History Of Intelligence During The United States

The Intelligence Community has had successes and failures, many of which have made history. One of the most prominent failures in U.S history was the attacks on September 11, 2011. Now most people would start to read this essay and think they know everything about what happened that day because it has been so publicized. However, for me it was different. Yes, I was alive when it happened, but I was too young to understand. The September 11th attacks have been of particular interest to me due to the fact that they happened right in my backyard. One of them even occurred in the same state in which I live. For this reason I wanted to know why an event of this magnitude occured in the U.S. The safety of Americans has changed since then leaving many people affected. The collection and analysis of intelligence in our nation changed dramtically after the 9/11 attacks.

This prevents the theft of secret information and detects the presence of spies in the United States. Some think the history of espionage goes back to prehistoric times. The bible tells of Moses sending spies into Canaan. Frederick the Great of Prussia is credited with originating organized espionage. George Washington's spies obtained intelligence and information during the Revolutionary war.

If you had that one piece of the puzzle that would have prevented the bombings of the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon on September 11 2001 would you know it? If you saw someone do something weird or suspicious before the attack on September 11 2001, would you have called the police? If someone had walked into a United States Embassy in a foreign country and said that they know someone was going to use a plane to destroy New York in two days, could this have stopped the attack? Intelligence Analysis puts the raw sources of information together, make predictions based on the data, and finally publish the results.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENCE IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR AND THE EFFECTS OF THE ESPIONAGE SYSTEM ON THE WAR

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.

The progression of military intelligence through the years is traced back to the Revolutionary War in 1775, courtesy of George Washington. “Through various re-incarnations, intelligence has played a key role in how the United States shaped their policies towards the armed forces and other countries” (The Evolution of the U.S. Intelligence Community-An Historical Overview). Intelligence collection often waned during peacetime, but made drastic increases during wartime.

Espionage, the use of spying to obtain secret information regarding the intentions and capabilities of other persons, groups, organizations, or states is largely seen as a modern twentieth-century phenomenon (Burds, 2012). In reality, it is one of the oldest political and military acts, appearing in historical and literary accounts since the beginning of recorded history. A vital tool of statecraft, espionage shapes foreign policy and changes how wars proceed. Unbeknownst to many Americans, subterfuge and secrecy would play an important role in the Revolutionary War. George Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was well aware that he needed reliable intelligence to triumph over British forces which outmatched and often outnumbered his own. To achieve this, Washington would establish numerous spy networks over the course of the war, the most successful being the Culper Spy Ring.

The American Revolution saw the rise of the American spy, and the father of these spies was George Washington, commander in Chief of the Continental Army. The siege of New York demonstrated the importance and dire need for an intelligence to General Washington. Unfortunately, the difficulty, at least initially, lay with finding people willing and able to serve in this manner.

It’s hard to pinpoint which events, what people, and how exactly they influenced Military Intelligence to be what it is today, but for America there is little doubt that CPT Nathan Hale had an impact. CPT Nathan Hale was one of the first spies during the Revolutionary War. He went behind enemy lines to provide intelligence directly to George Washington. It ultimately cost him his life, rumor has it he was sold out by a family member. However this helped shaped how intelligence was conducted relating to spies.

Mexican American War 1846-1848 In history it was said and believed that it only took a strong leader to win wars. With time, we learned that strong leaders are the ones that know battles are won as a team and not as individuals. Strong leaders know that there are assets available to them for battle planning. Leaders will have minimal intelligence if they do not utilize their available assets, restricting themselves from better options for battle planning.

Intelligence is a dependable instrument of its own to generate information that establishes the base of National Security in the United States. Intelligence has been used since the beginning of history to provide information on enemy threats and how to prevent a mass disasters. It has been used for wars, national security, military tactics, etc. Intelligence has been available since the revolutionary war and our first president George Washington and other leaders of the world have used intelligence to protect their countries. Intelligence is the dominant and the backbone of homeland Security and it is ceaseless learning about it. National Intelligence agents train tirelessly to fight and create

The United States has the most capable intelligence apparatus of any country in the world. The information produced by various agencies gives the United States a substantial advantage when it comes to understanding world events, predicting and preparing for unsettled times, fielding military forces, and making a host of other political and economic decisions. From an ethical perspective, it means that the United States Intelligences information can create the risk of security for the United

Abstract: In this analysis, it is shown throughout the many different agencies how the intelligence cycle is interpreted. Within each of the different agencies everyone has their own way of obtaining information and different policies that they follow, within the constriction of the US constitution. The intelligence cycle states the many different steps taken to obtain intelligence from domestic to foreign information.

Interestingly, the development of spy from space cannot be solely attributed to the terrorist menace. However, power struggles between the US and other major powers especially Russia had a great role to play in the development. In fact, one can confidently assert that the United States could not have made such great

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).