Covert actions

Covert Action and Clandestine Activities ofthe Intelligence Community: SelectedDefinitions in Brief 

Covert action is codified as an activity or activities of the United Sates Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly. It does not include

• activities with the primary purpose of acquiring intelligence, traditional counterintelligence activities, traditional activities to improve or maintain the operational security of United States government programs, or administrative activities;
• traditional diplomatic or military activities or routine support to such activities;
• traditional law enforcement activities conducted by United States government law enforcement agencies or routine support to such activities; 
• activities to provide routine support of any other overt activities of other United States government agencies abroad. 

Covert action is generally intended to influence conditions short of an escalation by the United States that might lead to a sizable or extended military commitment.6 Unlike traditional intelligence collection, covert action is not passive. It has a visible, public impact intended to influence a change in the military, economic, or political environment abroad that might otherwise prove counterproductive if the role of the United States were made know.

Covert actions

The CIA has a long history of helping to kill leaders around the world

Some of the most notorious of the CIA’s operations to kill world leaders were those targeting the late Cuban president, Fidel Castro. Attempts ranged from snipers to imaginative plots worthy of spy movie fantasies, such as the famous exploding cigars and a poison-lined scuba-diving suit.

But although the CIA attempts proved fruitless in the case of Castro, the US intelligence agency has since 1945 succeeded in deposing or killing a string of leaders elsewhere around the world – either directly or, more often, using sympathetic local military, locally hired criminals or pliant dissidents.

According to North Korea’s ministry of state security, the CIA has not abandoned its old ways. In a statement on Friday, it accused that the CIA and South Korea’s intelligence service of being behind an alleged recent an assassination attempt on its leader Kim Jong-un.

Covert actions

CIA to detail secret Cold War actions

The CIA is planning to offer details about four previously undisclosed covert actions conducted during the Cold War, a federal advisory committee declared in a report.

It is unclear which actions will be detailed, however they will be from the Ronald Reagan administration or earlier.

The disclosures will be published in upcoming volumes of an official State Department compendium of documents, called the Foreign Relations of the United States series.

“CIA consistently reviews both specific documents and compiled volumes in a timely manner, and in 2015 it agreed to acknowledge four covert actions that will be documented in future volumes,” the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation claimed in a report published last week.