The best way to learn a foreign language is to practice it with somebody. It was a pen pal in Bremen who helped me to learn German as it’s actually used and who told me about everyday life in his country. In what may have been an early version of this column, I did the same for him.
In the eighth grade, I knew very little about politics, but Frank seemed to know a bit more. He was very interested in spy movies and asked me to explain the CIA and the FBI. He also wanted me to send him a Jerry Cotton novel in English. That’s when I had to disappoint him. No one in America had heard of the fictional FBI agent; he’s a creation of German authors.
Today we’d have a lot to write about. The secret role of the CIA in destabilizing foreign governments has been admitted to by no less than Madeleine Albright and Barack Obama.
The terrorist attacks of 9/11 called attention to a lack of communication between the various intelligence agencies working for the United States. Another lack of communication that allowed the “underwear bomber” to come close to blowing up an airplane on Christmas Day 2009 led the media to observe that there are 17 such agencies. So naturally an alert reader of this column asked: What are they and what do they do?
Spies everywhere — even in Europe
Basically, information is gathered in a number of specific areas. Each branch of the American military, for example — the army, navy, air force and marines — has its own intelligence agency. There’s also an agency that builds and operates spy satellites, and another that looks at the pictures they take. The gathering of all this military intelligence is coordinated by yet another office: the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Also answerable to the Defense Department is the National Security Agency, which listens to transmissions of all kinds and specializes in cryptographic analysis. The NSA is believed to be able to intercept most of the world’s telephone calls, faxes, Internet traffic and e-mail, at points where these signals travel by radio, satellite or undersea cable. The European Union believes the NSA may have spied on America’s allies in Europe for several years, through a system known as Echelon, to give an advantage to US businesses. Under George W. Bush and possibly Barack Obama as well, the NSA, aided by AT&T and other phone companies, has also monitored the phone calls and Web traffic of millions of ordinary Americans.
Several other government departments have their own intelligence agencies as well. The Department of Energy spies on other countries’ nuclear programs. The State Department collects and reviews information that may affect US diplomacy. The Department of the Treasury has an agency that tries to undermine financial support for terrorism.
Plenty of work at home
For the Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard collects intelligence in American waters, and the Office of Intelligence and Analysis evaluates threats to American infrastructure.
In America, the FBI, or Federal Bureau of Investigation, is called in to do police work when crimes (such as kidnapping) are committed across state lines. It often collaborates with the DEA, or Drug Enforcement Agency, to find evidence of drug crimes.
All of the above, plus whatever the Central Intelligence Agency finds out, is forwarded to the Director of National Intelligence, whose office, created in 2005, forms the 17th agency.
Two weeks from today, the movie Jerry Cotton will be in German cinemas (with Christian Tramitz in the title role). But I’m not sure that he, or even Dana Scully or Fox Mulder (the FBI agents from The X-Files) could explain why America needs so many different agencies. After the underwear bomber incident, we heard that more information was being collected than could be analyzed. Has all this intelligence really made us more intelligent?
