INTEL Reform Over the Past 100 years

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the importance of information gathering and intelligence, and highlights the crucial points in the history of the US intelligence community, having in mind the initial goals of the system, the steps taken to increase its efficiency and new means of dealing with emerging threats. The author also explains how the recent evolution of the legal framework under which the intelligence community conducts its activities can be seen as an important step in identifying and countering the new challenges facing the United States.

From the Paper:

"There has been a lot of discussion over the tradition the US has in dealing with intelligence. Unlike other nations, the history of the US Intelligence Community is considered to be of recent date. Some authors see as the early signs of a coherent intelligence apparatus to emerge following 1947. This is largely due to the specificity of the American foreign policy which had conducted a relatively isolationist external behavior. This in turn did not encourage the expansion of a professional and modern structure of data gathering and analysis. Up until then, there were particular services for espionage, especially during the war, which conducted data gathering and interpretation for different sectors of the government, such as the Army or the Navy. However, the end of the Second World War drew the United States in what would be the Cold War. In the conflict against the USSR, information on the communist enemy was deemed essential and vital for the survival and supremacy of the American democracy. In this sense, a new, coherent, and unitary structure was considered essential."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Alexandrovna, Larisa, Muriel Kane. New documents link Kissinger to two 1970s coups. June 26, 2007, accessed 15 October 2007, available from http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Intelligence_officers_confirm_Kissinger_role_in_0626.html
• An Intelligence Community Primer. 2007, accessed 15 October 2007, available from http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wmd/pdf/appendix_c_fm.pdf
• Federation of American Scientists. Aspin-Brown Commission on the Role and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community. The Need to Maintain an Intelligence Capability. 1996, accessed 15 October 2007, available from http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/int005.html
• Goodman, Melvin A. "CIA: The Need for Reform." Foreign Policy in Focus, February 15, 2001.
• Intelligence Primer. An Intelligence Community Primer. 2007, accessed 14 October 2007, available from http://www.wmd.gov/report/appendix_c_fm.pdf

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