U.s. Counterintelligence And Covert Operations

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.

" Over 100 thousand private emails are viewed a day"(byman). The National security agency and central intel lance agency are illegally viewing private documents and private records. They have access to all of these items without the peoples consent. The NSA is going through people's documents and they are giving them to other countries. The NSA and CIA should not be allowed to do these things to private documents.

After World War II American intelligence had the need to be transformed. The inexperience along with bureaucracy and poor coordination among American intelligence officers obligated the United States intelligence community to change dramatically in order to confront the new challenges that emerged after the end of WWII. From Early America through WWI the intelligence system of the United States of America was involved in operations in which they had to construct intelligence systems virtually from scratch (Andrew 1995). Human intelligence was already developed, but with certain limitations and other intelligence disciplines were underdeveloped and very seldom sophisticated. After WWI America recessed and settled in a period of peace. The

Since 1947, when the Central Intelligence Agency was created, the United States has had an organization that has the sole purpose of conducting covert operations, collecting information, and providing that same information to the respective personnel. Although, this, by some, has been considered conflictual as the CIA is handling those three actions. It is considered that this may be a conflict of interest in a means of, the same people that are collecting information, creating a bias opinion, are conducting the covert action being carried out. This could create a bias work environment. Due to the professionalism and 60 years of success to show for it, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Clandestine Service (NCS) conducting

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a unique government agency that employs intensive research and immediate actions to solve issues that the general police cannot settle themselves (Quick Facts). The FBI’s today mission statement is “to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners” (Quick Facts). Today, the organization focuses on certain threats that requires strategic intelligence to protect our nation, threats like terrorism, foreign intelligence operations and espionage, technology-based crimes, criminal

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.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the United States of America domestic security and intelligence which also serves as the federal government’s law enforcement agency. Working under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI simultaneously considered as part of the US intelligence community, comprises of many other federal and state agencies and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. The agency performs a leading role in counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and criminal investigative roles making it have jurisdictions of over 200 categories of federal crime. Even though most of FBI’s roles are domestic and limited to crimes within the US borders, it is equivalent to intelligence

Intelligence in this day in age is a vital component of a countries security. The newest proposal increases intelligence spending between 2 and 3 billion dollars, a total adding to nearly $35 billion. In addition to military enhancement, the FBI and other law enforcement/intelligence agencies will also be included in this proposal. A new system has been proposed by President Bush that all information be shared among all agencies. DoD, FBI, and the Department of Counterterrorist Center have drawn closer together to create a Terrorist Threat Integration Center to evaluate information blended from all sources associated with terrorism and to act upon those findings accordingly.

The FBI is the USIC agency that is responsible for leading the efforts in the collection of information about terrorists and other criminals within the United States (Schneider, 2015). The FBI has the capabilities to utilize confidential informants and undercover agents when it is deemed necessary to do so in order to collect information (Schneider, 2015). Moreover, the FBI has the ability of being able to work very close with their state and local law enforcement counterparts. This ability enhances the capabilities of the FBI because in some

The espionage of the United States’ government is a controversial issue these days. Espionage is the gathering of information without the permission or warrant of the holder of the information. Within the rapid technological development, the variety of tools for espionage are available in the United States; it can be obtained by tracking, surveillance, wiretapping, etc. Specifically, Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking system is one of the significant topics for espionage. Recently, many people including drivers, hikers, and manufacturers often use GPS to see the directions to their destinations, to locate themselves one a trail map, or to keep track of their delivering products. However, today’s controversy with GPS device is that police also uses it to determine suspects’ locations and movements. It is the most advanced technological device to effectively track and monitor suspects and offenders using satellites. Therefore, some people argue that the use of GPS tracking should be increased and should not need warrants, while others assert that GPS devices to track suspects raise legal problems, so Supreme Court should limits police use of GPS tracking. There are many positive and negative aspects of it. According to the article “Do Police Need Warrants For GPS Tracking Devices?,” the author says that the reason for controversy of GPS tracking devices is that “Police, quite naturally, want to use new technology to get the goods on the bad guys, and citizens, quite

The United States is founded on the concept of freedom – freedom from the control of a government that the people have no participation in or control over and freedom from tyranny. Throughout its history the United States has often been forced to walk a difficult line and since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 that line has become increasingly blurred. The government must take certain actions in order to provide security from those who seek to harm its citizens. But to what extent do the citizens of the United States knowingly authorize the actions that are necessary for their protection, and to what extent are they unaware or even purposefully deluded about the nature of such actions?

Counterintelligence: exposing, preventing, and investigating intelligence activities on U.S. soil; foreign espionage strikes at the heart of national security, impacting political, military, and economic strengths.

When discussing covert operations, the truth of the matter is that we do in fact need them. To better understand how covert operations play a legal role under our Constitution, we need to go back to when the National Security Act of 1954 was enacted during the Ronald Regan Presidency. Regan exercised an executive order to extend the powers of the United States Central Intelligence Agency in response to foreign overseas intelligence agencies collecting American information during the War of Vietnam. This order allowed the CIA to conduct covert operation under the President’s orders with Congressional supervision. After 9/11, Bush placed even more power onto the Director of National Intelligence, allowing them to advise on the best action and

Intelligence collection and apprehension of criminals have occurred for many years; however, with the exception of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, these actions were performed by different organizations. Nonetheless, roles and responsibilities have changed since the attacks on September 11, 2001. Intelligence-led policing and the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing program were incorporated, and fusion centers were established to help gather intelligence from different levels of the government. Although law enforcement at the local, state, and tribal levels aid in intelligence collection, it is important to ensure that intelligence gathered to protect national security and law enforcement

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).