Intelligence (abbreviated int. or intel.) is the process and the result of gathering information and analyzing it to answer questions or obtain advance warnings needed to plan for the future. The information collected can be difficult to obtain or altogether secret material gained through espionage ("closed sources"), or it can be banal and widely available, such as newspaper articles or Internet postings ("open sources"). Traditionally, intelligence involves omnivorous collection, storage and indexing of data, usually in multiple languages, in the expectation that some small portion will later prove important. Intelligence findings or "product" and the sources and methods used to obtain them (tradecraft) are often highly classified and sometimes compartmentalized, and intelligence officers need top level security clearance. Information as a concept bears a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. ... Secrecy is the practice of hiding information from others. ... Espionage is the practice of obtaining secrets (spying) from rivals or enemies for military, political, or economic advantage. ... Tradecraft are the techniques used in modern espionage. ... Classified information is secret information to which access is restricted by law or corporate rules to a particular hierarchical class of people. ... A security clearance is a status granted individuals, typically members of the military and employees of governments and their contractors, allowing them access to classified information, i. ...

• Government intelligence is usually assigned to clandestine intelligence agencies, often with large, secret budgets. These use a variety of techniques to obtain information, ranging from secret agents (HUMINT) to communications intercepts (COMINT) to spy satellites (IMINT). See surveillance and list of intelligence gathering disciplines. Intelligence agencies often engage in clandestine activities beyond espionage such as political subversion, sabotage and assassination.
• Military intelligence is an element of warfare which covers all aspects of gathering, analyzing, and making use of information over enemy forces and the ground. It involves spying, look-outs, high-tech surveillance equipment, and also secret agents.
• Business intelligence denotes the public or secret information that an organization obtains about its competitors and markets. See also data warehousing.

Intelligence as used here, when done properly, serves a function for organizations similar to that which intelligence (trait) serves for individual humans and animals. Intelligence collection is often controversial and seen as a threat to privacy. While usually associated with warfare, intelligence can also be used to preserve peace, or the illusion of peace. An intelligence agency is a governmental organization devoted to gathering of information by means of espionage (spying), communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public sources. ... Secret Agent is a 1936 British film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. ... HUMINT, short for HUMan INTelligence, is an intelligence gathering discipline collecting information either by interviewing or tracking a subject of investigation, or by using a combination of black techniques to gain confessions or involuntary disclosure of information. ... SIGINT stands for SIGnals INTelligence, which is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether by radio interception or other means. ... KH-4B Corona satellite Lacrosse radar spy satellite under construction A spy satellite (officially referred to as a reconnaissance satellite or recon sat) is an Earth observation satellite or communications satellite deployed for military or intelligence applications. ... IMINT, short for IMagery INTelligence, is an intelligence gathering discipline which collects information via satellite and aerial photography. ... Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior. ... Intelligence Gathering Disciplines HUMINT - Human Intelligence - gathered from a person on the ground GEOINT - Geospatial Intelligence - gathered from satellite, aerial photography, mapping/terrian data IMINT - Imagery Intelligence - gathered from satellite and aerial photography MASINT - Measurement and Signature Intelligence ACOUSTINT - Acoustic Intelligence - gathered from acoustical sources CBINT - Chemical and Biological Intelligence... Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening an enemy through subversion, obstruction, disruption, and/or destruction. ... It has been suggested that Targeted killing be merged into this article or section. ... Military intelligence (abbreviated MI, int. ... The phrase business intelligence (BI) may refer to: a set of business processes for collecting and analyzing business information. ... A data warehouse is a record of an enterprises past transactional and operational activities, stored in a database. ... Intelligence is usually said to involve mental capabilities such as the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn. ... Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to stop information about themselves from becoming known to people other than those they choose to give the information to. ... For other uses of War, see War (disambiguation). ... The concept of peace ranks among the most controversial in our time. ...

Well-known national intelligence organizations

See main article List of intelligence agencies. The following is a partial list of current intelligence agencies. ...

Canada

• Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS)

INDIA . The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was founded in 1984 by an act of the Canadian Parliament, Bill C-9, an Act to Establish the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to be a replacement for the floundering RCMP Security Service. ...

• Research and Analysis Wing(RAW)
• Intelligence Bureau(IB)

Israel

• Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks (Mossad)

Russia Official seal of the Mossad ▶ (help· info) (Hebrew: המוסד למודיעין ולתפקידים מיוחדים, Institute for Intelligence and Special Assignments) is an Israeli intelligence agency, commonly referred to as Mossad. ...

• Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (FSB, successor of KGB)
• Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie (GRU)

United Kingdom The FSB (ФСБ) is a state security organisation in Russia. ... FSB may stand for one of the following. ... The KGB emblem and motto: The sword and the shield KGB (transliteration of КГБ) is the Russian-language acronym for State Security Committee, (Russian: â–¶ (help· info); Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti). ... GRU is the English transliteration of the Russian acronym ГРУ, which stands for Гла́вное Разве́дывательное Управле́ние (Glavnoe Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenie), meaning Chief Intelligence Directorate. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with State Political Directorate. ...

