History of the CIA: Presidential Power and Limits of Law

What does the average American truly know about the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)? For many, that understanding may be shaped more by movies and television, rather than by fact. Popular culture provides a familiar image of the CIA: an agent gets a call, puts on a trench coat, flies off to a foreign capital, drinks a martini, woos a beautiful woman, overthrows the government, and leaves on the midland boat. After Tim Weiner first walked into the CIA headquarters in 1988, he learned that reality, in this instance, was much more interesting than fiction. 

Weiner, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner for reporting and writing on American intelligence and national security, provided his expert perspective as an author and journalist at the March 12 TCFR event at the Tucson Country Club. He has covered the CIA in Washington as a reporter for The New York Times, and offered his engaging outlook and insight on the history of the CIA and pressing matters of presidential power under our current administration.

A Glimpse Into CIA History

Weiner first saw the gospel of John 8:32 on the wall of the CIA Public Affairs Department, stating “And you shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” The phrase embodies the principles of journalism, showing that reporting on intelligence history is never just about intelligence alone — you are also writing diplomatic, military, and presidential history, because the story of the CIA is deeply tied to how presidents have projected American power abroad. This has often depended on means just short of war: espionage, sabotage, subversion, propaganda, bribery, blackmail, and similar tactics. As Weiner put it, “Espionage is illegal everywhere. But it’s the bread and butter in the CIA to break the laws of foreign countries… that’s how the job gets done.” 

Looking back on relationships between the CIA and American presidents is crucial to understanding the complexity of the agency’s history. Dwight Eisenhower, for example, knew a “thing or two” about secret operations. The CIA’s creation raised questions not unlike those posed by the invention of the atomic bomb two years prior. Weiner noted that both the CIA and nuclear power expanded rapidly for decades before policies to “control” them were put in place. This left the possibility open for agents acting with broad authority and little oversight to carry out actions without the president, secretary of defense, or other officials knowing what was truly being done. Harry Truman himself later reflected on this contradiction, highlighting that the CIA was created to inform presidents like himself about worldwide happenings, gather and analyze intelligence, and report back to the White House; “it was not intended to be a cloak and dagger outfit.” Those, as Weiner indicated, were simpler times. 

By 1948, the Pentagon and the State Department had pushed the CIA into covert action. In its first five years, the CIA financed overseas operations through a hidden channel. By 1949, and for decades afterward, it was running paramilitary missions across Europe and, by 1950, across Asia. According to Weiner, many of these were effectively suicide missions and were repeatedly compromised. Hundreds of people were sent to their deaths in operations the American public would not fully learn about until much later.

How Tough Is Too Tough?

To put it simply, the CIA does what the president tells them to do. As former CIA officer Jim Olson stated, “I spent my entire CIA career lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating, deceiting.” The justification was always national defense: if the United States was going to protect itself from its enemies, we could not fight with “both hands tied behind our back.” But this leads to the deeper question that Olson alludes to — how tough is too tough? When does defending national values instead begin to betray them? Weiner underscored that this logic runs in a relatively straight line from the Doolittle Report, to the assassincation plots under Eisenhower and Kennedy against figures like Fidel Castro. Later, Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the CIA to spy on Americans; in direct violation of its charter. He was convinced that Moscow and Beijing were secretly financing and running the civil rights and antiwar movements in the U.S. When Richard Nixon came to office, he welcomed that approach and pushed it further, ordering the CIA to expand domestic surveillance through a program whose randomly selected code name was “chaos.”

Is There A Limit To Presidential Power?

Nixon had a political philosophy in mind, and expressed as such in his post-presidential interviews: “When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.” The logic behind this statement has carried weight — just 6 months ago, Nixon had a six to three majority of the Supreme Court agree with this concept, ruling that presidents are protected from prosecution for crimes committed in office. Additionally, following the Watergate scandal, Senator Frank Church warned that the CIA had become a “rogue elephant, trampling people and nations.” However, as history makes clear, the intelligence agency does not act on its own; the CIA does what the president tells them to do, and questions of presidential authority have had deadly consequences. This pattern has extended into later decades through torture, assasination plots, and secret prisons, all of which have been deemed “justified” through a mixture of fear, ignorance, and secrecy, and yet — it is very hard to keep a secret from America. 

Weiner explained that officials involved in the post-9/11 secret prison system understood that these actions may not remain secret, but convinced themselves they had no alternative and that the law protected such actions. That legal rationale was shaped, in part, by various arguments regarding presidential power, including the idea that the president could authorize extreme measures, such as torture — which was not considered “torture,” as long as prisoners were not killed. And if it was not torture, it was whatever the CIA labeled it to be. However, as Weiner remarked, the CIA was never created to kill people or to run secret prisons, but was created to gather and analyze intelligence,  and conduct espionage against enemies of the U.S. on behalf of the president. When this original mission gave way to covert violence, intelligence has often suffered. In Weiner’s view, this drift helped weaken the CIA’s core purpose for years, leaving the U.S. less prepared to counter later foreign threats.  

Trump And The CIA

In a government that claims to value truth and law, what does it mean to maintain an intelligence service, if this service becomes detached from those principles? The CIA swears an oath to the Constitution, not to the president. And yet, this distinction has been repeatedly tested. According to Weiner, President Donald Trump has since swung a “wrecking ball” to the architecture of American national security that was built after World War II to defend the U.S. and its allies against threats, including Russian imperialism. In an interview with Weiner, former CIA officer Ed Bogan reflected on this: “If we walk away from Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the land Russia has taken to date. Faith in our values — our stated American values, will be radically undermined, perhaps permanently. And, if Russia succeeds in the war of conquest, it will lead to our next world war in some form.”

“The lights of the shining city are blinking out,” Weiner stated, capturing the sense of democratic decline that runs through this argument. Trump’s refusal to engage with intelligence briefings, reflects not only indifference but also a current parallel to authoritarian regimes. In this context, the CIA is at risk of becoming not an institution that informs democratic decision making, but rather a weapon wielded by Trump above the law.