Central Intelligence Agency's Five Directorates

Counterintelligence is one of the most vital areas of the United States intelligence system, and is heavily intertwined with our history, laws and ethics. According to the National Security Act of 1947, counterintelligence (CI) is defined as “information gathered and activities conducted to protect against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted by or on behalf of foreign governments or elements thereof, foreign organizations or foreign persons, or international terrorist activities.” It consists of five activities and functions: operations, investigations, collection, analysis and production, and functional services. In this aspect, CI is unique in that it is both an activity and its product. U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) collect and analyze both CI information and foreign intelligence. There are many counterintelligence activities that the United States is involved in, as both CI and foreign intelligence play an important role in countering threats to our country’s national security. Among these most controversial and misunderstood activities are counterespionage and disinformation.

In the midst of July 2006, the NSB established a WMD Directorate to assimilate distributed components within the FBI. Besides, terrorist screening center was provided by the NSB, and this effort resulted in critical criminal intelligence and enlightening others agencies such as local law enforcements; specifically, significant Detainee Interrogation group. Also, interagency body and the collection of information on high-value terror suspects in thwarting violence against the U.S and allies around the world. Moreover, “merging the FBI’s national security workforce and mission under one leadership umbrella enhances our contribution to the national intelligence effort and allows us to leverage resources from our intelligence community (IC), Federal, state, local, tribal, private, and foreign partners”(FBI.GOV/NSB).

Perhaps the most important change in how the federal government was reorganized after September 11th is the creation of both the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) position and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in 2004 with the passage of the same IRTPA that created TSA. This concept had been first suggested in 1955 after a study by Congress then and was recommended time and again but only became a reality after the September 11th attacks drove the need for major intelligence reform home and the 9/11 Commission continued the push for the creation of such a position (ODNI, n.d., paras. 1-5). As one can see from the mission and vision of the ODNI, the importance cannot be overstated. The mission includes leading intelligence integration while having the IC produce the most insightful intelligence products possible and the vision is fully integrating the IC thus making the nation more secure (ODNI, n.d., paras. 1-2).

The Central Intelligence Agency pursues the effort to enhance the protection of the republic and the democratic ideals of the United States of America when being threatened by foreign nations and the communist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Hence, the gathering of intelligence through field agents becomes essential and the secretiveness of the operations is indispensable in order to obtain accuracy. Information on the actions in areas such as Poland, have caused field agents to have been entitled to research the current situation at both the levels of the populace and the central government. Apart from this region, operations in Moscow include the infiltration in the government and constant recruitment of agents in order to predict

Upon analyzing 9/11 it was clear to focus on the limitations that the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Central Intelligence Agency had faced. Security breaches and poor intelligence sharing were just some of the critical failures that were encountered. Moreover, the main focus is pointed towards the miscommunication between these two agencies. Evidently, the execution and tactical strategies went unnoticed despite the apparent red flags that presented themselves, in addition to the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Central Intelligence Agency failure to pursue threats and establish a baseline of security resulted in the disaster of 9/11. In conjunction to these mistakes, the restriction of shared information

The DNI has modestly more power than the old Directors of Central Intelligence (DCIs), but not enough to give the ODNI/AIS real clout. “Herding cats” remains a decent description of the ODNI’s basic role. The DNI has several duties and responsibilities, but for the subject of improving intelligence information sharing the focus will be directed towards: Improving Analytics, Improving Information Security, Improving Foreign Liaison Relationships, and the end state of Improving Information Sharing.

The CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) in the United States has been involved in several operations with drug trafficking. Some of these reports claim that the evidence of the Congress indicates that the CIA worked with groups that were known to be involved in drug trafficking. The deals mainly include providing the CIA with useful information and support material, in exchange for allowing their criminal activities to continue, and impede or prevent the arrest, prosecution and imprisonment from United States law enforcement agencies. This "war on drugs" was used as an easy way to increase repression in inner cities and confiscate millions of dollars in private assets through unconstitutional forfeiture laws. These assets were used to fund police burgeoning, and as an active participant in the illegal drug trade, public resources were used to bring heroin and cocaine into American inner cities since the 1960 's.