• MI6
• MI5

United States The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), more commonly known as MI6 (originally Military Intelligence Section 6), or the Secret Service, is the United Kingdom external security agency. ... Current MI5 headquarters in Thames House, London MI5, officially called the Security Service, is a British counter-intelligence and security agency. ...

• Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
• Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
• National Security Agency (NSA)
• National Reconnaisance Office (NRO)
• Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)

To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Official FBI Seal The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a Federal police force and intelligence agency which is the principal investigative arm of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). ... NSA seal The National Security Agency / Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) is believed to be the largest United States government intelligence agency. ... DIA seal The Defense Intelligence Agency is a major producer and manager of intelligence for the United States Department of Defense. ...

Major publicly-accessible intelligence sources

• Bloomberg
• CIA World Fact Book
• credit rating agencies
• Dow Jones
• Internet search engines such as Google
• LexisNexis
• newspapers of record, such as the New York Times
• private investigators
• public libraries
• Wikipedia

Bloomberg L.P. is a Financial Media Company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1982. ... The World Factbook is an annual publication by the United States with basic almanac-style information about the various countries of the world. ... A credit rating agency is a company that rates the ability of a person or company to pay back a loan. ... Dow Jones & Company NYSE: DJ, based in the United States, is a publishing and financial information firm. ... The success of the Google search engine was mainly due to its simple, easy-to-use, no-ad interface, and its powerful PageRank algorithm. ... Google, Inc. ... LexisNexis is a popular searchable archive of content from newspapers, magazines, legal documents and other printed sources. ... The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ... A private investigator, or PI, is a person who undertakes investigations. ... Librarians and patrons in a typical larger urban public library A public library is a library which is accessible by the public and is often operated by civil servants and funded from public sources. ... The Wikipedia logo. ...

Reference

Surveys

• Andrew, Christopher. For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (1996)
• Black, Ian. Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services (1992)
• Bungert, Heike et al eds. Secret Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (2003) essays by scholars
• Kahn, David The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet (1996), 1200 pages
• Lerner, K. Lee and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, eds. Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence and Security (2003), 1100 pages. 850 articles, strongest on technology
• O'Toole, George. Honorable Treachery: A History of U.S. Intelligence, Espionage, Covert Action from the American Revolution to the CIA (1991)
• Owen, David. Hidden Secrets: A Complete History of Espionage and the Technology Used to Support It (2002), popular
• Richelson, Jeffery T. A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (1997)
• Richelson, Jeffery T. The U.S. Intelligence Community (4th ed. 1999)
• West, Nigel. MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations 1909-1945 (1983)
• West, Nigel. Secret War: The Story of SOE, Britain's Wartime Sabotage Organization (1992)
• Wohlstetter, Roberta. Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (1962)

World War I

• Beesly, Patrick. Room 40. (1982). Covers the breaking of German codes by RN intelligence, including the Turkish bribe, Zimmermann telegram, and failure at Jutland.
• May, Ernest (ed.) Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two World Wars (1984)
• Tuchman, Barbara W. The Zimmermann Telegram (1966)

World War II: 1931-1945

• Babington-Smith, Constance. Air Spy: The Story of Photo Intelligence in World War II (1957)
• Hinsley, F. H. British Intelligence in the Second World War (1996) abridged version of multivolume official history.
• Jones, R. V. The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945 (1978)
• Kahn, David. Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (1978)
• Kahn, David. Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943 (1991)
• Lewin, Ronald. The American Magic: Codes, Ciphers and the Defeat of Japan (1982)
• May, Ernest (ed.) Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two World Wars (1984)
• Smith, Richard Harris. OSS: The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (2005)
• Stanley, Roy M. World War II Photo Intelligence (1981)
• Wark, Wesley. The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 (1985)
• Wark, Wesley K."Cryptographic Innocence: The Origins of Signals Intelligence in Canada in the Second World War", Journal of Contemporary History 22 (1987)

Cold War Era: 1945-1991

• Aldrich, Richard J. The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (2002).
• Ambrose, Stephen E. Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Intelligence Establishment (1981).
• Andrew, Christopher and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (1999)
• Andrew, Christopher, and Oleg Gordievsky. KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (1990).
• Bogle, Lori, ed. Cold War Espionage and Spying (2001), essays by scholars
• Dorril, Stephen. MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service (2000).
• Dziak, John J. Chekisty: A History of the KGB (1988)
• Koehler, John O. Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police (1999)
• Persico, Joseph. Casey: The Lives and Secrets of William J. Casey-From the OSS to the CIA (1991)
• Prados, John. Presidents' Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations Since World War II (1996)
• Rositzke, Harry. The CIA's Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action (1988)
• Trahair, Richard C. S. Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies and Secret Operations (2004), by an Australian scholar; contains excellent historiographical introduction
• Weinstein, Allen, and Alexander Vassiliev. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era (1999).

See also

• Counter-intelligence
• Espionage

Counter Intelligence A uk label started and owned by John Machielsen. ... Espionage is the practice of obtaining secrets (spying) from rivals or enemies for military, political, or economic advantage. ...