the public consciousness, the police service has determined to adopt a firm
disciplinary approach to any expression of racism and to instigate a deliberate
programme, such as US military services have operated for years, of sensitiza-
tion to race issues.
Intelligence Services
It seems likely that all nations have both intelligence and security services of a
more or less secret nature. The principal organization in the Soviet Union was
the Committee for State Security (KGB), which grew out ofLenin’soriginal
internal secret police, the Cheka. In 1991, after the KGB had played a major
role in the abortive coup attempt against PresidentGorbachev, the organiza-
tion was dismantled; it seemed likely that its previous paramilitary and
intelligence functions would be assumed, in greatly reduced form, by the
newly-independent republics of the former Soviet Union. The USA, which
had almost no intelligence gathering machinery before the Second World War,
developed rapidly the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), modelled on the
British services. It also has many other intelligence analysis organizations,
especially the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). In the USA, as in most
Western countries, the external intelligence and internal security or counter-
intelligence operations are divided between different organizations to mini-
mize the risk to democratic institutions of covert forces. So in America the
Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is responsible for internal security,
although it has been suggested that the CIA has breached this restriction from
time to time. The United Kingdom operates two principal services. The
Security Service (sometimes called MI5), in co-operation with the Special
Branch of the ordinary police is responsible directly to the prime minister for
internal security. The UK’s external intelligence-gathering activities are the
responsibility of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, sometimes called MI6),
which operates mainly under Foreign Office control. Among other major
examples, France has the Direction Ge ́ne ́rale de la Se ́curite ́ Exte ́rieure (DGSE)
and a host of internal security organizations, Germany the Bundesnachrich-
tendienst (BND), and Israel what is arguably the most efficient intelligence
service in the world, Mossad. Increasingly there is pressure for such agencies to
be restrained by some sort of legislative control because of the danger of
executive action in secret. The US Senate has established an intelligence
oversight committee which alone can authorize some CIA activities.
Traditional espionage activities have very largely been superseded by elec-
tronic intelligence gathering, from radio frequency intercepting. Far more
important in real terms than the CIA and MI6 are the US National Security
Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ). These, combined with satellite reconnaissance, have been crucial for
Intelligence Services