Cover-up Ends: CIA Required to Report Criminal Actions By Agents to DOJ
President Gerald Ford’s Justice Department and the CIA reached an agreement on this day whereby the CIA would report any possible criminal actions by its employees to the Department of Justice.
The agreement reversed the earlier policy, established 22 years earlier on this same day, February 18, 1954, which allowed the CIA not to report such actions.
This reform was a result of the exposés of abuses by the CIA and other intelligence agencies by the Senate Church Committee (created on January 27, 1975) and the House Pike Committee (created on February 19, 1975), in the wake of the Watergate Scandal and revelations of official misconduct.
Read about the history of the CIA: Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2007)
Learn more: Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008)
Learn more about the CIA today: https://www.hrw.org/topic/counterterrorism/cia-activities