CHRONOLOGY
-
c.6000 B.C.
-
The rise of the great ancient civilizations, beginning 6,000 years ago
in Mesopotamia, begat institutions and persons devoted to the security
and preservation of their ruling regimes and founded the need for
espionage, intelligence, and security operations.
-
c.3500 B.C.
-
Underground passages first used as hiding places and escape routes
during times of war.
-
c.1980 B.C.
-
Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhet I is targeted as one of the first recorded
victims of political assassination.
-
c.1500 B.C.
-
Between 1500
B.C.
and 1200
B.C.,
Greece's many wars with its regional rivals lead to the
development of new military and intelligence strategies. The early
Greeks relied on deception as a primary means of achieving surprise
attacks on their enemies.
-
c.1000 B.C.
-
From 1,000
B.C.
onwards, Egyptian espionage operations focused on foreign intelligence
about the political and military strength of rivals Greece and Rome.
Egyptian spies were the first to develop the extensive use of poisons,
including toxins derived from plants and snakes, to carry out
assassinations or acts of sabotage.
-
c.500 B.C.
-
Chinese military logician Sun-tzu stresses the importance of
intelligence gathering and deception in his treatise
The Art of War.
In this work, added to by later philosophers, Sun-tzu detailed methods
of espionage that included the use of defectors, double agents, and
organized spy rings.
-
c.480 B.C.
-
Demaratus of Sparta uses an early form of secret writing, concealing a
message on a wooden tablet covered with wax to warn his countrymen of
invasion by the Persian empire.
-
c.400 B.C.
-
The Spartans use a cryptographic system called a
scytale
on papyrus wrapped around wooden scrolls.
-
c.400 B.C.
-
Tunneling first used in warfare.
-
c.300 B.C.
-
Arthasastra
, an ancient Indian manual on politics, discusses mining, metallurgy,
medicine, pyrotechnics, poisons, and fermented liquors.
-
c.300 B.C.
-
During the Etruscan wars, Roman consul Fabius Maximus sends his brother
to spy on Umbrians. Romans develop use of intelligence to gain treaties
and scout military forces.
-
44 B.C.
-
Assassination of Julius Caesar; records have established that the Roman
intelligence community knew of the plot and even provided information to
Caesar or his assistants providing the names of several conspirators. In
a pattern to be repeated throughout the ages, the information from the
intelligence community was ignored.
-
c.100 A.D.
-
Roman records dating to the first century mention the presence of a
secret police force, the
frumentarii
.
-
c.900 A.D.
-
Lack of records conceals facts of espionage during the Middle Ages, but
the birth of large nation-states, such as France and England, in the
ninth and tenth centuries facilitated the need for intelligence in a
diplomatic setting.
-
1095
-
Pope Urban II calls for the first Crusade, a military campaign to
recapture Jerusalem and the Holy Lands from Muslim and Byzantine rule.
Over the next four centuries, the Catholic Church masses several large
armies, and employs spies to report on defenses surrounding
Constantinople and Jerusalem. Special intelligence agents also
infiltrate prisons to free captured crusaders, and sabotage rival
palaces, mosques, and military defenses.
-
c.1200
-
Thirteenth-century Church councils establish laws regarding the
prosecution of heretics and anti-clerical political leaders. The ensuing
movement became known as the Inquisition. Espionage was an essential
component of the Inquisition. The Church relied on vast networks of
informants to find and denounce suspected heretics and political
dissidents.
-
1245
-
A Franciscan monk, Carpini, is used by Pope Innocent IV to gather
intelligence about Mongols.
-
1520
-
Niccolo Machiavelli, a Florentine political philosopher, publishes a
series of book detailing the qualities and actions of effective rulers.
In his works,
The Prince
, and
The Art of War
, Machiavelli advocates that rulers routinely employ espionage
tradecraft, engaging in deception and spying to insure protection of
their power and interests. His advice, much of which was culled from
rediscovered works of Aristotle and Cicero, was intended for the ruling
Medici princes of Florence. However, the works gained popularity several
centuries after their 1520 publication.
-
c.1550
-
Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I nurture a spy network to locate
and infiltrate Catholic loyalist cells that threaten the English
monarchy. The Elizabethan intelligence community employs linguists,
scholars, authors, engineers, and scientists, relying on professional
experts to seek and analyze intelligence information.
-
1574
-
Francis Walsingham, joint secretary of state under Queen Elizabeth I of
Britain, mounts an elaborate and effective spy network that uncovers a
plot against Elizabeth by the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots, who was
then executed. Later, in 1587, the spy network provides Elizabeth with
information warning of the impending attack of the Spanish Armada.
-
1593
-
Christopher Marlowe, English dramatist/playwright/poet, is murdered in a
Deptford tavern after being accused of being a spy.
-
c.1600
-
Chemists invent invisible inks, and the rebirth of complex mathematics
revives long-dormant encryption and code methods. Later, in the
Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, the development of
telescopes, magnifying glasses, the camera obscura, and clocks
facilitates remote surveillance and the effective use of "dead
drops" to pass information between agents.
-
1670
-
Secret treaty between Charles II and Louis XIV.
-
c.1700
-
The Age of Empires: espionage further develops in the numerous conflicts
and wars that occur in Europe and between rival colonial powers in
Europe and abroad. Industrialization, economic and territorial
expansion, the diversification of political philosophies and regimes,
and immigration all transform the world's intelligence
communities.
-
1703
-
Although concepts of disease are primitive, in an act of biological
warfare, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, commander-in-chief of British forces in
North America, suggests grinding the scabs of smallpox pustules into
blankets intended for Native American tribes known to trade with the
French.
-
1776
-
Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford), an English physicist whose work
contributed to the formulation of the second law of thermodynamics, acts
as Tory spy during the American Revolution.
-
1776
-
Nathan Hale hanged by the British as a spy during the American
Revolution. His last words are reputed to have been, "I only
regret that I have but one life to give for my country."
-
1780
-
General Benedict Arnold betrays the colonial revolution when he promises
secretly to surrender the fort at West Point to the British army. Arnold
flees to England; his co-conspirator, British spy Major John Andre, is
hanged.
-
1789
-
Congress passes the Judiciary Act, which establishes the federal justice
system and creates the Office of the Attorney General, as well as the
U.S. Marshal Service.
-
1789
-
U.S. Customs Service begins operation on July 31.
-
1789
-
Congress establishes the Department of State on September 15.
-
1789
-
French spy Richeborg (a dwarf) is disguised as a baby in diapers, and
carried in girl's arms, so he can eavesdrop on conversations and
carry secret letters through Paris during the French Revolution.
-
1789
-
During the French Revolution, Robespierre's informant networks
denounce traitors to the new republic and track down refugee aristocrats
and clergy for trial and execution. The wide application of treason
charges marks one of the greatest abuses of intelligence powers in the
modern era.
-
1790
-
France introduces the metric system.
-
1794
-
First army air corps established when revolutionary France creates a
military balloon contingent.
-
1795
-
Martin Heinrich Klaproth, German chemist, isolates a new metal and names
it titanium, after the Titans of Greek mythology. He gives full credit
to English mineralogist William Gregor, who first discovered it in 1791.
-
1798
-
Government legislation is passed to establish hospitals in the United
States devoted to the care of ill mariners. This initiative leads to the
establishment of a hygenic laboratory, which eventually grows to become
the National Institutes of Health.
-
1798
-
Geologists accompany Napoleon's expeditionary force to Egypt.
-
1798
-
U.S. Congress establishes the Department of the Navy, which also
includes the Marine Corps.
-
1799
-
Chinese emperor Kia King's ban on opium fails to stop the
lucrative British opium trade.
-
1800
-
Records indicate use of chloral hydrate in the "Mickey
Finn," an anesthetic cocktail used to abduct or lure sailors to
serve on ships bound for sea.
-
1800
-
Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, Italian physicist,
announces his invention of the voltaic pile, which is the first battery.
His work duplicating Galvani's 1791 "animal
electricity" experiment leads him to discover that it is the
contact of dissimilar metals that causes the electricity. He arranges
suitable pairs of metallic plates in a certain order, separates them by
pieces of leather soaked in brine, and creates a pile, or battery, that
produces a continuous and controllable electric current.
-
c.1800
-
Colonial rulers and powers employ secret police and agents of espionage
throughout their territorial holdings, hoping to quell anti-colonial
rebellions and separatist movements.
-
1802
-
John Dalton introduces modern atomic theory into the science of
chemistry.
-
1804
-
Joseph Fouché, a French revolutionary and minister of police,
sets up the first modern police state, and uses his spy network to
uncover and foil a plot by George Cadoudal against Napoleon Bonaparte.
-
1805
-
Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, French chemist, establishes that precisely two
volumes of hydrogen combine with one volume of oxygen to form water.
-
1812
-
Second U.S. war with Great Britain, commonly called the War of 1812.
-
1817
-
German pharmacist Frederick Serturner announces the extraction of
morphine from opium.
-
1818
-
Augustin-Jean Fresnel, French physicist, publishes his
Mémoire sur la diffraction de la lumière
in which he demonstrates the ability of a transverse wave theory of
light to account for such phenomena as reflection, refraction,
polarization, interference, and diffraction patterns.
-
1820
-
André Marie Ampère, French mathematician and physicist,
extends Ørsted's work and formulates one of the basic laws
of electromagnetism.
-
1823
-
Monroe Doctrine declares Western Hemisphere a U.S. "sphere of
influence."
-
1827
-
Georg Simon Ohm, German physicist, experiments with electricity using
wires of different length and diameter and discovers that a long, thick
wire passes less current than a short, thin wire. He states what becomes
Ohm's law.
-
1828
-
Friedrich Wöhler synthesizes urea. This is generally regarded as
the first organic chemical produced in the laboratory, and an important
step in disproving the idea that only living organisms can produce
organic compounds. Work by Wöhler and others establish the
foundations of organic chemistry and biochemistry.
-
1828
-
Luigi Rolando, Italian anatomist, achieves the first synthetic
electrical stimulation of the brain.
-
1831
-
Michael Faraday, English physicist and chemist, discovers
electromagnetic induction. After laboring for ten years to achieve the
opposite of what Ørsted had done—to convert magnetism into
electricity—he finally produces for the first time an induction
current using a magnet. This is the first electric generator. With such
a device, mechanical energy can be converted into electrical energy.
-
1837
-
Invention of the Daguerreotype, the first practical form of photography.
When widely incorporated into intelligence practices in the 1860s, the
photograph permitted agents of espionage to portray targets, documents,
and other interests.
-
1839
-
First Opium War begins between Britain and China. The conflict lasts
until 1842. Imperial Chinese commissioner Lin Tse-hsü seizes or
destroys vast amounts of opium, including stocks owned by British
traders. The result was a Chinese payment of an indemnity of more than
21 million silver dollars and Hong Kong being ceded to Britain under the
Treaty of Nanking.
-
1839
-
Theodore Schwann extends the theory of cells to include animals and
helps establish the basic unity of the two great kingdoms of life. He
publishes
Microscopical Researches into the Accordance in the Structure and
Growth of Animals and Plants
, in which he asserts that all living things are made up of cells, and
that each cell contains certain essential components. He also coins the
term "metabolism" to describe the overall chemical changes
that take place in living tissues.
-
1839
-
Invention of microfilm by John Dancer.
-
1840
-
Friedrich Gustav Jacob Henle publishes the first histology textbook,
General Anatomy
. This work includes the first modern discussion of the germ theory of
communicable diseases.
-
1841
-
Eugene-Melchoir Peligot isolates the element uranium.
-
1843
-
Charles-Frédéric Gerhardt, French chemist, simpli-fies
chemical formula-writing, so that water becomes H
2
0 instead of the previous H
4
0
2
.
-
1843
-
Howard Aiken develops first mechanical programmable calculator.
-
1844
-
Samuel Morse sends the first message via telegraph. His code (Morse
code) and telegraph were able to send messages over lines in a matter of
minutes, requiring only knowledge of the operational code. As soon as
governments began to use telegraphs to send vital communications, rival
intelligence services learned to tap the line, gaining access to secret
communications and conducting detailed surveillance from a comfortable
distance. Use of the telegraph necessitated the development of complex
codes and the creation of specialized cryptology departments. By the
turn of the twentieth century, most national intelligence operations in
Europe and the United States were involved communications surveillance
and the tapping of both wired and wireless telegraphs.
-
1845
-
Christian Friedrich Schönbein, German-Swiss chemist, prepares
guncotton. He discovers that a certain acid mixture combines with the
cellulose in cotton to produce an explosive that burns without smoke or
residue.
-
1846
-
Ascanio Sobrero, Italian chemist, slowly adds glycerin to a mixture of
nitric and sulfuric acids and first produces nitroglycerine. He is so
impressed by the explosive potential of a single drop in a heated test
tube and so fearful of its use in war that he makes no attempt to
exploit it. It is another 20 years before Alfred Nobel learns the proper
formula and puts it to use.
-
1846
-
U.S. forces victorious in Mexican War, which results in annexation of
what is today the southwestern United States.
-
1848
-
U.S. Congress passes Drug Importation Act that allows U.S. Customs
Service inspection to stop entry of foreign drugs.
-
1849
-
First aerial bombardment campaign, by Austrians against Venetians, using
200 unpiloted hot-air balloons containing bombs set on timers.
-
1852
-
Jean Foucault invents gyroscope, an important instrument still used in
modern navigation and guidance systems.
-
1855
-
Henri-Etienne Sainte-Claire Deville, French chemist, first produces
aluminum in a pure state. He produces the metal in quantity by heating
aluminum chloride with metallic sodium.
-
1856
-
Second Opium War begins between Britain and China. The conflict lasts
until 1860. Also known as the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French War in
China, the war broke out after a British-flagged ship, the
Arrow
, is impounded by China. France joins Britain in the war after the
murder of a French missionary. China is again defeated, resulting in
another large indemnity and the legalization of opium under the Treaty
of Tientsin.
-
1857
-
Louis Pasteur demonstrates that lactic acid fermentation is caused by a
living organism. Between 1857 and 1880, he performs a series of
experiments that refute the doctrine of spontaneous generation. He also
introduces vaccines for fowl cholera, anthrax, and rabies, based on
attenuated strains of viruses and bacteria.
-
1858
-
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace agree to a joint presentation
of their theory of evolution by natural selection.
-
1858
-
Rudolf Ludwig Carl Virchow publishes his landmark paper "Cellular
Pathology" and establishes the field of cellular pathology.
Virchow asserts that all cells arise from preexisting cells (
Omnis cellula e cellula
). He argues that the cell is the ultimate locus of all disease.
-
1858
-
A group of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) forms another
revolutionary group, the Fenian Brotherhood, with the goal of freeing
Ireland from British rule.
-
1861
-
U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). Morphine gains wide medical use
during the conflict.
-
1861
-
President-elect Abraham Lincoln arrives secretly in Washington to foil
assassination plot brewing in Baltimore.
-
1861
-
Balloonist and Ohioan Thaddeus Lowe is accused by irate South Carolina
citizens of being a Yankee spy after his balloon lands following a 500
mile aerial flight. Lowe eventually volunteers his services to Union
forces and becomes director of the Union's balloon corps. His
resignation two years later brings the corps to an end.
-
1861
-
Rose O'Neal Greenhow is arrested as Confederate spy after warning
General P.G.T. Beauregard of a planned Union attack on Manassas in July
1861. She is released in 1862 but dies in a shipwreck.
-
1862
-
Department of Agriculture establishes the Bureau of Chemistry, the
organizational forerunner of the Food and Drug Administration.
-
1862
-
Legal Tender Act authorizes the U.S. government to issue currency notes
through the Treasury Department. These notes, which Treasury continues
to issue until 1971, are known as U.S. notes.
-
1862
-
In September, President Lincoln suspends the right of
habeas corpus
in order to allow federal authorities to arrest and detain suspected
Confederate sympathizers and draft resisters without arrest warrants or
speedy trials. The following year, Congress reaffirms the suspension in
the
Habeas Corpus
Act of 1863.
-
1863
-
Ferdinand Reich, German mineralogist, and his assistant Hieronymus
Theodor Richter examine zinc ore spectroscopically and discover the new,
indigo-colored element iridium. It is used in the next century in the
making of transistors.
-
1863
-
Geology plays decisive role in the Battle of Gettysburg as Union troops
hold key high-ground positions.
-
1863
-
Belle Boyd, a Confederate spy, is released from prison in Washington.
-
1864
-
James Clerk Maxwell develops equations of electromagnetic wave
propagation.
-
1864
-
First Geneva Convention addresses "the amelioration of the
condition of the wounded on the field of battle," resulting in
principles for protecting noncombatant personnel caring for the wounded.
The convention also establishes the International Red Cross.
-
1865
-
An epidemic of rinderpest kills 500,000 cattle in Great Britain.
Government inquiries into the outbreak pave the way for the development
of contemporary theories of epidemiology and the germ theory of disease.
-
1865
-
Gregor Mendel presents his work on hybridization of peas to the Natural
History Society of Brno, Moravia. The paper is published in the 1866
issue of the society's
Proceedings
. Mendel presents statistical evidence that hereditary factors are
inherited from both parents in a series of papers on "Experiments
on Plant Hybridization" published between 1866 and 1869. His
experiments provide evidence of dominance, the laws of segregation, and
independent assortment, although the work is generally ignored until
1900.
-
1865
-
U.S. Secret Service established to interdict counterfeit currency and
its manufacturers.
-
1865
-
President Lincoln is shot in Washington, D.C., by John Wilkes Booth.
Lincoln dies the next day; Andrew Johnson assumes the presidency.
-
1865
-
The Molly McGuires, a secret society of Irish miners, attacks coal-mine
operators and owners for mistreatment of workers.
-
1867
-
Alfred Nobel, Swedish inventor, invents dynamite, a safer and more
controllable version of nitroglycerine. He combines nitroglycerine with
"kieselguhr," or earth containing silica, and discovers
that it cannot be exploded without a detonating cap.
-
1867
-
Secret Service responsibilities broadened to include "detecting
persons perpetrating frauds against the government."
-
1869
-
Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, Russian chemist, and Julius Lothar Meyer,
German chemist, independently put forth the Periodic Table of Elements,
which arranges the elements in order of atomic weights. However, Meyer
does not publish until 1870, nor does he predict the existence of
undiscovered elements as Mendeleev does.
-
1870
-
Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet showes the importance of statistical
analysis for biologists and provides the foundations of biometry.
-
1870
-
Congress creates the Department of Justice.
-
1871
-
U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant establishes Office of the Surgeon
General.
-
1872
-
Ferdinand Julius Cohn publishes the first of four papers entitled
"Research on Bacteria," which establishes the foundation
of bacteriology as a distinct field. He systematically divides bacteria
into genera and species.
-
1873
-
James Clerk Maxwell, Scottish mathematician and physicist, publishes
Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism
in which he identifies light as an electromagnetic phenomenon. He
determines this when he finds his mathematical calculations for the
transmission speed of both electromagnetic and electrostatic waves are
the same as the known speed of light. This landmark work brings together
the three main fields of physics—electricity, magnetism, and
light.
-
1876
-
German bacteriologist Robert Koch publishes a paper on anthrax that
implicates a bacterium as the cause of the disease, validating the germ
theory of disease.
-
1876
-
Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone.
-
1876
-
The first microphone is invented by Emile Berliner.
-
1877
-
Congress passes legislation prohibiting the counterfeiting of any coin,
gold, or silver bar.
-
1878
-
Charles–Emanuel Sedillot introduces the term
"microbe." The term becomes widely used as a term for a
pathogenic bacterium.
-
1878
-
In a backlash against 12 years of martial law in the southern United
States, Congress passes the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the
military from enforcing domestic law.
-
1880
-
First attempt at passage of a nationwide food and drug law. Although
defeated in Congress, U.S. Department of Agriculture's findings
of widespread food adulteration spur continued interest in food and drug
legislation.
-
1880
-
Louis Pasteur develops a method of weakening a microbial pathogen of
chicken, and uses the term "attenuated" to describe the
weakened microbe.
-
1881
-
President James A. Garfield is shot on July 2, 1881, in Washington,
D.C., by anarchist Charles J. Guiteau. Garfield dies on September 19;
Chester A. Arthur assumes the presidency.
-
1882
-
Robert Koch discovers the tubercle bacillus and enunciates
"Koch's postulates," which define the classic
method of preserving, documenting, and studying bacteria.
-
1882
-
Establishment of the Office of Naval Intelligence, which by the early
twenty-first century will be the oldest continually operating
intelligence agency in the United States.
