By Olivia Ward, Foreign Affairs Reporter

The world’s most famous spy service, the Central Intelligence Agency, is nearing its 60th birthday. But are its six decades of skulduggery a thriller, a tragedy or a farce?

Accused of kidnapping, brutalizing and handing over terrorism suspects to torture-friendly countries, the agency is as beleaguered now as it was in the days of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

Dumping 25 years of dirty laundry on the public’s doorstep last month in the form of massive declassified files has only stirred the controversy about a shadowy organization that so many people love to hate.

After years of denials, the documents show that some of the worst suspicions about the agency are true. It did plan to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, as well as Patrice Lumumba of Congo and Dominican Republic strongman Rafael Trujillo. And it spied on American journalists, civil rights activists and pop star John Lennon.

Canadians were also targets of the agency, which set up a network of informants on Canadian campuses in the late 1960s to pry into “left wing” ideas, according to documents obtained by the CBC.

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