Stephen Marrin is an analyst with the General Accounting Office’s Defense Capabilities and Management team in Washington, DC. He is also a doctoral candidate in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, specializing in the study of intelligence. He previously served as an analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency and has written many articles on intelligence, including a background paper titled “Homeland Security and the Analysis of Foreign Intelligence” for the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the position of the General Accounting Office or any other U.S. government entity. As required, CIA’s Publication Review Board reviewed this paper and has no security objection to its dissemination, although the review does not confirm the accuracy of the information nor does it endorse the author’s views.

This article is adapted from an 18 March 2003 presentation to the 2003 Counter-Terrorism and Civil Liberties Conference at Central Missouri State University.

The U.S. experience with foreign intelligence indicates that the roles and missions of the federal government’s new domestic intelligence capabilities will likely increase in the future. The study of foreign intelligence provides a valuable vantage point from which to observe and critique the burgeoning federal domestic surveillance system, because the new domestic intelligence programs appear to approximate a domestic version of the longstanding foreign intelligence capabilities. Foreign intelligence—which entails the covert acquisition of information overseas to protect national security—has been institutionalized since 1947, whereas domestic intelligence—which entails the acquisition of information from domestic sources to protect domestic or homeland security—has historically had minimal institutionalization at the federal level.

Since the 11 September 2001 attacks, the federal government has proposed and implemented numerous new domestic intelligence programs to bolster its counter-terrorism capabilities. These domestic intelligence programs run the gamut from increased aerial surveillance to increased wiretap authority to the creation of passive surveillance systems to detect the presence of nuclear, chemical, or biological agents. Additional controversial domestic intelligence programs include the Justice Department’s proposed Operation TIPS for public reporting of suspicious activity, the modification of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to increase the use of information acquired in court-approved wiretaps, and the creation of the Total Information Awareness program—since renamed the Terrorism Information Awareness program—to determine whether large-scale data mining could be a feasible way to track or catch terrorists.

Concepts developed in the study of foreign intelligence can be applied to domestic intelligence to provide insight into how the federal government’s new domestic intelligence programs may develop. The study of foreign intelligence indicates that the roles and missions of domestic intelligence will likely increase for two distinctly different reasons:

• The study of foreign intelligence has demonstrated that the purpose of intelligence is to acquire information necessary to apply governmental power with greater precision and that as the need for application of government power increases, so does the need for intelligence. Domestically, terrorist threats to homeland security will be countered by government power wielded by various domestic security agencies, and the newly created domestic intelligence programs will enable them to apply their powers with greater force and precision. As technological capabilities inevitably grow, however, threats to homeland security will increase in the future, and the need for domestic intelligence will increase correspondingly.
• The study of foreign intelligence indicates that domestic intelligence capabilities created for homeland security purposes will likely be used for other reasons. Foreign intelligence missions expanded from national security threat perception and warning to foreign policy support once the benefits of tailored intelligence provision were realized by policy makers. It is likely that a similar growth in mission will occur in domestic intelligence as capabilities created for counterterrorism expand to support generic law enforcement as well.

The expanding roles and missions of domestic intelligence agencies will likely pose a threat to civil liberties. This threat can—and should—be countered through the incorporation of overlapping procedural guidelines and oversight mechanisms at the creation of each new domestic intelligence program so as to prevent possible future violations of civil liberties.

The Increasing Need for Domestic Intelligence

The U.S. experience with foreign intelligence indicates that homeland security needs will require even greater levels of domestic intelligence in the future. Foreign intelligence indicates that the purpose of intelligence—both foreign and domestic—is to facilitate precise application of governmental power. Countering terrorism has increased the need to collect domestic intelligence, but threats to domestic security will increase even more in the future due to growth in technological capacities. As the use of power increases to counter these threats, domestic intelligence capabilities must correspondingly increase so that the power is applied effectively.