-
1883
-
George Francis Fitzgerald, Irish physicist, first suggests a method of
producing radio waves. From his studies of radiation, he concludes that
an oscillating current will produce electromagnetic waves. This is later
verified experimentally by Hertz in 1888 and used in the development of
wireless telegraphy.
-
1883
-
U.S. Secret Service is officially embodied as a distinct organization
within the Treasury Department.
-
1883
-
British inventor Hiram Stevens Maxim invents the machine gun.
-
1884
-
Louis Pasteur and coworkers publish a paper titled "A New
Communication on Rabies." Pasteur proves that the causal agent of
rabies can be attenuated and the weakened virus can be used as a vaccine
to prevent the disease. This work serves as the basis of future work on
virus attenuation, vaccine development, and the concept that variation
is an inherent characteristic of viruses.
-
1885
-
U.S. Army establishes its Division of Military Information, its formal
military intelligence organization.
-
1887
-
Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist, is the first to note the sudden change
in the nature of the airflow over a moving object that occurs as it
approaches the speed of sound. Because of this, the speed of sound in
air is called Mach 1. Mach 2 is twice that speed, and so on.
-
1888
-
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, German physicist, for the first time generates
electromagnetic (radio) waves and devises a detector that can measure
their wavelength. From this he is able to prove experimentally James
Clerk Maxwell's hypothesis that light is an electromagnetic
phenomenon. Hertz's work not only discovers radio waves, but
experimentally unites the three main fields of
physics—electricity, magnetism, and light.
-
1889
-
Frederick Augustus Abel, English chemist, and James Dewar, Scottish
chemist and physicist, invent cordite and pioneer the production of
smokeless powder. Their new mixture borrows from previous discoveries
but proves safer to handle.
-
1889
-
Johann Philipp Ludwig Julius Elster and Hans Friedrich Geitel, both
German physicists, study the photoelectric effect (when an electric
current is created upon the exposure of certain metals to light) and
produce the first practical photoelectric cells that can measure the
intensity of light.
-
1890
-
Oliver Joseph Lodge, English physicist, invents the coherer, a detector
of radio waves that, although replaced, makes him one of the pioneers of
early radio communication. He also suggests correctly that the sun emits
radio waves.
-
1892
-
George M. Sternberg publishes his
Practical Results of Bacteriological Researches
. Sternberg's realization that a specific antibody was produced
after infection with vaccinia virus and that immune serum could
neutralize the virus becomes the basis of virus serology. The
neutralization test provides a technique for diagnosing viral
infections, measuring the immune response, distinguishing antigenic
similarities and differences among viruses, and conducting retrospective
epidemiological surveys.
-
1892
-
U.S. Congress awards Harriet Tubman a pension for her work as a Union
nurse, spy and scout during the Civil War.
-
1894
-
U.S. Secret Service begins part-time protection of U.S. president Grover
Cleveland.
-
1895
-
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, German physicist, discovers x rays. While
working on cathode ray tubes and experimenting with luminescence, he
notices that a nearby sheet of paper that is coated with a luminescent
substance glows whenever the tube is turned on. For seven weeks he
continues to experiment, and near the end of the year is able to report
the basic properties of the unknown rays he names "x
RAYS."
-
1896
-
Antoine-Henri Becquerel, French physicist, discovers radioactivity in
uranium ore.
-
1896
-
Guglielmo Marconi, Italian electrical engineer, travels to England to
apply for and obtain the first patent in the history of radio. By this
time, he has sent and received a radio signal over nine miles.
-
1896
-
Johann Elster and Hans Friedrich Geitel study the newly discovered
radioactivity and demonstrate that external effects do not influence the
intensity of radiation. They are also the first to characterize
radioactivity as being caused by changes that occur within the atom.
-
1897
-
Joseph John Thomson, English physicist, discovers the electron. He
conducts cathode ray experiments and concludes that the rays consist of
negatively charged "electrons" that are smaller in mass
than atoms.
-
1898
-
Marie Sklodowska Curie and Pierre Curie discover the radioactive element
radium. They spend the next four years refining eight tons of
pitchblende to obtain a full gram of radium.
-
1898
-
Spanish-American War.
-
1899
-
First Hague Conference establishes international laws of conduct in
warfare.
-
1900
-
Carl Correns, Hugo de Vries, and Erich von Tschermak independently
rediscover Mendel's laws of inheritance. Their publications mark
the beginning of modern genetics. Using several plant species, de Vries
and Correns perform breeding experiments that parallel Mendel's
earlier studies and independently arrive at similar interpretations of
their results. Therefore, upon reading Mendel's publication, they
immediately recognized its significance. William Bateson describes the
importance of Mendel's contribution in an address to the Royal
Society of London.
-
1900
-
Ernest Rutherford, British physicist, first determines radioactive
half-life.
-
1900
-
Friedrich Ernst Dorn, German physicist, demonstrates that radium emits a
gas as it produces radioactivity. This proves to be the first evidence
that in the radioactive process one element is actually transmuted into
another.
-
1900
-
Karl Landsteiner discovers the blood-agglutination phenomenon and the
four major blood types in humans.
-
1901
-
President William McKinley is assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz.
-
1901
-
United States acquires rights from Cuba to use Guantanamo Bay
indefinitely as a naval base.
-
1901
-
Antoine Henri Becquerel, French physicist, studies the rays emitted by
the natural substance uranium and concludes that the only place they
could be coming from is within the atoms of uranium. This marks the
first clear understanding of the atom as something more than a
featureless sphere. Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity and
his focus on the uranium atom make him the father of modern atomic and
nuclear physics.
-
1901
-
After the assassination of President William McKinley, Congress formally
places the U.S. Secret Service—which first began guarding
presidents during the second Grover Cleveland administration seven years
before—in charge of protecting the president.
-
1901
-
Henry Classification System devised for fingerprint analysis by Sir
Edward Henry.
-
1902
-
The Secret Service assumes full-time responsibility for protection of
the president. Two operatives are assigned full time to the White House
detail.
-
1902
-
U.S. Congress passes Spooner Act, which authorizes the United States to
purchase the assets of a French company that had attempted to build a
canal through Panama, and to begin a U.S. effort toward building a
canal.
-
1902
-
Oliver Heaviside, English physicist and electrical engineer, and Arthur
Edwin Kennelly, British-American electrical engineer, independently and
almost simultaneously make the first prediction of the existence of the
ionosphere, an electrically conductive layer in the upper atmosphere
that reflects radio waves. They theorize correctly that wireless
telegraphy works over long distances because a conducting layer of
atmosphere exists that allows radio waves to follow Earth's
curvature instead of traveling off into space.
-
1903
-
For their work in the physics of radioactivity, Antoine Becquerel,
Pierre Curie, and Marie Curie are awarded the Nobel Prize for physics.
-
1903
-
Panama secedes from Colombia. The new government will cooperate in the
building of the Panama Canal.
-
1903
-
U.S. Army implements the concept of a permanent general staff, and with
it the idea, pioneered in Europe, of the four sections of a military
command. The Division of Military Information thus becomes G-2.E170.
-
1903
-
Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first powered flight.
-
1904
-
Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine asserts that the United
States has the right to assume the defacto role of an international
police power.
-
1904
-
Congress creates Panama Canal Zone, and in the summer construction on
the Panama Canal begins.
-
1905
-
Bloody Sunday incident in Russia. Tsarist troops fire on marchers in St.
Petersburg.
-
1905
-
Sinn Fein political movement for Irish independence is founded.
-
1905
-
Albert Einstein, German-Swiss physicist, publishes his second paper on
relativity including his famous equation stating the relationship
between mass and energy: E = mc
2
. In this equation, E is energy, m is mass, and c is the velocity of
light. This contains the revolutionary concept that mass and energy are
simply different aspects of the same phenomenon.
-
1906
-
Congress passes Sundry Civil Expenses Act, which provides funds for
presidential protection by the Secret Service.
-
1906
-
Secret Service operatives began to investigate the western land frauds.
The investigations return millions of acres of land to the government.
Operative Joseph A. Walker is murdered on November 3, 1907, while
working on one of these cases, becoming the first operative killed in
the line of duty.
-
1907
-
Triple Entente formed as Great Britain formally joins the defense pact
between France and Russia.
-
1907
-
Bertram Borden Boltwood, American chemist and physicist, discovers what
he believes is a new element which he calls ionium. It is later
determined to be a radioactive isotope of thorium. Boltwood also invents
a radioactive dating procedure.
-
1907
-
Second Hague Conference establishes further international laws of
conduct in warfare, with a focus on war in a maritime environment.
-
1907
-
Establishment of Aeronautical Section of the U.S. Army Signal
Corps—first incarnation of the U.S. Air Force. This becomes the
Aviation Section in 1914.
-
1908
-
Large deposits of petroleum are discovered in the Middle East.
-
1908
-
Ernest Rutherford and Hans Wilhelm Geiger develop an electrical
alpha-particle counter. Over the next few years, Geiger continues to
improve this device which becomes known as the Geiger counter.
-
1908
-
Secret Service begins protecting the president-elect.
-
1908
-
A Sundry Civil Service Bill declares that Secret Service employees
accepting assignments by any department other than Treasury (except in
counterfeiting cases) would be suspended for two years. The provision
became effective July 1, and prevented the practice of agencies like the
Department of Justice (DOJ) borrowing investigators for specific cases.
-
1908
-
Formal beginning of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), which became the
FBI in 1935.
-
1909
-
U.S. Congress passes Copyright Law.
-
1909
-
Alfred Stock, German chemist, first synthesizes boron hydrides
(compounds of boron and hydrogen). Forty year later, boron hydrides
prove useful to space exploration as additives to rocket fuel.
-
1909
-
An intelligence report in the British Parliament leads to the
establishment of the Secret Service Bureau, precursor to both MI5 and
MI6.
-
1910
-
The United States sends military forces to Mexico during Mexican
revolution.
-
1910
-
Britain signs an agreement with China to dismantle the opium trade.
However, the profits made from its cultivation, manufacture, and sale
were so enormous that no serious interruption would be effected until
World War II closed supply routes throughout Asia.
-
1910
-
Congress passes the White Slave Traffic Act on June 25. Also known as
the Mann Act, this new law significantly increases BOI jurisdiction over
interstate crime.
-
1911
-
At 11:01
a.m.
on January 18, the U.S. Navy's Eugene Ely lands a Curtiss pusher
aircraft on a specially built platform aboard the USS
Pennsylvania.
Thus is born the concept of the aircraft carrier.
-
1911
-
Fritz Pregl, Austrian chemist, first introduces organic microanalysis.
He invents analytic methods that make it possible to determine the
empirical formula of an organic compound from just a few milligrams of
the substance.
-
1911
-
Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes, Dutch physicist, first discovers the phenomenon
of superconductivity when he studies the properties of certain metals
subjected to the low temperatures of liquid helium. He finds that some
metals, like mercury and lead, undergo a total loss of electrical
resistance. He also discovers that a form of liquid helium is produced
which has properties unlike any other substances.
-
1911
-
Marie Curie receives the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery of
the elements radium and polonium, for the isolation of radium, and for
investigating its compounds. It is Curie's second Nobel Prize.
-
1911
-
Georg von Hevesy conceives the idea of using radioactive tracers. Von
Hevesy later wins the Nobel Prize in 1943.
-
1911
-
Italians make first use of aircraft in combat during 1911–12 war
against Turkey. On October 23, Italians conduct first reconnaissance in
an airplane, against Turkish troops near Tripoli in what is now Libya.
On November 1, the Italians again make aviation history when they
conduct the first aerial bombing raid against an enemy.
-
1912
-
U.S. Marines invade Honduras, Cuba, and Nicaragua to protect American
interests. U.S. troops will remain in Nicaragua until 1930s.
-
1912
-
The U.S. Public Health Service is established.
-
1912
-
Joseph Thomson develops a forerunner of mass spectrometry and separation
of isotopes.
-
1912
-
Max von Laue, German physicist, obtains diffraction pattern for x rays
through a crystal and offers evidence that x rays are a form of
electromagnetic radiation and are waves. This marks the beginning of
studies on the physics of solids as an analysis of the periodic and
regular disposition of atoms in a crystal.
-
1912
-
Paul Ehrlich discovers a chemical cure for syphilis. This is the first
chemotherapeutic agent for a bacterial disease.
-
1912
-
Theodore Roosevelt survives assassination attempt on October 14 in
Milwaukee while campaigning for a second term as president.
-
1913
-
U.S. troops assist in pursuit of Mexican rebel leader Francisco Pancho
Villa in northern Mexico.
-
1913
-
Congress authorizes permanent protection of the president and the
statutory authorization for president-elect protection.
-
1913
-
Harry Brearly, English metallurgist, accidentally discovers a
nickel-chromium alloy that is corrosion resistant. It becomes stainless
steel.
-
1913
-
Max Bodenstein, German physical chemist, develops the concept of a chain
reaction in which one molecular change triggers another, and so on.
-
1913
-
U.S. Congress passes Federal Reserve Act, creating Federal Reserve
System.
-
1913
-
Ratification of Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which gives
Congress power to levy taxes.
-
1914
-
The assassination of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand precipitates
World War I.
-
1914
-
World War I places additional responsibilities on the BOI. On April 6,
1917, Congress declares war on Germany and President Woodrow Wilson
authorizes the BOI to detain enemy aliens.
-
1914
-
Panama Canal opens on August 15.
-
1915
-
Germany uses poison gas at the Battle of Ypres.
-
1915
-
A U-boat sinks the British ship
Lusitania,
a passenger ship also carrying military supplies from the United States
to Britain.
-
1915
-
Frederick William Twort publishes the landmark paper
An Investigation of the Nature of Ultra-Microscopic Viruses
. Twort notes the degeneration of bacterial colonies and suggests that
the causative agent is an ultra-microscopic-filterable virus that
multiplies true to type.
-
1915
-
President Wilson directs the secretary of the treasury to have the
Secret Service investigate espionage in the United States.
-
1915
-
U.S. Coast Guard founded.
-
1915
-
British nurse Edith Cavell is shot as a spy by a German firing squad for
assisting British soldiers seeking to escape the Germans.
-
1915
-
After denouncing them as spies, the United States expels German
attaches.
-
1916
-
German use of zeppelins, important both as surveillance craft and
bombers during the first two years of World War I, begins to decline in
September, after Allies develop special explosive bullets capable of
downing airships.
-
1916
-
The Black Tom explosion. On July 29, German agents set fire to a complex
of warehouses and ships in the New York harbor that hold munitions,
fuel, and explosives bound to aid the Allies in their fight. Though the
United States is technically a neutral nation at the time of the attack,
their general policies greatly favor the Allies. The attack persuades
many that the United States should join the Allies and intervene in the
war in Europe.
-
1916
-
The Home Section of the British Secret Service Bureau becomes MI5, or
the Security Service.
-
1916
-
Mexican guerrilla leader Pancho Villa conducts a raid on Columbus, New
Mexico, killing 17 Americans.
-
1917
-
The British issue a declaration calling for a Jewish homeland in
Palestine.
-
1917
-
Congress authorizes permanent protection of the president's
immediate family and "threats" directed toward the
president become a federal violation.
-
1917
-
Tsarist Russia's February Revolution begins with rioting and
strikes in St. Petersburg. Alexander Kerensky ultimately assumes control
of democratic socialist provisional government, exposes undercover
agents of the Okhrana.
-
1917
-
British signal intelligence, having cracked the German cipher,
intercepts a message from German foreign minister Arthur Zimmermann to
the Mexican president, promising to return territories Mexico had lost
to the United States in the Mexican War if Mexico will enter the war on
Germany's side.
-
1917
-
Mata Hari (the pseudonym of Dutch dancer Margaretha Geertruida Zelle),
who joined the German secret service in 1907, is executed by French
firing squad. Mata Hari betrayed many military secrets that were gained
from Allied officers who were on intimate terms with her.
-
1917
-
United States declares war on Germany.
-
1917
-
The U.S. Army creates the Cipher Bureau within the Military Intelligence
Division.
-
1917
-
American engineer Gilbert S. Vernam develops the first significant
automated encryption and decryption device when he brings together an
electromagnetic ciphering machine with a teletypewriter.
-
1917
-
U.S. Congress passes the Espionage Act, criminalizing the disclosure of
military, industrial, or government secrets related to national
security. The act also prohibits antiwar activism and refusal of
conscription, sparking controversy.
-
1917
-
V.I. Lenin returns from exile to Russia following Romanov abdication of
the Russian throne. Lenin leads a Bolshevik revolution in November.
-
1918
-
German radio officer Fritz Nebel develops the ADFGX cipher.
-
1918
-
Russia signs the Brest-Litovsk treaty, ending Russian participation in
World War I.
-
1918
-
Bolsheviks execute Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
-
1918
-
Major Joseph O. Mauborgne of the U.S. Army devises the one-time pad,
whereby sender and receiver possess identical pads of cipher sheets that
are used once and then destroyed—a virtually unbreakable system.
-
1918
-
German engineer Arthur Scherbius invents a three-rotor cipher machine,
the Enigma.
-
1918
-
Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates and World War I ends in
Europe after 20 million casualties and six million deaths.
-
1918
-
U.S. president Wilson's fourteen-point peace proposal introduced.
-
1918
-
Sedition Act of 1918 amends Espionage and Sedition Acts to broaden the
arrest powers granted to federal agents in apprehending and detaining
individuals suspected of treason or antiwar activity.
-
1918
-
Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs is convicted and sentenced to a
ten-year prison term under the Espionage Act for an antiwar speech he
delivers in Canton, Ohio. Debs is later pardoned by President Warren G.
Harding in December 1921.
-
1918
-
Hungary overthrows the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
-
1918
-
An influenza epidemic spreads across Asia and warravaged Europe to the
Americas. The epidemic eventually kills 20 million people, including
500,000 Americans.
-
1919
-
The Treaty of Versailles requires Germany, now under the Weimar
Republic, to cede territory to France, Belgium, and Poland; relinquish
its colonies; and pay extensive war reparations that will eventually
cripple the German economy. The U.S. Senate refuses to ratify the
treaty.
-
1919
-
U.S. House of Representatives refuses to seat socialist Victor Berger, a
congressman elected from Wisconsin.
-
1919
-
U.S. fears increase after anarchist groups target government and
business leaders with bombs in April and May; the terrorist wave
culminates in a series of bombings in eight U.S. cities on June 2. Under
the orders of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, federal agents begin
round-up of suspected communists and anarchists in November. The Palmer
Raids, as they became known, last until March 1920 and result in the
arrest of 6,000 suspects.
-
1919
-
Anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman are deported by the United
States to Russia.
-
1919
-
Establishment of British Government Code and Cypher School
(GC&CS) in November.
-
1919
-
Congress passes the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act, also known as the
Dyer Act, on October 28. This act authorizes the Bureau of Investigation
to investigate auto thefts that cross state lines.
-
1920
-
The League of Nations first meets in Geneva.
-
1920
-
Bolshevist or anarchist terrorists accused of September 16 bombing on
Wall St. in New York City which kills 35 people and injures hundreds
more.
-
1920
-
Iraq is placed under British mandate.
-
1921
-
Except for six counties in Protestant Northern Ireland, the British
Parliament grants Ireland dominion status.
-
1921
-
William Marston develops first modern polygraph.
-
1921
-
Twenty-six-year-old J. Edgar Hoover is named assistant director of BOI.
-
1922
-
Militants in the Irish Sinn Fein party form the Irish Republican Army
(IRA).
-
1922
-
White House police force created at request of President Warren G.
Harding. Ultimately this will become the uniformed division of the U.S.
Secret Service.
-
1922
-
On March 20, U.S. Navy commissions the
Langley,
its first aircraft carrier. Later that year, the United States and
other powers sign the Washington Naval Limitation Treaty, which controls
battleship inventories, thus spurring carrier production. Congress
authorizes the conversion of the unfinished battleships
Lexington
and
Saratoga
to become the navy's second and third carriers.
-
1922
-
Benito Mussolini becomes Italian dictator and forms a Fascist
government.
-
1923
-
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) formed.
-
1923
-
Adolf Hitler, leader of the German Nazi party, attempts to seize power.
He is arrested and sentenced to prison.
-
1923
-
Works published before 1923 are now in the public domain, meaning that
they no longer hold a copyright, though a particular translation, made
more recently, may be copyrighted. For works published after 1923, there
are specific provisions as to when the item becomes part of the public
domain. Some of these provisions, and other aspects of U.S. copyright
law, are governed by the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary
and Artistic Works, which the United States signed in 1989.
-
1924
-
Lenin dies, to be succeeded by a triumvirate of leaders headed by Joseph
Stalin.
-
1924
-
The U.S. Navy creates its first cryptanalytic group within the Code and
Signal Section of the Office of Naval Communications.
