Order officially creating the U.S. Intelligence Community
Executive Order 12333 was signed by President Ronald Reagan on December 4, 1981.
Executive Order 12333, signed on December 4, 1981 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, was an executive order intended to extend powers and responsibilities of U.S. intelligence agencies and direct the leaders of U.S. federal agencies to co-operate fully with CIA requests for information.[1] This executive order was titled United States Intelligence Activities.
"Goals, Direction, Duties and Responsibilities with Respect to the National Intelligence Effort" lays out roles for various intelligence agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Energy, State, and Treasury.
Part 2.3 permits collection, retention and dissemination of the following types of information along with several others.
(c) Information obtained in the course of lawful foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, international narcotics or international terrorism investigation
...
(i) Incidentally obtained information that may indicate involvement in activities that may violate federal, state, local or foreign laws[1]
Part 2.11 of this executive order reiterates a proscription on US intelligence agencies sponsoring or carrying out an assassination. It reads:[5]
No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.
Previously, EO 11905 (Gerald Ford) had banned political assassinations and EO 12036 (Jimmy Carter) had further banned indirect U.S. involvement in assassinations.[6] The ban arose in the context of the Church Committee investigation of intelligence activities, which identified US assassination plots against government figures in Cuba, South Vietnam, the Dominican Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo merely to have people more favorable to US interests replace them.[7]
A 1989 memorandum interprets the ban as an assertion of those bans already existing in international law, namely the United Nations Charter's principles of state territorial integrity and political independence and the 1907 Hague Convention on laws of war. The latter convention prohibits poisoning, "treacherous" killing, no quarter, and killing surrendered or disabled combatants in wartime. The memorandum determined that the order does not preclude the president from ordering military force against combatant forces that pose a direct threat to the security of the United States or its citizens.[8]
Executive Order 12333 has been regarded by the American intelligence community as a fundamental document authorizing the expansion of data collection activities.[9] The document has been employed by the National Security Agency as legal authorization for its collection of unencrypted information flowing through the data centers of internet communications giants Google and Yahoo!.[9]
In July 2014 chairman David Medine and two other members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a government oversight agency, indicated a desire to review Executive Order 12333 in the near future, according to a report by journalist Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian.[9]
In July 2014, former State Department official John Tye published an editorial in The Washington Post, citing his prior access to classified material on intelligence-gathering activities under Executive Order 12333, and arguing that the order represented a significant threat to Americans' privacy and civil liberties.[10]