The Purpose of Foreign Intelligence

The purpose of institutionalized foreign intelligence is to provide information to national security decision makers so that they can use the economic, political, or military power at their disposal more effectively. To accomplish this purpose, foreign intelligence agencies covertly acquire, analyze, and disseminate information regarding threats to national security.¹ A covert information acquisition capability supplements overt information collection because much of international relations is conducted in secret, and the only way to apply power effectively in an area where so much is kept secret is by uncovering the capabilities and intentions of enemies and potential competitors. As intelligence scholar Loch Johnson observed, “Democracies in this perilous world must have a secret service. The United States could well perish at the hands of foreign enemies without the protection afforded by the eyes and ears of the intelligence community.”²

Controversy over intelligence exists not because of the purpose it serves but because of ethical concerns regarding how it is collected and pragmatic concerns regarding how it is used. In 1930, Secretary of State Henry Stimson expressed his opposition to intelligence by saying, “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”³ Such ethical objections to foreign intelligence were quickly overridden in the face of military threats, and during World War II and the Cold War the United States did not eschew any intelligence capabilities. Even though opposition to intelligence collection for ethical considerations is now archaic in a world where almost every country possesses an intelligence service, periodic controversies erupt over the ethics of intelligence collection.⁴

Additional opposition to intelligence agencies arises from their association with covert action capabilities. Covert action is the secret use of power, usually consisting of military force, and some intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency, contain a covert action unit. Covert action is a very different function from the covert collection and analysis of intelligence information, however, and the functions should be separated for conceptual clarity because combining the functions obscures the real purposes of intelligence and makes intelligence as a governmental function guilty by association with controversial policymaking. As a result, for purposes of this article, “intelligence” refers to the collection and analysis of information, but not the covert action capability that is associated with it.

The primary security benefit of intelligence is that it enables power to be applied with greater precision and with less collateral damage. Properly understood, the role of intelligence is the collection and analysis of information. Contrary to the popular maxim, the American experience with foreign intelligence demonstrates that knowledge is not power. Knowledge can make the application of power more effective, but knowledge alone is powerless. In terms of foreign intelligence, the benefit of intelligence is easiest to illustrate in the application of military power. For example, satellite imagery provides military planners with precise information regarding the location of enemy military installations and terrorist training camps, and military force can be applied more precisely once this information is provided to bomber pilots or programmed into cruise missiles. The failure of intelligence to provide correct information also illustrates its importance in applying power with precision and preventing collateral damage, such as the May 1999 inadvertent bombing of China’s Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, due to faulty intelligence.⁵ Foreign intelligence can also assist in the application of economic and political power—for example, by identifying economic corruption and thereby enabling policy officials to avoid giving humanitarian assistance to corrupt government officials.

The specific roles and missions of strategic foreign intelligence agencies are subject to debate and change because even though they focus on threats to national security, the definitions of both threat and national security are ambiguous. As Joseph Romm observed, the phrase national security “had become so widely used by 1947 that the National Security Act, which established … the National Security Council (and the Central Intelligence Agency), did not bother to define the term but left it open to broad (ie not purely military) interpretations.”⁶ He went on to say that the ambiguity inherent in the term national security comes “from the inherent subjectivity in determining the threats to any nation’s security.” Narrow definitions of national security focus tightly on military issues, but broader definitions can incorporate political, economic, social, and environmental considerations. As definitions of security expand, so do perceptions of threats to national security.

In sum, foreign intelligence exists to provide information to decision makers at all levels of government so that they can apply the power they have at their disposal more precisely. Domestic intelligence agencies exist to provide the same service to policymakers who wield power domestically. Even though a single agency could collect and analyze intelligence information both overseas and at home as the Soviet Union’s KGB did, in the United States foreign and domestic intelligence collection are separated from each other to protect domestic civil liberties. As Stewart Baker—the former general counsel of the National Security Agency—observed, “Combining domestic and foreign intelligence functions creates the possibility that domestic law enforcement will be infected by the secrecy, deception, and ruthlessness that international espionage requires. Dividing the responsibilities among different agencies reduces that risk.”⁷

Application to Domestic Intelligence

Domestic intelligence serves the same purpose as foreign intelligence—to enable government power to be applied with greater precision—and is structured in a similar way. Domestic intelligence is defined as “the collection, evaluation, and collation of information relating to threats to government, including threats to the orderly conduct of government business,” according to W. Raymond Wannall, former Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.⁸ As with foreign intelligence, the primary benefit of domestic intelligence is that it allows domestic security agencies to apply their powers of search, detention, and arrest with greater precision and less collateral damage. For example, informants can provide information leading to the arrest of people suspected of committing crimes, and wiretaps can provide law enforcement agencies with sufficient information to arrest suspects before they can carry out criminal or terrorist activities. In addition, domestic intelligence can provide correct information to law enforcement personnel so that misapplication of power—such as false arrests and breaking down doors to wrong houses—does not occur.

