Intelligence Agencies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Intelligence Agencies - Essay Example Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public sources. The assembly and propagation of this information is known as intelligence analysis. Intelligence has now become big business with legal status and financial support. It is no longer sensible to pretend that it does not exist. By the end of World War II, with the Cold War looming on the horizon and USSR leading the intelligence world, the United States began the process of developing an elaborate peacetime intelligence structure that would extend across a number of government departments of various allied and third world nations. The operations of the U.S. and USSR intelligence community during the Cold War would range from running single agents, to marshaling the talents of thousands to build and deploy elaborate spy satellites. The intelligence agencies of the United States and Soviet Union have been used by government officials since the end of World War Two to guard and advance the global interests of their nation. Even after the end of cold war by the late 1990's, it continues to have a major impact in designing the structure of the various intelligence agencies. ... The Cold War was the period of conflict, tension and competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies from the mid-1940s until the early 1990s. But in actual there was never a direct military engagement between the US and the Soviet Union. There was half a century of military buildup as well as political battles for support around the world, including significant involvement of allied and satellite nations in proxy wars. In most of these activities the intelligence agencies played a major part in both political battles (setting up and supporting of puppet government by USSR in Afghan) and proxy wars (Vietnam War). COVERT OPERATIONS A covert operation is a military or political activity carried out in such a way that the parties responsible for the action can be an open secret, but cannot be proved. Covert operations are frequently illegal in the target state and are sometimes in violation of the laws of the enacting country. During the cold war era, both US and USSR undertook a lot of covert operations in order to understand the military and political agenda of one another. The history of Covert Operations goes back far beyond the Cold War, with many operations during the two World wars and even long before then. Despite this long history the hay day of covert operations was during the Cold War where two opposing power blocks faced each other but were unwilling to risk an actual war. They undertook these covert operations especially in third world nations trying to install a government which supports their policies. US undertook a lot of these covert operations mostly in communist influential states. Some of the operations were CIA's help to the Italian Christian Democrats, and the help to the Iranian Shah in 1953 code name