-
1924
-
From prison, Adolf Hitler publishes
Mein Kampf,
in which he outlines the plan for the conquest of eastern Europe and
the extermination of the Jews, which he will undertake as German leader
less than a decade later.
-
1924
-
J. Edgar Hoover designated director of the BOI.
-
1924
-
BOI establishes an identification division after Congress authorizes
"the exchange of identification records with officers of the
cities, counties, and states."
-
1925
-
France begins construction of defensive Maginot Line against future
German aggression. The line eventually proves useless as Hitler's
troops bypass the line during their 1940 conquest of France.
-
1925
-
Johannes Hans Berger, German neurologist, records the first human
electroencephalogram (EEG).
-
1925
-
Patrick Blackett, English physicist, takes the first photographs of a
nuclear reaction in progress. To achieve this he uses a Wilson cloud
chamber and takes over 20,000 photographs of more than 400,000 alpha
particle tracks and observes eight actual collisions of an alpha
particle and a nitrogen molecule.
-
1925
-
Special Agent Edwin C. Shanahan becomes the first BOI agent killed in
the line of duty.
-
1926
-
Jiang Jie-shi (Chiang Kai-shek) assumes control of the Chinese
government.
-
1926
-
The passage of the Air Commerce Act creates the earliest predecessor of
the FAA, called the Aeronautics Branch.
-
1926
-
U.S. Army Air Service becomes Army Air Corps.
-
1926
-
Emperor Showa Tenno Hirohito assumes power in Japan.
-
1926
-
U.S. forces intervene in Nicaragua against leftist nationalist
insurgency led by Augusto Cesar Sandino.
-
1927
-
Jiang Jie-shi defeats Communist Mao Zedong's (Mao Tse-tung)
"Autumn Harvest" rebellion.
-
1927
-
Charles Lindbergh makes first nonstop solo transatlantic flight.
-
1927
-
German physicist Werner Heisenberg publishes uncertainty principle.
-
1928
-
George Gamow, Russian-American physicist, develops the quantum theory of
radioactivity which is the first theory to successfully explain the
behavior of radioactive elements, some of which decay in seconds and
others after thousands of years.
-
1928
-
Hermann Weyl, German mathematician, publishes his
Gruppen theorie und Quatenmechanik
in which he shows that most of the regularities of quantum phenomena on
the atomic level can be most simply understood using group theory. His
book helps mold modern quantum theory.
-
1928
-
Sixty-two nations sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact (including the United
States, Great Britain, Japan, and Italy) and renounce war as a means to
solve international disputes.
-
1929
-
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes becomes Yugoslavia.
-
1929
-
Scottish biochemist Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin. He observes
that the mold
Penicillium notatum
inhibits the growth of some bacteria. This is the first antibiotic, and
it opens a new era of "wonder drugs" to combat infection
and disease.
-
1929
-
John Douglas Cockcroft, English physicist, and Irish physicist Ernest
Thomas Sinton Walton devise the first particle accelerator, which
produces proton beam energies up to 600,000 volts. Three years later,
they will use the accelerator to bombard lithium and produce two alpha
particles (having combined lithium and hydrogen to produce helium). This
is the first nuclear reaction that has been brought about through the
use of artificially accelerated particles and without the use of any
form of natural radioactivity; it will prove highly significant to the
creation of an atomic bomb.
-
1929
-
Julius Arthur Nieuwland, Belgian-American chemist, develops neoprene,
the first successful synthetic rubber.
-
1929
-
U.S. stock market crash in October ushers in Great Depression.
-
1930
-
U.S. Food, Drug, and Insecticide Administration is renamed Food and Drug
Administration (FDA).
-
1930
-
Nils Edlefsen constructs the first cyclotron under the direction of the
American physicist Ernest Orlando Lawrence. This first instrument is a
small machine that is used to produce directed beams of charged
particles. Over the next few years, Lawrence continues to build larger
instruments, which eventually contribute to the discovery of new
elements.
-
1930
-
U.S. Treasury Department creates Bureau of Narcotics, which will remain
the principal anti-drug agency of the federal government until the late
1960s.
-
1930
-
Establishment of U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) to
consolidate all military operations in cryptography and cryptanalysis.
-
1930
-
Primitive anthrax vaccine developed.
-
1931
-
Japanese invade Manchuria.
-
1932
-
James Chadwick, English physicist, proves the existence of the neutral
particle of the atom's nucleus, called the neutron. It proves to
be by far the most useful particle for initiating nuclear reactions.
-
1932
-
Werner Heisenberg wins the Nobel Prize in physics for the creation of
quantum mechanics, which has led to the discovery of the allotropic
forms of hydrogen.
-
1932
-
Aldous Huxley publishes the novel
Brave New World,
which presents a dystopian view of genetic manipulations of human
beings.
-
1932
-
The BOI starts the international exchange of fingerprint data with
friendly foreign governments. Later halted as war approached, the
program was not reinstituted until after World War II.
-
1932
-
In response to the Lindbergh kidnapping case and other high-profile
cases, the Federal Kidnapping Act is passed to authorize BOI to
investigate kidnappings perpetrated across state borders.
-
1932
-
Iraq declared an independent state.
-
1932
-
BOI establishes technical laboratory.
-
1933
-
In January, Adolf Hitler and Nazi Party take power in Germany. By the
end of the year, Hitler proclaims Third Reich.
-
1933
-
U.S. president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escapes assassination attempt
in Miami.
-
1933
-
Gilbert Newton Lewis, American chemist, is the first to prepare a sample
of water in which all the hydrogen atoms consist of deuterium (the heavy
hydrogen isotope). Called "heavy water," this will later
play an important role in the production of the atomic bomb.
-
1934
-
Frédéric Joliot-Curie and Irène Joliot-Curie, a
husband-and-wife team of French physicists, discover what they call
artificial radioactivity
. They bombard aluminum to produce a radioactive form of phosphorus.
They soon learn that radioactivity is not confined only to heavy
elements like uranium, but that any element can become radioactive if
the proper isotope is prepared. For producing the first artificial
radioactive element they win the Nobel Prize in chemistry the next year.
-
1934
-
John Marrack begins a series of studies that leads to the formation of
the hypothesis governing the association between an antigen and the
corresponding antibody.
-
1934
-
In an attempt to reduce organized crime violence, the U.S. Congress
passes the National Firearms Act, which places restrictions on the sale
of certain weapons favored by gang members.
-
1935
-
German Nazi party formalizes anti-Semitism with passage of Nuremberg
laws.
-
1935
-
In violation of the Versailles Treaty, Germany begins to rearm and
reconstitutes the German Air Force (Luftwaffe).
-
1935
-
Federal Bureau of Narcotics, forerunner of the modern Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA), begins a campaign portraying marijuana as a drug
that leads to addiction, violence, and insanity. The government produces
films such as
Marihuana
(1935),
Reefer Madness
(1936), and
Assassin of Youth
(1937).
-
1935
-
Irish Protestants in Belfast riot against Catholics, provoking Catholic
retaliation.
-
1935
-
Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett, English physicist, demonstrates that
when gamma rays pass through lead, they sometimes disappear and give
rise to a positron and an electron. This is the first demonstrable case
of the conversion of energy into matter and as such, is a confirmation
of Einstein's famous E=mc
2
equation.
-
1935
-
Robert Watson-Watt develops design for RADAR.
-
1935
-
Italian forces invade Ethiopia. The League of Nations, formed after
World War I as an international body to ensure stability, fails to act.
-
1935
-
The BOI officially becomes the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on
July 1.
-
1936
-
Spanish Civil War begins and becomes an international battleground
pitting Francisco Franco's Fascist right against Marxist
republican forces. Germany and Italy support Franco, while Soviet Union
backs republicans. War will end with Franco's victory in 1939.
-
1936
-
Joseph Stalin begins a "great purge." Lysenkoism, a
repressive pseudoscientific set of beliefs, also begins to gain strength
in Soviet politics.
-
1936
-
Sulphonamides, a class of antibiotics, introduced.
-
1936
-
Adolf Hitler includes synthetic fuel production as a priority in his
Four-Year Plan.
-
1936
-
Eugene Paul Wigner, Hungarian-American physicist, proposes the theory of
neutron absorption which comes into play when nuclear reactors are
built.
-
1936
-
Germany reoccupies the Rhine River area, a key move toward later
expansion in Europe.
-
1936
-
Italy and Germany sign Axis Pact, to which Japan will become a signatory
in 1940.
-
1936
-
President Roosevelt asks FBI to report on the activities of Nazi and
communist groups.
-
1937
-
Italy withdraws from the League of Nations to join a Germany-Japan pact.
-
1937
-
Emilio Segre, Italian-American physicist, and Carlo Perrier bombard
molybdenum with deuterons and neutrons to produce element 43,
technetium. This is the first element to be prepared artificially that
does not exist in nature.
-
1937
-
William Thomas Astbury, English physicist, first obtains information
about the structure of nucleic acids by means of x-ray diffraction.
-
1937
-
Japan invades eastern China.
-
1938
-
German Nazis attack Jews and Jewish businesses during night of violence
termed
Kristallnacht.
-
1938
-
Hitler annexes Austria.
-
1938
-
At Munich conference in September, Germany, backed by Italy, gains title
to the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia. Britain, led by Prime
Minister Neville Chamberlain, and France, comply in this act of
diplomatic conquest. After appeasing Hitler, Chamberlain returns to
Britain and proclaims, "Peace in our time!"
-
1938
-
Otto Frisch and Lise Meitner advance theory of uranium fission.
-
1938
-
Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann at Sandoz Laboratories synthesizes LSD.
After initial testing on animals, Hoffman's subsequent accidental
ingestion of the drug in 1943 reveals LSD's hallucinogenic
properties.
-
1938
-
German scientists develop sarin while researching pesticides.
-
1938
-
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC; sometimes called the
Dies Committee) is initially charged with ferreting out Nazi activity in
the United States but also begins to attempt to investigate Communist
activity.
-
1938
-
Orson Welles' radio drama based on H.G. Wells' novel
War of the Worlds
causes panic among listeners who believe Martians have invaded Earth.
-
1938
-
Debut of the Minox camera, designed by Walter Zapp of Latvia, which was
destined to become one of the most widely used miniature cameras by
intelligence services on both sides of the iron curtain.
-
1939
-
In Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh creates the Viet Minh party to oppose French
colonialism.
-
1939
-
Ernest Chain and H.W. Florey refine the purification of penicillin,
allowing the mass production of the antibiotic.
-
1939
-
President Roosevelt assigns responsibility for investigating espionage,
sabotage and other subversive activities jointly to the FBI, the
Military Intelligence Service of the War Department (MID), and the
Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).
-
1939
-
Leo Szilard, Hungarian-American physicist, and Canadian-American
physicist Walter Henry Zinn confirm that fission reactions (nuclear
chain reactions) can be self-sustaining using uranium.
-
1939
-
Marguerite Perey, French chemist, first isolates element number 87 from
among the breakdown products of uranium. She names it francium, after
her country.
-
1939
-
Niels Bohr, Danish physicist, proposes liquid-drop model of the atomic
nucleus and offers his theory of the mechanism of fission. His
prediction that it is the uranium-235 isotope that undergoes fission is
proved correct when work on an atomic bomb begins in the United States.
-
1939
-
Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman publish results in which they observe that
fission reactions can be self-sustaining because of the chain reaction
that occurs. This discovery eventually makes the construction of an
atomic bomb feasible.
-
1939
-
Paul Hermann Müller, Swiss chemist, discovers the insect-killing
properties of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane). It is used during
WW II to kill disease-carrying lice, fleas, and mosquitoes, and after
the war to kill agricultural pests. It is later proved to be a harmful
environmental pollutant and its use in the United States is banned in
1972.
-
1939
-
Richard Brooke Roberts, American biophysicist, discovers that uranium
fission does not release all the neutrons it produces at one time. This
phenomenon of
delayed neutrons
eventually proves to be an important element in the safety of nuclear
reactors.
-
1939
-
U.S. Geological Survey strategic mineral program started.
-
1939
-
The little-known tank battle at Nomonhan in August discourages Japanese
hopes of easy victory against Soviets—a major factor motivating
the Japanese refusal to join Germans in attacking Soviet Union two years
later.
-
1939
-
Nazi Germany and Soviet Union sign Non-Aggression Pact on August 23.
-
1939
-
Albert Einstein sends a letter to President Roosevelt informing him of
German atomic research and the potential for the development of an
atomic bomb.
-
1939
-
World War II begins with the German invasion of Poland on September 1.
Britain and France declare war on Germany.
-
1940
-
Germany launches a full-scale air war against England and extends
persecution of the Jews into Poland, Romania, and the Netherlands.
-
1940
-
Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as Britain's prime
minister.
-
1940
-
Ernest Chain and E.P. Abraham detail the inactivation of penicillin by a
substance produced by
Escherichia coli
. This is the first bacterial compound known to produce resistance to an
antibacterial agent.
-
1940
-
Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico City by agents of SMERSH (
SMERrt SHpionam
or "Death to Spies").
-
1940
-
The British begin to intercept German non-Morse teleprinter text that
used the Baudot Code, an international standard where each letter is
represented by five binary elements.
-
1940
-
The FBI participates in the growing Red Scare by conducting additional
arrests of suspected Communist agents under powers granted by the 1940
Smith Act, which permits the arrest of any individual inciting the
overthrow of the government.
-
1940
-
The FBI establishes a Special Intelligence Service (SIS).
-
1941
-
The Lend-Lease Act allows the United States to send military supplies to
Britian and other allies.
-
1941
-
Arnold O. Beckman, American physicist and inventor, invents the
spectrophotometer. This instrument measures light at the electron level
and can be used for many kinds of chemical analysis.
-
1941
-
Glenn Theodore Seaborg, American physicist, and his colleagues prepare
the transuranium element 94, plutonium.
-
1941
-
Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife first produced and used by Allies in
World War II.
-
1941
-
U.S. Army Air Corps becomes Army Air Force. Six years later, the
National Security Act of 1947 will transform this group into a full
military service, the U.S. Air Force.
-
1941
-
On June 22, Germany launches largest land invasion in history against
Soviet Union. Initial German efforts will meet with success, but three
Russian winters, combined with Russian resistance, will result in German
defeat by early 1944.
-
1941
-
U.S. president Roosevelt appoints William J. (Wild Bill) Donovan as
Coordinator of Information, a proto intelligence service.
-
1941
-
On December 7, the Japanese attack the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii. In response, the United States enters World War II. The FBI is
authorized to act against dangerous enemy aliens and to seize enemy
aliens and contraband (e.g. short-wave radios, dynamite, weapons, and
ammunition).
-
1942
-
German Nazi party makes Jewish extermination a systematic state policy,
termed the "Final Solution."
-
1942
-
In the United States, economic depression is relieved by war production
of planes, tanks, and other military supplies.
-
1942
-
The largest detainment of American citizens in the name of national
security (ultimately resulting in the internment of 110,000
Japanese-Americans during World War II) begins two months after the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. Department of Justice orders
the detention of about 2,200 Japanese, 1,400 German, and 269 Italian
nationals. More than 47,000 Issei (Japanese-born residents) are barred
under federal law from gaining American citizenship, and 80,000 of their
American-born family members, called Nissei, are subject to internment
under Executive Order 9066, signed by President Roosevelt in February.
-
1942
-
Despite early losses in the war, Allied forces rally, defeating German
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in North Africa.
-
1942
-
Office of Strategic Services formed by President Roosevelt and led by
William J. Donovan.
-
1942
-
Alcohol Tax Unit (ATU) formed and given responsibility for enforcing the
Firearms Act.
-
1942
-
The U.S. military creates the Army-Navy Communications Intelligence
Board (ANCIB).
-
1942
-
The Manhattan Project is formed to secretly build the atomic bomb before
the Germans.
-
1942
-
Enrico Fermi, Italian-American physicist, heads a Manhattan Project team
at the University of Chicago that produces the first controlled chain
reaction in an atomic pile of uranium and graphite. With this first
self-sustaining chain reaction, the atomic age begins.
-
1942
-
Frank Harold Spedding, American physicist, develops the necessary
methods to produce pure uranium in very large quantities for the U.S.
atomic bomb effort. Spedding's laboratory produces two tons in
November, to be used for the first "atomic pile."
-
1942
-
The Clinton Engineer Works is built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (later
renamed the Oak Ridge National Laboratory). The Clinton Pile, the first
true plutonium production reactor, begins operation in November 1943.
-
1942
-
Harvard University chemist Louis F. Fieser invents napalm.
-
1942
-
U.S. Geological Survey establishes military geology branch.
-
1942
-
Selman Waksman suggests that the word "antibiotics" be
used to identify antimicrobial compounds that are made by bacteria.
-
1942
-
British Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) renamed the
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to conceal its cryptologic
mission.
-
1942
-
U.S. Naval intelligence breaks the Japanese navy's JN–25
code, providing valuable intelligence from the Battle of Midway to the
end of World War II.
-
1942
-
U.S. naval victories against Japan in the naval battles of the Coral Sea
in May and Midway in June. Fought primarily with carriers and aircraft,
the first of these marks history's first naval battle in which
opposing fleets' ships never came in sight of one another.
-
1942
-
Four German saboteurs come ashore from a U-boat on the beach near
Amagansett, Long Island. Within the week, a second team of German
saboteurs lands in Florida. Some saboteurs surrender and within two
weeks the FBI captures the others.
-
1943
-
Mussolini overthrown and arrested on July 25; Prime Minister Pietro
Badoglio, who has secretly been in contact with Allies, becomes Italian
leader. Italy surrenders to the Allies. Mussolini is later rescued in a
daring German airborne raid on September 12. He will spend the remainder
of the war (and his life) as head of a puppet government based in the
northern Italian town of Salo.
-
1943
-
The Soviet army defeats German troops at Stalingrad.
-
1943
-
Stalin abolishes the Soviet Comintern and the KGB and GRU (Soviet Army
Intelligence) assume all espionage activities.
-
1943
-
J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist, is placed in charge of U.S.
atomic bomb production at Los Alamos, New Mexico. He supervises the work
of 4,500 scientists and oversees the successful design construction and
explosion of the bomb.
-
1943
-
Lars Onsager, Norwegian-American chemist, works out the theoretical
basis for the gaseous-diffusion method of separating uranium-235 from
the more common uranium-238. This is essential for producing a nuclear
bomb or nuclear power.
-
1943
-
First operational nuclear reactor is activated at the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
-
1943
-
Construction starts (completed 1945) at the Hanford Site in Richland,
Washington, where plutonium is to be produced.
-
1943
-
Colossus Mark I, the world's first programmable computing
machine, built.
-
1943
-
Lockheed establishes its advanced development programs headquarters at
Palmdale, California. Over the years that follow, this facility, known
as the "Skunk Works," will be the birthplace of
extraordinary aircraft such as the U-2, the SR-71, and the F-117A.
-
1943
-
U.S. Army renames SIS as the Signal Security Agency, or SSA.
-
1943
-
The SZ43 cipher machine is first used by Germany in WWII. The German
military did not replace Enigma with the SZ42 for general use because
the SZ42's complexity made it too heavy for the field.
-
1943
-
On January 15, just 16 months after the September 11, 1941,
groundbreaking, the new Pentagon building is dedicated in Washington,
D.C.
-
1943
-
U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service, a forerunner of NSA,
formally begins program codenamed VENONA to break encrypted Soviet
diplomatic communications.
-
1943
-
Amy Elizabeth Thorpe, a U.S. born British spy known as
"Cynthia" acts as World War II's "Mata
Hari."
-
1944
-
To combat battle fatigue during World War II, nearly 200 million
amphetamine tablets are issued to U.S. soldiers stationed in Great
Britain during the war.
-
1944
-
Massive Allied invasion of European continent at Normandy in France on
June 6 (D Day). Invasion, under the command of General Dwight D.
Eisenhower, is preceded by deception effort designed to convince Germans
that the action will occur elsewhere.
-
1944
-
Allies liberate France, allow French troops under de Gaulle to
ceremonially enter Paris first. Nazi puppet government at Vichy, France,
collapses.
-
1944
-
Assassination attempt on Hitler and several other high-ranking
officials. Himmler suspects that the plot was the work of agents inside
of the government, most especially the Abwehr.
-
1944
-
Colossus II computer becomes operational.
-
1944
-
Otto Hahn receives the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery of
nuclear fission.
-
1944
-
Soviet Viktor Kravchenko defects to United States.
-
1944
-
Stalin orders creation of Department S, which will use American
scientists as Russian spies.
-
1944
-
Britain's MI6 establishes a section devoted to Soviet espionage
and subversion. Unfortunately, its director is Harold (Kim) Philby, a
Soviet agent.