Government power in domestic areas is not limited solely to law enforcement, however. As with foreign policy, domestic policy entails application of economic, political, and social power. The difference is that these powers are structured by the U.S. government through policy-making organizations such as the Social Security Administration and the Department of Education. Each department has structured mechanisms for acquiring the information it needs, but in the domestic context most of this information is not considered intelligence because it does not have to be acquired covertly.

The bulk of domestic intelligence in the United States is collected by local law enforcement agencies in the course of their daily street patrols and other activities.⁹ Most of this information is not stored or aggregated into broader assessments of criminal activity, and once the information in case files is used to arrest or prosecute individuals, it is archived or disposed of according to local guidelines. On the national level, however, the United States lacks a dedicated domestic intelligence collection and analysis capability akin to that of the foreign intelligence community or the United Kingdom’s MI5.¹⁰ Instead, domestic policy departments such as Justice, the Treasury, and Homeland Security contain components that collect the information that their policy makers and implementers require. Premier among these intelligence-collecting entities is the FBI.¹¹

The FBI—according to intelligence scholar Arthur Hulnick—“is … a police service with investigative powers, with an intelligence component, and its officers … are armed and have the power of arrest. It is hardly a secret service, however, and certainly not a secret police.”¹² According to the FBI’s website, its mission “is to uphold the law through the investigation of violations of federal criminal law; to protect the United States from foreign intelligence and terrorist activities; to provide leadership and law enforcement assistance to federal, state, local, and international agencies …”¹³ To accomplish this mission, the FBI collects information on “all federal criminal violations that have not been specifically assigned by Congress to another federal agency,” including “civil rights; counterterrorism; foreign counterintelligence; organized crime/drugs; violent crimes and major offenders; and financial crime.”¹⁴ Most FBI domestic intelligence functions are related to its counterintelligence function and consist of “identifying, penetrating and neutralizing the foreign intelligence activities directed against a country's national interests, values and objectives.”¹⁵

Terrorism has led to an increased need for domestic intelligence, but in the future the threat to homeland security will be even greater due to growth in technology, and as a result the role of domestic intelligence in protecting homeland security will be even greater than it is today. The threat to security is growing because technological knowledge inevitably diffuses, and as knowledge increases, greater power is available at less cost and requires the efforts of fewer and fewer people. Technology provides people with tools—intrinsically neither good nor bad—that acquire normative value based on the uses to which they are put. Technological advances have provided huge benefits in many fields—including communications, education, medicine, and food production—but the same technology that can be used to create can also be used to destroy. Soon technological advances in areas including genetics and nanotechnology will require the re-conceptualization of security. Biological warfare is bad enough, but biological warfare incorporating genetic engineering is downright apocalyptic. Information from the human genome could give biological weapons programs the means to target specific ethnic groups—“transform[ing] biological weapons into potent tools of ethnic cleansing and terrorism”¹⁶—and reportedly could be developed within ten years. The threat that this kind of weapon could pose to international peace and stability is incalculable. Potentially as destructive are micro-machines; nanotechnology theorists have speculated that once micro-machines are programmable, it will be theoretically possible for molecular machines to process living matter to make more of them, leaving behind a world consisting of “gray goo.” Other less apocalyptic visions of the future are possible, but all technological advances lead to greater ability to destroy as well as create. As technological capabilities get more advanced, the need to monitor smaller and smaller groups to prevent the development of new weapons by terrorists becomes increasingly important. In the end, prospects for comprehensive national domestic intelligence collection and exploitation have increased since the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, and the need in the future may be even greater.

Mission Creep Is Also Highly Likely

The U.S. experience with foreign intelligence demonstrates that, over time, intelligence capabilities expand and that a similar expansion of domestic intelligence capabilities is highly likely. Foreign intelligence bureaucracies were permanently established after World War II to prevent another attack similar to Pearl Harbor, but once they were institutionalized, their intelligence missions expanded from a focus on national security tightly defined to foreign policy support more generally. The war on terrorism provides a similar security rationale for expanding existing national domestic intelligence capabilities into permanent bureaucracies dedicated to domestic intelligence collection and analysis, and a similar growth of mission can be expected.

