Civil Liberty and National Security: The Implications of the Debate for the United States Intelligence Community

For years, the US Intelligence Community has worked to maintain the thin and often wavering line between civil liberty and national security in its attempts to protect the American people while simultaneously preserving their constitutional rights. However, this line has often shifted with the course of American history, including events such as the Alien and Sedition Acts, the establishment of the Church Committee, and the publication of the NSA’s data collection program. One of the most significant of these factors was the passage and eventual amendment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which opened the door to later constitutional controversies. In the midst of this ever-changing national landscape, how is the US Intelligence Community to strike a balance between protecting the American people and ensuring their civil freedoms? The Intelligence Community must remember that it has a responsibility to protect both the American people and their constitutional freedoms. The Intelligence Community faces the unique challenge of reconciling the freedom of the American people to live safely and the freedom of the US government, embodied by the executive branch, to lead. In recent history, it has done a remarkable job of instituting measures of oversight and enacting greater controls on itself as part of the executive branch to avoid the unconstitutional missteps it has taken in the past. Intelligence agencies in the present and future must continue to prioritize not only on the safety of the United States and its people but also on the maintenance of the liberties guaranteed to them under the US Constitution

Ethnographic Research in the U.S. Intelligence Community: Opportunities and Challenges

This article considers lessons learned from conducting research inside the intelligence community. Drawing on a year of ethnographic field work and interviews at the National Counterterrorism Center, I show that “boundary personnel”- people who navigate between the worlds of academia and national security - provide value added in the form of tacit knowledge that outside researchers would not be able to deliver. At the same time, these people face delays, challenges to freedom of information, and ethical considerations that are unique to their positions. Despite setbacks, social scientists must continue their engagement with national security organizations to further our understanding of how these powerful institutions operate

Intelligence and the machinery of government: conceptualizing the intelligence community

This article argues that the failure to address intelligence agencies as public organizations part and parcel with the overt machinery of government constitutes a significant lacuna both in the specialist study of intelligence and the broader discipline of public administration studies. The role and status of intelligence institutions as aspects of the machinery of central government is examined, along with the prospects of certain key paradigms in the field for understanding those institutions are considered. Finally, the implications for the wider study of decision-making, policy and public management will be examined

Secrecy vs. Disclosure of the Intelligence Community Budget: An Enduring Debate

Little known U.S. congressional documents, dating from the 1970s, debate public disclosure of Intelligence Community (IC) budget. The documents offer a rich repository of the arguments on both sides of the debate and shine a light on the thoughtful, measured congressional oversight practiced in formative years of the House and Senate intelligence committees

The Intelligence Community

Intelligence services are currently focusing on the fight against terrorism, leaving relatively little resources to monitor other security threats. For this reason, they often ignore external information activities that do not pose immediate threats to their government's interests. Extremely few external services operate globally. Almost all other services focus on immediate neighbors or regions. These services usually depend on relationships with these global services for information on areas beyond their immediate neighborhoods, and often sell their regional expertise for what they need globally. A feature of both internal and external services is that they behave like a caste. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.25847.6800

Refocusing Intelligence: Keeping Intelligence Relevant Beyond the Global War on Terrorism

Historically, the intelligence community has been unprepared to meet emerging threats. This is due to intelligence focusing on current and past threats rather than being oriented towards the future. The attacks on 9/11 and subsequent war on terrorism only cemented this fact. This study looks at the history of intelligence to reveal this pattern along with relevant reforms to the intelligence community. Unfortunately, the current reforms only meet the needs of the current issues facing the intelligence community without preparing the community for the future. Looking at potential threats faced by the nation, the potential shortfalls in intelligence become known. This study proposes four reform areas that are required in the intelligence community and ways to implement the reforms. Ultimately, unless further reforms are implemented, the intelligence community may remain unprepared to meet the intelligence needs of future conflicts and operations.B.S. (Bachelor of Science

What Intelligence Community Needs

In order to depoliticize any claim that any U.S. president would ever take military action especially one involving tactical nuclear weapons based on politically predetermined intelligence, Congress needs to legislate and fund with a small budget what I\u27m calling the Contrarian Threat Assessment Directorate. The director of this small, independent intelligence arm would be nominated by the president, confirmed by the Senate, and report directly to the president. Through a statutory amendment, the director would become an adviser to the National Security Council (NSC) on the contrarian, dissenting and minority intelligence assessments

A multi-INT semantic reasoning framework for intelligence analysis support

Lockheed Martin Corp. has funded research to generate a framework and methodology for developing semantic reasoning applications to support the discipline oflntelligence Analysis. This chapter outlines that framework, discusses how it may be used to advance the information sharing and integrated analytic needs of the Intelligence Community, and suggests a system I software architecture for such applications

Dismantling the “Deep State”: The Evolution of Legitimacy in the American Intelligence Community

SYDNEY CAROL STANARD: Dismantling the “Deep State”: The Evolution of Legitimacy in the American Intelligence Community (Under the direction of Dr. John Winkle) This thesis explores the nature of legitimacy and how it applies to the American intelligence community. The laws and regulations that allow the intelligence community to be a legitimate actor within the American democracy have changed over the years, and there have been periods where these safeguards have failed. I will examine how and why these legitimacy crises, were rectified in the past and how current legitimacy questions are affecting the intelligence community. My research is based on open-source information, such as the work of political scientists, statements by former intelligence professionals, and the legal and legislative record. My research finds that the legitimacy of the intelligence community is based on its neutrality, transparency, and accountability, with specific care being placed on accountability. The process of making the intelligence community accountable is reactionary, however. Current questions of the intelligence community’s neutrality being made by prominent politicians and political pundits are largely unfounded, though these questions may have a negative effect on perceived neutra