Who Does What in American Intelligence, Explained in Twelve Questions

The backyard barbecue always has one man in a lawn chair who insists the CIA, the NSA and the FBI are all the same outfit with different hats. He is wrong, but he is not stupid. Washington has made the whole subject sound like a spy novel written by a committee, and a country that cannot explain who does what is a country that believes whatever it hears at the next barbecue.

That matters for a practical reason. Confusion is where conspiracy theories grow. If you do not know that the CIA has no power to arrest you, you will believe the story that says it does. If you do not know that Congress has committees whose only job is to watch these agencies, you will believe the story that nobody does. So here are twelve questions with straight answers, short enough to read in one sitting, and sourced to things you can look up yourself.

Why the confusion matters

An informed conservative has two jobs. One is to want a strong intelligence service, because the world is dangerous, the other side does not play fair, and the first duty of government is defense. The other is to distrust concentrated power, which is the oldest conservative habit there is. You cannot do either well if you cannot tell the agencies apart. So let us start with the map.

The agencies: who is who

1. What is the "intelligence community"?

It is the name for the group of federal organizations that collect and analyze information about foreign threats. It is a loose federation, not a single agency. It includes the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the intelligence offices of the military services, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the FBI's intelligence branch, and intelligence offices inside the Departments of State, Treasury, Energy and Homeland Security, among others. The count of members is well over a dozen. It is led, on paper, by the Director of National Intelligence, a position I explain in question six.

2. What does the CIA do, and what does it not do?

The Central Intelligence Agency was created by the National Security Act of 1947, signed by President Truman, which also created the National Security Council and the Air Force as a separate service. The CIA replaced the wartime Office of Strategic Services, which Truman had shut down in 1945.

The CIA collects intelligence from human sources abroad, analyzes information from all sources, and conducts covert action when the President orders it. What it does not have is just as important. The 1947 statute says the agency has no police, subpoena or law-enforcement powers and no internal-security functions. The CIA cannot arrest you, cannot get a search warrant and is not supposed to run a domestic spying operation. That job, such as it is, belongs to someone else. See question five.

3. What does the NSA do?

The National Security Agency was established in November 1952 by a memorandum from President Truman. It is based at Fort Meade, Maryland, and it is part of the Defense Department. Its specialty is signals intelligence: intercepting and decoding foreign communications. It also has a defensive mission, which is to protect the government's own secure systems. People used to joke that its initials stood for "No Such Agency" because the government barely admitted it existed. Today it is one of the best-known acronyms in the country, and not always for happy reasons.

The NSA is not a police force either. It does not make arrests. Its job is foreign intelligence.

4. What do the DIA and the other agencies do?

The Defense Intelligence Agency was created in October 1961 under Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to serve the military's intelligence needs, a role centered on foreign military forces and capabilities. The National Reconnaissance Office, which builds and operates spy satellites, was formed in 1961 as well, though its existence was kept classified until 1992. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency makes sense of imagery and maps. Each military service has its own intelligence arm. The State Department has a Bureau of Intelligence and Research, a small shop with a reputation for sharp analysis, and the Treasury and Energy departments have offices that look at illicit finance and nuclear matters.

The short version: the CIA is the civilian generalist, the NSA owns signals, the DIA serves the military, and the others handle the specialties.

5. What does the FBI do, and why is it in both worlds?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is part of the Justice Department. It began in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation and got its current name in 1935. It is a law-enforcement agency first: it investigates federal crimes and can arrest people, get warrants and testify in court. It has long handled counterintelligence at home, and after 9/11 it made counterterrorism a core mission, which makes it the agency that works inside the country on spies and terror plots.

That dual role is why the FBI sits at the center of so many arguments. A police agency has to follow the rules of criminal procedure, with warrants and probable cause. An intelligence agency collects information before there is a crime. When one organization does both, the question of which rules apply to which activity is never trivial. The FBI's role is the thing to watch in any debate over domestic surveillance, a debate laid out in FISA, Section 702 and the Fourth Amendment, What the Law Allows.

The rules: who is allowed to do what

6. Why do we have a Director of National Intelligence?

Because after the attacks of September 11, 2001, a bipartisan commission concluded that the government had failed to connect what it knew. The 9/11 Commission reported in July 2004, and Congress responded that December with the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which created the Director of National Intelligence, or DNI, and the National Counterterrorism Center.

Before that law, the Director of Central Intelligence wore two hats, running the CIA and trying to coordinate the whole community at the same time. The DNI's job is the second hat: to lead the community, set priorities, oversee the budget process and serve as the President's principal intelligence adviser. Critics, including some who supported the law, have argued ever since about whether the position has enough real authority or adds another layer of bureaucracy. That is a fair argument, and the answer depends on who is in the chair and how much the President backs them. Who holds the post at any given time is a matter of public record at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

7. Can the CIA spy on Americans?

In general, no. The CIA's mission is foreign intelligence, and the 1947 statute bars it from internal-security functions. The rules for collecting information about Americans are set by statute, executive order and guidelines approved by the Attorney General, and they put sharp limits on what the CIA and the NSA can do with information about U.S. persons. When an American is the subject of a foreign-intelligence investigation inside the United States, that is generally the FBI's work, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and a court.

Does that mean nothing has ever gone wrong? No. The Church Committee of 1975 and 1976 found programs in which the CIA, the FBI and the NSA had overreached, and the rules we have today are largely a response. The honest conservative answer is that the law is clear, the history shows the temptation to bend it, and the right response is vigilance.

