Historical Dictionary of United States Intelligence

(Martin Jones) #1
move that FBI Director Hoover vehemently opposed, the FBI lost its
intelligence collection responsibilities in Latin America but retained
its jurisdiction over counterintelligence within the United States. In
this context, the FBI engaged in covert activitiesagainst domestic
dissident groups during the Vietnam War, as in Operation COIN-
TELPRO, and became embroiled in the Watergate scandalas well
as the congressional investigations of the mid-1970s. J. Edgar Hoover
died on 2 May 1972, ushering in a period of instability for the FBI.
In 1982, FBI Director William H. Websterexpanded FBI juris-
diction over terrorism, the illicit narcotics trade, and white-collar
crime. With the end of the Cold Warin 1991, the FBI established the
National Security Threat List(NSTL), changing its approach from
defending against hostile intelligence services to protecting U.S. in-
formation technologies. The list included a compendium of new
threats, including proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the
loss of critical technologies, and the improper collection of trade se-
crets and proprietary information. Counterterrorism jumped to the
forefront of the list with the first terrorist attack on the World Trade
Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Internal
crime also rose high on the list as a national security threat.
The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001called into question
the strict separation of intelligence and law enforcement functions
that had existed since 1947. The USA PATRIOT Actand similar an-
titerror tools enacted in the aftermath of 9/11 now blur the separation
between intelligence and law enforcement by promoting cooperation
between foreign intelligence agencies and the law enforcement com-
munity, including the state and local levels. Indeed, the FBI now con-
tains the National Security Service, established by Executive Order
in 2005, to strengthen the bureau’s intelligence capabilities. See also
SPECIALINTELLIGENCE SERVICE.

FEDORA.Fedora was the code name given to a Sovietcitizen, Aleksei
Isidorovich Kulak, who spied for the Federal Bureau of Investiga-
tion (FBI) during the 1960s. Fedora actually was a KGB case officer
in New York with the coverof consultant to the United Nations Sci-
entific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. In March 1962,
Fedora offered his services to the FBI, and the Bureau so prized and
so jealously protected Fedora’s information that it hid Fedora’s, as
well as another FBI informant, Top Hat’s, existence from the Central

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