Community (IC), Air Force ISR specialists are embedded in each air force component, preparing for and conducting operations that range from disaster and humanitarian relief, peacekeeping, counterterrorism, and counternarcotics, to full-scale conflict. The air force acquired its own intelligence capability soon after the National Security Act of 1947 established the air force as an independent service within America’s military structure.
Air Force ISR is the latest iteration in the evolution of air force intelligence. It now has the responsibility to provide accurate, timely intelligence on air and space forces for U. S., allied, and coalition forces at all echelons and levels of command. It does so by employing analytic tools and dissemination systems to tailor intelligence information for all levels of the air force, including theater commanders.
ISR contains several subordinate elements, the most important of which is the National Air Intelligence Center (NAIC), which exploits and analyzes adversary air, space, and long-range ballistic missile systems using all-source information. Another major subordinate unit is the Air Force Information Warfare Center (AFIWC), which works on the development of information warfare concepts, tools, and a wide array of support services. In addition, Air Force ISR contributes to national intelligence capabilities by operating a worldwide array of ground-based, airborne, shipborne and space-based high-technology sensors.
AJAX (OPERATION). A covert action by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1953 to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran. Both the American and British governments were angered by Mossadegh’s nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Corporation in 1952. In addition, the Iranian Communist Party was gaining influence, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower feared that the Iranian political climate, if left unchecked, would enable the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) to have a stronghold on Iranian oil. A CIA operative, Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt) headed a joint U. S.-British operation that incited a revolt against Mossadegh, overthrowing him and restoring Shah Reza Pahlavi to power. This action, though lauded as a successful covert operation at the time, engendered resentment of the United States and the United Kingdom among Iranians and sparked an insurgent religious movement that eventually ousted the shah in 1979 and led to the Iranian hostage crisis, during which Iranian students held 54 American officials hostage for 444 days. The hostages were released on 20 January 1981.
ALIAS. A fictitious name employed by an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to mask his identity when conducting operations. A CIA officer may use many aliases during an operation. See also PSEUDONYM.
ALIEN REGISTRATION ACT. See McCARTHY ERA.
ALL AMERICAN SYSTEM. The All American system was an innovative agent extraction procedure employed by the British toward the end of World War II. The procedure involved the use of a modified version of a mail pickup system used by All American Aviation before America’s entry into the war. The mail package to be picked up was secured to a transfer line, strung between two wheel poles, set 54 feet apart. The aircraft designated to do the pickup approached the ground in a gentle glide of 90 miles per hour, while a mechanic in the airplane let out a 50-foot steel cable, with a four-finger grapple at the end. As the aircraft pulled up, the grapple engaged the transfer line, and the mechanic winched the mail package into the airplane.
The British revised the All American system in September 1943 to retrieve human beings behind enemy lines. The modified grapple yanked the transfer line off the ground, and the agent soared off behind the airplane. While the British used the system to retrieve agents, United States forces occasionally used the method to retrieve objects, such as downed gliders. During the Korean War, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used the system to retrieve agents as part of Operation Tropic. It modified and adapted the system even further toward the end of the 1950s, employing it as part of the Skyhook system and Operation Coldfeet.
ALLENDE, SALVADOR (1908-1973). President of Chile from 1970 until 1973, when a coup fomented by Chilean military officers, who were backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), ousted him from office. Prior to his presidency, Allende served as minister in a previous government and was for a time chairman of the Chilean Senate. He ran for president of Chile three times and succeeded in 1970 as leader of the Unidad Popular coalition party.
The U. S. government, along with American commercial interests in Chile, had long opposed left-leaning politicians and supported the Chilean Right, especially the Christian Democrats. Declassified documents show that beginning in 1963 the CIA spent $2.6 million on propping up the Christian Democratic presidential aspirant, Eduardo Frei. Allende was a thorn in the sides of both the Christian Democrats and the CIA, especially because Allende, a physician by profession, was an ardent Marxist and an outspoken critic of the capitalist system. Even before his election, Allende had declared his intention for far-reaching socialist reforms but was vague about how exactly he planned to implement them.
President Richard M. Nixon made his displeasure with Allende’s prospective election known very early in his administration and instructed the CIA to engage in covert actions to prevent Allende’s election. Consequently, the CIA spent an additional $3 million on propaganda activities to turn Chilean voters away from Allende. When that failed, the Nixon White House authorized the CIA to oust Allende from office. General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the Allende government in a CIA-engineered military coup on 11 September 1973, and Allende committed suicide soon thereafter. See also COVERT ACTION; FUBELT (OPERATION); KISSINGER, HENRYA.; NATIONAL SECURITY DECISION MEMORANDUM 93.
