United States Intelligence Community

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The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), created by U.S. President Ronald Reagan's Executive Order 12333, has been a multi-departmental intelligence community since the 19th century.

The Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA, formerly NIMA, National Imaging and Mapping Agency), the National Recognition Office (NRO, National Recognition Office) and the United States Armed Forces Intelligence Service (USF).

The National Intelligence Director is responsible for coordinating these services following the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act 2004.

History of spying in the United States

Before the United States became a superpower, in peacetime intelligence was not a major concern of the US government and there was no comprehensive intelligence service. It took the cold war to integrate this aspect of international relations on a wide scale, using, among other things, the National Security Act 1947.

Beginnings
The United States Secret Service, founded in 1865, is responsible for protecting the President of the United States and the fight against counterfeiting; the United States Navy had established the Office of Naval Intelligence in 1882 to monitor the evolution of the war marines; The Black Chamber, the first permanent cryptographic structure created in 1917 by the United States during World War I, was closed in 1929 because then Secretary of State Henry Lewis Stimson abhorred espionage; The FBI developed a small network in Latin America in the 1930s, which was formalized in 1940.

The United States was spied upon in the inter-war period by its ideological rival, the USSR, and then during the Second World War by Nazi German networks, but the Abwehr was hardly effective on the North American continent.

With the Second World War, the need for an intelligence service capable of acting on the ground appeared, and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was created with the help of the British services, which performed very well in this field. These relations continued after the war with the signature of the secret United Kingdom agreement - USA Security Agreement, often called UKUSA Treaty.

Cold War
At the end of this conflict, relations with the new Eastern bloc cooled very quickly and turned into a cold war. Communist regimes, mainly the Soviet Union, launched continuous intelligence missions at all levels, mainly intelligence on military potential, but also industrial, scientific and political espionage, as well as disinformation. They recruit