Intelligence agency

This article needs more citations. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Intelligence agency" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objectives. Countries often have different intelligence agencies with their own focus area. A distinction that is often made is between foreign intelligence agencies and security intelligence agencies. The former collects information about targets in other countries while the latter is focused on protecting the homeland from internal threats.^{[citation needed]}

Means of information gathering are both overt and covert and may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public sources. The assembly and propagation of this information is known as intelligence analysis or intelligence assessment.

Objectives

Intelligence agencies can provide the following services for their national governments.

• Give early warning of impending crisis;
• Serve national and international crisis management by helping to discern the intentions of current or potential opponents;
• Inform national defense planning and military operations, known as military intelligence;
• Protect sensitive information secrets, both of their own sources and activities, and those of other state agencies;
• Covertly influence the outcome of events in favor of national interests, or influence international security; and
• Defense against the efforts of other national intelligence agencies, known as counterintelligence.

There is a distinction between "security intelligence" and "foreign intelligence". Security intelligence pertains to domestic security and related threats, including terrorism and espionage. Foreign intelligence involves information collection relating to the political, or economic activities of foreign states.

Some agencies have been involved in assassination, arms trafficking, coups d'état, and the placement of misinformation propaganda and other covert and clandestine operations to support their own or their governments' interests.

Gallery

• 
  The SIS Building, headquarters of MI6, in London, United Kingdom
• 
  The George Bush Center for Intelligence, headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, in Langley, United States
• 
  The Ministry of State Security in Beijing, China
• 
  The headquarters of the Foreign Intelligence Service in Moscow, Russia
• 
  The BND Headquarters, headquarters of the Federal Intelligence Service, in Berlin, Germany

See also

• Counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism organizations
• Intelligence officer
• List of defunct intelligence agencies
• List of intelligence agencies
• List of intelligence gathering disciplines
• Private intelligence agency
• Secret police
• Security agency
• Secret service
• State Security (disambiguation)

References

Further reading

Books

• Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security, hrg. von K. Lee Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, 3 Bände, Detroit [u.a.]: Gale [u.a.], 2004
• Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence, Yale University Press, 2002
• Richard C. S. Trahair, Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations, Westport, Conn. [u.a.] : Greenwood Press, 2004
• Amy B. Zegart, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1999

Journals

• The Journal of Intelligence History

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Intelligence agencies.

• Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the intelligence agency of the United Kingdom
• Central Intelligence Agency, the intelligence agency of the United States
• Ministry of State Security, the intelligence agency of China
• Foreign Intelligence Service, the intelligence agency of Russia
• Directorate-General for External Security, the intelligence agency of France
• Federal Intelligence Service, the intelligence agency of Germany