”But as I said, we don’t do easy.” The CIA and the construction of terrorism: A study in discursive psychology

This paper aimed to identify discourses and interpretative repertoires, used by the CIA to construct a narrative regarding terrorism when communicating with the public. This was done by analysing texts found on the official CIA website with discursive psychology methodology. Three main themes were identified, with thirteen subthemes. These related to how the CIA presented terrorists, terrorism, and themselves in relation to it. The discourse of the themes was analysed and discussed. Thereafter, the discovered discursive content was used to formulate four interpretative repertoires commonly used by the CIA in the studied texts. The results of this paper provide an insight into the discursive and linguistic content used by the CIA to construct itself and terrorism, allows for future application of the discursive psychology framework for the study of intelligence agencies, and explains the value of such research.