-
1945
-
Yalta Summit sets forth terms of a divided postwar Europe.
-
1945
-
U.S. troops liberate Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald.
-
1945
-
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini killed by partisans on April 28, Adolf
Hitler commits suicide April 30, and Germany surrenders to the Allies on
May 7. Germany is divided and occupied by the United States, the Soviet
Union, Great Britain, and France.
-
1945
-
First atomic bomb is detonated by the United States at Trinity test site
near Almagordo, New Mexico. The experimental bomb generates an explosive
power equivalent to 15–20 thousand tons of TNT. The United States
then destroys the Japanese city of Hiroshima with a nuclear fission bomb
based on uranium-235 on August 6. Three days later a plutonium-based
bomb destroys the city of Nagasaki. Japan surrenders on August 14 and
World War II ends. This is the first use of nuclear power as a weapon.
-
1945
-
U.S. Department of State intelligence experts join Army-Navy
Communications Intelligence Board (ANCIB) to form combined
State-Army-Navy Communications Intelligence Board (STANCIB).
-
1945
-
United States develops a radar-absorbent paint containing iron.
-
1945
-
Army Security Agency (ASA) begins to provide the U.S. Army with signal
intelligence and security information (ASA operates until 1976).
-
1945
-
OSS is abolished; operations transfer to its successor, Central
Intelligence Group (CIG).
-
1945
-
League of Arab States formed; United Nations (UN) is created on October
24.
-
1946
-
In a January 22 presidential directive, President Harry S. Truman first
uses the term "Director of Central Intelligence" (DCI)
which he designates as the lead position in the CIG within the National
Intelligence Authority (NIA). NIA will be abolished, and the DCI will
eventually lead the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
-
1946
-
U.S. diplomat George Kennan's "Long Telegram"
provides the ideological foundation for postwar policy toward the Soviet
Union. Referring to the repressive Soviet domination of the Eastern Bloc
states, British former prime minister Winston Churchill states that an
"iron curtain" has come down across Europe.
-
1946
-
The organizational structure of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is
changed in response to the increased need for national security in
Canada. Personnel are assigned to the Special Branch, which deals
specifically with issues of national security.
-
1946
-
State-Army-Navy Communications Intelligence Board (STANCIB) becomes the
U.S. Communications Intelligence Board (USCIB). FBI intelligence
officers join the working group.
-
1946
-
In a postwar reorganization of the U.S. Army, the Military Intelligence
Division is placed over the Army Security Agency and the Counter
Intelligence Corps.
-
1946
-
U.S. Air Force Strategic Air Command (SAC) established at Offutt Air
Force Base in Nebraska. It eventually becomes the command center for the
defense "triad": the strategic bombers and ICBMs
(intercontinental ballistic missiles) of the Air Force, and the U.S.
Navy's submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
-
1946
-
On March 5, United States and United Kingdom sign UKUSA agreement, which
brings together signals intelligence efforts of U.S., British, Canadian,
Australian, and New Zealand agencies.
-
1946
-
American Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), is
completed by the U.S. Army. ENIAC is considered the world's first
computer until information on Colossus was finally declassified in the
1970s.
-
1946
-
Establishment of Bureau of Intelligence & Research, intelligence
arm of U.S. State Department.
-
1946
-
U.S. Army School of the Americas established in Panama.
-
1946
-
Baruch Plan for international control of atomic weapons presented to the
UN.
-
1946
-
The United States tests a nuclear bomb on Bikini Atoll, an island in the
Pacific.
-
1946
-
In August, Congress passes the Atomic Energy Act, creating Atomic Energy
Commission, and makes FBI responsible for investigating persons having
access to restricted nuclear data. The FBI will also be responsible for
investigation of criminal violations of this act.
-
1946
-
First Vietnam war, between Viet Minh and France, begins December 19.
-
1947
-
Voice of America begins regular radio broadcasts to Russia from
transmitters in Munich, Manila, and Honolulu in February.
-
1947
-
William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain invent the
transistor.
-
1947
-
Vice-President Richard Nixon speaks in Congress, attacking Gerhart
Eisler, who had been revealed as a German communist spy and who was then
being detained on Ellis Island for passport fraud and refusing to
testify before HUAC. The House agrees with Nixon and votes a contempt
charge, but Gerhart escapes to East Germany as a stowaway.
-
1947
-
The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 bans members of the Communist Party from
holding leadership positions in American labor unions.
-
1947
-
Three "pillars" of the containment policy are in place:
Truman Doctrine (March 12), Marshall Plan (June 5), National Security
Act (July 28). Supporting instruments include DOD, CIA, SAC, advance
bases in Turkey and Libya. Stalin creates the Cominform, or Information
Bureau of Communist parties, in August, at the meeting in Poland of the
Soviet, East European, French and Italian communist parties. Andrei
Zhadov reports to the conference that America and Russia are locked in a
two-camp struggle for world domination.
-
1947
-
Major Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager breaks the sound barrier
in a Bell XS-1 rocket-powered research plane in October.
-
1947
-
HUAC subpoenas 41 witnesses in an investigation of communism in
Hollywood films. Ten witnesses who refuse to testify are jailed for
contempt; supporters sign an
amici curiae
Supreme Court brief and many are subsequently refused work in the film
industry.
-
1947
-
The UN proposes a division of what is now Israel almost equally between
Israelis and Arabs. Arab countries reject this proposal.
-
1947
-
On December 19, the National Security Council gives the CIA orders to
conduct its first covert operation, influencing the general elections in
Italy to prevent a Communist victory. The operation is successful,
resulting in victory for the Christian Democrat party in 1948.
-
1948
-
Soon after Israel becomes a state in May, it is attacked by Egypt, Iraq,
Jordan, and Syria. Though outnumbered, the Israelis defeat the Arab
nations, and Israeli territory expands to encompass an area larger than
that allotted in the original UN partition.
-
1948
-
NSC directive creates Office of Policy Coordination to conduct covert
operations for the CIA. Former Wehrmacht officer Reinhard Gehlen is
recruited to carry out espionage against Russia in Eastern Europe.
Gehlen warns the CIA about the coming blockade of Berlin but is ignored.
-
1948
-
The United States organizes the Berlin airlift to break the blockade of
Berlin (entirely within the Soviet sector of Germany) imposed by
Soviets.
-
1948
-
Czech Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk is killed in a "fall"
from his office window following a communist coup on February 25.
-
1948
-
Yugoslavia expelled from the Cominform.
-
1948
-
DPRK (North Korea) established.
-
1948
-
Executive Order 9835 establishes Federal Employee Loyalty Program. FBI
begins background investigations and refers questionable cases to
loyalty boards. Federal employees are subject to dismissal for specific
acts including disclosure of confidential information and association
with subversive organizations.
-
1948
-
Congress creates the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
-
1948
-
Nuclear tests in the South Pacific (Operation Sandstone) pave the way
for mass production of weapons that previously had to be assembled by
hand. By late 1948, the United States has 50 nuclear bombs.
-
1948
-
Indictments issued against leaders of the U.S. Communist Party for
violation of Smith Act (advocating violent overthrow of the government).
-
1948
-
Germanium crystals are used by the Bell Telephone Company in the United
States to build the first transistors.
-
1948
-
World Health Organization (WHO) formed. The WHO subsequently becomes the
principal international organization managing public health related
issues on a global scale. Headquartered in Geneva, the WHO will
eventually become an organization of more than 190 member countries,
contributing to international public health in areas including disease
prevention and control, promotion of good health, vaccination programs,
and development of treatment and prevention standards.
-
1948
-
Alger Hiss testifies that he has never been a communist, never
participated in espionage, and does not know Whittaker Chambers.
Chambers, a former communist and editor for
Time
magazine previously testified to the HUAC that Hiss had once supplied
him with stolen documents. Chambers then produced microfilm of secret
documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm. Hiss is indicted
on charges of perjury. Eventually he is convicted and serves a prison
sentence.
-
1949
-
Victory of Mao Zedong in China forces Nationalist government to flee to
Formosa, where it establishes the Republic of China. Meanwhile, the
world's largest population falls under communist rule as the
People's Republic of China.
-
1949
-
FDA publishes "black book" guide to toxicity of chemicals
in food.
-
1949
-
Armed Forces Security Agency established to coordinate military
communications intelligence and security activities.
-
1949
-
Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and German Democratic
Republic (East Germany) are established.
-
1949
-
In April, ten countries (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland,
Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal) join the United
States and the United Kingdom to form the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO).
-
1949
-
Judith Coplon becomes the first U.S. citizen convicted as a spy, a
conviction that was later reversed because of illegal FBI wiretaps.
-
1949
-
May 12, the Soviets finally lift the blockade on Berlin. Train and auto
transport resumes into the city. Allied Airlift operations continue
through September until supplies regularly reach Berlin via train and
truck.
-
1949
-
The Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 provides special
administrative authorities and responsibilities for the agency and the
director.
-
1949
-
Russia announces that its first A-bomb was successfully tested July 14.
-
1949
-
The CIA-sponsored Radio Free Europe begins broadcasting to
Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe.
-
1950
-
Puerto Rican nationalists attempt to assassinate President Truman. As a
result of this incident, in which a Secret Service agent is killed,
Congress greatly expands the duties of the Secret Service.
-
1950
-
President Truman orders the Atomic Energy Commission to begin work to
develop the hydrogen bomb (H-bomb).
-
1950
-
Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy launches an effort to identify and
eliminate communism in America. "McCarthyism" is used to
describe McCarthy's tactics of public denunciation without proof
and forcing testimony through intimidation.
-
1950
-
British security agents in February arrest Los Alamos physicist Klaus
Fuchs after an investigation based on an FBI tip derived from Soviet
telegrams decrypted and decoded by the Army Signals Agency with FBI
investigative assistance.
-
1950
-
East German government, with the assistance of the Soviet intelligence
community, establishes the Stasi.
-
1950
-
The FBI initiates the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives Program in May in order
to draw national attention to dangerous criminals who have avoided
capture.
-
1950
-
McCarran Internal Security Act enacted, mandating that all communist
organizations must register with the attorney general. The act also
prohibits communists from working in national defense and prevents those
who are members of "totalitarian" organizations from
entering the United States.
-
1950
-
North Korea invades South Korea, igniting the Korean War. U.S. military
troops sent to expel North Korean forces as part of a UN coalition.
-
1950
-
Determined to create a framework and mechanism for the production of
reliable intelligence estimates, General Walter Bedell Smith, when he
becomes Director of Central Intelligence in October, institutes the
concept and practice of developing national intelligence estimates.
-
1950
-
Arrest of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who are tried, convicted, and
later executed for espionage against the United States.
-
1950
-
MacArthur crosses the 38th parallel in an attempt to liberate North
Korea.
-
1950
-
President Truman escapes assassination attempt unhurt as two Puerto
Rican nationalists shoot their way into Blair House in Washington, D.C.
Officer Leslie Coffelt, of the White House police, is shot and killed.
In response, Congress enacts legislation the following year that
permanently authorizes Secret Service protection of the president, his
immediate family, the president-elect, and the vice president.
-
1950
-
North Korean troops gain easy victories against UN forces, but when
MacArthur launches a bold offensive at Inchon, he cuts the North Korean
army in half. By Thanksgiving, he promises that U.S. troops will be home
by Christmas, but on November 25, China enters the war, and drives the
UN forces back to the 38th parallel. Allied bombing ensures that this
line remains the boundary between North and South Korea.
-
1951
-
In
Dennis v. U.S.,
the Supreme Court upholds decisions declaring U.S. Communist Party
illegal because the party constitutes a "clear and present
danger." The Court reverses itself in 1957.
-
1951
-
The United States forms a special committee to analyze the
nation's intelligence and cryptographic efforts. The committee
is, in part, composed of the secretaries of state, defense, and the DCI
(CIA director). Later in the year, President Truman issues a top-secret
directive creating the National Security Agency (NSA).
-
1951
-
Mossad, Israel's chief intelligence collection, counterterrorism,
and covert action agency, established on April 1.
-
1951
-
CIA is given responsibility to determine the overall requirements of
foreign economic intelligence.
-
1951
-
General MacArthur, eager for victory against the Chinese in Korea,
attempts to defy President Truman's orders to stand down, and
calls for American citizens' support of his plan to invade China.
For this act of insubordination, Truman relieves him of duty on April
11, and replaces him with General Matthew B. Ridgway.
-
1951
-
The first usable electricity from nuclear fission is produced.
-
1952
-
British scientists develop VX nerve agent while studying insecticides.
-
1952
-
First thermo-nuclear device is exploded successfully by the United
States at the Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific. This hydrogen-fusion
bomb (H bomb) is the first such bomb to work by nuclear fusion and is
considerably more powerful than the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima
on August 6, 1945.
-
1952
-
First use of isotopes in medicine.
-
1952
-
The Treasury Department's Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR)
becomes the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). BIR's Alcohol Tax
Unit—latest in a series of offices through which Treasury has
enforced federal alcohol, tobacco, and firearms policy over the
years—becomes the IRS Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division.
-
1952
-
Greece and Turkey join NATO.
-
1952
-
First U.S. overflights of Soviet airspace, using B-47 Stratojets.
-
1952
-
In National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) No. 9, a
secret memorandum issued on October 24, President Truman establishes the
U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
-
1952
-
McCarran-Walter Act is revised. The new immigration quota laws allow
more Asians but exclude "subversives" and give the
attorney general the right to deport immigrants found to be communists
even after they acquired U.S. citizenship.
-
1952
-
Great Britain explodes its first nuclear device.
-
1953
-
Joseph Stalin dies and a political power struggle starts in the U.S.S.R.
-
1953
-
James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crick publish two landmark papers in
the journal
Nature
. The papers are titled "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A
Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" and "Genetic
Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid." Watson
and Crick propose a double helical model for DNA and call attention to
the genetic implications of their model. Their model is based, in part,
on the x-ray crystallographic work of Rosalind Franklin and the
biochemical work of Erwin Chargaff. Their model explains how the genetic
material is transmitted.
-
1953
-
U.S. Federal Security Agency becomes the Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare (HEW).
-
1953
-
United States receives information on VX nerve agent production from
United Kingdom and sets up lab in Edgemont, Maryland to study it.
-
1953
-
U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers "Atoms for
Peace" speech to the UN, calling for the creation of an
organization to control and develop the use of atomic energy. He later
publicly predicts the potential for a nuclear arms race between the
United States and the Soviet Union.
-
1953
-
An armistice on July 27 brings an end to the Korean War.
-
1953
-
In August, Operation AJAX, conducted by British and American
intelligence, deposes Iraqi prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, and
restores Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the throne.
-
1954
-
CIA-supported coup in Guatemala overthrows President Jacobo Arbenz.
-
1954
-
U.S. policy of massive retaliation to any Communist aggression
(forerunner of MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction—policy).
-
1954
-
French garrison at Dien Bien Phu falls to Viet Minh on May 7, and in
July, French agree to leave Vietnam.
-
1954
-
Site-R, an underground government communications and operations facility
in Pennsylvania, is completed.
-
1954
-
U.S. Navy commissions its first nuclear sub,
Nautilus,
on September 30.
-
1954
-
Televised Army-McCarthy hearings. Senator McCarthy focuses his hunt for
communists on the highest echelons of the military, is finally denounced
for his unscrupulous tactics, and is ultimately censured by the Senate.
-
1954
-
Manhattan Project physicist Robert Oppenheimer is stripped of his
security clearance and is dismissed from government service, suspected
of being a communist sympathizer.
-
1954
-
Atomic Energy Act is passed.
-
1954
-
Communist Control Act is passed, briefly outlawing the Communist Party
in the United States.
-
1955
-
West Germany joins NATO. The Soviet Union and eight Eastern European
states respond by forming the Warsaw Pact.
-
1955
-
National Institutes of Health organizes a Division of Biologics Control
within FDA, following a death caused by a faulty polio vaccine.
-
1955
-
Cesium atomic clock developed.
-
1955
-
Boeing B-52 Stratofortress introduced.
-
1955
-
U.S. Navy Fleet Intelligence Center Pacific (FICPAC) established.
-
1955
-
ASA expands its mission to include electronic intelligence and
electronic warfare functions that had formerly been the responsibility
of the signal corps. Because its role now encompasses more than
intelligence and security, it is reassigned from G-2 (military
intelligence) to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff.
-
1955
-
The Berlin tunnel (operational from March 1955 until its discovery by
Soviet troops in April 1956) allowed Western intelligence agencies to
tap Soviet and East German communications.
-
1955
-
President Eisenhower signs a bill authorizing $46 million for
construction of a CIA Headquarters Building.
-
1955
-
A United Airlines DC-6B explodes near Longmont, Colorado, on October 1,
killing all 39 passengers and 5 crewmembers. The FBI provides assistance
from its Disaster Squad in identifying the deceased.
-
1955
-
In December, U.S. Air Force launches Project GENETRIX, a surveillance
operation using balloons over communist countries. The unsuccessful
effort comes to an end three months later.
-
1955
-
President Eisenhower sends first U.S. military and civilian advisers
into Vietnam, which in 1955 is divided into northern and southern
portions.
-
1956
-
President Eisenhower establishes the President's Board of
Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities, predecessor to the
President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
-
1956
-
First U-2 overflight of Soviet Union on July 5.
-
1956
-
Hungarian revolution is crushed by Soviet military.
-
1956
-
Suez Crisis when Western powers, worried over Egyptian president Gamal
Abdel Nasser's close ties with the Soviet bloc, refuse assistance
in building Aswan High Dam. In response, Nasser seizes the Suez Canal.
Britain and France form an alliance with Israel, which invades on
October 26.
-
1956
-
Fidel Castro launches Cuban revolution against the Batista regime.
-
1956
-
Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, speaking about the West,
states "History is on our side. We will bury you." The
following year, he becomes premier of the Soviet Union.
-
1956
-
Pakistan officially becomes an Islamic state.
-
1957
-
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is formed as an autonomous UN
body to verify that nuclear materials are not used in a prohibited
manner.
-
1957
-
In March, President Eisenhower proclaims the Eisenhower Doctrine,
whereby "the United States regards as vital to the national
interest and world peace the preservation of the independence and
integrity of the nations of the Middle East."
-
1957
-
The Soviet Union launches
Sputnik.
-
1957
-
Civil Rights Act of 1957 establishes U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
-
1957
-
The sodium reactor experiment at Santa Susana, California, provides the
first power generated from a civilian nuclear reactor.
-
1957
-
June 21, the FBI arrests Colonel Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, a Soviet
espionage agent.
-
1957
-
United States conducts first underground nuclear test in a tunnel 100
miles from Las Vegas.
-
1958
-
U.S. National Defense Education Act dedicates resources to math,
science, and language education.
-
1958
-
United States establishes NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration).
-
1958
-
Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite, launched with a cosmic ray
detector onboard.
-
1958
-
U.S. Department of Defense establishes Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA).
-
1958
-
The Federal Aviation Act passes, creating the Federal Aviation Agency.
-
1958
-
Congress passes Defense Reorganization Act, which creates unified
military commands within the U.S. Department of Defense.
-
1958
-
United States conducts nuclear tests high above the Pacific Ocean. The
explosions send out an extremely high-frequency electromagnetic pulse
that turns off street lights in Hawaii and disrupts radio navigation as
far away as Australia for up to 18 hours.
-
1958
-
Iraqi monarchy is overthrown in a military coup.
-
1958
-
Following the Geneva Conference on the Discontinuance of Nuclear Weapons
Tests, the United States, Great Britain, and Soviet Union declare
temporary testing moratoriums.
-
1959
-
The microchip, forerunner of the microprocessor, is invented.
-
1959
-
Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba on January 1.
-
1959
-
Launch of the
Forrestal,
the first of many large carriers deployed by the U.S. Navy. The
Forrestal
includes rectangular extensions on the rear part of the flight deck,
which greatly expand the deck area.
-
1959
-
U.S. Navy's Marine Mammal Program established near Los Angeles,
CA.
-
1959
-
Discoverer XIV, the first successful mission of the Corona satellite
program, which was developed the previous year to photograph sites in
the Soviet Union. The returning capsule, containing 20 pounds of film
and suspended from a parachute, is snatched from midair by a U.S. C-119
aircraft.
-
1959
-
President Eisenhower approves a secret program, proposed by the CIA, to
depose communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
-
1960
-
Chinese criticisms of the Soviet Union cause a split in Sino-Soviet
relations.
-
1960
-
Vietcong seek to overthrow South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem.
-
1960
-
First U.S. Key Hole intelligence satellite launched.
