CIA

"We've been approached already by the DOD, the FBI, the CIA..."

- Pepper Potts to Phil Coulson

The Central Intelligence Agency is a major United States intelligence service, specializing in foreign operations.

History
"Get our agency people looking for a white man at that bottling plant."

- Thaddeus Ross

Nick Fury joined the ranks of the agency and, during the Cold War, he was sent on a mission in Budapest. When he discovered that Agent Escobar is a traitor, Fury's Russian friend Verliecki left a fake CIA identification card with Fury's name and Escobar's image near the unconscious Escobar for the Soviet police to find.

The CIA was one of the agencies that approached Stark Industries, following Tony Stark's capture by, and escape from, the Ten Rings.

While Espinoza's men where beating up Bruce Banner Espinoza himself accused Bruce Banner of being a spy, naming the CIA as one of the potential agencies that send him into the jungle. Later, while working at the Pingo Doce Bottling Plant, some of Banner's blood dripped from his injured finger and into a bottle, giving his location away to Lieutenant general Thaddeus Ross of the US Army, who requested that the CIA monitor the building.

The CIA was one of the agencies that had intel on the "Mandarin bombings".

S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter was recruited by the CIA, following the exposure of that organization's infiltration by HYDRA.

After Skye hacked the NSA satellites for video on the release of the prisoners from the Fridge, Agent Grant Ward killed Agent Eric Koenig and stopped the feed to conceal his involvement. When Skye returned and asked about Koening's location, Ward told her that he was sending the info to the CIA, NATO and Interpol.

Jemma Simmons pretended to be from the CIA when she approached Audrey Nathan after S.H.I.E.L.D. was labelled a terrorist organization.

When Maria Hill was leaving a Senate hearing and discussing her feeling about it to Pepper Potts, Hill described how she would rather deal with the CIA than with Congress.

Rosalind Price was a member of the CIA using an alias before becoming the leader of the Advanced Threat Containment Unit.

The CIA stationed agent Carter in the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre in Berlin.

Trivia

 * In the comics, Nick Fury spent several decades as a member of the CIA before he joined S.H.I.E.L.D., and Alphonso Mackenzie was a CIA liasion to S.H.I.E.L.D. before he joined the latter agency.
 * In the promotional S.H.I.E.L.D. files for The Avengers, it is said that Phil Coulson worked for the CIA before joining S.H.I.E.L.D. However, that information contradicts the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode Turn, Turn, Turn where Coulson says that he joined S.H.I.E.L.D. right after high school.