Introduction

The public perceives intelligence to be all action, with freewheeling agents either doing dastardly deeds or saving the world. This is a limited view of intelligence, in which the media feeds the public only depictions of covert actions that have gone wrong or of fictional characters stealing secrets, thwarting terrorists, nabbing the bad guys, and producing general mayhem-all, of course, for the common good. The media promotes this erroneous view in order to publicize its television programs or to boost newspaper and magazine readership. Intelligence professionals probably secretly wish that at least some of this were true. However, they also know that what the media puts out for public consumption is for fun and generally a misrepresentation of the world of intelligence.

Some intelligence supports covert actions-the notorious part of intelligence-but the bulk of intelligence activities have more to do with collecting, processing, analyzing, and disseminating intelligence information to decision makers. Indeed, intelligence agencies provide specific services and products to political leaders-consumers-who use intelligence information to make national security and foreign policy decisions. More specifically, intelligence is policy-relevant information, collected through open and clandestine means and subjected to analysis, for the purposes of educating, enlightening, or helping American decision makers in formulating and implementing U. S. national security and foreign policy. This, at least, is the theory behind intelligence, and there is a good deal of truth to it.