Historical Dictionary of United States Intelligence

Introduction

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The public perceives intelligence to be all action, with freewheeling

agents either doing dastardly deeds or saving the world. This is a limited

view of intelligence, in which the media feeds the public only depictions

of covert actions that have gone wrong or of fictional characters stealing

secrets, thwarting terrorists, nabbing the bad guys, and producing general

mayhem—all, of course, for the common good. The media promotes this

erroneous view in order to publicize its television programs or to boost

newspaper and magazine readership. Intelligence professionals probably

secretly wish that at least some of this were true. However, they also

know that what the media puts out for public consumption is for fun and

generally a misrepresentation of the world of intelligence.

Some intelligence supports covert actions—the notorious part of

intelligence—but the bulk of intelligence activities have more to do

with collecting, processing, analyzing, and disseminating intelligence

information to decision makers. Indeed, intelligence agencies provide

specific services and products to political leaders—consumers—who

use intelligence information to make national security and foreign pol-

icy decisions. More specifically, intelligence is policy-relevant infor-

mation, collected through open and clandestine means and subjected to

analysis, for the purposes of educating, enlightening, or helping Amer-

ican decision makers in formulating and implementing U.S. national se-

curity and foreign policy. This, at least, is the theory behind intelli-

gence, and there is a good deal of truth to it.

THE MISSION

According to the definition, the mission of intelligence is to gather

“raw” information based on “requirements” identified by political

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