of Robert F. Kennedy in the months and years after his death. The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial organization was founded in 1968, with an international award program to recognize human rights activists. It is now known as the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. In a further effort to not just remember the late Senator, but continue his work helping disadvantaged, a small group of private citizens launched the Robert F. Kennedy Children's Action Corps in 1969, which today helps more than 800 abused and neglected children each year. A bust of Kennedy resides in the library of the University of Virginia School of Law, from where he obtained his law degree.

On June 4, 2008, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Kennedy, the New York State Assembly voted to rename the Triborough Bridge in New York City the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge in honor of the former New York Senator. New York State Governor David Paterson signed the legislation into law on Friday, August 8, 2008.

Kennedy and King

Several public institutions jointly honor Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

*In 1969, the former Woodrow Wilson Junior College, a two-year institution and a constituent campus of the City Colleges of Chicago, was renamed Kennedy-King College.

*In 1994, the City of Indianapolis erected a monument, Landmark for Peace Memorial, in Kennedy's honor in the space made famous by his oration from the back of a pickup truck the night King died. The monument, in Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Park, depicts Kennedy as a piece of a large metal slab reaching out to King, who is also part of a similar slab. This is meant to symbolize their attempts in life to bridge the gaps between the races—an attempt that united them even in death. A historical marker has also been placed at the site. A nephew of King and Indiana U.S. Congresswoman Julia Carson (Democrat) presided over the event; both made speeches from the back of a pickup truck in similar fashion to Kennedy's speech.

Writing

Considered an eloquent speaker generally, Kennedy also wrote extensively on politics and issues confronting his generation: •"The Enemy Within: The McClellan Committee's Crusade Against Jimmy Hoffa and Corrupt Labor Unions" (1960) •"Just Friends and Brave Enemies" (1962) •"The Pursuit Of Justice" (1964) •"To Seek a Newer World" (1967) •"Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis" (1969)

Quotations

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." "Men without hope, resigned to despair and oppression, do not make revolutions. It is when expectation replaces submission, when despair is touched with the awareness of possibility, that the forces of human desire and the passion for justice are unloosed." "There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were and ask why not." "Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation ... It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." "At the University of Natal in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. "But suppose God is black", I replied. "What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?" There was no answer. Only silence." South Africa, June 1966

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black." Indianapolis, Indiana, April 4, 1968 Announcing to the crowd that Martin Luther King had been assassinated.

"Fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it." From his last speech, June 5, 1968 "Laws can embody standards; governments can enforce laws—but the final task is not a task for government. It is a task for each and every one of us. Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted—when we tolerate what we know to be wrong—when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened—when we fail to speak up and speak out—we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice." June 21, 1961 "...We must recognize the full human equality of all our people-before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous-although it is; not because the laws of God and man command it-although they do command it; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do."

Media

The 2006 film Bobby is about the story of multiple peoples' lives leading up to Kennedy's assassination. The film employs stock footage from Kennedy's presidential campaign, and he is briefly portrayed by Dave Fraunces.

The 2002 made-for-TV-movie RFK portrays Kennedy's life from the time of his brother's assassination to his own death. He is played by Linus Roache.

The 1985 three part TV mini-series Robert Kennedy & His Times starred Brad Davis and is based on the book of the same title by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. A reverential personal portrait of Robert Kennedy as a family man, his time as Attorney General and Presidential candidate during the turbulent times in which he lived including the fight for civil rights, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Vietnam war.

Kennedy's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis has been portrayed by Martin Sheen in The Missiles of October and by Steven Culp in Thirteen Days.

Kennedy is also portrayed in Hoffa by Kevin Anderson.

See also

Kennedy family

Ted Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy assassination

List of assassinated American politicians

References

Bibliography

i |location=Honolulu |isbn=0824802020 |pages= }}

Grubin, David, director and producer, RFK. Video. (DVD, VHS). 2hr. WGBH Educ. Found. and David Grubin Productions, 2004. Distrib. by PBS Video

Hilty, James M. Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector (1997), vol. 1 to 1963. Temple U. Press., 1997. 642 pp.

RFK's speech after the death of Martin Luther King in 1968.

Navasky, Victor S. Kennedy Justice (1972). Argues the policies of RFK's Justice Department show the conservatism of justice, the limits of charisma, the inherent tendency in a legal system to support the status quo, and the counterproductive results of many of Kennedy's endeavors in the field of civil rights and crime control.

National Book Award.

Schlesinger, Arthur, M. Jr. (2002 re-print), Robert Kennedy And His Times, Mariner Books-Houghton Mifflin Co., ISBN 0-618-21928-5

ISBN 1-55849-730-7

Schmitt, Edward R. President of the Other America: Robert Kennedy and the Politics of Poverty (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010) 324 pp. isbn 978-1-55849-730-6

External links

Annotated Bibliography for Robert F. Kennedy from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues

Text, Audio, and Video of Robert Kennedy's Address at Ball State University

American Experience: RFK -- From PBS

Text, Audio, and Video of Robert Kennedy's Remarks on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr

Text, Audio, and Video excerpt of Robert Kennedy's Address at Cape Town University

Edward Kennedy eulogy to Robert Kennedy (text and audio)

My Father's Stand on Cuba Travel by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, The Washington Post, April 23, 2009

Rare photos, videos, audio-clips and other RFK source materials from the U.S. National Archives.

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Category:1925 births Category:1968 deaths Category:American anti-communists Category:American lawyers Category:American military personnel of Irish descent Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:American politicians of Irish descent Category:American Roman Catholic politicians Category:American Roman Catholic writers Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:Anti-poverty advocates Category:Assassinated American politicians Category:Bates College alumni Category:Burials at Arlington National Cemetery Category:Congressional Gold Medal recipients Category:Deaths by firearm in California Category:Harvard Crimson football players Category:Harvard University alumni Category:University of Virginia alumni Category:Irish American history Category:Kennedy Administration cabinet members Category:Kennedy family Category:Lyndon B. Johnson Administration cabinet members Category:Massachusetts Democrats Category:Massachusetts lawyers Category:Milton Academy alumni Category:American people of Irish descent Category:New York Democrats Category:New York lawyers Category:International activists against apartheid in South Africa Category:People from Brookline, Massachusetts Category:People murdered in California Category:Roman Catholic activists Category:Siblings of Presidents of the United States Category:United States Attorneys General Category:United States Navy officers Category:United States presidential candidates, 1964 Category:United States presidential candidates, 1968 Category:United States Senate lawyers Category:United States Senators from New York Category:University of Virginia School of Law alumni Category:Writers from Boston, Massachusetts Category:Writers from New York Category:Democratic Party United States Senators Category:American murder victims

Name	Jesse Ventura
Order	38th
Office	Governor of Minnesota
Term start	January 8, 1999
Term end	January 6, 2003
Lieutenant	Mae Schunk
Predecessor	Arne Carlson
Successor	Tim Pawlenty
Office2	Mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota
Term start2	1991
Term end2	1995
Birthname	James George Janos
Birth date	July 15, 1951
Birth place	Minneapolis, Minnesota
Spouse	Terry Ventura
Children	Tyrel Ventura Jade Ventura
Profession	US Navy UDT Professional Wrestler Color commentator Actor Talk Show host Politician Author
Party	Reform Party (1999–2000) Independence Party of Minnesota (2000–present)
Branch	United States Navy
Serviceyears	1969–1975
Rank	Petty Officer
Unit	Underwater Demolition Team 12 United States Navy
Awards	National Defense Service Medal Vietnam Service Medal

James George Janos (born July 15, 1951), better known as Jesse Ventura, is an American politician, the 38th Governor of Minnesota from 1999 to 2003, Navy UDT veteran, actor, and former radio and television talk show host. As a professional wrestler, he is best known for his nickname, Jesse "The Body" Ventura, and tenure in the World Wrestling Federation as a combatant and color commentator. In 2004, he was inducted into the company's Hall of Fame. Ventura has described himself as Slovak. Ventura (then still using his legal name of Janos) attended the now-closed Cooper Elementary School and graduated from Minneapolis' Roosevelt High School in 1969.

Navy career

From September 11, 1969, to September 10, 1975, during the Vietnam War era, Ventura served in the United States Navy. While on active duty, Ventura was part of Underwater Demolition Team 12 (UDT). The UDTs were merged with the US Navy SEALs in 1983, 8 years after Ventura had left the Navy.

Bill Salisbury, an attorney in San Diego and a former Navy SEAL officer, accused Ventura of "pretending" to be a SEAL and wrote that Ventura would be blurring an important distinction by claiming to be a SEAL when he was actually a frogman with the UDT. Compared to SEAL teams, UDTs saw less combat and took fewer casualties. Following that, Governor Ventura's office confirmed that Ventura was never a member of the SEALs. His spokesman stated that Ventura has never tried to convince people otherwise. He was criticized by hunters and conservationists for stating in an interview with the Minneapolis StarTribune in April 2001, "Until you have hunted men, you haven't hunted yet."

In January 2002, Ventura, who had never specifically claimed to have fought in Vietnam, disclosed for the first time that he did not see combat. He did not receive the Combat Action Ribbon, which was awarded to those involved in a firefight or who went on clandestine or special operations where the risk of enemy fire was great or expected.

In the fall of 1974, Ventura left the bike club to return to Minnesota. Shortly after leaving, the Mongols entered into open warfare with their rivals the Hells Angels.

Professional wrestling career

Name	Jesse Ventura
Names	Jesse "The Body" Ventura Years later, as a broadcaster, Ventura made a running joke out of claiming that Graham stole all of his ring attire ideas from him.
Show name	Jesse Ventura's America
Caption	Ventura on his MSNBC talk show Jesse Ventura's America
Starring	Jesse Ventura
Location	Saint Paul, Minnesota,
Network	MSNBC
First aired	October 4, 2003
Last aired	December 26, 2003
Italic title	no

Ventura was succeeded in his office by Republican Tim Pawlenty. He began a cable television show in October 2003, on MSNBC called Jesse Ventura's America. The show was broadcast once a week, on Saturdays, unlike many MSNBC shows which are on five nights a week (this show was originally planned for five nights a week as well, but MSNBC executives changed their minds). At the time of its airing, Jesse Ventura's America was the only national television show filmed in Minnesota. Among his guests were Charles Barkley, Gray Davis, Arianna Huffington, Rob Kampia, and Kathy McKee.

In 2004, fellow Navy veteran and Harvard graduate student Christopher Mora promoted the idea that the academic establishment had failed to reach out to citizens experienced in public service, but who did not fit the traditional idea of a politician. He successfully lobbied for the selection of Ventura, who started teaching a study group at Harvard University for the Spring 2004 semester as a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School of Government's Institute of Politics (IOP). His 90-minute study group focused on third party politics, campaign finance, the war on drugs, and other relevant political issues. Ventura scheduled multiple famous friends to appear for his seminars including Dean Barkley and Richard Marcinko.

On October 22, 2004, with Ventura by his side, former Maine Governor Angus King endorsed John Kerry for President at the Minnesota state capitol building. Ventura did not speak at the press conference. When prodded for a statement, Governor King responded, "He plans to vote for John Kerry, but he doesn't want to make a statement and subject himself to the tender mercies of the Minnesota press".

In November 2004, an advertisement began airing in California featuring Ventura. In it, Ventura voices his opposition to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's policies regarding Native American casinos. Like Hogan, Schwarzenegger at one point was also a close friend of Ventura as well, but since Schwarzenegger's victory in California, Ventura has not reportedly given him any praise; Schwarzenegger didn't even mention Ventura's name in an interview with Fox News in 2005, where reporter Chris Wallace asked him if he was "the next Jesse Ventura". Ventura is serving as an advisory board member for a new group called Operation Truth, a non-profit organization set up "to give voice to troops who served in Iraq." “The current use of the National Guard is wrong....These are men who did not sign up to go occupy foreign nations”.

In August 2005, Ventura became the spokesperson for BetUS, an online Sportsbook. In 2005, Ventura repeatedly discussed leaving the United States. In September 2005, Ventura announced on The Mike Malloy Show that he was leaving the U.S. and planned to "have an adventure". In late October 2005, he went on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch and reiterated that he was leaving the U.S. due to, among other things, censorship. He has since moved to Baja California, Mexico.

In September 2006, Ventura endorsed and campaigned with independent Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, and Independence Party of Minnesota's gubernatorial candidate Peter Hutchinson and Team Minnesota. He revealed he now spends much of his time surfing near his home in Mexico.

