The Central Intelligence Agency, usually shortened to its acronym as the CIA, is the American foreign intelligence agency, tasked with defending American interests abroad. It is an evolution of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) of World War II, from which it inherited much of its training, capabilities and institutional culture. The CIA itself was created in 1947 by President Harry S. Truman, whose government was found in dire necessity to update its intelligence apparatus due to the start of the Cold War and the, in retrospect correct, assumption that covert operations would spearhead this new conflict. However, the CIA's full potential would not be realised until the Korean War.
Since the Korean War, the CIA has been involved in numerous operations across the globe, and is the primary means by which the United States Government fights its proxy conflicts. Through covert arms smuggling, elections interference and, when the situation is most dire, regime change operations, the CIA enacts Washington D.C.'s will across the globe. However, not all of these operations have been successful. For example, in April of 1960, its attempted overthrow of The Republic of Cuba would en up in the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion, which saw most of its operatives and auxilliaries killed or missing in action.
The CIA's operative branch is the Special Activities Division, made up of special forces operators recruited from across the numerous branches of the United States Armed Forces. However, following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, many of its activities were relegated to the Armed Forces, such as the wildly successful MACV-SOG.
In an effort to clean up its reputation and gain an advantage over the KGB, the CIA has experimented with numerous bleeding-edge technologies, including Psionic Theory. It has most recently been involved in a conspiracy within the United States for tests conducted on unconsenting citizens as part of its enigmatic mind-control program, Project MKUltra.