In terms of criminality, my feeling is that the CIA was always a bit of a loose cannon. In the WWII era with "Wild Bill" Donovan, there were all sorts of hijin

In terms of criminality, my feeling is that the CIA was always a bit of a loose cannon. In the WWII era with "Wild Bill" Donovan, there were all sorts of hijinks that wouldn't fly today, ranging from assassinations to downright silly operations leaving agents exposed to unnecessary danger. In the Eisenhower era, I don't think there was anything as bad as torture, but Allen Dulles and his cronies authorized assassinations behind Eisenhower's back (the criticism is that Eisenhower did not institute strong enough oversight of CIA back then). Similar to the Military Industrial Complex, the intelligence community has morphed into a bureaucracy all its own, with a tendency to hide its own agenda from oversight.