The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world and performing covert actions. The CIA was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt with a Presidential military order issued on June 13, 1942, and was originally named Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
In the novel The Wallenberg Dossier the CIA is often described and one of its operatives, Robert Taylor Cole, is a central character of the novel.
The CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. After the Second World War President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order dissolving the OSS. Army Intelligence agent Colonel Sidney Mashbir and Commander Ellis M. Zacharias worked for four months at the direction of Fleet Admiral Joseph Ernest King, and prepared the first draft and implementing directives for the creation of what would become the Central Intelligence Agency. President Harry S. Truman then created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a Director of Central Intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946. This group was eventually transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency by implementation of the National Security Act of 1947.