8. What is Executive Order 12333?

It is the foundation document for U.S. intelligence activities. President Reagan signed it in December 1981, and it has been amended since, including in 2004 and 2008. It lays out the roles of the agencies, authorizes and limits collection, and sets rules for how information about Americans is treated. It is the main authority for intelligence collection that takes place outside the United States, where FISA does not apply.

One of its provisions says that no person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in or conspire to engage in assassination. The order has been interpreted and reinterpreted by successive administrations, but the framework has lasted more than four decades.

9. What is covert action, and who has to approve it?

Covert action means an activity to influence political, economic or military conditions abroad in such a way that the role of the United States is not apparent or acknowledged. It is different from spying, which is gathering information. It is doing something.

The rules grew out of scandal. In 1974, Congress passed the Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which required a presidential finding that a covert operation was important to national security. The Iran-Contra affair of 1986 and 1987 showed that the system still had holes, and the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 1991 tightened it. Today, a covert action requires a written presidential finding, it cannot be approved after the fact, and the intelligence committees of Congress must be informed, in the most sensitive cases through a smaller group of leaders known as the "Gang of Eight." That group consists of the top House and Senate leaders of both parties and the chairs and ranking members of the two intelligence committees.

The watchers: who checks the spies

10. Who watches them in Congress?

Two committees were created for exactly that purpose. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was established in 1976 and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 1977, both in the wake of the Church Committee. They oversee the agencies, authorize their programs each year and receive notice of covert action. The Armed Services and Appropriations Committees also have a hand, because the money has to come from somewhere.

Other checks include inspectors general inside the agencies, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for the activities that need its approval, and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a body Congress created after the 9/11 Commission to look at privacy and civil-liberties issues in counterterrorism programs. None of these is perfect. Congress's oversight is only as good as the members willing to do the work, and a lot of the work is classified, which means the voters cannot see it. That is a real weakness, and it is why a citizen should care about who sits on the intelligence committees. How a Bill Really Becomes Law, Including the Steps Schoolhouse Rock Skipped explains how the authorizing legislation moves.

11. Is there a "deep state"?

Let me answer this one straight, because both sides abuse it.

The factual core is that the federal government has a permanent civil service and a permanent intelligence bureaucracy that outlast any administration. That is true, and it creates a legitimate question about who really runs things. The Constitution answers it: the executive power is vested in a President, and the agencies are part of the executive branch, answerable to him and to Congress. A conservative can and should insist that unelected officials follow the lawful directives of elected ones.

The claim that the agencies are a single secret cabal that coordinates against every elected leader does not match the record. The record shows something more ordinary and more worrying: agencies that make mistakes, protect their own turf, leak, overreach and sometimes hide their errors, which is documented in the Church Committee's findings and in later Justice Department inspector general reports. The remedy for that is not a legend. It is oversight, transparency where it is possible, consequences for those who break the rules, and elected officials who do their jobs. Equal Under the Law Means the Rule Applies to the People in Charge puts it as a principle. The accurate target is bad government, and you can aim at it without inventing a villain.

12. How can I check what I hear about intelligence?

You do not have to trust a pundit, including this one. Here is where to look.

1. Statutes. The National Security Act, FISA and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act are all searchable on Congress.gov.
2. Reports. The Church Committee's final reports and the 9/11 Commission Report are public. They are long, and they are the best primary sources on why the system looks the way it does.
3. Executive Order 12333. The text is public.
4. Hearings. The intelligence committees hold some open hearings, including annual threat assessments from the community's leaders.
5. Declassified records. The CIA maintains an online reading room of declassified records, and the Freedom of Information Act lets you request more. Note that in real life requests take a long time and are often partly redacted.
6. Inspector general reports. Many are public on the agencies' websites.

If someone tells you a claim about the intelligence community and cannot point you to a statute, a report or a hearing, treat the claim the way you would treat a rumor at a barbecue.

What to take from it

The picture, once you see it, is simple. The CIA looks abroad and runs covert action when ordered. The NSA intercepts and protects communications. The DIA and the services support the military. The FBI works at home, with the powers of a police agency. The DNI is meant to tie it together. Congress, courts and inspectors general are meant to watch.

For a look at one threat this machinery was built to counter, Nine Questions About Chinese Spying and Stolen Technology covers the espionage side, and for how Congress and the President share the war power, which governs what the military side of the intelligence community can be told to do, see Who Declares War? What the Founders Meant and Where We Drifted. The constitutional logic of dividing and checking power runs through Madison Built a Government Where Ambition Fights Ambition, and It Works.

The bottom line

• They are not one agency. The CIA looks abroad, the NSA intercepts signals, the DIA serves the military, and the FBI works at home. Learn the difference and you will not be fooled by the next story.
• The CIA cannot arrest you. By statute it has no police, subpoena or internal-security powers. If someone says otherwise, ask for the law.
• Oversight is real but uneven. The intelligence committees, inspectors general and the FISA Court exist. They work only if members of Congress and the public pay attention. Pay attention.
• Demand accountability, not legends. Insist that unelected officials follow the law and that violations have consequences, and skip the theory of a single secret cabal.
• Check primary sources. Statutes on Congress.gov, the Church and 9/11 reports, and declassified records beat any talking head.