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  3. How the CIA Works [A]Despite plenty of Hollywood films about the CIA and its spies, many people still don’t know what the ag

How the CIA Works [A]Despite plenty of Hollywood films about the CIA and its spies, many people still don’t know what the ag

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问题     How the CIA Works
    [A]Despite plenty of Hollywood films about the CIA and its spies, many people still don’t know what the agency actually does. The CIA stands for the Central Intelligence Agency. Its primary stated mission is to collect, evaluate and spread foreign intelligence to assist the president and senior United States government policymakers in making decisions about national security. The CIA may also engage in covert(秘密的)action at the president’s request. It doesn’t make policy. It isn’t allowed to spy on the domestic activities of Americans or to participate in assassinations, either— though it has been accused of doing both.
    [B]The CIA reports both to the executive and legislative branches. During the CIA’s history, the amount of oversight has ebbed and flowed. On the executive side, the CIA must answer to three groups—the National Security Council, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the Intelligence Oversight Board.
    CIA History
    [C]The United States has always engaged in foreign intelligence activities. Covert action aided the patriots in winning the Revolutionary War. But the first formal, organized agencies didn’t exist until the 1880s, when the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Army’s Military Intelligence Division were created. Around World War I, the Bureau of Investigation(the forerunner of the FBI)took over intelligence-gathering duties. The intelligence structure continued through several repetitions. For example, the Office of Strategic Services, known as the OSS, was established in 1942 and abolished in 1945.
    [D]After World War II, U.S. leaders struggled with how to improve national intelligence. The Pearl Harbor bombing, which brought the United States into World War II, was considered a major intelligence failure.
    [E]In 1947, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, which created the CIA. The act also created a director of central intelligence, who had three different roles: the president’s principal adviser on security issues, the head of the entire U.S. intelligence community and the head of the CIA, one of the agencies within that intelligence community. This structure was revised in 2004, with the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which created the position of director of national intelligence to oversee the intelligence community. Now, the director of the CIA reports to the director of national intelligence.
    [F]Two years later, Congress passed the Central Intelligence Agency Act, which allows the agency to keep its budget and staffing secret. For many years, the agency’s primary mission was to protect the United States against communism and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. These days, the agency has an even more complex job—to protect the United States from terrorist threats from all over the globe.
    CIA Structure
    [G]The CIA is broken down into four different teams, each with its own responsibilities. National Clandestine Service is where the so-called "spies" work. NCS employees go undercover abroad to collect foreign intelligence. They recruit agents to collect what is called "human intelligence." What kinds of people work for the NCS? NCS employees are generally well-educated, know other languages, like to work with people from all over the world and can adapt to any situation, including dangerous ones. Most people, including their friends and family members, will never know exactly what NCS employees do. Later we’ll take a look at how the spies stay undercover and check out some of their cool gadgets.
    [H]The people on Directorate of Science and Technology team collect overt, or open source, intelligence. Overt intelligence consists of information that appears on TV, on the radio, in magazines or in newspapers. They also use electronic and satellite photography. This team usually recruits people who enjoy science and engineering.
    [I]All of the information gathered by the first two teams is turned over to the Directorate of Intelligence. Members of this team interpret the information and write reports about it. A DI employee must have excellent writing and analytical skills, be comfortable presenting information in front of groups and be able to handle deadline pressure.
    [J]Directorate of Support team provides support for the rest of the organization and handles things like hiring and training. "The Directorate of Support attracts the person who may be a specialist in a field such as an artist or a finance officer, or a generalist with many different talents," according to the CIA Web site.
Spy Stuff
    [K]About a third of the agency’s estimated 20, 000 employees are undercover or have been at some point in their CIA careers, according to a Los Angeles Times story, which explored just how they keep those covers.
    [L]Most of the agency’s overseas officers are under official cover, meaning they pose as employees of another government agency, such as the state department. A much smaller number are under nonofficial cover or NOC(pronounced "knock"). This means they usually pose as employees of real international corporations, employees of fake companies or as students. Valerie Plame worked as a NOC, posing as the employee of a shell company in Boston called Brewster-Jennings. NOC is more dangerous than having an official cover, because if NOCs are caught by a foreign intelligence service, they have no diplomatic immunity to protect them from prosecution in that country.
    [M]In a newspaper interview, an anonymous source said that he posed as a mid-level executive at multinational corporations while collecting intelligence overseas for more than a decade. He worked several years as a business consultant before joining the agency, giving him a great resume for the NOC program. Senior executives at his covert employer’s were aware of his real job, but his coworkers day-to-day were not. He carried out the normal duties that someone in his cover job would do, once even working on a $2 million deal. However, he also often spent three or four nights a week holding secret meetings.
    [N]There is plenty of lore(传说)about the cloak-and-dagger lives that spies lead. Some of it is just that-lore. On the other hand, spies through the years really have used a variety of gadgets and technology to do their jobs. Some are now treasured up at the CIA Museum. Highlights of the museum include:(1)The dead drop spike, a concealment device that has been used since the late 1960s to hide money, maps, documents, microfilm and other items. The spike is waterproof and can be shoved into the ground or placed in a shallow stream to be retrieved later.(2)The Mark IV microdot camera was used to pass documents between agents in East and West Berlin during the 1950s and ’60s. Agents took photographs that were the size of a pinhead and glued them to typed letters. The agent who received the letter could then view the image under a microscope.(3)The silver dollar hollow container is still being used today. It looks like a silver dollar and can be used to hide messages or film.
    [O]Though the agency has had its share of failures and scandals, the government still depends heavily on the CIA to provide intelligence and assist with maintaining national security.
Engaging in secret action at the president’s request is among the CIA’s responsibility.
选项
答案A
解析 根据Engaging in和action at the president’s request定位到A段。该段第4句说，中情局也可能应总统的要求从事一些秘密活动。本题句子的secret对应原文的covert。
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