Intelligence on the Internet

by Jonathan Freeman

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.

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:



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.