Conspiracy theory: the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a bunch of loose cannons, who go off on their own to do whatever mischief their pointy little heads come up with. Fact: the CIA is an agency of the US government which carries out tasks assigned to it by the National Command Authority. For example, the CIA overthrow of the semi-democratically elected government of Iranian PM Mohammed Mosaddeq, with the active assistance of the British SAS, was ordered by President Eisenhower, at the request of British PM Churchill.   Many of the operations carried out by the CIA have been, at best, morally reprehensible but that doesn't mean that they ever did anything without specific orders.