INTELLIGENCE AS AN ACTIVITY IN U.S. GOVERNMENT

INTELLIGENCE AS AN ACTIVITY IN U.S. GOVERNMENT

(FRAZER CHRONICLE)

(All the News That Nobody Else Will Print)

Ok, so it goes, there’s some bad guys over there, it doesn’t matter which state, or street they’re on, it’s just that they’re bad guys and they need to be watched…..clandestinely. They’re different, or they have strange customs and wear weird cloths…..point is, they aren’t like us. What has just happened here with this scenario…..can anybody tell me, huh, no, well I can, either one or two people, or a group has been profiled by somebody with a bit of juice in government, any level of government, and they’ve started the ball rolling on a plan to keep an eye on these people because…..well, since I’m not the one with juice, I don’t know…..but the juice-man does.

 

Gathering intelligence on foreign as well as domestic individuals has been going on for a long time, the difference between then and now is the fact that today…..the gathering has been refined, and the scope of potential targets to be watched has grown exponentially. The average person doesn’t really think about it, but whenever you walk down the street in your town, or when you drive your vehicle on some streets, you are being filmed. When you grocery shop, or go to your favorite department store, your picture is being taking.

 

My friends, this is the age of distrust, and it’s getting worse and worse with each passing day, and the authority figures, those people who actually seem to be attempting to protect us from…..us are overjoyed with their new gadgets and newfound leeway to practice their craft. And the best part of the entire equation is the fact that most of the people that are being spied on, you and me are paying their salaries and for their new surveillance toys.

 

A LONG, LONG, LONG, LONG HISTORY OF SLEUTHING IN THE U.S.

With little exception people like to know about their friend’s dirty laundry, it’s a bit of power that one might hold over another…..just in case they ever need it…..and the worse the better. During the Revolutionary War, General George Washington was an avid and crafty user of intelligence, and was a consummate practitioner of the intelligence craft.

 

In a letter that General Washington wrote to one of his officers in 1777, Washington wrote that secrecy was the key to success of intelligence activities: “The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged-All that remains for me to add is, that you keep the matter as secret as possible. For upon Secrecy, success depends in most Enterprises of the & for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned.”

 

Also during this period, Washington wasn’t the only person to understand what intelligence gathering might mean during a military conflict. In 1775 the Continental Congress created the Committee of Secret Correspondence whose job was to gather foreign intelligence from people in England, Ireland and elsewhere on the European continent in the prosecution of the war.

 

In January of 1790, at President Washington’s urging Congress established the Contingent Fund for Foreign Intercourse (also known as the Secret Service Fund). In July of 1790 $40,000 was appropriated for the fund, and by 1793 the budget had grown to $1 million and represented 12% of the overall budget of the United States. While congress required the President to certify the amounts spent, it also allowed him to conceal the purpose and recipients of the funds.

 

The House of Representatives, in 1846, challenged the provision of secrecy of the funds given for intelligence gathering, their purpose, or how the money was spent. However President Polk, citing national security grounds (even 169 years ago there was a question of national security) refused to turn over more specific information on the use of the funds.

 

The interest in national security and intelligence gathering as a tool by the Executive appears to have waned in succeeding administrations after the War of 1812 until the Civil War when, intelligence was credited with Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg and the Union’s defeat at Chancellorsville. At war’s end, the Bureau of Military Intelligence was disestablished; however the Secret Service was established in 1865 to combat counterfeiting currency.

 

Strangely in the years after the Civil War the use of intelligence for foreign policy was not expanded, but there was an expansion of domestic intelligent capabilities. In 1908 the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation (forerunner of the FBI) was established out of concern that Secret Service agents were spying on members of Congress. By 1916 the Bureau had expanded from 34 members focusing primarily on banking issues to more than 300 agents with an expanded charter that included internal security.

 

Surprisingly during World War I U.S. clandestine Intel gathering lacked a coordinated intelligence effort, due to an open door policy by President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson disdained the use of spies and was suspicious of intelligence gathering efforts and agencies.

 

However prior to the United States entrance into the war, British intelligence intercepted a document known as the Zimmerman Telegram, and the decrypted information from a German Ambassador telling of a plan to induce Mexico to join Germany against the United States in return for Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico…..if Germany won the war.

 

President Wilson used this captured communiqué as part of his reasoning to enter the war in his address before a joint session of Congress in 1917, urging the United States to declare war on Germany. The entering of World War I in the spring of 1917 led directly to the formation of the U.S. Signal Intelligence Agency by the United States Army which was known as MI-8, and was charged with decoding military communications, and providing codes for use by the U.S. military.

 

In 1919, at war’s end, MI-8 was transferred to the State Department, and became known as the Black Chamber, and focused on diplomatic rather than military communications. Black Chamber did have some well publicized success, such as the 1921 interception and decoding of Japanese diplomatic traffic. The intelligence gained was used to support U.S. negotiation at a Washington conference on naval disarmament.

 

However despite the success of Black Chamber, President Hoover, citing Secretary of State, Henry Stimson statement that “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail,” Hoover returned the agency to a military orientation under the Army Signal Corps.

 

Until the late 1930’s intelligence agencies saw their resources cut substantially with one exception, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation which saw a marked expansion of not only its mission, but its workforce, and budgetary expenditures. This all had to do with one man, J. Edger Hoover, who was named director in 1924. By 1935 Hoover, the Director of the Bureau saw his bureau’s name changed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation…..FBI.

 

WORLD WAR II

In the years previous to the United States entry into World War II saw American interest in developments in Europe and the Pacific intensify dramatically, prompting both formal and informal efforts to gather and analyze as much foreign information as possible. President Roosevelt relied heavily on American and British citizens traveling abroad to provide him with intelligence on the intentions of other leaders.

 

One of these European travelers was William “Wild Bill” J. Donovan who had an extensive military, law enforcement career and was an aficionado of intelligence through his service in World War I.

 

In July of 1941 President Roosevelt appointed Donovan as Coordinator of Information to form a non-military intelligence organization. Using the British intelligence model as a template for his new agency, Donovan created an analytical staff that would eventually supply information that would be presented to the President.

 

Of course most all bets were off when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which exposed a horrific failure of American intelligence. Deemed to be casual, and uncoordinated, with insufficient attention to certain collection requirements, especially from the Army and Navy which resulted in a failure to provide timely dissemination of relevant information to key decision makers, the United States created the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in June 1942.

 

“Wild Bill” Donovan was appointed OSS director, and was responsible to the newly organized Joint Chiefs of Staff. Plus its analytical responsibilities carried over from the non-military organization, the OSS was chartered to carry out clandestine operations against the Axis powers on a worldwide scale.

 

The OSS was the precursor to what we have today known as the Central Intelligence Agency, or the CIA. Donovan was, and is the founder of the Central Intelligence Agency, and I suppose a boney finger of accusation can be pointed at “Wild Bill” for the plight and sometimes mess that we, as a nation today find ourselves.

 

SPOOKS

Today we’ve got 7 departments with 19 elements, which are within these 7 federal executive departments. It all sounds confusing to me…..but I believe that’s the way it is supposed to be. In addition to the 19 elements we have splinter groups that nobody can get information on. It’s the “if I tell ya, I gotta kill ya” thingy.

 

Guesstimates, well educated guesstimates place to total employment of these spook-groups at between 200,000 and 300,000. The budgets…..well my friends, I attempted to look that up on my trusty computer but got the old ACCESS FORBIDDEN, and was referred to intelligence.gov. That’s where I decided to end this blog…..I don’t want any black sedan’s with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith knocking on my front door.

HAVE A NICE DAY!