Providing for the common defense means that the United States government must preserve the rights, freedom, and safety of the nation as a whole. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) fulfills this goal, as the agency collects, analyzes, and processes information at an international level and utilizes the data to further bolster our nation’s intelligence and security against foreign countries. Without the CIA, we would not be able to be one of the strongest nations on the planet.

Dating back to the 1930’s and following the Great Depression, Americans witnessed exponential growth of Federal Government Agencies. Implementation of many of these agencies by President Roosevelt came as a sort of relief to citizens, seemingly. While a growing federal government stifles civil liberties, the constitutional responsibility of the government to provide national defense remains paramount. Governmental expenditures and advancements regarding our military are imperative in maintaining superiority internationally. With this in mind, we have the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Consolidation of the intelligence community under the DNI increases collaboration by inculcating a culture of “jointness”, similar to collaborative efforts by the military services following the Goldwater-Nichols reform. Second, establishment of the National Intelligence Coordination Center (NIC-C) provides DNI with a way to coordinate and focus collection efforts across the intelligence community. Lastly, The Library of National Intelligence provides a means for analysts across the intelligence community to gain access to additional sources.

     The CIA is one of the U.S. foreign inteligency agencies, responsible for getting and analyzing information about foreign government, corporations, individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the U.S. government. The State Department's Bureau or inteligence and reserch and theDefense Department'sdefense inteligence agency comprise the other two. Its headquarters is inLangley, Virginia, across the Potomac River from D.C. The Agency, created in 1947 by President Harry S. Trueman, is a descendant of the Office of stratigic Services(OSS) of World War 2. The OSS was dissolved in October 1945 but

Thesis: The U.S. Intelligence Community has evolved since its establishment in 1947 into a complex network including; program managers, departmental components, and service components. The service components are supported by the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, and U.S. Coast Guard. Many agencies were created in response to incidents such as the Bay of Pigs, First Gulf War, and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centers. Growth complexities and global commitments continue to be a challenge for the Intelligence Community. Evolution of the U.S. Intelligence Community

Terrorism has become a main threat to the peace and development in the U.S and the world as a whole. Past experiences of terrorism such as the September 11th attack in the United States has a created the need to have a functioning counters intelligence which will effectively deal with terrorism. However, for the counter intelligence to be effective, other basic functions have to be played out. The basic functions are collection and analysis. The other function is the execution of covert actions and the major role is the counterintelligence. The Intelligence agents combine all roles and place them under the umbrella of intelligence.

Intelligence is one of the first lines of defense used by the United States to protect the Country against both foreign and domestic threats (Johnson, 2010). There are many ways and methods of intelligence collections employed by the intelligence community such as “spies, eavesdropping, technical sources, and openly available materials” etc (Clark, 2013). Method used also depends on many factors such as available resources, time, agency involved, and intelligence collection source. U.S Intelligence agencies use different collection and analytical method that suit their collection function, structure and pro¬cess. For example, DNI/OSC relies on open source (OSINT), CIA uses human intelligence (HUMINT) tactic, DIA uses measurements and signatures intelligence (MASINT), NSA employs signals intelligence (SIGINT), and NGA utilizes imagery intelligence (IMINT) techniques for their intelligence collections (Clark, 2013).

Counterintelligence (CI) involves actions aimed at protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage from penetration and disruption by hostile nations or their intelligence services (Lowenthal, 2014). Three main components of Counterintelligence include collection, defensive and offensive. The collection is the ability to gather intelligence information about rivalry capabilities against own nation; defensive part of CI involves measures to prevent and thwart other nations ' attempts to penetrate into own nation 's intelligence system; while an offensive aspect deal with running double agents to penetrate, manipulate, exploit, and control targeted adversaries. CI is said to be the most essential aspect of the intelligence disciplines, in the sense that it helps in collecting vast quantities of secret information and produce an excellent analysis of intelligence, although, ineffective counterintelligence measures may diminish confidence in the final results (Van Cleave, 2013).