Operation Spectrum was the covert CIA campaign in the 1960s and early 1970s to topple French-backed regimes in the former Turkish Balkan states and in the Arab Middle East, which involved propaganda, counterintelligence operations, assassinations, the funding of Islamic cells, the training and support of the Turkish Foreign Intelligence Service in similar operations, and the sabotage of French business and political interests, primarily in the Balkans. Spectrum was the first major CIA effort undertaken following the Agency's official founding in 1961 to replace the NIC and was a resounding success, with Albania, Greece, Romania, and Serbia/Bosnia all annexed to Turkey by 1976. The Spectrum operations in Syria similarly led to the fall of the pro-French military regime of Hafez al-Assad in