-
1960
-
Theodore Harold Maiman, American physicist, develops the first laser. He
uses a ruby cylinder that emits a light that is coherent (all in a
single direction) and monochromatic (a single wavelength). He finds that
it can travel thousands of miles as a beam without dispersing, and that
it can be concentrated into a small, super-hot spot. Laser is an acronym
for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
-
1960
-
France explodes its first nuclear device.
-
1960
-
Premier Nikita Khrushchev vows the Soviet Union will support
"wars of national liberation."
-
1960
-
The NSA begins intercepting messages and communications revealing the
Soviet military buildup in Cuba, including the installation of air
defense systems and missile capabilities.
-
1960
-
U.S. Navy Fleet Intelligence Center Europe (FICEUR) established.
-
1960
-
Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) established as Defense
Communications Agency.
-
1960
-
In September, NSA cryptographers William H. Martin and Bernon F.
Mitchell defect to the Soviet Union and issue the first public
revelations as to NSA's mission.
-
1960
-
A Soviet missile shoots down an American U-2 spy plane near Sverdlovsk.
The pilot Francis Gary Powers is detained and tried by the Soviet Union
as a spy. After nearly two years, Powers is exchanged for a captured
Soviet spy. Soviet outrage over the incident leads to the collapse of
the Paris summit of the Conference on Discontinuance of Nuclear Weapons
Trials.
-
1961
-
In his inauguration speech, President John F. Kennedy sets the tone for
modern U.S. foreign policy when he states, "Let every nation
know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price,
bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe
to assure the survival and success of liberty."
-
1961
-
National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) formed.
-
1961
-
U.S. Strategic Air Command activates its Airborne Command Post on
February 3. Known as Looking Glass for the fact that equipment aboard
its planes mirrors control systems on the ground, Looking Glass will
remain in continuous operation for the next 29 years.
-
1961
-
Soviet Union launches first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, into space.
-
1961
-
Cuba establishes what will become its largest intelligence agency, the
Dirección General de Inteligencia (DGI; General Intelligence
Directorate), within the Ministry of the Interior.
-
1961
-
Cuban exiles organized and armed by the CIA invade Cuba on April 17, in
a failed attempt to overthrow the leftist leader Fidel Castro. The event
became known as the "Bay of Pigs," in reference to the
small bay on the southern coast of Cuba where the invasion commenced.
-
1961
-
Congress creates the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA),
devoted to policy making for conventional and nuclear armament.
-
1961
-
United States introduces the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the
Enterprise.
-
1961
-
First U.S. aircraft hijacking on May 1. The hijacker takes over the
plane at gunpoint and forces pilots to fly to Havana, Cuba, where he is
granted asylum.
-
1961
-
In August, the Soviet Union and East Germany erect the Berlin Wall to
divide West and East Berlin.
-
1961
-
In a letter published in the September issue of
Life
magazine, President Kennedy advises Americans to build fallout shelters
to reduce American vulnerability to Soviet nuclear attack.
"Shelter-mania" ensues as Americans prepare for potential
nuclear attack.
-
1961
-
Defense Intelligence Agency established.
-
1961
-
Soviet Union resumes nuclear weapons testing after dispute on
verification provisions of test ban agreements. Two weeks later the
United States resumes testing.
-
1962
-
Commissioning of the first Navy SEAL (sea, air, land) teams.
-
1962
-
Cuban missile crisis, triggered by the Soviet deployment to Cuba of
medium-range, nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, brings the world to the
brink of nuclear war. The United States blockades Cuba for 13 days until
the Soviet Union agrees to remove its missiles. The United States also
agrees to remove its missiles from Turkey. The crisis marks the first
time the NSA creates an around-the-clock command center.
-
1962
-
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, President Kennedy becomes
concerned with faulty communications technology in the national security
communications apparatus. After the crisis ends, he calls for a study to
improve communications coordination and technology, ultimately leading
to the formation of the National Communication System.
-
1963
-
A nuclear submarine, the USS
Thresher,
sinks off the coast of Cape Cod in 8,400 feet of water, killing all 129
sailors aboard.
-
1963
-
Development of Canada Geographic Information System, the first modern
geographic information system, begins.
-
1963
-
Coup in Iraq led by the Arab Socialist Ba'th Party (ASBP).
-
1963
-
Directorate of Science and Technology, the arm of the CIA responsible
for technological development, is formed.
-
1963
-
Britain's war minister, Lord John Dennis Profumo, is discovered
to be sleeping with Christine Keeler, who is also having an affair with
a Soviet spy. The scandal becomes known as the Profumo affair.
-
1963
-
Israel's Mossad assists in the defection of an Iraqi airman, who
delivers to Israel a Soviet MiG-21 fighter jet.
-
1963
-
The United States and Soviet Union set up a hotline (teletype) between
the White House and the Kremlin.
-
1963
-
The United States and Soviet Union sign the Limited Test Ban Treaty,
which prohibits underwater, atmospheric, and outer space nuclear tests.
More than 100 countries have ratified the treaty since 1963.
-
1963
-
Assassination of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem on November 1.
-
1963
-
November 22, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinates President Kennedy in Dallas,
Texas. Lyndon B. Johnson becomes president.
-
1964
-
American refusal to fly the Panamanian flag over a high school in the
Panama Canal Zone sparks riots that leave 23 Panamanians and four U.S.
Marines dead. Afterward, Panama calls for new treaty discussions with
the United States.
-
1964
-
U.S. Navy introduces E-2 Hawkeye airborne early warning and command and
control aircraft.
-
1964
-
North Vietnamese gunboats open fire on U.S. destroyer
Maddox
in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2. This results in the Gulf of Tonkin
resolution, passed by U.S. Senate, which gives President Johnson power
to vastly escalate U.S. commitment in Vietnam.
-
1964
-
China conducts its first nuclear test.
-
1965
-
American troops sent to the Dominican Republic to prevent a communist
takeover.
-
1965
-
Congress passes Drug Abuse Control Amendments—legislation that
forms the FDA Bureau of Drug Abuse Control and gives the FDA tighter
regulatory control over amphetamines, barbiturates, and other
prescription drugs with high abuse potential.
-
1965
-
Congress authorizes protection of former presidents and their spouses
during their lifetime and minor children until age 16.
-
1965
-
In June, first U.S. ground troops arrive in Vietnam.
-
1965
-
Anthrax vaccine adsorbed (AVA), is approved for use in the United
States.
-
1965
-
First bombings against Israel by the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO).
-
1966
-
France withdraws its troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO). French President de Gaulle argues for a Europe free from both
American and Soviet intervention.
-
1966
-
Marshall Nirenberg and Har Gobind Khorana lead teams that decipher the
genetic code. All of the 64 possible triplet combinations of the four
bases (the codons) and their associated amino acids are determined and
described.
-
1966
-
NORAD Combat Operations Center in Cheyenne Mountain becomes fully
operational.
-
1966
-
Naval Investigative Service, predecessor of the Naval Criminal
Investigative Service, formed as an office within the Office of Naval
Intelligence.
-
1967
-
FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC) becomes
operational.
-
1967
-
Congress passes Freedom of Information Act, which limits the ability of
U.S. federal government agencies to withhold information from the public
by classifying that information as secret.
-
1967
-
In the Six-Day War, fought in the first week of June, Israel defeats a
much larger Arab force, and gains control of the west bank of the Jordan
River, which was previously Jordanian territory.
-
1967
-
CIA launches Phoenix program to fight Vietcong infrastructure in South
Vietnam.
-
1967
-
A cosmic gamma ray burst leads to the discovery of a new phenomenon for
astronomers to study. The burst is detected while U.S. Vela spy
satellites remain alert for potential Soviet nuclear testing in space.
Part of an unclassified research and development program, the Vela
program was designed to develop nuclear monitoring technology. Vela
satellites carried x-ray, gamma-ray, neutron detectors, EMP detectors
and other instruments.
-
1968
-
An overwhelming North Vietnamese attack on South Vietnamese cities,
called the Tet Offensive, ultimately proves to be a crucial
psychological turning point in the Vietnam War.
-
1968
-
FDA administratively moves to Public Health Service.
-
1968
-
During testing exercise of VX nerve agent, 6,400 sheep are killed near
Dugway, Utah.
-
1968
-
Following passage of the Gun Control Act, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax
Division of IRS becomes the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF)
Division.
-
1968
-
U.S. Navy Fleet Intelligence Center Atlantic (FICLANT) established.
-
1968
-
U.S. anti-drug agencies in the Treasury and Health, Education, and
Welfare departments merged to form the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous
Drugs under the Justice Department.
-
1968
-
National Institute of Justice established under the authority of the
Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act to provide independent,
evidence-based tools to assist state and local law enforcement.
-
1968
-
Creation of first national contingency plan to deal with oil spills in
the United States.
-
1968
-
Israel's Mossad successfully captures eight missile boats that
Israel had ordered from France, but which President Charles de Gaulle
had placed under embargo. Mossad also captures and brings to trial
nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, who had revealed Israeli nuclear
secrets to the British press.
-
1968
-
Prague Spring reforms in Czechoslovakia ended by Soviet invasion.
-
1968
-
James Earl Ray assassinates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis,
Tennessee, on April 4. The FBI opens a special investigation based on
the violation of Dr. King's civil rights so that federal
jurisdiction in the matter can be established.
-
1968
-
As a result of Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination on June
5, Congress authorizes protection of major presidential and
vice-presidential candidates and nominees.
-
1968
-
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)—calling for halting the
spread of nuclear weapons capabilities—is signed.
-
1968
-
Final flight of X-15 hypersonic aircraft on October 24.
-
1969
-
President Richard Nixon begins troop withdrawal from Vietnam.
-
1969
-
On July 20, U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk
on the moon.
-
1969
-
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) begin between the United States
and the Soviet Union.
-
1969
-
United States and Soviet Union begin period of diplomatic
détente.
-
1969
-
By Executive Order, the United States renounces first-use of biological
weapons and restricts future weapons research programs to issues
concerning defensive responses (e.g., immunization, detection, etc.).
-
1969
-
Microprocessor developed.
-
1969
-
Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)
establishes ARPANET, a forerunner to the Internet.
-
1969
-
Muammar Qaddafi seizes power from King Idris in Libya on September 1.
-
1970
-
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 is signed, requiring the
federal government to review the environmental impact of any
action—such as construction of a building—that might
significantly affect the environment.
-
1970
-
United States Congress passes Controlled Substance Act (CSA),
delineating a hierarchy of commonly abused drugs and establishing
corresponding penalties for misuse.
-
1970
-
United States Environmental Protection Agency established.
-
1970
-
White House Police Force renamed the Executive Protective Service.
-
1970
-
The UN assigns the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the task of
NPT monitoring and for developing nuclear safeguards.
-
1970
-
The Consolidated Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, a bureau of
the Department of the Treasury, is established as an organization to
provide training for all federal law-enforcement personnel. Today known
as the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, it is now part of the
Department for Homeland Security.
-
1970
-
In October, a group advocating the separation of Quebec from Canada
kidnaps two government officials and murders one of them. The crisis
causes the temporary imposition of martial law in the country and renews
calls for a dedicated security agency.
-
1970
-
Congress approves the Organized Crime Control Act in October. This law
contains a section known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organization Act or RICO. RICO becomes an effective tool in convicting
members of organized criminal enterprises.
-
1971
-
CIA activity in Laos, termed by critics a "secret war," is
exposed.
-
1971
-
Chinese defense minister Lin Biao attempts a coup against Mao Zedong but
is killed in a plane crash. China is officially seated in the UN and
launches its first space satellite.
-
1971
-
Stolen by Defense Department official Daniel Ellsberg, a classified set
of papers detailing compromising U.S. involvement in Vietnam,
"The Pentagon Papers," is published by the
New York Times
and the
Washington Post
.
-
1971
-
United Kingdom passes the Misuse of Drugs Act.
-
1971
-
Canada Geographic Information System becomes operational.
-
1971
-
Congress authorizes Secret Service protection for visiting heads of a
foreign state or government, or other official guests, as directed.
-
1971
-
The NSA receives operation control over the cryptologic agencies of the
air force, army and navy. The three agencies are reorganized into the
newly created Central Security Service (CSS) headed by the NSA director.
The move centralizes the government's signals intelligence
(SIGINT) and communications security (COMSEC) programs under the NSA.
-
1971
-
Spy satellite called
Hexagon
is launched carrying a KH-9 camera.
-
1972
-
U.S. president Nixon meets with Mao Zedong in Beijing. The meeting eases
U.S.-China animosities.
-
1972
-
President Nixon visits Soviet Union.
-
1972
-
United States and Soviet Union under Premier Leonid Brezhnev) negotiate
reductions in nuclear arsenals.
-
1972
-
Defense Investigative Service (changed in 1997 to Defense Security
Service) established on January 1.
-
1972
-
Recombinant technology emerges as one of the most powerful techniques of
molecular biology. Scientists are able to splice together pieces of DNA
to form recombinant genes. As the potential uses, therapeutic and
industrial, become increasingly clear, scientists and venture
capitalists establish biotechnology companies.
-
1972
-
Landsat I
satellite launched, providing the first publicly available satellite
imagery.
-
1972
-
Congress passes the Consumer Product Safety Act, creating the Consumer
Product Safety Commission, which is charged with protecting the public
from risk or injury involved with defective or unsafe products.
-
1972
-
The ATF Division of IRS becomes a separate Treasury bureau, the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
-
1972
-
Computer axial tomography, commonly known as CAT scanning, is
introduced. A CAT scan combines many high-definition, cross-sectional
x-rays to produce a two-dimensional image of a patient's anatomy.
-
1972
-
President Nixon issues Executive Order 11652, which stipulates that
virtually all national security records should be declassified after 30
years.
-
1972
-
Five men ultimately discovered to have ties to anti-Castro forces, the
American CIA, and the White House are arrested inside the Democratic
National Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. Known
as a "plumbers" team, the intelligence operatives carried
electronic surveillance equipment and cameras. A subsequent cover-up of
the break-in, destruction of taped conversations related to the
cover-up, and revelations of a history political dirty tricks form the
core of the Watergate scandal that ultimately leads to criminal
prosecutions of top officials and President Nixon's resignation
in August 1974.
-
1972
-
The Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty is signed by the United States
and the Soviet Union. The treaty is one of two treaties produced by the
first series of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I) between the two
countries; the other is an interim agreement limiting offensive nuclear
weapons.
-
1972
-
U.S. Department of Defense directs Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA) name change to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) in March. DARPA is established as a separate defense agency
under the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
-
1972
-
The FBI Academy opens a new training facility on the Marine Corps Base
at Quantico, Virginia in May.
-
1972
-
Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention first signed. BWC prohibits the
offensive weaponization of biological agents (e.g., anthrax spores). The
BWC also prohibits the transformation of biological agents with
established legitimate and sanctioned purposes into agents of a nature
and quality that could be used to effectively induce illness or death.
-
1972
-
"Bloody Friday": on July 21, an IRA bomb attack kills 11
people and injures 130 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Ten days later,
three additional IRA attacks in the village of Claudy leave six dead.
-
1972
-
Establishment of U.S. Air Force Intelligence Service in June.
-
1972
-
After 11 Israeli athletes are murdered by Palestinian terrorists with
the Black September organization at the Munich Olympics in September,
Israel's Mossad establishes an action team, Wrath of God. Over
the next two years, the team tracks down and kills a dozen members of
Black September.
-
1972
-
Iraq and Soviet Union sign 15-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation.
-
1973
-
The peace treaty ending the Vietnam War, the Paris Peace Accords, is
signed. South Vietnam collapses two years later after the last U.S.
troops are withdrawn.
-
1973
-
Atmospheric Release Advisory Capability (ARAC) concept has its origins
when the Department of Energy (DOE) seeks assistance from scientists at
California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in assessing
potential and ongoing atmospheric hazards.
-
1973
-
Concerns about the possible hazards posed by recombinant DNA
technologies, especially work with tumor viruses, leads to the
establishment of a meeting at Asilomar, California. The proceedings of
this meeting are subsequently published by the Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory as a book entitled
Biohazards in Biological Research.
-
1973
-
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) created on July 1.
-
1973
-
Libya claims the Gulf of Sidra in defiance of international protocol.
-
1973
-
General Augusto Pinochet, with the support of the CIA, overthrows
Marxist president Salvador Allende in Chile in September. Allende
dies—either by suicide (according to Pinochet) or by murder
(according to Allende's supporters).
-
1973
-
Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War. Fourth Arab-Israeli war begins with a
combined Egyptian and Syrian attack against Israel in October. When
military efforts fail, the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries
(OPEC) announces a cutback in oil production, raising gasoline prices
and precipitating an energy crisis in the United States.
-
1974
-
Congress passes the Energy Reorganization Act, which abolishes the
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and replaces it with two other agencies:
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Energy Research and
Development Administration.
-
1974
-
Members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) kidnap heiress Patricia
Hearst on February 5. Hearst, allegedly brainwashed by the group, adopts
the name "Tania" and participates in bank robberies. Most
members, including leader Donald DeFreeze, are killed in a May 1974
shootout with authorities, and Hearst is captured by the FBI in
September 1975. In January 2001, outgoing president William J. Clinton
pardons her.
-
1974
-
Treaty on Underground Nuclear Weapons Tests (also known as the Threshold
Test Ban Treaty) is signed by the United States and Soviet Union,
prohibiting underground nuclear weapons tests using weapons that produce
yields greater than 150 kilotons.
-
1974
-
U.S. Navy Fleet Intelligence Center (FIC) Europe (FICEUR) and FIC
Atlantic (FICLANT) merge to form FIC Europe-Atlantic (FICEURLANT).
-
1974
-
Cuba's National Liberation Directorate (DLN), which is
responsible for fomenting communist revolutions worldwide, becomes the
America Department (DA) of the Communist Party of Cuba Central
Committee. During the years that follow, DA will provide support to
communist insurgents and terrorists in numerous locales.
-
1974
-
Congress passes Privacy Act of 1974, greatly restricting the authority
of agencies to collect information on individuals, or to disclose that
information to persons other than the individual. The Privacy Act also
requires agencies to furnish individuals with any information on them
that the agency has in its files.
-
1974
-
New era of congressional oversight in intelligence begins with passage
of Hughes-Ryan Act amending the Foreign Service Act. Written in the wake
of covert activities that helped bring down the Marxist regime of
Salvador Allende in Chile, Hughes-Ryan requires the president to submit
plans for covert actions to the relevant congressional committees.
-
1974
-
The
New York Times
publishes a report concerning a CIA domestic intelligence campaign
involving interception of private mail.
-
1974
-
India conducts its first nuclear test—an explosion in the
Rajasthan Desert.
-
1974
-
British Prevention of Terrorism Act permits the arrest of suspected
terrorists without a warrant and allows authorities to detain them for a
week without bringing charges. While being interned, detainees are
subject to a range of harsh practices that include
"hooding"—being isolated and forced to wear a hood
over their heads—noise bombardment, and sleep and food
deprivation.
-
1974
-
Bar-coded products arrive in American stores, along with the laser
scanners used at checkout stations to read the codes.
-
1975
-
American Apollo 18 and Soviet Soyuz 19 join in an orbital linkup.
-
1975
-
Puerto Rican nationalists bomb a Wall Street bar, killing four and
injuring 60; two days later, the Weather Underground claims
responsibility for an explosion in a bathroom at the U.S. Department of
State in Washington.
-
1975
-
The duties of Executive Protective Service are expanded to include
protection of foreign diplomatic missions located throughout the United
States and its territories.
-
1975
-
U.S. Nuclear Emergency Support Team established to analyze and respond
to cases involving nuclear threats.
-
1975
-
On April 30, Saigon falls to North Vietnamese. In the following year,
Vietnam is united under a communist government.
-
1975
-
Commissioning, in May, of the
Nimitz,
first in a super-class of large modern aircraft carriers deployed by
the U.S. navy.
-
1975
-
President Gerald R. Ford signs Executive Order 11828, creating the
Commission on CIA Activities within the United States.
-
1975
-
Investigations by congressional committees headed by Idaho senator Frank
Church and New York representative Otis Pike reveal that government
agencies, including the NSA, performed clandestine surveillance on U.S.
citizens who participated in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War
movements.
-
1975
-
FBI special agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams are murdered
while conducting an investigation on an Indian reservation in South
Dakota. American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier is convicted of
committing the murders.
-
1975
-
President Ford escapes an assassination attempt in Sacramento,
California, by Lynette Alice (Squeaky) Fromme, who pointed a gun at him
but did not fire. A few weeks later, Ford escaped another assassination
attempt in San Francisco, California, when Sara Jane Moore was prevented
from firing at him by a bystander.
-
1976
-
Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and Central Committee Chairman Mao Zedong
die.