ALL SOURCE ANALYSIS SYSTEM (ASAS). ASAS is a computerized battlefield intelligence collection system developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of Pasadena, California, and operated by Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM). The system receives intelligence information by radio or from battlefield sensors, analyzes it, and provides real-time results to tactical commanders. The army first used the system in the 1991 Persian Gulf War by employing more than a dozen workstations in the battlefield. See also TACTICAL INTELLIGENCE.
AL QAI DA. Also commonly referred to as al Qaeda, it is an umbrella organization of worldwide terrorist groups that espouse Jihad (or holy war) against the West, or what Islamists call “the Jews and crusaders.” Formed by Osama bin Laden in the 1980s to bring together Arabs and other Muslims fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation, al Qai’da’s goal is to establish a pan-Islamic state throughout the world by overthrowing “non-Islamic” regimes and expelling Westerners and non-Muslims from Muslim countries.
Its long-term strategy calls for the use of force as a preferred method. Al Qai’da has been implicated in numerous terrorists acts, such as the 1993 bombings of the World Trade Center in New York City, the assassination plot against Pope John Paul II in 1994, the plan to hijack American commercial airliners over the Pacific in 1995, the bombings of U. S. embassies in Africa in August 1998, the attack on the USS Cole on 12 October 1999, the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and the bombings of two synagogues in Istanbul, Turkey, on 15 November 2003.
AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE COMMAND (AIC). Established in the summer of 1942 by the Military Intelligence Division (MID), AIC was an effort to establish a series of intelligence-gathering networks in
Latin America. Run by the American defense attaches attached to U. S. embassies in the western hemisphere during World War II, AIC ran into numerous problems and points of conflict with Special Intelligence Service (SIS) agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). These jurisdictional disputes continued throughout the war and were only addressed by the establishment of the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) in 1946.
AMES, ALDRICH (1941- ). Aldrich Ames was a mid-level employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who was arrested in 1994 for spying for the Russians. Ames entered CIA duty in 1967 as a case officer, working primarily against the Soviet Union. He later was transferred to counterintelligence duties against Soviet targets. According to his own statements, Ames began providing information to the Soviets in April 1985 and continued these activities even after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. According to damage assessments, Ames provided Moscow the largest amount of secret information in the history of American intelligence, including the identities of eleven assets of the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) inside the Soviet Union who were reporting on Soviet activities and who were promptly executed when identified.
In August 1985, Ames was selected as one of the CIA officers to debrief defector Vitaly Yurchenko. Ames reportedly told his handlers at the Soviet Embassy in Washington everything Yurchenko was telling his interrogators. Both the CIA and the FBI became suspicious of Ames’s activities in the mid-1980s and began clandestinely searching his home, intercepting his communications, and conducting physical surveillance in order to develop evidence of his treachery, a process that took over eight years. The FBI arrested Ames on 21 February 1994.
ANGLETON, JAMES J. (1917-1987). James J. Angleton headed the Counterintelligence Staff of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1954 until his forced retirement by Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) William E. Colby in 1974. Angleton had earlier served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and from late 1944 had been in charge of OSS counterintelligence operations in Italy. He met and became friends with Harold (“Kim”) Philby, British
MI-6 officer and Soviet agent, during a stay in England in 1943. His personal and professional relationship with Philby continued when Philby later became the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) liaison with the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Washington. His close friendhip with Philby colored Angleton’s judgments about the British officer, probably delaying the identification of Philby as a Soviet penetration agent.
Once Philby’s treachery became known, Angleton became obsessed with the notion of further penetrations of the CIA, particularly after the defection of Anatoly Golitsyn from the KGB in 1961. In fact, Angleton came to believe that most of the CIA’s assets and contacts were KGB-controlled and that defectors were actually Russian agents sent to the West to spread disinformation. Angleton subsequently engaged in a “mole hunt” that targeted numerous innocent CIA officers, ruining many careers. Angleton’s excesses led DCI Colby to force Angleton into retirement in 1974.
