Historical Dictionary of United States Intelligence

Preface

ix

Preparing a historical dictionary on U.S. intelligence is a formidable

task, for two reasons. First, the subject matter is not what it seems:

while the United States has had some kind of intelligence capability

throughout its history, its intelligence apparatus is young, dating only to

the period immediately after World War II. Yet, in that short a time, it

has undergone enormous changes—from the labor-intensive espionage

and covert action establishment of the 1950s to an enterprise that today

relies heavily on technologically advanced information pathways and

seriously expensive gadgets like satellites, airborne collection plat-

forms, and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Second, writing about intelligence matters invariably is fraught with

difficulties, not the least of which is the secrecy surrounding intelligence

activities. Secrecy is a bulwark of any intelligence service, and this is no

different for U.S. intelligence. Therefore, some of what could be known

about U.S. intelligence and its activities simply is shrouded in the mists

of classification schemes and is unavailable to the public. However, the

United States is one of the few countries on the globe that allows dis-

cussion and debate, albeit sometimes grudgingly, about its intelligence

agencies and their activities. As a result, a surprisingly large number of

authors, both from inside and outside the U.S. intelligence community,

have written about U.S. intelligence in all its guises. This burgeoning lit-

erature makes virtually all facets of the American intelligence enterprise

readily available to the public. The richness of this literature is evident

in the fact that, even though the author is a former intelligence officer,

everything in this dictionary came from publicly available materials.

There is a third complication in writing historically about intelligence—

that of coming to terms with the myriad conceptions of intelligence. Ap-

preciating the history of U.S. intelligence requires an understanding of in-

telligence as an essential governmental activity. The public understandably

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