-
1976
-
Church Committee submits its final report on April 26. Meanwhile, on
January 29, just two days before the Pike Committee was to complete its
investigation, the House votes not to make its findings public. (The
report was later leaked to journalist Daniel Schorr, who passed it on to
the
Village Voice.
)
-
1976
-
On May 19, the Senate establishes its permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence. On July 14, 1977, the House puts in place its own such
committee.
-
1976
-
On the night of July 3–4, members of Israel's Mossad
conduct a raid on a French airliner, hijacked by Palestinian terrorists,
in the Uganda city of Entebbe. The Israelis rescue all but four of the
plane's 97 passengers, losing a single officer, along with 20
Ugandan soldiers, in the process.
-
1976
-
A military junta overthrows the government of Argentina.
-
1977
-
The United States vetoes a UN Security Council resolution calling for
total Israeli withdrawal from Arab areas.
-
1977
-
U.S. ambassador Francis E. Melroy is killed in Beirut.
-
1977
-
U.S. president James E. Carter and Panamanian military dictator Omar
Torrijos sign the Panama Canal Treaty on September 7, which abolishes
the Canal Zone, terminates all prior treaties regarding the canal, and
provides for the full transfer of the canal to Panama on December 31,
1999. A separate Neutrality Treaty guarantees the neutrality of the
canal in perpetuity. Congress ratifies both treaties the following year.
-
1977
-
Introduction of E-3 Sentry AWACS (airborne warning and control system).
Packed with electronics, the aircraft—based on the Boeing
707—serves purposes that include identifying enemy aircraft,
jamming enemy radar, guiding bombers to their targets, and managing the
flow of friendly aircraft.
-
1977
-
The last reported smallpox case recorded. Ultimately, the WHO declares
the disease eradicated.
-
1977
-
Office of Intelligence Support (OIS) established as the intelligence
office of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. OIS thus replaces Office
of National Security, established in 1961.
-
1977
-
U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) goes into operation
on January 1.
-
1977
-
In November, Delta Force is activated. Established by Colonel Charles
Beckwith at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Delta Force becomes one of the
leading U.S. counterterrorist units.
-
1977
-
A new security and intelligence command known as Headquarters, U.S. Army
Intelligence and Security Command, replaces ASA.
-
1977
-
Department of Energy Organization Act signed into law by President
Carter on October 1. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) replaces the
Energy Research and Development Administration and consolidates Federal
energy programs and activities.
-
1978
-
The United States recognizes the People's Republic of China
(PRC).
-
1978
-
On January 24, President Carter signs Executive Order 12036,
"United States Foreign Intelligence Activities," which
restructures the U.S. Intelligence Community and provides explicit
guidance on all facets of intelligence activities.
-
1978
-
A bomb disguised as a package goes off at Northwestern University. This
is the first of 16 attacks, over the course of 17 years, by an
individual dubbed the "Unabomber" for his principal
targets, universities and airlines.
-
1978
-
Camp David meetings between U.S. president Carter, Egyptian president
Anwar Sadat, and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, offer hope for
peace in Middle East.
-
1978
-
Dissident Georgi Markov is assassinated by an umbrella tip laced with
ricin in London by the Bulgarian secret service.
-
1978
-
Congress passes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to regulate
electronic intelligence gathering. The act includes the creation of a
special court to handle requests by the NSA to perform electronic
surveillance on targeted U.S. persons.
-
1978
-
Executive Order 12046 establishes National Telecommunications
Information Administration to serve as president's advisory on
matters involving the radio frequency spectrum.
-
1978
-
President Carter, in Executive Order 12065, calls for a review of
national security records after 20 years with an eye toward
declassification.
-
1978
-
DOE initiates its Nuclear Threat Assessment Program at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory in September.
-
1978
-
The U.S. government defines a cipher algorithm for standard use by all
government departments, the Digital Encryption Standard.
-
1978
-
Kidnapping of Italian former prime minister Aldo Moro; he was seized by
the Red Brigade and assassinated 55 days later.
-
1978
-
The United States cancels development of the neutron bomb, which would
theoretically destroy life but cause minimal physical destruction. The
bomb was initially developed, in part, to ensure the maximal survival of
European cultural treasures in the advent of nuclear war and thus
enhance the credibility of U.S. threats to use the bomb against possible
Soviet aggression in western Europe.
-
1978
-
The FBI Laboratory Division begins use of laser technology to detect
latent crime scene fingerprints.
-
1979
-
Egyptian president Sadat and Israeli prime minister Begin sign a peace
treaty; other Arab nations protest the treaty.
-
1979
-
Congress passes Panama Canal Act. Among its many provisions, the act
creates the Panama Canal Commission, which will act as custodian over
the canal for the next 20 years.
-
1979
-
Sandinistas gain control of Nicaragua.
-
1979
-
As a result of a March 28 accident at the Three Mile Island plant
outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, portions of the reactor's core
melts, potentially threatening the health and perhaps even the lives of
nearby residents. For several weeks, the nation is gripped by terror as
government agencies, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
respond to the disaster. No deaths occur as a result of the Three Mile
Island accident, but construction of new commercial reactors will be
delayed for more than two decades. ARAC and the National Atmospheric
Release Advisory Center (NARAC) at Livermore first prove their
capabilities by providing DOE and other federal agencies with assessment
of the incident.
-
1979
-
Use of illegal drugs in the United States reaches its peak, as three out
of 10 youth, and one in five adults, reports having used an illegal
substance.
-
1979
-
President Carter issues an executive order creating the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
-
1979
-
Saddam Hussein becomes president of Iraq.
-
1979
-
The Iranian shah flees Iran, and Shiite Muslim leader Ayatollah Khomeini
assumes control of the fundamentalist Islamist revolution. The shah,
suffering from cancer, seeks treatment and asylum in the United States.
Islamist revolutionaries (mostly Iranian students) seize the American
embassy and take 66 Americans hostage. Thirteen hostages are soon
released, but the remaining 53 are held until January 20, 1981. The
hostage crisis consumes the remainder of U.S. president Carter's
term and critics claim that his failure to act decisively to secure the
release of the hostages ultimately emboldens a generation of Islamist
fundamentalists to commit acts of terrorism against the United States.
-
1979
-
Less than a month after the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, the
U.S. embassies in Tripoli, Libya, and Islamabad, Pakistan, are attacked.
-
1979
-
Soviets invade Afghanistan on December 24.
-
1980
-
CNN, the first 24-hour-a-day cable television news channel, is launched,
inspired in part by intense public interest in the Iranian hostage
crisis.
-
1980
-
After Lech Walesa leads a strike by shipyard workers, Poland's
Solidarity Party becomes an independent labor union, the first in the
sphere of Soviet influence.
-
1980
-
More than five months after the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran,
Iran, the United States mounts an attempt to rescue the hostages, but
fails when helicopters collide in the desert. The crash forces leaders
to abort the mission. Eight Americans die and five are injured in the
attempt.
-
1980
-
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that a living organism developed by General
Electric (a microbe used to clean up an oil spill) can be patented.
-
1980
-
Congress passes the Classified Information Procedures Act, which
presents guidelines for the use of classified information by both the
government and defendants in legal cases.
-
1980
-
The United States and 57 other countries boycott the summer Olympics in
Moscow to protest Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
-
1980
-
Intelligence Oversight Act replaces the armed services committees with
intelligence committees as the principal arm of legislative oversight
over the CIA in both houses of Congress.
-
1980
-
Iran shells Iraqi border installations at the start of the Iran/Iraq
war. Two weeks later, Iraq attacks Iranian air bases.
-
1980
-
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability
Act (also known as Superfund) is passed in response to the discovery in
the late 1970s of a large number of abandoned, leaking hazardous waste
dumps. Under Superfund, the Environmental Protection Agency identifies
hazardous sites, takes appropriate action, and sees that the responsible
party pays for the cleanup.
-
1980
-
The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act is passed, making states
responsible for the disposal of their own low-level nuclear waste, such
as from hospitals and industry.
-
1981
-
AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is recognized and tracked as
an epidemic.
-
1981
-
Ronald Reagan inaugurated as president of the United States. Fearing
Reagan's promise to renew and use American military strength to
protect U.S. citizens and interests, Islamist militant revolutionaries
in Iran release U.S. hostages held for 444 days.
-
1981
-
President Ronald Reagan signs Intelligence Authorization Act of 1981,
mandating congressional over-sight of covert actions. As part of its
oversight of the intelligence community, Congress has passed
intelligence authorization acts in every fiscal year since.
-
1981
-
President Reagan wounded in assassination attempt by John W. Hinckley,
Jr.; three others also wounded.
-
1981
-
Israel launches air attacks to destroy an Iraqi nuclear research center
at Tuwaythah, Iraq, a city near Baghdad.
-
1981
-
In August, two U.S. F-14 Tomcat fighters dispatched by the U.S. Sixth
Fleet shoot down two Libyan Su-22 fighter-bombers over the Gulf of
Sidra.
-
1981
-
Egyptian president Anwar Sadat assassinated by Islamic militants on
October 6.
-
1981
-
President Reagan reconstitutes the President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board and names 19 distinguished citizens outside
of government to serve on the Board.
-
1981
-
President Reagan signs Executive Order 12333 on December 4, which
clarifies ambiguities of previous orders and sets clear goals for the
Intelligence Community in accordance with law and regard for the rights
of Americans.
-
1981
-
Murder of missionaries, December 4: three American nuns and one lay
missionary are found murdered outside San Salvador, El Salvador. They
are assumed to have been assassinated by a right-wing death squad.
-
1981
-
In order to avoid mid-air collisions of increasingly traveled skies, the
FAA adopts the aircraft Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance Systems I
and II (TCAS I and II). The system combines radio transmitters and
receivers, directional antennas, and computer and cockpit displays to
transmit signals called interrogations. Other airplanes in the area
receive these signals and transmit replies. Finally, computers calculate
the distance between the planes based on time between the interrogation
and the reply.
-
1982
-
Israel invades Lebanon and ousts PLO forces. In consolidating its
occupation of southern Lebanon, which it first invaded in 1978, Israel
becomes the first nation to make significant use of unmanned
reconnaissance drones in combat.
-
1982
-
American journalist James Bamford publishes
The Puzzle Palace,
an expose on the work of the U.S. National Security Agency.
-
1982
-
In January, federal law enforcement reorganization gives DEA and FBI
concurrent jurisdiction in drug-related criminal matters.
-
1982
-
The FDA issues regulations for tamper-resistant packaging after seven
people die in Chicago from ingesting Tylenol capsules laced with
cyanide. The following year, the federal Anti-Tampering Act is passed,
making it a crime to tamper with packaged consumer products.
-
1982
-
Spain joins NATO.
-
1982
-
With Executive Order 12356, President Reagan bucks the trend of earlier
administrations with regard to declassification of national security
materials. Reagan tightens the standards with the order, which favors
continued classification and even provides conditions for the
reclassification of previously declassified documents.
-
1982
-
United States withdraws from comprehensive test ban negotiations
indefinitely.
-
1982
-
President Reagan signs Executive Order 12382, which establishes the
National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC), a
presidential advisory board composed of leaders in the
telecommunications, finance, and aerospace industries.
-
1982
-
U.S. authorities convict four Castro aides of smuggling drugs into the
United States, and subsequently uncover a vast Cuban drug-smuggling ring
that operates in cooperation with Panamanian leader General Manuel
Noriega, as well as with Colombian drug lords.
-
1982
-
On June 23, President Reagan signs into law the Intelligence Identities
Protection Act, making it a felony to reveal the names of covert
intelligence personnel.
-
1982
-
In December, Congress passes Boland Amendment to War Powers Act of 1973,
forbidding CIA or Department of Defense to support anti-Sandinista
forces in Nicaragua.
-
1983
-
On January 1, U.S. Defense Department and all participants in its
ARPANET officially adopt TCP/IP, a revolutionary new system for network
connectivity. Some regard this event as the birth of the Internet.
-
1983
-
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is signed, authorizing the
development of a high-level nuclear waste repository.
-
1983
-
February 13 attack on law enforcement officers in Medina, North Dakota,
by the Sheriff's Posse Comitatus is the first significant
incident involving an anti-government right-wing terrorist group in the
United States.
-
1983
-
Bombing of U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, April 18: sixty-three
people, including the CIA's Middle East director, are killed and
120 injured in a 400-pound suicide truck-bomb attack on the U.S.
embassy. Islamic Jihad claims responsibility.
-
1983
-
Democratic rule is restored in Argentina.
-
1983
-
U.S. president Reagan terms the Soviet Union the "evil
empire" and announces the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star
Wars), a satellite-based defense system that can destroy incoming
missiles and warheads in space.
-
1983
-
The FBI Hostage Rescue Team becomes fully operational.
-
1983
-
In October, President Reagan launches Operation Urgent Fury, the first
significant U.S. military action since Vietnam, to overturn a coup on
the Caribbean island of Grenada.
-
1983
-
Simultaneous suicide truck-bomb attacks on U.S. and French compounds in
Beirut, Lebanon. A 12,000-pound bomb destroys the U.S. compound, killing
242 Americans, while 58 French troops are killed when a 400-pound device
destroys a French base. Islamic Jihad claims responsibility.
-
1984
-
Crime-fighting efforts bolstered by the Sentencing Reform Act, which
stiffens prison sentences, requiring mandatory terms for certain crimes
and abolishing federal parole; and by the Victims of Crime Act.
Throughout the 1980s, numerous national and community-based
organizations are formed to provide support to victims of rape, spousal
abuse, drunk driving, and other crimes.
-
1984
-
Congress enacts legislation making the fraudulent use of credit and
debit cards a federal violation.
-
1984
-
The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service Act is approved, creating
Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.
-
1984
-
The DOE, Office of Health and Environmental Research, U.S. Department of
Energy (OHER, now Office of Biological and Environmental Research), and
the International Commission for Protection Against Environmental
Mutagens and Carcinogens (ICPEMC) cosponsor the Alta, Utah, conference
highlighting the growing role of recombinant DNA technologies. OTA
incorporates the proceedings of the meeting into a report acknowledging
the value of deciphering the human genome.
-
1984
-
President Reagan issues a directive giving the NSA responsibility of
maintaining security of government computers.
-
1984
-
DOE Office of Security establishes Central Training Academy. Now known
as Nonproliferation and National Security Institute, this facility
provides training in counterintelligence and other areas to more than
100 government departments and agencies.
-
1984
-
Islamic Jihad kidnaps and later murders CIA station chief William
Buckley in Beirut, Lebanon. Other U.S. citizens not connected to the
U.S. government are subsequently seized over a two-year period.
-
1984
-
With Executive Order 12472, signed on April 3, President Reagan expands
the mission of the National Communications System.
-
1984
-
Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) chartered in April by
secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger.
-
1984
-
CIA Information Act, signed by President Reagan on October 15, exempts
the agency from the search and review requirements of the Freedom of
Information Act.
-
1984
-
Eighteen U.S. servicemen are killed and 83 people are injured in a bomb
attack on a restaurant near a U.S. air force base in Spain. Hezbollah
claims responsibility.
-
1984
-
Sikh terrorists seize the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India. One hundred
people die as Indian security forces retake the Sikh holy shrine.
-
1984
-
Assassination of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, October 31; she is
shot to death by members of her security force.
-
1985
-
Mikhail Gorbachev becomes general secretary of the Communist Party in
the Soviet Union. Gorbachev institutes economic reforms and policies
such as "glasnost" (openness) to ease Cold War tensions.
-
1985
-
Called "the year of the spy," 1985 features a series of
high-profile espionage cases and arrests. In May, the John Walker Spy
Ring is arrested. Former navy personnel John Walker, Jerry Whitworth,
Arthur Walker, and Michael Walker are convicted of or plead guilty to
passing classified material to the Soviet Union. On November 21,
Jonathan Jay Pollard, a navy intelligence analyst, is arrested for
spying for Israel. On November 23, Larry Wu Tai Chin, a former CIA
analyst, is arrested on charges of spying for the People's
Republic of China since 1952. On November 25, a third major spy, former
National Security Agency employee William Pelton, is arrested and
charged with selling military secrets to the Soviets.
-
1985
-
Alec Jeffreys develops "genetic fingerprinting," a method
of using DNA polymorphisms (unique sequences of DNA) to identify
individuals. The method, which is subsequently used in paternity,
immigration, and murder cases, is generally referred to as "DNA
fingerprinting."
-
1985
-
David Deutsch advances theory of quantum computing.
-
1985
-
Kary Mullis, working at Cetus Corporation, develops the polymerase chain
reaction (PCR), a new method of amplifying DNA. This technique quickly
becomes one of the most powerful tools of molecular biology. Cetus
patents PCR and sells the patent to Hoffman-LaRoche, Inc. in 1991.
-
1985
-
The Global Positioning System (GPS) becomes operational.
-
1985
-
U.S. air force and army join forces to develop the J STARS (Joint
Surveillance and Target Acquisition Radar System) aircraft.
-
1985
-
Federal Radiological Preparedness Coordinating Committee, appointed by
the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), completes the U.S.
Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan, a blueprint for the
federal response to a hazard involving nuclear radiation.
-
1985
-
TWA hijacking, June 14: A Trans-World Airlines flight is hijacked en
route to Rome from Athens by two Lebanese Hezbollah terrorists and
forced to fly to Beirut. The eight crew members and 145 passengers are
held for 17 days, during which one American hostage, a U.S. sailor, is
murdered. After being flown twice to Algiers, the aircraft is returned
to Beirut after Israel released 435 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners.
-
1985
-
Achille Lauro
hijacking, October 7: Four Palestinian Liberation Front terrorists
seize an Italian cruise ship in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, taking
more than 700 hostages. One elderly U.S. passenger is murdered.
-
1985
-
The Soviet Union announces a nuclear testing moratorium.
-
1986
-
The space shuttle
Challenger
explodes shortly after lift-off. Gaskets weakened by unusually cold
weather are blamed for the accident, which leads to intense scrutiny of
NASA safety procedures.
-
1986
-
Explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine causes severe
radiation leakage and an estimated 8,000 near-term deaths.
-
1986
-
U.S. sales of arms to Iran during its war with Iraq and the use of
profits to fund anti-government, or Contra, forces in Nicaragua fuels
the Iran-Contra scandal.
-
1986
-
DNA analysis conducted by the Scientific Intelligence Unit of
England's Scotland Yard leads to the first conviction of a
criminal—Colin Pitchfork, accused of rape and murder—on
the basis of DNA evidence.
-
1986
-
Tension escalates between the United States and Libya in the Gulf of
Sidra, off the coast of Libya, as U.S. and Libyan forces skirmish. The
conflict culminates on April 15 in devastating U.S. air strikes on
targets within Libya.
-
1986
-
Congress passes Anti-Drug Abuse Act. This federal law includes mandatory
minimum sentences for first time offenders with harsher penalties for
possession of crack cocaine than powder cocaine.
-
1986
-
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is enacted, defining federal computer
crimes.
-
1986
-
U.S. intelligence community establishes Intelligence Community Staff
Committee on MASINT (measurement and signatures intelligence) to oversee
all relevant activities.
-
1986
-
Congress passes Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act
(EPCRA), which establishes guidelines whereby federal agencies assist
local communities in the event of a toxic chemical spill or related
incident.
-
1986
-
U.S. Defense Department establishes Chemical and Biological Defense
Analysis Center.
-
1986
-
Congress passes Goldwater-Nichols Act, the fourth major reorganization
of the U.S. Department of Defense since World War II. The act calls on
the White House to issue an annual National Security Strategy.
-
1986
-
United States Congress passes the Electronic Communication Privacy Act.
-
1986
-
Clayton Lonetree, the only U.S. Marine convicted of espionage, turns
himself in to the CIA.
-
1987
-
Congress passes the Computer Security Act, which makes unclassified
computing systems the responsibility of the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST) and not the NSA with regard to
technology standards development.
-
1987
-
Iraqi government uses nerve agents including sarin against Kurds in
Northern Iraq.
-
1987
-
Founding of U.S. Special Operations Command, which brings together
special operations forces from the army, navy, and air force.
-
1987
-
The PLO's terrorist campaign against Israel becomes acute during
its first Intifada (or "shaking off") of Israeli authority
in the occupied territories.
-
1987
-
North Korean agents plant a bomb that destroys Korean Air Lines Flight
858.
-
1987
-
Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act designates Yucca Mountain, Nevada,
as candidate site for the nation's first geological repository
for high-level radioactive waste.
-
1987
-
Soviet president Gorbachev and U.S. president Reagan sign the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
-
1987
-
The idea to use patterns of the iris of the eye as an identification
marker is patented, along with the algorithms necessary for iris
identification.
