The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, with responsibility for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers. Intelligence gathering is performed by non-military commissioned civilian intelligence agents, many of whom are trained to avoid tactical situations. The CIA also oversees and sometimes engages in tactical and covert activities at the request of the President of the United States. Often, when such field operations are organized, the US military or other warfare tacticians carry these tactical operations out on behalf of the agency while the CIA oversees them. Although intelligence-gathering is the agency's main agenda, tactical divisions were established in the agency to carry out emergency field operations that require immediate suppression or dismantling of a threat or weapon. The CIA is often used for intelligence-gathering instead of the U.S military to avoid a declaration of war.
Gary Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was a Pulitzer prize-winning American investigative journalist.
Webb was best known for his 1996 "Dark Alliance" series of articles written for the San Jose Mercury News and later published as a book. In the three-part series, Webb investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had allegedly smuggled cocaine into the U.S. Their smuggled cocaine was distributed as crack cocaine in Los Angeles, with the profits funneled back to the Contras. Webb also alleged that this influx of Nicaraguan-supplied cocaine sparked, and significantly fueled, the widespread crack cocaine epidemic that swept through many U.S. cities during the 1980s. According to Webb, the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by Contra personnel. Webb charged that the Reagan administration shielded inner-city drug dealers from prosecution in order to raise money for the Contras, especially after Congress passed the Boland Amendment, which prohibited direct Contra funding.
Lindsay Moran (born 18 December 1969) is a former clandestine officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. She is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. In 2005 she published her memoir Blowing My Cover, My Life As A Spy, in which she wrote about her experiences as a case officer from 1998 to 2003.
Lindsay Moran had an interest in everything espionage related from her early years on. Her childhood fantasies were fueled by spy novels, especially "Harriet the Spy" and James Bond series and she dreamed of growing up to join the CIA. When she was a child, she often conducted surveillance on the neighbors or communicated with friends through secret codes. A member of Montgomery Blair High School's graduating class of 1987, she was voted "Most Intellectual," "Wittiest" and "Most Likely to Succeed" by her classmates. Moran used to be a staff writer and editor-in-chief of Silver Chips, where she wrote a series of articles on serious issues like teenage abortion and Vietnam refugees as well as lighter topics like shopping mall Santa Clauses. After high school, she attended Harvard College majoring in English.