Expanding Foreign Intelligence Missions¹⁷

American officials created a permanent intelligence community to warn policymakers of threats to national security. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had such a detrimental effect on American perceptions of security that after World War II ended, policymakers decided to create for the first time in the nation’s history a permanent bureaucracy intended to prevent any future surprise attacks or other strategic surprises. Historically, intelligence capabilities had been organized ad hoc to provide targeted military information to commanders because losing wars held such disastrous consequences. According to intelligence scholar Harold Ford, “US intelligence efforts [began] impressively with George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and many subsequent Presidents had commissioned small, one-shot intelligence operations,” generally in wartime.¹⁸ However, Ford observed that despite these operations, “The United States was the last major power to get into the intelligence analysis business. After all, two great oceans protected America from foreign dangers. Then, too, the United States was different—it did not engage in power politics, or so its citizens thought.”

The attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent American involvement in World War II changed the United States’ need for and use of intelligence. During World War II, the United States increased its overseas presence, and this necessitated the creation of a global intelligence capability commensurate with the United States’ expanded global role. After World War II ended, American political leaders decided that the United States needed an intelligence agency capable of integrating disparate pieces of information distributed throughout the military and other government agencies to prevent another Pearl Harbor. As a result, in 1947 the Central Intelligence Agency was created to prevent future surprise attacks by focusing on threats to national security.

Over time a more expansive role for foreign intelligence agencies developed, providing intelligence to support foreign policymaking more generally rather than limiting the focus to national security threats. The term national security is notorious for its ambiguity and flexibility. During the Cold War, “national security” could reasonably incorporate all aspects of foreign and domestic policy. Distinct from pure security considerations, a foreign policy is a government’s attempt to advance its interests internationally. In the case of the United States, the primary interests are mentioned in the Constitution: “Provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.” To achieve the goals of greater defense, welfare, or liberty requires the application of power—whether military, economic, or political—internationally through a foreign policy. During the Cold War, economic and political matters were interpreted through a security prism, and national security considerations seemed to incorporate all aspects of foreign policy because of the huge level of effort required to be prepared to fight World War III. In this heightened security environment, threats to national security were perceived to arise from all corners, including economic, military, and political competitors. The foreign intelligence community—made up of the CIA and other agencies—fulfilled its task by monitoring the world as best it could.¹⁹

When the Cold War ended and the primary threat to national security disappeared, it became obvious that intelligence agencies had expanded their role to provide intelligence relevant to foreign policy support more generally rather than exclusively for national security concerns. In the early 1990s, debates over the direction of post–Cold War intelligence roles and missions highlighted the importance of changing perceptions of national security threats. Those who emphasized the primacy of economic matters in the future wanted the Intelligence Community to focus on economic intelligence. Those who believed that interdependence would make the power of states less relevant focused their attention on other transnational issues, such as narcotics trafficking, terrorism, and the environment. And those who believed that the United States should focus its power only on narrowly defined national security threats argued for a smaller, more targeted intelligence capability.

Once intelligence collection capabilities are built for one purpose, they can—and most likely will—be used for others. For example, information acquired on a foreign country’s transportation infrastructure for a defense capabilities study can be adapted to provide assessments of port or rail carrying capacities prior to humanitarian interventions. Information collected to assess how a foreign leader responds in different national security situations can be provided in the form of foreign leader profiles to trade negotiators to provide an edge in negotiations. Absent a clear security threat and outside the context of the Cold War, these activities are more accurately conceived as foreign policy support rather than national security threat perception and warning.

National domestic intelligence capabilities will likely expand along a path similar to the one foreign intelligence has taken.

