CIA Counterintelligence Staff

Counterintelligence component of the CIA clandestine service 1954-88

The Counterintelligence Staff (CI) was a component of the CIA founded on 20 December 1954 (ref 1). It was one of a a number of functional staffs within the Directorate of Plans (DDP) (ref 2, p.147).

Like the Covert Action Staff, the CI Staff was originally intended to play an advisory role to the DDP's geographic divisions, but quickly acquired its own field operations (ref 10, p.47). In the CI case this amounted to a monopoly of counterintelligence operations to the effective exclusion of the divisions (ref 10, p.47).