Intelligence on the Internet
Proposed to
Communications 464 - Fall 1996
The University of Michigan
Introduction
The intelligence community has always been a cliquish group, inbred and secretive. During a one month effort to examine the Intelligence community on the Internet I have found this continues to be the case even on a frontier dedicated free flowing information. However, this paper is neither trying to find a psychological answer nor to damn a group for its choice of secrecy. What this paper does hope to accomplish is better understanding of the intelligence resources on the Internet and clear understanding of the usefulness of those resources. This paper's is primarily focused is on the Central Intelligence Agency because the CIA has been given the task to coordinate all the intelligence that comes to various agencies in the Intelligence Community through the Director of Central Intelligence, who also serves as the director of the CIA, to disseminate that intelligence to the National Security Council and the President of the United States.
Throughout the quest for the for information on the intelligence community, I have discover that there are generally two types of people: professionals/former professionals and paranoid freaks. Fortunately, it is rather easy to tell the difference between the individual that is discussing security techniques of the new Russian states given the organized crime situation and the individual that is determine that the CIA was behind the New Coke plot. The challenge of my choice of community, was because of the weirdoes on the Internet, the professionals have all retreated behind closed doors, in other words they have resorted to only using private chat rooms and discussion groups that are closely moderated, making it extremely to become an official member of a "virtual community". Luckily, because of the many resources surrounding the intelligence community on the Internet, researching this project was not impossible.
An important point is that this is not a link page, though there are many links, it is the journey of research that I did of the intelligence community which, as I discovered can be divided into government supported resources and non-government resources. In order to grasp any field, it is important to gain a foothold of the history, to better understand the present and to predict the future.
Background
The history of intelligence in the United States is one that begins far before the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency with George Washington during the Revolutionary War who said, "There is nothing more necessary than good Intelligence to frustrate a designing enemy, nothing that requires greater pains to obtain." Intelligence gathering has continued throughout the United States' history but truly began being implemented as aid for military strategy and international diplomacy during and after World War II.
At that time of the United States' entrance into World War II, President Roosevelt appointed William "Wild Bill" Donovan as the Coordinator of Information and one year later as the director for the CIA's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), in 1942. After the war, OSS dissolved, but in 1947, using Donovan's plan, Harry Truman created the Central Intelligence Group which one year later became the Central Intelligence Agency. The scope and mission of the CIA have changed from administration but has undergone serious re-organization only a few times, the latest of which was Executive Order 12333 signed by President Ronald Reagun in December of 1981.
The CIA has some very interesting pieces of historical equipment including old spying paraphernalia to a rusty horse shoe at the CIA Exhibit Center and can take you on a virtual tour since because of security reasons you can not take a tour in person. The CIA's walk down memory lane also includes heart breaking stops, such as the memorial stars of those who have give their lives while working for the CIA. The touching thing being not the memorial but the book which records those names of the individuals that died is only half filled because many of those who died are still classified. This is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg.
Government Resources
The government resources on the Internet revolve around the United States Intelligence Community which is broken up into roughly four parts: the Office of the Director of Central Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, individual Cabinet Departments (Justice, Treasury, Energy, and State), and the Military Intelligence Community. Along with the links to each site I will give a short blurb on what the agency does.
- The Office of the Director of Central Intelligence is not an agency of any kind but rather the main coordinator of the United States Intelligence Community. In addition the Director (DCI), currently John Deutch who will soon be replaced by Anthony Lake, serves as the senior advisor to the President and the National Security Council and in that role oversees the National Foreign Intelligence Program that is developed by the Intelligence Community. One extremely important resource that the Office of the Director has is the Center for the Study of Intelligence, which contains a wide variety of articles and documents on the intelligence field.
- The Central Intelligence Agency coordinates and analyzes of all the intelligence from various agencies in the Intelligence Community to pass onto the DCI for review and presentation to NSC and the President. In addition to the coordination and analyzation of intelligence, the CIA also gathers intelligence through its own clandestine program. The CIA web page has some excellent publications on intelligence however, the far and away best resource is the CIA World Factbook (1995 ed.). The World Factbook has basic information about ever country in the world such as land area, population, political leaders, etc. and is a must for anyone doing international research.
- The Department of Justice serves the Intelligence Community in two different aspects. The first is to act as the attorney for organizations such as the CIA through its Office of Intelligence Policy and Review. The second purpose is the Federal Bureau of Investigation which works in tandem with the CIA and other agencies tin the area of counterespionage.
- Through it's Office of Intelligence Support the Treasury Department supports the Intelligence Community. The office provides intelligence to the bureaus of the department that are in constant need of such information, such as the Secret Service, Customs Service, IRS, and the ATF to name a few. The office also gathers and coordinates all the intelligence coming from the Treasury Department to the Intelligence Community.
- Due to the rise of smaller rogue states having nuclear capabilities, the expertise of the Department of Energy has become a major contributor to the Intelligence Community. The Department of Energy is used for its technical understanding of nuclear weapons technology and nuclear reactor sites that have the potential to be used for those weapons.
- The Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the Department of State was created after the Office of Strategic Services was disbanded after the war. The State Department believed that it was best suited to gather intelligence during peace and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research was born. The Bureau's main purpose is to convey the State Department's intelligence needs to the Intelligence Community and then to organize the intelligence that is received for the department.
