I was just wondering if the CIA or a similar, but differently named 'spy' orginization would have existed in the US prior to the Great War? I assume there would be but I couldn't find any information on it.

In Game, there is no reference to the CIA to my knowledge. Known parts of the government, and parts believed to exist from extrapolated canon sources can be found here:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Federal_government

So, with no official answer, we're left with Speculation. Based on the CIA's founding date of 1947 (thanks Wacky-I-Err-mean-WikiPedia), and given that the divergence is believed to happen sometimes in the 1950's, the CIA probably did exist, at the very least, at some point.

If yo want to keep a bit closer to known canon, you may want to consider having a US Army Military inteligence unit, although this might not work for all situations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Military_Intelligence might be a good springboard) as we know the US Army definately existed.

Also the Un-American Activities Force did exist, but they have a closer equivalency to the Department of Homeland Security than the CIA.

Thanks for the replies. I was just doing some research for a possible mod idea I had. I think United States Militiary Intelligence Agency (USMIA) would work just fine and should be closer to canon as you suggested agent_c.

Thanks again!

Didn't the Enclave kind of worked as their information agency? Ingame, they seem to have had access to -all- information concerning the USA government..

No, they're Shadow Government, so they have full unlimited access to any information the Government agencies have

Nothing in the official canon mentions it, but I think we can safely assume there was some form of intelligence agency. At the very least the Office of Strategic Services would have been around early on, and was almost certainly replaced by the CIA or similar.

IRL, the OSS was broken up in 1945; the CIA, which was formed in 1946 was one of its successors. This was a Truman-era reform, as was the breakup of the War Department. But many of the Truman-era reforms are not canon; for example, the War Department, which ceased to exist IRL in 1947, still exists in 2077.

So the perpetuation of the OSS or something like it is not out of the question. The real-life OSS was such a creature of Gen. Donovan that it could never have survived his retirement intact. Some intelligence agency (or agencies) would continue to exist, but I doubt that it would be alike in name or form to the OSS or the CIA.

In the alternate Universe of Fallout we only have Chinese spies and the Secret Service which serves the PreWar Enclave. Their poster boy is a man named Frank Horrigan. In FO there are only two boss fights. The Master (who svcks if you can shoot him twelve times a round with plasma) and then there is Frank Horrigan. The most badass bossfight of all time.