Application to Domestic Intelligence

Like foreign intelligence, domestic intelligence has been a perennial component of domestic governance that historically has been institutionalized ad hoc to address specific threats to domestic security. Unlike other countries that established permanent domestic intelligence agencies to monitor citizen behavior in the face of long-term insurgencies or violent political factions, the United States has had few reasons to institutionalize a national domestic intelligence capability. As Richard Morgan observed, “The first century and a half of American democracy was marked by intermittent episodes of internal intelligence gathering. Monitoring dissent, by the federal government at least, was undertaken only in response to a crisis of the moment; with the passing of the crisis the monitoring ceased, and the federal machinery that supported it was dismantled or retooled for other tasks.”²⁰ Permanent domestic intelligence departments—such as the Justice Department’s FBI—were originally created to support federal law enforcement investigations and not to collect intelligence on security threats per se. The FBI was originally created in 1908 to assist the Justice Department’s investigation of Congressional corruption.²¹

During the Cold War, however, domestic intelligence capabilities expanded for reasons similar to the expansion in foreign intelligence. According to Morton Halperin, “The Cold War also intensified the practice of government surveillance of persons and groups in America engaged in lawful political activities. In the name of counterintelligence, the government has systematically harassed and spied upon disfavored groups: communists in the 1940s and 1950s; civil rights activists, black nationalists, antiwar activists, women’s liberationists, and the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s; and opponents of U.S. policy in Central America and the Middle East in the 1980s.… The government continues to assert that it has an inherent power to investigate political opponents, wiretap telephones, and even break into homes without a warrant under the guise of protecting the nation from foreign agents.”²²

Domestic intelligence agencies such as the FBI and local police departments curtailed their activities in the late 1970s because of public opposition to their practices and a backlash against their abuses. According to intelligence expert Herbert Romerstein, in the mid-1970s the domestic intelligence “collection process began to ‘wither away’ … as local police intelligence units disbanded or were curtailed. The military ceased its domestic … intelligence collection. Finally, in 1976, the [Attorney General Edward] Levi Guidelines ended most FBI collection efforts in this area.… What little is collected is not subject to sufficient analysis. Indeed, much of it is intentionally ignored. Therefore the FBI does not provide policymakers with a clear understanding of the extent and nature of problems within the United States, and the FBI itself becomes less and less able to focus its own collection properly.”²³

The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks highlighted the risk to national security of allowing domestic intelligence capabilities to wither, and the attacks provided a security rationale analogous to Pearl Harbor for expanding existing national domestic intelligence capabilities into permanent bureaucracies dedicated to domestic intelligence collection and analysis. In 1990, Morton Halperin warned that the counterterrorism rationale might be used to increase federal domestic intelligence capabilities when he observed that “the national security apparatus that was put in place to wage the Cold War is now a burgeoning bureaucracy in search of a new mission.

It is busy identifying new enemies, based on an expanded definition of national security, that justify its continued existence and funding. International terrorism is rapidly supplanting the communist threat as the primary justification for wholesale deprivations of civil liberties and distortions of the democratic process. Once governments, guerilla movements, and individuals disliked by the US government are labeled ‘terrorists,’ measures such as warrantless searches and wiretaps, restrictions on the right to travel, speak, and receive information … often become acceptable.²⁴

Despite Halperin’s concern’s, however, some increase in domestic intelligence capabilities seems necessary in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks.

Since 2001 the federal government has made many changes to its security and intelligence agencies to improve their operations. These changes include the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the incorporation of the Secret Service into the Department of Homeland Security, the shift of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from the Treasury Department to Justice, and the growth in FBI intelligence collection and analysis capabilities. Further institutionalization of the domestic intelligence capability is also likely and is reflected in proposals to “strip the FBI of its counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence functions, and move them to a new intelligence agency” similar to the British organization MI5.²⁵

Once intelligence capabilities are developed for one purpose, eventually they will be used for other purposes due to pressures to “do something.” For example, civilian agencies have accepted assistance from tactical military intelligence systems in the past. The Defense Department’s willingness to offer—and law enforcement’s eagerness to accept—the use of an unpiloted aircraft in the search to find the snipers near Washington, DC, in 2002 is but one example of how tools built for one purpose can find a use once they are on the shelf. Another occurred in 1993 when “naval tactical aircraft flew photographic reconnaissance missions over the Mississippi River Valley, mapping the extent of flood damage and providing that information to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other civil authorities charged with flood relief efforts,” according to a Navy study.²⁶