In April 2008, a book authored by Ventura, titled Don't Start the Revolution Without Me, was released. In it, Ventura describes a hypothetical campaign in which he is a candidate for President of the United States in 2008, running as an independent. In an interview with the Associated Press at the time of the book's release, however, Ventura denied any plans for a presidential bid, stating that the scenario is only imaginary and not indicative of a "secret plan to run". On MinnPost.com, Ventura's agent, Steve Schwartz, describes the book thus: "[Ventura is revealing] why he left politics and discussing the disastrous war in Iraq, why he sees our two-party system as corrupt, and what Fidel Castro told him about who was really behind the assassination of President Kennedy."

However, in an interview on CNN's The Situation Room on April 7, Ventura hinted that he was considering entering the race for the United States Senate seat then held by Norm Coleman, his Republican opponent in the 1998 Gubernatorial race. A poll commissioned by Twin Cities station Fox 9 put him at 24 percent, behind Al Franken at 32 percent and Norm Coleman at 39 percent in a hypothetical three-way race. However, Ventura announced on Larry King Live on July 14, 2008 that he would not run.

He spoke at former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul's "Rally for the Republic", organized by the Campaign for Liberty, on September 2, 2008. At the event, Ventura implied a possible future run at the U.S. Presidency. Ventura stated before a live audience that "If America proves itself worthy, in 2012 we'll give them a race they'll never forget!"

TV Week is reporting that Ventura is in negotiations with 20th Television to host a half-hour court show that would debut in the fall of 2009.

Bush/Cheney administration and torture

In a May 11, 2009 interview with Larry King, Ventura twice stated that George W. Bush was the worst president of his lifetime, adding "President Obama inherited something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. You know? Two wars, an economy that's borderline depression." On the issue of waterboarding, Ventura added:

I'll put it to you this way, you give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders. ... If it's done wrong, you certainly could drown. You could swallow your tongue. [It] could do a whole bunch of stuff to you. If it's done wrong orit's torture, Larry. It's torture. Ventura also expressed interest in being appointed ambassador to Cuba should U.S. relations with Cuba continue to improve. On a May 18, 2009 appearance on The View, Ventura asked Elisabeth Hasselbeck if waterboarding is acceptable, why were not Oklahoma City bombers, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols waterboarded. "We only seem to waterboard Muslims." Comparing the waterboarding of detainees to the North Vietnamese torture of American P.O.W.s, Ventura asserted, "We created our own Hanoi Hilton in Guantánamo. That's our Hanoi Hilton."

Questions regarding 9/11

In April and May 2008, Jesse Ventura, in several radio interviews for his new book, Don't Start the Revolution Without Me, expressed concerns about what he described as some of the unanswered questions of the September 11 attacks. His remarks about the possibility that the World Trade Center was demolished with explosives were also repeated in newspaper and television stories following some of the interviews.

Ventura was interviewed on the Alex Jones radio show on April 2, 2008 where he said that he felt that many unanswered questions remain, and he believes that World Trade Center Building 7, which was not struck by a plane, collapsed on the afternoon of 9/11 in a manner which resembled a controlled demolition Ventura stated:

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He also states the Twin Towers appeared to be pulverized to dust, that they fell at virtually free-fall speed, and that no other massive steel-framed buildings had ever collapsed in this manner due to fire before.

Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura

In August 2009, it was announced that Ventura would host TruTV's new show Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura. "Ventura will hunt down answers, plunging viewers into a world of secret meetings, midnight surveillance, shifty characters and dark forces," truTV said in a statement. On the program, which debuted on December 2, 2009, Ventura travels the country, investigating cases and getting input from believers and skeptics before passing judgment on a theory's validity. According to TruTV, the first episode drew 1.6 million viewers, a record for a new series on the network.

American Conspiracies

American Conspiracies is a book Ventura wrote with Dick Russell, published by Skyhorse Publishing in 2010 which discusses conspiracy theories related to several notable events in United States history.

Personal life

In 1975, Ventura married his wife Terry. The couple have two grown children: a son, Tyrel (b. 1980), who is a movie and television director and producer, and a daughter, Jade (b. 1983).

