Central Intelligence Agency
From Stormravengaming
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an intelligence agency of the United States government. Its primary function is obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons, and reporting such information to the branches of the government. Its secondary function is propaganda or public relations, overt and covert information dissemination, both true and false, and influencing others to decide in favor of the United States government. The third function of the CIA is as the hidden hand of the U.S. government, by engaging in covert operations at the direction of the President. This last function has caused the most controversy for the CIA, raising questions about the legality, morality, effectiveness, and wisdom of such operations.
The CIA is part of the American Intelligence Community, led by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The role and functions of the CIA are roughly equivalent to those of the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Israel's Mossad. Its headquarters are in the community of Langley, in Fairfax County, Virginia, a few miles northwest from downtown Washington, D.C. along the Potomac River.
For a full description of the real-world agency, see the article at Wikipedia.
In TV Superheroes
The CIA carries out its usual real-world activities and also has secretive divisions whose purposes relate to various paranormal tasks. The black-ops division called APO, for instance, though tasked to a variety of covert activities relating to international terrorism and crime, is often given the task of securing the mysterious Rambaldi artifacts and stopping those others who pursue them.
At least two international, criminal organizations – the Alliance of Twelve and Prophet Five – have established cells (the SDs and the Shed, respectively) which falsely claim, for purposes of recruiting willing personnel, to be covert CIA operations. Although CIA operations have effectively crippled or destroyed both of these organizations, there could be others following the same tactic.
See Central Intelligence Agency (TV Superheroes) for full details.