ARBENZ GUZMAN, JACOBO (1913-1971). Democratically elected president of Guatemala between 1950 and and 1954. An agrarian reformer, Arbenz instituted various projects to confiscate unusued land for distribution to peasants. He also threatened to nationalize the holdings of the United Fruit Company, in which many American politicians and prominent individuals held stock. President Dwight D. Eisenhower condemned the Arbenz government as a “communist dictatorship” and authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct a covert action to oust Arbenz. The CIA employed a combination of propaganda and paramilitary forces to whip up opposition to the Arbenz regime and force him out of office. Toppling Arbenz and his government ushered in decades of dicta-torhips and numerous human rights violations of genocidal proportions. See also SUCCESS (OPERATION).
ARMS CONTROL. Arms control refers to the diplomatic efforts by both the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War to establish limits on the quantitative and qualitative aspects of nuclear weapon stocks or to reduce their numbers on a reciprocal basis. The Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (LNTBT), for example, was negotiated in the 1960s to restrict nuclear tests to underground experimental conditions.
In addition, arms control efforts have focused on disarming various regions of the globe—Antartica, for example — and space, such as the Outer Space Treaty, from nuclear weapons. American intelligence has had a vital role in these efforts of supporting American arms control negotiators with intelligence information and monitoring and verifying compliance with the resulting treaties. See also ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT AGENCY; ARMS CONTROL INTELLIGENCE STAFF.
ARMS CONTROLAND DISARMAMENTAGENCY (ACDA). Established as an independent agency by the Arms Control and Disar-mamant Act of 26 September 1961, ACDA was the leading organizational unit for formulating U. S. policy on arms control and disarmament issues and for U. S. participation in international negotiations over such issues. Executive Order 11044, dated 20 August 1962, also endowed ACDA’s director with the authority to coordinate policy planning for diplomatic negotiations. As such, ACDA was deeply involved in all major arms control agreements, such as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I and II. ACDA also supported efforts to prevent missile and weapons proliferation by fully participating in two of the National Security Council’s (NSC’s) interagency working groups (IWGs), one on nonproliferation and export controls and the other on arms control.
Although not a formal member of the intelligence community (IC), ACDA was an active member of various interagency intelligence committees working on verification issues and to ensure that U. S. policy initiatives were based on accurate intelligence information. ACDA ceased to be an independent agency on 1 April 1999 and was integrated into the Department of State.
ARMS CONTROL INTELLIGENCE STAFF (ACIS). Formerly attached to the Office of the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), ACIS, now a part of the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), supports all American arms control
Negotiations and provides advice on verification and compliance issues. Tasking for ACIS at one time came from the Intelligence Resources Division of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), but now tasking primarily comes from the Department of
State and elements of the White House, such as the National Security Council (NSC). ACIS remains the principal coordinating mechanism for requirements on arms control intelligence issues.
ARMY INTELLIGENCE. See ARMY INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY COMMAND.
ARMY INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (AINTA). See ARMY INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY COMMAND.
ARMY INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY COMMAND (INSCOM). Established on 1 January 1977, INSCOM is responsible for fielding intelligence assets in support of combat commanders. It provides threat assessments as well as training for contingency operations that range from war fighting to peacekeeping operations.
INSCOM originally combined the Army Security Agency (ASA), the Army Intelligence Agency (AINTA), and the various intelligence production agencies falling under the army chief of staff. The Army Security Agency was the latest successor to the War Department’s Cipher Bureau within the Military Intelligence Division (MID), in which Herbert O. Yardley, a pioneer in American cryptology, had played an important role. Its immediate successor, the Army Signals Intelligence Corps, broke the Purple cipher system that carried the most secret Japanese diplomatic messages. On 15 September 1945, the U. S. Army Security Agency (USASE) came into being to conduct army signals intelligence (SIGINT) and communications security (COMSEC) until its incorporation into INSCOM in 1977.
The Army Intelligence Agency had its genesis in World War I counterintelligence operations within the United States. It evolved into the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, with its personnel functioning as plainclothes investigators on the home front and abroad. In 1961, the CIC was folded into the Intelligence Corps, which gathered positive intelligence in addition to conducting counterintelligence. On 1 July 1965, the Department of Defense (DOD) disbanded the CIC and established the Army Intelligence Command (USAINTC), which, over time, acquired human intelligence (HUMINT), imagery intelligence (IMINT), counterintelligence, and other capabilities. The Defense
Investigative Service (DIS) in 1971 absorbed USAINTC, abandoning some intelligence activities and focusing more on conducting personnel investigations in the United States.
World History
