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By Root 619 0

functional and yet sometimes dysfunctional. One director of central intelligence (DCI), Richard Helms (1966-1973), testified before Congress that, despite all of the criticisms of the structure and functioning of the intelligence community, if one were to create it from scratch, much the same community would likely emerge. Helms’s focus was not on the structure of the community but on the services it provides, which are multiple, varied, and supervised by a number of individuals. This approach to intelligence is unique to the United States, although others have copied facets of it. The 2004 legislation that created a director of national intelligence (DNI; see chap. 3) made changes in the superstructure of the intelligence community but not to the functions of the various agencies.

MAJOR THEMES

A number of major themes can be discerned in the development of the U.S. intelligence system, each of which will be discussed in turn.

THE NOVELTY OF U.S. INTELLIGENCE. Of the major powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the United States has the briefest history of significant intelligence beyond wartime emergencies. British intelligence dates from the reign of Elizabeth 1(1558-1603), French intelligence from the sway of Cardinal Richelieu (1624-1642), and Russian intelligence from the reign of Ivan the Terrible (1533—1584). Even given that the United States did not come into being until 1776, its intelligence experience is brief. The first glimmer of a national intelligence enterprise did not appear until 1940. Although permanent and specific naval and military intelligence units date from the late nineteenth century, a broader U.S. national intelligence capability began to arise only with the creation of the Coordinator of Information (COI), the predecessor of the World War II-era Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

What explains this nearly 170-year absence of organized U.S. intelligence? For most of its history, the United States did not have strong foreign policy interests beyond its immediate borders. The success of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine (which stated that the United States would resist any European attempt to colonize in the Western Hemisphere), abetted by the acquiescence and tacit support of Britain, solved the basic security interests of the United States and its broader foreign policy interests. The need for better intelligence became apparent only after the United States achieved the status of a world power and became involved in wide-ranging international issues at the end of the nineteenth century.

Furthermore, the United States faced no threat to its security from its neighbors, from powers outside the Western Hemisphere, or—with the exception of the Civil War (1861-1865)—from large-scale internal dissent that was inimical to its form of government. This benign environment, so unlike that faced by all European states, undercut any perceived need for national intelligence.

Until the cold war with the Soviet Union commenced in 1945, the United States severely limited expenditures on defense and related activities during peacetime. Intelligence, already underappreciated, fell into this category. (Historians have noted, however, that intelligence absorbed a remarkable and anomalous 12 percent of the federal budget under President George Washington. This was the high-water mark of intelligence spending in the federal budget, a percentage that was never approached again. In 2007 national intelligence accounted for roughly 1.6 percent of the federal budget—for a total national intelligence budget of $43.5 billion, according to figures declassified by the director of national intelligence. This percentage is the same as it was in 1999. the last year in which the intelligence budget was made public. These data suggest that although there has been a great increase in intelligence spending in terms of dollars since the 2001 attacks, intelligence remains roughly where it was as a national priority for the period before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.)

Intelligence was a novelty in the 1940s. At this