During his wrestling days, Ventura used anabolic steroids. He admitted this after retiring from competition, and went on to make public service announcements and appear in printed ads and on posters warning young people about the potential dangers and potential health risks of abusing steroids.

In 2002, Ventura was hospitalized for a severe blood clot in his lungs, the same kind of injury that ended his wrestling career.

Currently, Ventura and his wife live in Mexico, "There are no newspapers down where I live. Where I live, I'm an hour from pavement and an hour from electricity..I'm completely off the grid."

Religion

In a Playboy interview, he said, "Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business." In his 1999 best-selling memoir I Ain't Got Time to Bleed, Ventura responded to the controversy sparked by these remarks by elaborating on his views concerning religion: "I’d like to clarify [my comments published in Playboy] about religious people being weak-minded. I didn’t mean all religious people. I don’t have any problem with the vast majority of religious folks. I count myself among them, more or less. But I believe because it makes sense to me, not because I think it can be proven. There are lots of people out there who think they know the truth about God and religion, but does anybody really know for sure? That’s why the founding fathers built freedom of religious belief into the structure of this nation, so that everybody could make up their minds for themselves. But I do have a problem with the people who think they have some right to try to impose their beliefs on others. I hate what the fundamentalist fanatics are doing to our country. It seems as though, if everybody doesn’t accept their version of reality, that somehow invalidates it for them. Everybody must believe the same things they do. That’s what I find weak and destructive."

Ventura endorsed equal rights for religious minorities, as well as people who don't believe in God, by declaring July 4, 2002, "Indivisible Day". Ventura proclaimed October 13–19, 2002 as "Christian Heritage Week" in Minnesota.

In 2010, regarding the Ground Zero Mosque controversy, Ventura argued, "Excuse me, the Constitution says they can do it, it ends there! You cannot subject the Constitution to a popularity poll," in reference to the opposition of the mosque. In a separate interview on CNN, when told that the victims' families needed to be respected, Ventura replied, "But what's the problem? I mean, Timothy McVeigh, I assume, was a Christian and he did an act of terrorism. Would they then remove all Christian churches from around Oklahoma City, because it happened to have been a Christian that did it? You know, it's ridiculous."

Electoral history

1998 election for Governor

*Jesse Ventura (Ref.), 37%

*Norm Coleman (R), 34%

*Hubert H. Humphrey III (DFL), 28%

Books

I Ain't Got Time to Bleed: Reworking the Body Politic from the Bottom Up ISBN 978-0-451-20086-0

Do I Stand Alone?: Going to the Mat Against Political Pawns and Media Jackals ISBN 978-0-7434-0587-4

Jesse Ventura Tells It Like It Is: America's Most Outspoken Governor Speaks Out About Government (co-authored with Heron Marquez) ISBN 978-0-8225-0385-9

Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (co-authored with Dick Russell) ISBN 978-1-60239-273-1

American Conspiracies (March 2010, co-authored with Dick Russell) ISBN 978-1602398023

Notes

References

deFiebre, Conrad. "Record-high job approval for Ventura; Many Minnesotans like his style, don't mind moonlighting." Star Tribune 22 July 1999: 1A+.

deFiebre, Conrad. "Using body language, Ventura backs Kerry." Star Tribune 23 October 2004: 1A+.

Kahn, Joseph P. "The Body Politic." The Boston Globe 25 February 2004. Accessed April 28, 2004.

Olson, Rochelle and Bob von Sternberg. "GOP demands equal time; Wellstone aide apologizes; Ventura upset." Minneapolis Star-Tribune 31 October 2002: 1A+.

External links

WWE Hall of Fame Profile

Ventura "on the issues"

Analysis of Jesse Ventura's Playboy interview by Aubrey Immelman

Jesse Ventura – Media Man Australia profile

Election Of Bonapartist Figure Ventura In Minnesota Is Danger To Working People – article in The Militant 1998.

Radiotapes.com Recordings of Jesse Ventura for Governor commercials from 1998 (scroll down to Misc Recordings).

Larry King Live: Jesse Ventura CNN April 1, 2008

"Jesse's back! New Ventura book 'Revolution' will cover political waterfront" from Minnpost.com

The Jesse Ventura Forums

Jesse Ventura on Wrestling-Radio.com

Jesse Ventura interview, Diaday.com

Jesse Ventura on The Young Turks Show.

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