The United States Army Counter Intelligence Corps was a World War II and early Cold War intelligence agency. Its role was taken over by the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1961.
The CIC had its origins in the Corps of Intelligence Police founded by Ralph Van Deman in 1917. This organization, operating within the USA and on attachment to the AEF in France, at its peak numbered over 600 men. However in the post-war period, the policy of isolationism, retrenchment of military spending and economic depression meant that by the mid-1930s its numbers had fallen to fewer than 20 officers.
The looming threat of war in the late 1930s brought an expansion of the CIP back to its WWI levels, and the entry of the United States into World War II in December 1941 brought an even greater expansion, and a new name. On 13 December 1941 the Adjutant General of the Army issued an order renaming the CIP as the Counter Intelligence Corps, effective from 1 January 1942. A new complement of 543 officers and 4,431 non-commissioned agents was authorized.
The CIC recruited men with legal, police or other investigative backgrounds, and particularly looked for men with foreign language skills. However there were never enough of these and local interpreters where often recruited. As most CIC agents in the field held only non-commissioned officer rank - Sergeant or Corporal - they wore either plain-clothes, or uniforms without badges of rank, and were instructed to identify themselves only as "Agent" or "Special Agent" as appropriate, in order to facilitate their work.
Within the US the CIC, in collaboration with the Provost Marshal General and the FBI, carried out background checks on military personnel having access to classified material, investigations of possible sabotage and subversion, and allegations of disloyalty, especially those directed against Americans of Japanese, Italian or German ancestry. However the use of informants within the Army become politically controversial, and CIC was forced to curtail its activities. CIC units were also involved in providing security for the Manhattan Project.
In the European and Pacific theaters of operations CIC deployed detachments at all levels. These detachments provided tactical intelligence about the enemy from captured documents, interrogations of captured troops, and from para-military and civilian sources. They were also involved in providing security for military installations and staging areas, located enemy agents, and acted to counter stay-behind networks. They also provided training to combat units in security, censorship, the seizure of documents, and the dangers of booby traps. In some cases CIC agents found themselves acting as the de facto Military Government on the occupation of large towns prior to the arrival of AMGOT officers. As the war in Europe came to a close CIC were involved in the Operations Alsos, Paperclip and TICOM, searching for German personnel and research in atomic weapons, rockets and cryptography.
In the immediate post-war period the CIC operated in the occupied countries, particularly Japan, Germany and Austria, countering the black market, and searching for and arresting notable members of the previous regime. Despite the problem of demobilization, with many experienced agents returning to civilian life, CIC became the leading intelligence organization in the American occupation zones, and very soon found themselves facing a new enemy in the emerging Cold War.
The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 meant that CIC was once again involved in a military conflict, and it underwent a major expansion. However this proved to be CIC's last chance to enjoy resources and recruits.
The proliferation of intelligence agencies had meant needless duplication of effort and disputes over responsibility, so in 1961 the CIC ceased to exist as an independent organisation, as it and its Navy and Air Force equivalents were combined into the Defense Intelligence Agency.
One of CIC's operations in post-war Europe was the operation of a "rat-line" - a conduit for spiriting informants and defectors out of the Soviet Zones of Occupation to safety in South America, via Italy, with false identities paid for by CIC. However in 1983 the arrest of former SS officer Klaus Barbie in Bolivia raised questions as to how the "Butcher of Lyons" had escaped. It was then revealed that Barbie had worked for CIC from 1947, and in 1951 had been provided with the means of escape in return his services as an agent and informant.
A Department of Justice investigation, also uncovered the CIC's dealings with Father Krunoslav Draganović, a Croatian cleric based in Rome, who while working for CIC, also operated his own clandestine rat-line to transport Ustaše war criminals to Latin America. A further report in 1988 also examined the CIC's use of Nazi war criminals and collaborators as informants in the years after World War II.