- The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) does for the military what the CIA does for the entire community, coordinating and disseminating intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Department of Defense. Recently, the DIA has undergone major changes in focus with the end of the Cold War to focus on rogues states.
- In addition to DIA, each of the individual armed forces has a division to gather intelligence specifically for it's own area of expertise. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) is by far the most prestigious as it is the oldest intelligence service in the United States dating back to the 1800's. ONI has the responsibility of tracking foreign fleets, new marine technology, as well as other issues like the dumping of radioactive waste. Since the end of the Cold War Army Intelligence has aimed its efforts to the creation of the most flexible armed force in the world, provided with the best possible information of terrain, climate, troop movements, etc. Marine Intelligence focus' on pre-deployment training and force contingency planning and aids ONI in it's intelligence efforts. Air Force Intelligence examines battle condition for its divisions and working with the Intelligence Community to provide intelligence for the future of warfare on the ground and in the air.
- The last three agencies in the Intelligence Community have been cloaked in secrecy with the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office just recently having their existence declassified. The National Security Agency (NSA) are mathematicians of the Intelligence Community, their purpose being to protect and break encrypted technology, and intercept and decipher electronic signals (SIGINT). The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is an agency within the Department of Defense tasked with the coordination of intelligence received through satellites and other spaceborn assets. The Central Imagery Office is a newly created agency designed to collect responsive imagery to aid the Intelligence Community and other various divsions of government.
These thirteen agencies, not including the Office of the Director, compose the Intelligence Community of the United States. Their websites are the most information the government offers at this present time on the Internet. And who is watching the watchers?
Non-Government Resources
The major challenge with researching non-government sources on the Internet is that, in general, they don't want to be found. One reason being that there are a lot "weirdoes" on the Internet and professionals and other serious intelligence buffs do not appreciate the routine arguments made about the fact that the CIA must be conducting time travel in their backyards because, they have bright lights (this argument really was made to me once).
The other major challenge is that most credible publications of intelligence news are in some subscription form of newsletters and/or journals, making access to the information expensive since subscriptions cost anywhere between $100-700. Here is a modest attempt at collecting the non-government resources for intelligence on the Internet:
- The first stop in my quest for a virtual intelligence community me top the newsgroups. The groups that did deal with intelligence were alt.politics.org.cia, alt.politics.org.nsa, alt.politics.org.covert, and alt.politics.org.fbi. After spending a few day in each of these forums I realized that it was a futile effort. The newsgroups seem to be a congregation of the paranoid and intellectually inferior (this is where I got the time travel argument), there are a few intelligent people that "hang around" these news groups but for the most part they are rant sessions who normally get ignored for good reason.
- The primary set of web sites that I looked at were organizations, free newsletters, and think-tanks. Of these sites four were clear and away the best resources. The Center for International Policy (CIP) is a liberal think tank which has been one leaders in the call for reforming the CIA. Their Intelligence Reform Program page outlines the need and plan of reform and continues to provide some wonderful sources to support their claims. The Sources eJournal is the only free journal I could on the web that had credible information. The journal has an attractive layout, good supporting links, and excellent articles. The Federation of American Scientist (FAS) is an organization that is aiding CIP in it's efforts to reform the Intelligence Community. One program the FAS is heading up is the Project on Government Secrecy and the other is the Intelligence Reform Project. Both have intriguing information on the CIA and intelligence activities and have excellent links to supporting documentation. The weakest site of the group, though by no means poor in its own right, is the Intelligence Web Link, an online intelligence newsletter, which adds a unique and yet reasonably perception of intelligence today.
- The next set of sites that I looked were those newsletters and journals that charged for subscriptions to their publications. The far and away best site was that of IntelWeb which is the site of the Intelligence Watch Report (IWR). Although, the IWR newsletter cost $100 for a year, the site has a breakdown and links to almost every foreign secret service (official or unofficial) in the world. Open Source Solutions is a provider of a variety online intelligence services such as, a newsletter, hosting professional associations, and member's biographies. Intelligence Online by Indigo Publishing is an extremely expensive publication at $30 an issue to $690 for one year. There is a free issue online which gives a good display of the quality of the bi-weekly newsletter, the only annoyance is that the sample is from late February 1996. The last journal that I reviewed was a rather unrealistic, too much left leaning journal, called the Consortium, there was no content in it for which I would ever be willing to pay money.
- Two sites Kim-Spy and InfoManage-Intelligence Resources are excellent sources for extra information and are deserving of attention. Two other sites that deserve attention is the Discovery Channel's Spy in the Sky, which details the story of satellite intelligence during the Cold War, and CIABASE, a stripped down online version of a CD-ROM on the CIA developed and compiled by a twenty-five year veteran of the Agency. I would like to post a small warning, though, about CIABASE and that is I have tried to use this two or three times in the last week and it not yet worked.
Conclusion
Why is any of this important? The very basis of a free society is free flowing information however, at the same time the state of affairs in our world require secrecy and the clandestine operations that United States Intelligence Community runs. With the Internet quickly becoming a mainstream medium of communication it is imperative to understand how the Intelligence Community is being publicly portrayed in this new and open medium. That is why the above Internet resources were researched, to gain that understanding of the intelligence resources on the Internet.