-
1988
-
U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. W. Higgins is kidnapped and murdered by the
Iranian-backed Hezbollah group while serving with the UN Truce
Supervisory Organization (UNTSO) in Lebanon.
-
1988
-
Congress passes the Prescription Drug Marketing Act designed to maintain
the sale and distribution of prescription drugs through legitimate
commercial channels. The new law requires state-level licensing for drug
wholesalers, restricts drug reimportation from other countries,
institutes regulations regarding drug samples, and prohibits the traffic
or counterfeiting of redeemable drug coupons.
-
1988
-
The Food and Drug Administration Act officially establishes the FDA as
an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The act
provides for a Commissioner of Food and Drugs appointed by the president
and outlines the responsibilities of the secretary and the commissioner
for research, enforcement, education, and information.
-
1988
-
The Human Genome Organization (HUGO) is established by scientists in
order to coordinate international efforts to sequence the human genome.
-
1988
-
First test flight of J-STARS (Joint Surveillance and Target Acquisition
Radar System) aircraft.
-
1988
-
Congress passes National Defense Authorization Act, establishing the
Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board as an independent agency charged
with over-seeing the disposition of defensive nuclear materials.
-
1988
-
Iran-Iraq ceasefire begins, monitored by the UN Iran-Iraq Military
Observer Group (UNIIMOG).
-
1988
-
The federal Polygraph Protection Act prohibits employers from using
polygraphs for employment screening.
-
1988
-
Libyan intelligence operatives plant a bomb aboard Pan-Am flight 103,
which crashes into the village of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259
aboard and 11 persons on the ground. Two Libyan intelligence officers
are ultimately tried under Scottish law in The Hague. One of them,
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, is found guilty in January 2001; the
other, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, is acquitted.
-
1989
-
After nine years of war, Soviet forces withdraw from Afghanistan.
-
1989
-
British Parliament passes Security Service Act, which for the first time
confers legal status on MI5.
-
1989
-
Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard develop first quantum computer.
-
1989
-
United States signs Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and
Artistic Works.
-
1989
-
The New People's Army (NPA) assassinates U.S. army colonel James
Rowe in Manila in April. The NPA also assassinates two U.S. government
defense contractors in September.
-
1989
-
The Berlin Wall is torn down, as many communist governments in Eastern
Europe collapse.
-
1989
-
In December, U.S. forces attack Panama to remove General Manuel Noriega
in Operation Just Cause. The U.S. army uses loud music as part of a
psychological operation to dislodge Noriega from his refuge at the
Vatican embassy.
-
1989
-
Nicolae Ceausescu, communist dictator of Romania, is overthrown and
executed.
-
1990
-
Yugoslavia overthrows Communist Party and ethnic tensions mount.
-
1990
-
U.S. embassy in Peru bombed by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.
-
1990
-
Syrian troops intervene in Lebanon's civil war.
-
1990
-
Iraq invades Kuwait. UN Security Council passes resolution 660 calling
for full Iraqi withdrawal. President George H.W. Bush vows "this
aggression will not stand" and launches Operation Desert Shield,
a buildup of U.S. forces in the region in preparation for a possible
armed confrontation.
-
1990
-
U.S. military personnel receive vaccinations against anthrax prior to
duty in the Persian Gulf.
-
1990
-
UN, via resolution 661, imposes economic sanctions on Iraq.
-
1990
-
East and West Germany reunited.
-
1990
-
Former Solidarity union leader Lech Walesa becomes president of
post-communist Poland.
-
1990
-
NATO and Warsaw Pact nations sign Conventional Armed Forces in Europe
treaty (CFE), which promises mutual non-aggression.
-
1990
-
U.S. Strategic Air Command brings to an end the 24-hour-a-day operation
of its Airborne Command Post, Looking Glass, on July 24.
-
1990
-
Iraq hangs Farzad Bazoft, an Iranian-born journalist with the
London Observer
newspaper, whom Hussein accuses of spying on Iraqi military
installations.
-
1990
-
Space shuttle
Atlantis
completes secret mission to place a spy satellite in orbit.
-
1991
-
First-ever use of the strategic petroleum reserve to stabilize world oil
prices following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
-
1991
-
Launch of Operation Desert Storm against Iraq on January 17. The initial
bombing campaign lasts approximately 100 hours, and the entire military
operation takes only 42 days. The result is overwhelming Iraqi defeat.
-
1991
-
Carbon-graphite coils capable of generating an electromagnetic pulse or
otherwise disabling electronics are used in U.S.-led raids on Baghdad,
Iraq.
-
1991
-
J-STARS aircraft gain their first combat experience in Operation Desert
Storm.
-
1991
-
Saddam Hussein orders Iraqi forces to brutally suppress Kurd and Shia
rebellions in northern and southern Iraq.
-
1991
-
IAEA's Iraq Action Team begins inspecting suspect sites in Iraq
under UN Security Council mandate. UN also establishes a safe-haven in
northern Iraq, north of latitude 36 degrees north, for the protection of
the Kurds. Subsequently, the United States orders Iraq to end all
military activity and establishes north and south "no-fly"
zones.
-
1991
-
Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev announces that the Soviet Union will
unilaterally cease nuclear testing for one year.
-
1991
-
The United States and Soviet Union sign historic agreement to cut back
long-range nuclear weapons by more than 30 percent over the next seven
years.
-
1991
-
The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved.
-
1991
-
The Baltic republics—Latvia, Lithuania, and
Estonia—declare their independence and the Soviet Union crumbles.
A commonwealth of independent states takes the place of the former
Soviet empire. Boris Yeltsin becomes president of Russia.
-
1991
-
U.S. Navy Fleet Intelligence Center (FIC) Pacific (FICPAC) and FIC
Europe-Atlantic (FICEURLANT) absorbed into National Military Joint
Intelligence Center (NMJIC).
-
1991
-
U.S. Army Intelligence Agency ceases to exist; absorbed by Intelligence
and Security Command (INSCOM).
-
1991
-
Lustration law enacted in the Czech Republic, barring persons who had
collaborated with the secret police during communist rule from serving
in most public posts.
-
1991
-
In December, Britain's MI5 signals a new era of openness when it
announces the appointment of a new director-general, Stella Rimington,
the first MI5 chief to be publicly identified.
-
1992
-
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia collapses; fierce fighting between ethnic
groups ensues.
-
1992
-
The U.S. Army begins collecting blood and tissue samples from all new
recruits as part of a "genetic dog tag" program aimed at
better identification of soldiers killed in combat.
-
1992
-
Naval Criminal Investigative Service formed as an entity separate from
the Office of Naval Intelligence.
-
1992
-
In August, DEA creates its Intelligence Division.
-
1992
-
Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992 establishes legal basis for
ownership and operation of commercial remote sensing satellites in the
United States.
-
1992
-
The FBI establishes a Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS)
Division.
-
1992
-
The United States conducts its last nuclear explosion test in September.
-
1993
-
Czechoslovakia dissolves into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
-
1993
-
The Maastricht Treaty officially forms the European Union.
-
1993
-
U.S. Congress passes the Domestic Chemical Diversion Control Act, aimed
to stop the conversion of legal substances into illegal substances.
-
1993
-
February 26: the World Trade Center in New York City is badly damaged
when a car bomb planted by Islamic terrorists explodes in an underground
garage. The bombing leaves six people dead and 1,000 injured. The men
carrying out the attack were followers of Umar Abd al-Rahman, an Islamic
cleric who preached in the New York City area.
-
1993
-
After a 51-day siege by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms,
federal teams assault a compound held by the Branch Davidians, a
religious sect charged with hoarding illegal weapons. The Branch
Davidians set the buildings on fire, killing 76 people, including cult
leader David Koresh.
-
1993
-
On April 14, Iraqi intelligence agents attempt to assassinate former
president George H.W. Bush during a visit to Kuwait. Two months later,
President William J. Clinton launches a cruise missile attack on the
Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
-
1993
-
U.S. Department of Defense closes the Naval Intelligence Command, whose
functions—along with those of the Naval Technical Intelligence
Center, Task Force 168, and the Navy Operational Intelligence
Center—are absorbed by the Office of Naval Intelligence.
-
1993
-
China defies informal global moratorium on nuclear testing with a
weapons test.
-
1993
-
The final Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) is placed into orbit and
the GPS system becomes fully operational.
-
1993
-
Explosive growth of Internet begins as a result of two factors: the full
opening of the National Science Foundation's NSFNET, and the
development of the first browsers, Mosaic (forerunner of Netscape
Navigator) and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
-
1993
-
In October, U.S. Air Force Air Intelligence Agency replaces Air Force
Intelligence Service.
-
1993
-
On October 3, 18 U.S. Rangers, participants in a UN peacekeeping force
in Somalia, are killed in a firefight on the streets of Mogadishu.
-
1993
-
In the wake of a congressional ban on the deployment of space-based
weapons, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) forms. The
collapse of the former Soviet Union makes a large-scale attack upon the
United States appear much less likely and Congress seeks to push the DOD
to update missile defense programs to address the dangers of the
post-Cold War world. In this changed political climate, secretary of
defense Les Aspin announces that former president Reagan's
ten-year-old Strategic Defense Initiative (popularly known as
"Star Wars") will be terminated, with missile defense
responsibilities transferred to the newly formed BMDO.
-
1993
-
Time
magazine names the personal computer as its "man of the
year," as personal computer sales skyrocket, changing the way
people around the world work, play and communicate.
-
1994
-
The Genetic Privacy Act, the first U.S. Human Genome Project legislative
product, proposes regulation of the collection, analysis, storage, and
use of DNA samples and genetic information. These rules were endorsed by
the ELSI Working Group.
-
1994
-
Aldrich Ames, a 30-year CIA veteran, and his wife, Maria del Rosario
Casas Ames, are arrested on espionage charges for selling secrets to the
former Soviet Union.
-
1994
-
Jewish right-wing extremist and U.S. citizen Baruch Goldstein kills
Muslim worshippers at a mosque in the West Bank town of Hebron, killing
29 and wounding about 150.
-
1994
-
North Korea withdraws its membership from IAEA over dispute regarding
nuclear inspections.
-
1994
-
U.S. Navy, Marine, and Coast Guard intelligence agencies begin operating
jointly from the National Maritime Intelligence Center in Suitland,
Maryland.
-
1994
-
Congress reduces the lifetime-protection provisions for U.S. presidents,
authorizing Secret Service protection only for the first 10 years after
leaving office. The new law applies to all presidents in office after
January 1, 1997.
-
1994
-
Britain's Parliament passes Intelligence Services Act, which
gives MI6 new statutory grounding. The Act defines the responsibilities
and functions of MI6 and its chief, and sets in place a framework of
government oversight for MI6 activities.
-
1994
-
U.S. military action in Haiti restores government of ousted president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
-
1994
-
After Rwandan dictator Major General Juvenal Habyarimana dies in a plane
crash on April 6, his Hutu supporters blame the Tutsi-controlled Rwandan
Patriotic Front, and launch a campaign of genocide that results in more
than 800,000 deaths.
-
1994
-
Russia invades Chechnya on October 11, launching a war that will last
almost two years.
-
1995
-
Combinatorial chemistry, a technique which quickly surveys huge numbers
of chemical combinations in order to select the most desirable molecular
configurations, attracts the attentions of chemical companies.
Scientists predict the possibility of creating numerous new chemicals to
serve the needs of industrial and pharmaceutical development, along with
defense technology.
-
1995
-
President Clinton signs Executive Order 12968 on February 22, which
provides rules for access to classified information.
-
1995
-
Study by the Rand Corporation finds that every dollar spent in drug
treatment saves society seven dollars in crime, policing, incarceration,
and health services.
-
1995
-
UN Security Council resolution 986 allows partial resumption of Iraqi
oil exports, with the original intent to allow Iraq to sell oil to buy
food and medicine (the "oil-for-food program"). Iraq
subsequently diverts funds from sales to additional weapons purchases
and the building of offices and places for the Hussein government.
Malnutrition and improper medical care becomes widespread in Iraq.
-
1995
-
After thwarting UN weapons inspectors, the government of Iraq admits to
producing over 8,000 liters of concentrated anthrax as part of the
nation's biological weapons program.
-
1995
-
Twelve are killed and 5,700 injured in a sarin nerve gas attack on a
crowded subway station in the center of Tokyo. Aum Shinri-kyu cult is
blamed for the attacks.
-
1995
-
A truck bomb explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal office
building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, collapsing walls and
floors. The massive explosion kills 169, including 19 children and one
person who dies in the rescue effort. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols
are later convicted in the anti-government plot to avenge the Branch
Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas, exactly two years earlier.
-
1995
-
Concerned by revelations that agents of the CIA have committed human
rights violations in Guatemala, the CIA draws up guidelines prohibiting
the agency from hiring agents with records of human-rights violations.
-
1995
-
June 1995, while Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)
negotiations are still under way, France announces that it will resume
nuclear testing.
-
1995
-
President Clinton issues Presidential Decision Directive 39,
"U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism," calling for a number of
specific efforts to deter terrorism in the U.S. as well as attacks on
its citizens and allies abroad.
-
1995
-
Radical Sunni Muslims set off a bomb at a national guard facility in
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing five Americans.
-
1995
-
NATO launches air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions to force the
Bosnian Serbs to negotiate a peace settlement. NATO deploys
Implementation Force (Ifor) to monitor and enforce a ceasefire.
-
1995
-
Dayton Accords end fighting in Bosnia.
-
1996
-
Defense Authorization Act directs Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA) to once again be named the Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA).
-
1996
-
An Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb detonates in London on February 9,
killing two persons and wounding more than 100 others, including two
U.S. citizens.
-
1996
-
International participants in the genome project meet in Bermuda and
agree to formalize the conditions of data access. The agreement, known
as the "Bermuda Principles," calls for the release of
sequence data into public databases within 24 hours.
-
1996
-
National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) created by the consolidation
of several existing government and military agencies.
-
1996
-
The Health Care Portability and Accountability Act incorporates
provisions to prohibit the use of genetic information in certain
health-insurance eligibility decisions. The Department of Health and
Human Services is charged with the enforcement of health-information
privacy provisions.
-
1996
-
U.S. signs the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, but the Senate ultimately
refuses (in 1999) to ratify the treaty.
-
1996
-
In an effort to reduce counterfeiting, federal government makes first
major change to U.S. currency in 70 years.
-
1996
-
The Chemical and Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF), a unit of
the U.S. Marines devoted to countering chemical or biological threats at
home and abroad, is activated.
-
1996
-
World chess champion Garry Kasparov, able to compute the ramifications
of 2–3 chess moves per second, loses a chess match to
IBM's Deep Blue computer, able to compute the ramifications of
200 million moves per second.
-
1996
-
France conducts its last nuclear weapons test and immediately afterwards
French president Jacques Chirac announces his support for a
comprehensive test ban.
-
1996
-
A fuel truck carrying a bomb explodes outside the U.S. military's
Khobar Towers housing facility in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on June 25,
killing 19 U.S. military personnel and wounding 515 persons, including
240 U.S. personnel. Thirteen Saudis and a Lebanese, all alleged members
of Islamic militant group Hezbollah, are eventually indicted.
-
1996
-
China conducts its last nuclear explosion test.
-
1996
-
Bombing at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park on July 27, during
the Olympic Games, kills two people and injures 112. Eric Robert Rudolph
is charged with the crime, but he evades the authorities until his
capture in 2003.
-
1996
-
Dolphins and sea lions used to protect waters off San Diego during the
Republican Party convention.
-
1996
-
On October 11, President Clinton signs into law the Economic Espionage
Act, which makes it a federal crime to use unauthorized means to obtain
any trade secret whose transfer to other parties would cause economic
harm to its lawful owner.
-
1996
-
Twenty-three members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA)
take several hundred people hostage at a party given at the Japanese
Ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru on December 17. Among the
hostages were several U.S. officials, foreign ambassadors and other
diplomats, Peruvian Government officials, and Japanese businessmen. The
group demanded the release of all MRTA members in prison and safe
passage for them and the hostage takers. The terrorists released most of
the hostages in December but held 81 Peruvians and Japanese citizens for
several months.
-
1996
-
U.S. Economic Espionage Act passed.
-
1997
-
Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, announces the
birth of a lamb called Dolly, the first mammal cloned from an adult
cell, specifically, a cell in a pregnant ewe's mammary gland.
-
1997
-
The National Center for Human Genome Research (NCHGR) at the National
Institutes of Health becomes the National Human Genome Research
Institute (NHGRI).
-
1997
-
U.S. National Cancer Institute estimates that 160 million people in the
United States were exposed to some level of iodine 131 from prior U.S.
nuclear tests conducted in Nevada, and that these exposures would, over
time, cause 30,000–75,000 cases of thyroid cancer.
-
1997
-
Congress passes the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which establishes
rights involving records from consumer reporting agencies.
-
1997
-
Department of Energy creates Chemical and Biological National Security
Program to develop systems and technologies to protect civilian
populations against the threats associated with chemical, biological,
and nuclear attacks.
-
1997
-
The corrupt regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, a longtime U.S. ally in Zaire,
is overthrown by rebel forces under the leadership of Laurent Kabila.
Kabila will change the country's name back to Congo, but his
regime will bring few democratic reforms, and he will be killed by his
own bodyguards in 2001.
-
1997
-
Tourist killings in Egypt, November 17. Al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya
(IG) gunmen shoot and kill 58 tourists and four Egyptians and wound 26
others at the Hatshepsut Temple in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor.
-
1997
-
The FBI announces its new National DNA Index System (NDIS) on December
8, allowing forensic science laboratories to link serial violent crimes
to each other and to known sex offenders through the electronic exchange
of DNA profiles.
-
1998
-
The Hebron Accord, designed to promote peace between Israel and
Palestine, is undermined by both sides as terrorism breaks out and the
building of new settlements defies non-expansionist agreements.
-
1998
-
Craig Venter forms a company (later named Celera), and predicts that the
company will decode the entire human genome within three years. Celera
plans to use a "whole genome shotgun" method, which will
assemble the genome without using maps. Venter says that his company
will not follow the Bermuda principles concerning data release.
-
1998
-
DNA analyses of semen stains on a dress worn by White House aide Monica
Lewinsky are found to match DNA from a blood sample taken from President
Clinton.
-
1998
-
DNA fingerprinting used to identify remains of Russian Imperial Romanov
family.
-
1998
-
India and Pakistan conduct underground nuclear tests. Exaggerated
results are detected using seismic records.
-
1998
-
Controversy breaks out over the reported NSA Echelon project, which
privacy groups describe as a worldwide surveillance network that
eavesdrops on communications traffic and shares intelligence gathered by
the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
-
1998
-
International Atomic Energy Agency Iraq Action Team withdraws from Iraq
because of a lack of "full and free access" to Iraqi
sites.
-
1998
-
Congress passes Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the most
comprehensive overhaul of copyright law in a generation.
-
1998
-
Presidential Decision Directive 61, issued by President Clinton in
February, reorganizes DOE Office of Intelligence.
-
1998
-
U.S. Army combines its Chemical and Biological Defense Command and
Soldier Systems Command to form U.S. Army Soldier and Biological
Chemical Command (SBCCOM).
-
1998
-
Due to heightened concerns over technology leaks from the U.S. Commerce
Department to China, commerce secretary William Daley announces plans to
tighten security and limit access to classified information within the
department.
-
1998
-
Presidential Decision Directive 63, signed by President Clinton in May,
establishes the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office (CIAO) of the
U.S. Department of Commerce.
-
1998
-
Real IRA explodes a car bomb outside a store in Banbridge, Northern
Ireland.
-
1998
-
U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa, August 7, 1998: A bomb explodes at
the rear entrance of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, killing 12 U.S.
citizens, 32 foreign service workers, and 247 Kenyan citizens. About
5,000 Kenyans, six U.S. citizens, and 13 foreign service workers are
injured. Almost simultaneously, a bomb detonates outside the U.S.
embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing seven foreign service
workers and three Tanzanian citizens, and injuring one U.S. citizen and
76 Tanzanians. The U.S. government holds Osama Bin Laden responsible.
-
1998
-
Formation, in October, of the U.S. National Domestic Preparedness Office
as the coordination center for all federal efforts in response to
weapons of mass destruction.
-
1998
-
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed.
-
1998
-
Iraq expels UN weapons inspectors on October 31. In December, the United
States and Britain launch Operation Desert Fox to attempt to destroy
Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs.
-
1999
-
Vladimir Putin becomes prime minister of Russia.
-
1999
-
The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland become the first former Soviet
bloc states to join NATO, taking the alliance's borders some 400
miles towards Russia.