The ability to use counterterrorism surveillance capabilities for general law enforcement purposes will be a temptation not easily resisted, and such mission expansion may already be occurring. In February 2003, the New York Times reported that “FBI-led task forces whose primary duty is stopping al-Qaida and other international groups.… have thwarted several would-be domestic terrorists in recent months,” including specific plans by members of the Ku Klux Klan and Jewish militants.²⁷ The article quoted U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, who justified this expansion of focus by saying, “Domestic terrorism can be devastating as well. We are continuing to deal with both.” While the article highlighted the security benefits arising from heightened domestic intelligence collection, it also cited “intelligence officials [who] … point out that even a single individual can wreak mayhem.” By expanding the definition of “security threat” to encompass foreign individuals acting as lone-wolf terrorists and other domestic terrorist groups—including neo-Nazi groups, anarchic environmentalists, and animal liberation groups, it is only a small leap to apply counterterrorism capabilities to track and catch individual lawbreakers and everyday criminals.

Over time, technological advancements will only increase domestic surveillance capabilities and the ability of those in power to ensure domestic security. Technological capabilities exist to monitor society at a level only imagined in books like George Orwell’s 1984, including the ability to catch all red light runners and speeders, the installment of cameras in public places, the use of biometric devices for authentication, the ability to “survey the movements and behavior of people by passively monitoring [emissions from personal wireless devices such as mobile phones, cameras, consumer audio devices, smart cards, digital radios and medical tracking devices] or actively querying the devices they carry,”²⁸ and soon perhaps even the ability to implant chips as a means of identification or for some other purpose. Many of these technologies are profiled in Gartner Group reports, along with more prosaic capabilities such as data mining.²⁹ The promise of these technologies is that if they are linked, the potential exists to track and arrest terrorists in the same way that the military can target and destroy enemy tanks in a field of operations. The risk of such technologies is that they could lead to the diminution of personal privacy and the creation of a surveillance state.³⁰

Beyond security issues, domestic intelligence information—once collected, centralized, and available for use by appropriate authorities—could be used for purposes other than ensuring security, such as the targeted distribution of goods and services. In the end, once information is collected, it can be used for purposes other than those initially intended, and it likely will, because of increased efficiency and effectiveness of policymaking. Domestic intelligence mission creep is highly likely due to the benefits accruing from other uses of the information.

Protecting Against Abuse

Insight regarding the likely future development of domestic intelligence capabilities derived from the study of foreign intelligence gives today’s policymakers the ability to create bulwarks against possible future violations of civil liberties. Domestic intelligence collection and exploitation capabilities have increased since the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, and the study of foreign intelligence indicates that these capabilities will likely expand even further in the future. In and of itself, this expansion of mission may not be a bad thing, because it could increase an individual’s security from both terrorism and crime, but the expansion of missions does pose the greatest single risk of future violation of civil liberties. With foresight into the pressures that will lead domestic authorities to expand domestic intelligence programs, the federal government can prevent violations of civil liberties by incorporating an overlapping system of procedural guidelines and oversight into the domestic intelligence infrastructure at its founding.³¹ William Stephenson conveyed quite well both the need for and the peril of intelligence:³²

Perhaps a day will dawn when tyrants can no longer threaten the liberty of any people, when the function of all nations, however varied their ideologies, will be to enhance life, not to control it. If such a condition is possible, it is in a future too far distant to foresee. Until that safer, better day, the democracies will avoid disaster, and possibly total destruction, only by maintaining their defenses.

Among the increasingly intricate arsenals across the world, intelligence is an essential weapon, perhaps the most important. But it is, being secret, the most dangerous. Safeguards to prevent its abuse must be devised, revised, and rigidly applied. But, as in all enterprise, the character and wisdom of those to whom it is entrusted will be decisive. In the integrity of that guardianship lies the hope of free people to endure and prevail.

Author Contact Information

spm8p@virginia.edu

References

Click on an end note number to return to the article.

1. For articles on the definition and purpose of intelligence, see Michael Warner’s “Wanted: A Definition of ‘Intelligence,’” Studies in Intelligence (CIA publication), vol. 46, no. 3, 2002, and Thomas F. Troy’s “The ‘Correct’ Definition of Intelligence,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, vol. 5, no. 4, winter 1991–1992, pp. 433–454.

2. Loch Johnson, “Controlling the CIA: A Critique of Current Safeguards,” in Controlling Intelligence, ed. Glenn P. Hastedt (London: Frank Cass, 1991), p. 46.

3. James Titus, book review of Henry L. Stimson: The First Wise Man by David F. Schmitz, Aerospace Power Journal, summer 2002.

4. For example, in early 2003 controversy sprung up over reports that the U.S. National Security Agency was increasing its interception of communications made by United Nations Security Council diplomats. See Colum Lynch, “Spying Report No Shock to U.N.,” Washington Post, 4 March 2003.

5. For more on the details behind the bombing, see the statement of Bill Harlow, CIA Director of Public Affairs, 10 April 2000.

6. Joseph J. Romm, Defining National Security: The Nonmilitary Aspects (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993), p. 3.

7. Stewart A. Baker, “Should Spies Be Cops?” Foreign Policy, vol. 97, winter 1994–1995, pp. 36–52.

8. W. Raymond Wannall, “The FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Operations: Domestic Security in Limbo,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, vol. 4, no. 4, 1991, p. 446.

9. For information on tactical law enforcement intelligence, see Donald O. Schultz and Loran A. Norton, Police Operational Intelligence (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1968). See also the website of the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts.

10. For information on strategic domestic intelligence, see Intelligence Requirements for the 1980s, vol. 6, Domestic Intelligence, edited by Roy Godson (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1986).

11. For more on FBI intelligence, see John T. Elliff, The Reform of FBI Intelligence Operations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979).

12. Arthur S. Hulnick, “Intelligence and Law Enforcement: The ‘Spies Are Not Cops’ Problem,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 269–286.

13. FBI website: General Frequently Asked Questions.

14. Ibid.

15. Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies homepage.

16. Ethirajan Anbarasan, “Genetic Weapons: A 21st-Century Nightmare?” UNESCO Courier, March 1999.

17. This section borrows some ideas and language from a submission entitled “Foreign Policy and Intelligence” posted to the H-Diplo discussion group on 3 March 2002. The same content was reposted to Intelforum on 17 March 2002.

18. Harold P. Ford, “The US Government’s Experience With Intelligence Analysis: Pluses and Minuses,” Intelligence and National Security, vol. 10, no. 4, Oct. 1995, p. 34.

19. U.S. Intelligence Community: Who We Are.

20. Richard E. Morgan, Domestic Intelligence: Monitoring Dissent in America (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1980), p. 16.

21. Ibid., p. 24.

22. Morton H. Halperin and Jeanne M. Woods, “Ending the Cold War at Home,” Foreign Policy, winter 1990–1991, p. 136. For more information on domestic intelligence operations during the Cold War, see Frank J. Donner, Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990); David Wise, The American Police State: The Government Against the People (New York: Random House, 1976); Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America’s Political Intelligence System (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980); and Cathy Perkus, ed., Cointelpro: The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom (New York: Monad Press, 1975).

23. Herbert Romerstein, “What Information Should Be Collected and How Should Collection Be Organized,” in Intelligence Requirements for the 1980s, vol. 6, Domestic Intelligence (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1986), pp. 107–108. For more on the constriction of domestic intelligence capabilities, see W. Raymond Wannall, pp. 443–473.

24. Morton H. Halperin and Jeanne M. Woods, p. 141.

25. Stuart Taylor Jr., “Spying on Terrorists,” Government Executive, 13 Jan. 2003.

26. “Naval Intelligence Operations” in Naval Intelligence, Naval Doctrine Publication 2.

27. “FBI Changes Thwart Domestic Terrorism,” Associated Press report, New York Times, 22 Feb. 2003.

28. Nick Jones, “Eavesdropping on the Device in Your Pocket,” Gartner Group Research Note SPA-15-4727, 27 March 2002. See also John Markoff and John Schwartz, “Many Tools of Big Brother Are Up and Running,” New York Times, 23 Dec. 2002.

29. Jackie Fenn, “Surveillance and Privacy: Technologies and Opportunities,” Gartner Research Report AV-15-9913, 1 April 2002; and Alexander Linden, “Data Mining: Balancing Benefits Against Privacy Intrusion,” Gartner Research Note, 28 March 2002.

30. For civil libertarian concerns, see Jay Stanley and Barry Steinhardt, “Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society” (New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 2003).

31. For examples of guidelines, see Protecting America’s Freedom in the Information Age (New York: Markle Foundation, 2002).

32. William Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976): a biography of William Stephenson (not the author), head of Britain’s secret service in World War II; he was code-named Intrepid.