-
1999
-
President Clinton signs Executive Order 13142, which amends Executive
Order 12958 by extending the period of classification for some sensitive
documents.
-
1999
-
Taiwanese-born computer scientist Wen Ho Lee is fired from his job in
March and subsequently arrested by the FBI. Charged with not properly
securing classified materials and failing to report meetings with
individuals from "sensitive" countries, Lee will be held
for a year and eventually convicted in 2000.
-
1999
-
Beginning March 24, NATO forces conduct a 78-day campaign of air strikes
to end Serb "ethnic cleansing" in the Albanian enclave of
Kosovo and to break the hold of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
-
1999
-
Melissa virus (actually a form of malicious data wedded to a particular
type of virus program, a macro virus) spreads through the e-mail systems
of the world on March 26, causing $80 million worth of damage, primarily
in the form of lost productivity resulting from the shutdown of
overloaded mailboxes.
-
1999
-
Osama bin Laden is added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives
list in June, in connection with the U.S. embassy bombings in eastern
Africa.
-
1999
-
FBI personnel travel to Kosovo on June 23 to assist in the collection of
evidence and the examination of forensic materials in support of the
prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic and others before the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
-
1999
-
Congress releases a bipartisan report asserting that China stole nuclear
secrets regarding U.S. weapons. The systematic espionage campaign by the
Chinese is alleged to date to the 1970s.
-
1999
-
A nuclear accident at Japan's Tokaimura facility occurs on
September 30 when a criticality event, or unplanned chain reaction,
exposes 39 workers to radiation contamination and causes the evacuation
of families within 350 meters of the facility.
-
1999
-
Russia invades Chechnya on October 1, resuming hostilities that had
abated since 1996.
-
1999
-
IKONOS, the world's first commercial remote sensing satellite
with 1 meter resolution, is launched.
-
1999
-
UN Security Council resolution 1284 creates the UN Monitoring,
Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) as a replacement for
UNSCOM. Saddam Hussein rejects the resolution. In March 2000, Hans Blix
becomes chairman of UNMOVIC.
-
1999
-
A merger of the ACDA and U.S. State Department creates a number of new
bureaus, including the Bureau of Arms Control.
-
1999
-
As the year 2000 approaches, the world prepares itself for the possible
deleterious effects of a computer shortcut (a protocol developed when
memory was scarce) that used only the last two digits of a year to
indicate the year. Termed the Y2K problem, fears approach near hysteria
as people and governments prepare for computers to malfunction and
adversely effect critical infrastructure. Adequate preparation,
considerable investment in programming solutions, and monitoring turn
the dawn of 2000 into a grand worldwide party but a non-event with
regard to Y2K fears. Minimal disruptions are reported.
-
2000
-
Mokhtar Haouari and Abdel Ghani Meskini are charged with collaborating
with Ahmed Ressam and others in a wide-ranging terrorist conspiracy to
bomb U.S. sites during the January 1, 2000, millennium celebrations. The
FBI/New York Police Department Joint Terrorist Task Force, Royal
Canadian Mounted Police, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service,
and Canada's Department of Justice collaborate in the
investigation.
-
2000
-
Islamic extremist group Asbat al-Ansar carries out a rocket-propelled
grenade attack on the Russian embassy in Beirut in January 2000.
-
2000
-
The Jaish-e-Mohammed, an Islamic extremist group based in Pakistan, is
formed by Masood Azhar upon his release from prison in India in early
2000.
-
2000
-
President Clinton signs an executive order prohibiting federal
departments and agencies from using genetic information in hiring or
promoting workers.
-
2000
-
NNSA begins operations on March 1, 2000. NNSA has the mission of
improving national security through defense uses of nuclear energy.
-
2000
-
Beginning in October, OIS divides its functions between its Information
Security Services Center and its new Office of Information Assurance and
Critical Infrastructure Protection.
-
2000
-
October 12, terrorist bombing of USS
Cole
kills 17 of its crew and wounds 39 others. Two suicide bombers,
ultimately linked to al-Qaeda, pull alongside the vessel near the port
in Aden, Yemen, and detonate explosives near the
Cole
's hull.
-
2000
-
The PLO's terrorist campaign against Israel again intensifies
with start of a second Intifada.
-
2000
-
Former U.S. senator John Danforth, conducting an independent review of
FBI actions in the 1993 FBI assault on the Branch Davidian compound in
Waco, Texas, releases his final report exonerating the FBI of
wrongdoing. The Government Operations Committee reaches a similar
conclusion.
-
2001
-
On January 5, just 15 days before leaving office, President Clinton
issues Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 75, "U.S.
Counterintelligence Effectiveness—Counterintelligence for the
Twenty-first Century."
-
2001
-
A U.S. Navy P-3 on a surveillance mission over the South China Sea
collides with a Chinese fighter plane, killing the Chinese pilot and
forcing the American plane to make an emergency landing on
China's Hainan Island. Although the Chinese pilot is blamed for
the collision, Washington issues "regrets" but no apology
(as is demanded by the Chinese) to secure the release of the U.S. crew
after they are held for 11 days.
-
2001
-
The FBI announces on January 5 the National Infra Guard program at the
FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center. The program
centers on securely sharing information about computer intrusions and
intrusion threats between business and law enforcement so that the
confidentiality of potentially affected businesses is protected.
-
2001
-
The complete draft sequence of the human genome is published in
February. The public sequence data is published in the British journal
Nature
and the Celera sequence is published in the American journal
Science.
Increased knowledge of the human genome allows greater specificity in
pharmacological research and drug interaction studies.
-
2001
-
FBI Agent Robert Philip Hanssen is arrested on February 18 for
conspiracy to commit espionage. The affidavit in support of an arrest
warrant for Hanssen charges that he engaged in a lengthy relationship
with the KGB and its agencies.
-
2001
-
Following years of Iraqi firings upon U.S. and British airplanes
patrolling the northern and southern "no fly" zones, the
United States and Britain carry out bombing raids in February with the
intent to disable Iraq's air defense network.
-
2001
-
President George W. Bush presents the Congressional Gold Medal to World
War II Navajo code talkers (windtalkers).
-
2001
-
In May, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi admits to a German newspaper that
Libya was behind a Berlin discotheque bombing in 1986 that killed a U.S.
serviceman and a Turkish civilian, and injured some 200 others. At a
trial in November, four defendants are convicted for roles in the
bombing.
-
2001
-
Hamas claims responsibility for the bombing of a popular Israeli
nightclub that causes more than 140 casualties.
-
2001
-
A U.S. grand jury indicts fourteen Hezbollah members on June 21 for the
1996 Khobar Towers bombing.
-
2001
-
Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of the rebels in the Afghanistan Northern
Alliance, widely regarded as the most popular opposition figure to the
ruling Taliban (the regime providing asylum to al-Qaeda and its leader,
Osama bin Laden) is assassinated on September 9.
-
2001
-
September 11, Islamist terrorists mount coordinated attacks on New York
and Washington. The World Trade Center towers are destroyed, killing
nearly 3,000 people. In Washington, a plane slams into the Pentagon,
while passengers aboard another hijacked airliner, aware of the other
terrorist attacks, fight back. During the struggle for the aircraft, it
crashes into a Pennsylvania field, thwarting the terrorists'
plans to crash the plane into either the U.S. Capitol or the White
House. The FBI dedicates 7,000 of its 11,000 special agents and
thousands of FBI support personnel to the PENTTBOM investigation.
"PENTTBOM" is short for Pentagon, Twin Towers Bombing.
-
2001
-
Letters containing a powdered form of
Bacillus anthracis
, the bacteria that causes anthrax, are mailed by an unknown terrorist
or terrorist group (foreign or domestic) to government representatives,
members of the news media, and others in the United States. More than 20
cases and five deaths are eventually attributed to the terrorist attack.
-
2001
-
On October 7, United States launches Operation Enduring Freedom against
the al-Qaeda terror network and Afghanistan's Taliban regime. The
Taliban regime is toppled and many al-Qaeda operatives are killed, but
Osama bin Laden evades capture.
-
2001
-
Following the September 11 attacks, NATO secretary-general George
Robertson invokes Article Five of the alliance's constitution,
which states that an attack on one member nation is seen as an attack on
all. Washington chooses, however, not to involve NATO in the U.S.-led
military campaign which follows.
-
2001
-
QuickBird satellite launched, providing sub meter commercial satellite
images.
-
2001
-
On October 16, President Bush signs Executive Order 13231,
"Critical Infrastructure Protection in the Information
Age."
-
2001
-
On October 26, President Bush signs the USA Patriot Act into law, giving
the FBI and CIA broader investigatory powers and allowing them to share
confidential information about suspected terrorists with one another.
Under the act, both agencies can conduct residential searches without a
warrant and without the presence of the suspect and immediately seize
personal records. The provisions are not limited to investigating
suspected terrorists, but may be used in any criminal investigation
related to terrorism. The Patriot Act also grants the FBI and CIA
greater latitude in using computer tracking devices such as the
Carnivore (DCS 1000) to gain access to Internet and phone records.
-
2001
-
Disarmament operations begin in the former Yugoslav republic of
Macedonia.
-
2001
-
Chernobyl nuclear power plant begins decommissioning.
-
2001
-
In
United States v. Scarfo,
a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey, grants the government's
motion to suppress information on an FBI computer keystroke recording
device under the Classified Information Protection Act (CIPA).
-
2001
-
Fourth Marine Expeditionary Brigade formed. It consists of the Marine
Security Force Battalion, the Marine Security Guard Battalion, the
Chemical and Biological Incident Response Force, and the new
anti-terrorism battalion. The latter had evolved from the 1st Battalion,
8th Marines, which had been hit in the 1983 bombings of U.S. Marine
barracks in Lebanon.
-
2001
-
On November 19, President George W. Bush signs into law the Aviation and
Transportation Security Act (ATSA), which creates the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA), and authorizes TSA to direct a team of
air marshals and federal airport security screeners.
-
2001
-
United Kingdom passes a new counter-terrorist bill in December, the
Anti-Terrorism, Crime, and Security Act. The act allows British
authorities to detain suspected terrorists for up to six months before
reviewing their cases and for additional six-month periods after that.
As in the United States, civil liberty advocate groups in the United
Kingdom criticize the new law for potentially infringing upon a basic
civil liberty, specifically the right to avoid unlawful detention and
gain access to a speedy trial.
-
2001
-
The Chemical and Biological Incident Response Force (CBIRF) sends a
100-member initial response team into the Dirksen Senate Office Building
in Washington on December 2 alongside EPA specialists to detect and
remove anthrax spores which had been introduced into the building in a
letter. A similar mission was undertaken at the Longworth House Office
Building in October, during which time samples were collected from more
than 200 office spaces.
-
2001
-
FBI Director Mueller orders the reorganization of FBI operations on
December 3 to respond to a revised agency mission that emphasizes
terrorism prevention and internal accountability, and strengthens
partnerships with domestic and international law enforcement.
-
2001
-
Enough closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) are installed in public
places in Britain that, on an average day in any large British city,
security experts calculate that a person will have over 300
opportunities to be captured on CCTV during the course of normal daily
activities.
-
2001
-
U.S. unmanned plane completes trans-Pacific flight from California to
Australia.
-
2001
-
Brian Regan, retired U.S. Air Force master sergeant and cryptanalyst, is
arrested on charges of spying for Iraq, Libya and China.
-
2002
-
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government
dramatically increases funding to stockpile drugs and other agents that
could be used to counter a bioterrorism attack.
-
2002
-
An explosives-laden boat rams the French oil tanker
Limburg
off the coast of Yemen, killing one member of the tanker's crew,
tearing a hole in the vessel and spilling 90,000 barrels of oil. U.S.
experts believe that the attack was perpetrated by al-Qaeda members.
-
2002
-
Industrialized nations pledge $10 billion to help Russia secure Soviet
era nuclear weapons and materials.
-
2002
-
The planned destruction of stocks of smallpox-causing Variola virus at
the two remaining depositories in the United States and Russia is
delayed over fears that large-scale production of vaccine might be
needed in the event of a bioterrorist action.
-
2002
-
More than 1,300 FBI personnel, along with representatives of other
federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, ensure safety at the
2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Preparations for the games
began in May 1998 and included multiple training exercises involving
weapons of mass destruction scenarios.
-
2002
-
Scientists at Russia's DS Likhachev Scientific Research Institute
for Cultural Heritage and Environmental Protection successfully breed a
new kind of highly efficient explosives sniffer dog. The new breed is a
cross between a jackal and a Russian Husky.
-
2002
-
The Pathogen Genomic Sequencing program is initiated by DARPA to focus
on characterizing the genetic components of pathogens in order to
develop diagnostics, treatments and therapies for the diseases they
cause.
-
2002
-
GAO reports that 13 of the hijackers involved in the September 11
attacks had not been interviewed by U.S. consular officials prior to the
granting of visas.
-
2002
-
DARPA initiates the Biosensor Technologies program in 2002 to develop
fast, sensitive, automatic technologies for the detection and
identification of biological warfare agents.
-
2002
-
A report released in March by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
Institute of Medicine concludes that AVA anthrax vaccine is
"acceptably safe."
-
2002
-
Russian and NATO foreign ministers reach final agreement in May on the
establishment of the NATO-Russia Council, in which Russia and the 19
NATO countries will have an equal role in decision-making on policy to
counter terrorism and other security threats.
-
2002
-
NATO secretary-general George Robertson visits Ukrainian capital in July
and welcomes Ukraine's declared desire for membership, but he
states that further political, economic, and military reforms are
necessary before Ukraine can join.
-
2002
-
The United States withdraws from the ABM treaty in July.
-
2002
-
President Bush calls upon the UN to confront the Iraqi threat and usurp
potential Iraqi transfer of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist
groups.
-
2002
-
On October 1, the U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Space Command merge to
form USSTRATCOM, located at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
-
2002
-
Under threat of serious consequences, including potential military
action based on UN Resolution 1441, Iraq allows IAEA's Iraq
Action Team to resume inspections in Iraq. The Iraq Action Team is
renamed the Iraq Nuclear Verification Office (INVO).
-
2002
-
London police arrest seven men in connection with ricin manufacture.
-
2002
-
On November 26, President Bush signs into law the Terrorism Risk
Insurance Act, intended to cover the private sector in the event of
terrorist attacks such as those that occurred on September 11.
-
2002
-
Seven countries—Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania,
Slovakia and Slovenia, are invited to join the European Union at a
summit meeting in Prague.
-
2002
-
Congress passes and President Bush signs the Homeland Security Act of
2002 into law creating the Department of Homeland Security.
-
2002
-
In November, a CIA-operated Predator drone fires a missile that kills
Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant in Yemen, Qaed Salim Sinan
al-Harethi, and five other al-Qaeda suspects.
-
2002
-
A group of Swiss researchers at the Lausanne-based Dalle Molle Institute
for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence claim they are 95 percent certain
that a tape purported to show Osama Bin Laden and played on Arabic
television network Al-Jazeera was a fake. U.S. officials continue to
assert that the tape is probably genuine. Investigators claim that the
poor tape quality defeats sophisticated efforts using aural spectrogram
machines that rely on biometric algorithms to analyze breath patterns,
syllable emphasis, frequency of speech, rate of speech, and other
factors. Over the next several months, additional tapes are released
with experts generally agreeing only that the voice alleged to be that
of bin Laden could be genuine. The authenticity of the tapes was
critical to determine if the al-Qaeda leader had survived the U.S. war
against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
-
2002
-
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri—allegeded to be leader of al-Queda
operations in the Persian Gulf—is captured. Nashiri, also known
as Abu Asim al-Makki, is suspected of masterminding the October 2000
attack on the USS
Cole.
-
2002
-
Anas al-Liby, one of the FBI's most-wanted fugitives, is captured
in Afghanistan. Al-Liby was allegedly linked to the 1998 bombings of
American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
-
2002
-
Ramzi Binalshibh, allegedly one of the most senior al-Qaeda members, is
arrested in Pakistan.
-
2002
-
Trial of Mounir al-Motassadek begins in Germany. Al-Motassadek, a
Moroccan, is the first man to stand trial in the September 11 attacks
and is charged with being an accessory to more than 3,000 murders in New
York and Washington, and of belonging to an al-Qaeda cell in Hamburg.
Motassadek claims he knew the hijackers, but only socially; he is
convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison for being a
co-conspirator.
-
2002
-
Zacarias Moussaoui, a 34-year-old French citizen of Moroccan origin, is
charged with six counts of conspiracy and faces a possible death
sentence for alleged involvement in the September 11 attacks. Moussaoui
is referred to as the "20th hijacker"; it is suspected
that he was unable to participate in the mission because he had been
placed under arrest on an unrelated charge. Moussaoui denies involvement
in the attacks but admits to being a member of the al-Qaeda network and
at his trial publicly supports the actions of the terrorists.
-
2002
-
In December, North Korea expels IAEA inspectors, removes surveillance
equipment from nuclear facilities, and announces an intent to make
plants operational.
-
2003
-
Office of Homeland Security becomes Department of Homeland Security on
January 24.
-
2003
-
President Bush announces formation of Project BioShield during his 2003
State of the Union Address.
-
2003
-
Scientists at Sandia National Laboratory report achieving limited
controlled fusion using a pulsed power source.
-
2003
-
North Korea pulls out of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons (NPT).
-
2003
-
U.S. secretary of state Colin L. Powell presents to the UN Security
Council evidence of Iraq's continued development of prohibited
biological weapons.
-
2003
-
NATO's internal divisions are highlighted as France, Germany, and
Belgium temporarily block U.S. moves to offer military support to Turkey
in the event of war in Iraq.
-
2003
-
Ten suspected terrorists mysteriously vanish from a high-security prison
in Yemen. Among the escapees are two top suspects in the bombing of the
USS
Cole.
-
2003
-
Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber" who attempted a suicide
bombing of an American Airlines Paris-to-Miami flight in December 2001,
pleads guilty on all eight charges against him and declares himself a
follower of Osama bin Laden. Reid is sentenced to life in prison without
possibility of parole.
-
2003
-
U.S. government officials claim that the capture of top al-Qaeda
lieutenant Khalid Sheik Mohammed, allegedly al-'s chief
operations planner, also yields valuable documents and computer files
outlining al-Qaeda operations.
-
2003
-
August 19: a truck-bomb explodes near the UN Iraq headquarters in
Baghdad, killing 17, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, head of the UN
delegation in Iraq.
-
2003
-
Virtually all agencies scheduled for transfer to the new Department of
Homeland Security are officially moved in a March 1 ceremony attended by
President Bush.
-
2003
-
Break-up of the space shuttle
Columbia
upon reentry. Scientists use GIS technology to map debris field.
-
2003
-
Carbon-graphite coils capable of generating an electromagnetic pulse or
otherwise disabling electronics are used in U.S.-led raids on Baghdad,
Iraq.
-
2003
-
Dolphins and sea lions used in mine detection and swimmer defense in
waters off of Iraq.
-
2003
-
U.S. intelligence sources indicate that at least 17 nations around the
globe have offensive biological weapons programs.
-
2003
-
On March 17, U.S. president Bush gives Saddam Hussein and his sons 48
hours to leave Iraq or face war. On March 20, American missiles hit
"targets of opportunity" in Baghdad, marking the start of
the war to oust Hussein. Intelligence sources on the ground in Iraq have
indicated that Hussein and other elements of the Iraqi leadership are
meeting in a bunker in Baghdad. In less than 45 minutes, a U.S. B-2
stealth bomber armed with "bunker-buster" munitions
attempts to eliminate the Iraqi leadership. For several weeks the fate
of Hussein is debated, with Iraqi television showing images of Hussein
that do not definitively verify his survival. Within days, U.S. and
British ground troops enter Iraq from the south, and on April 9, U.S.
forces advance into central Baghdad. Hussein government is toppled, but
U.S. efforts to establish order and a new government are hampered by
sporadic attacks and sectarian violence.
-
2003
-
PLF leader Abu Abbas, found guilty of the murder of an elderly American
during the 1985 terrorist hijacking of the cruise ship
Achille Lauro,
is discovered and arrested in Baghdad following Operation Iraqi
Freedom.
-
2003
-
UN Security Council approves resolution backing the U.S.-led
administration in Iraq and plan to lift economic sanctions. U.S.
administrator abolishes the Baath Party and security institutions of
Saddam Hussein's regime.
-
2003
-
August 19: a truck-bomb explodes near the UN Iraq headquarters in
Baghdad, killing 17, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, head of the UN
delegation in Iraq.
-
2003
-
September 23: two U.S. military personnel who have been working at the
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility, where suspected al-Qaeda
members are being held, are accused of espionage.
Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic: