The development of US counterintelligence organizations and missions throughout US history

Since the revolutionary war, intelligence gathering was an art that was not largely practiced. At the time of the Revolution, there was no such thing as the "intelligence community" of today; there was not even an organization solely dedicated to collect intelligence not in the conventional sense anyway. Spying was largely a freelance business. Paul Revere's ride in April 1775 alerting colonists to a British attack from Boston is a classic example of warning intelligence, back then it was a personal initiative. For the most part, generals ran spies directly as part of their scout services. This was the relationship between British General Henry Clinton and his agent Major John André, as well as that of George Washington with spies John Honeyman and Joshua Merserau, and scouts like Knowlton's Rangers. Nathan Hale, possibly the best known revolutionary war spy, was a volunteer from that unit.  This type of approach continued through the Civil War, which saw the beginnings of a distinct intelligence mission. 

In 1861–1862 contracting a private security firm was the only way that General George S. McClellan could procure intelligence and counterespionage reports. So he depended heavily upon Allan Pinkerton's organization, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, Many of the Pinkerton reports exaggerated the Confederates  strength, and McClellan's successors terminated the Pinkerton connection, but spying nevertheless became much more systematic. On the Confederate side, no formal arrangements for spying existed, but they also used agents quite often used. Scholars of that period have identified more than 4,200 persons who functioned as spies, informants, guides, scouts, and so on. It is alleged that President Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, certainly a Confederate sympathizer, may have been a southern agent as well.  

After the Civil War the U.S. military began to collect information on foreign militaries more systematically. In 1866 the Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox went to Russia on an official information gathering mission. In 1882 the Office of Naval Intelligence became the first official U.S. intelligence agency. The army created an information office in 1885 that became the Military Intelligence Division in 1918. World War I stimulated growth of both units, as well as the Cipher Bureau within the State Department on 17 June 1917. The latter contained a code-breaking unit that achieved notoriety revealed in the 1930s for unraveling Japanese instructions to their diplomats at the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–1922, an early illustration of the utility of intelligence. The code-breaking unit was abolished in 1929, but State continued to play a coordinating role among U.S. agencies in the field right through World War II.  

The need for coordination grew when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation, previously entirely involved in crime solving, to carry out counterespionage activities in Latin America. Roosevelt also created a propaganda organization with quasi-intelligence functions, the Office of Coordination of Information, in 1941. This soon evolved into a true intelligence organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), with propaganda left to the Office of War Information. The OSS developed both analytical and operational sides, greatly benefiting from the pillars of intelligence developed during the war. When the OSS was abolished in 1945, its espionage and counter-espionage elements went to the War Department, while its analytical unit was absorbed by the State Department, eventually becoming the Bureau of Intelligence and Research that exists today. The other former OSS elements, meanwhile, had a difficult time within the War Department, where OSS counterespionage was seen to be in competition with the army's Counterintelligence Corps, and its espionage nets as having little to contribute.  

A far cry from the dreams of former OSS chief General William J. Donovan for a peacetime permanent intelligence service, the postwar situation resulted from decisions by President Harry S. Truman, who was concerned primarily with ending the ravages of war, and not especially fond of Donovan or his ideas. With a growing Cold War in 1946 and later, Truman worried more about intelligence. He approved formation of the National Intelligence Authority in January 1946, under which the former clandestine units from OSS were gathered with the Central Intelligence Group. This order also created the post of director of central intelligence. But the National Intelligence Authority proved to be moribund, and the Central Intelligence Group, of very limited utility, was stymied by the departments of government in competition with it. In 1947, as part of the National Security Act (Public Law 80-253), which also established the Department of Defense and National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency became the legally authorized U.S. foreign intelligence organization. As Truman described his intentions to an aide several years later, he had wanted a unit to take the intelligence flowing to him from "200 different sources" and boil it down to make presentations—exactly the kind of activity at the heart of the intelligence cycle described at the outset of this narrative. Functions of the National Intelligence Authority were taken over by the National Security Council (NSC) while the CIA absorbed the Central Intelligence Group.  

For several years the CIA grew slowly and gradually acquired missions. Covert operations and political action were added to the agency's basic analytical and espionage functions with the formation of the Office of Policy Coordination by NSC directive in 1948. A 1949 review by a panel of outside consultants found flaws in CIA operations and led to covert action and espionage both being merged in the Directorate of Operations (called the Directorate of Plans until 1973). Agency work interpreting photography led to formation of the National Photographic Interpretation Center in 1953, which the CIA ran on behalf of the entire intelligence community until the 1995 creation of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. The need for development of machine spies obliged the director of central intelligence to conduct certain research programs, such as U-2, SR-71, and CORONA development, directly out of his own office, but this became formalized in 1962 with creation of the Directorate of Science and Technology (called Directorate of Research until 1964). The Directorate of Administration is responsible for support, security, data processing, recruitment, printing, finance, logistics, training, and other functions.

 

Reference: The NCIX and the National Counterintelligence Mission: What has Worked, What has not, and why?

http://www.pnsr.org/data/images/michelle.pdf

Reference: Evolution of u.s. intelligence - Intelligence and Counterintelligence http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Intelligence-and-Counterintelligence-Evolution-of-u-s-intelligence.html#ixzz1vpky4coH 

Reference: National Counterintelligence Strategy Of The United States

http://www.ncix.gov/publications/policy/FinalCIStrategyforWebMarch21.pdf

What is your definition of counterintelligence?

According to the Central Intelligence Agency, Counterintelligence is the study of the organization and behavior of the intelligence services of foreign states and entities, and the application of the resulting knowledge.

Counterintelligence or (CI) refers to efforts made by intelligence organizations to prevent hostile or enemy intelligence organizations from successfully gathering and collecting intelligence against them. National intelligence programs by extension are the overall defenses of nations. Every nation is vulnerable to attack.  It is the role of intelligence cycle security to protect the process embodied in the intelligence cycle, and that which it defends.  A number of disciplines go into protecting the intelligence cycle. One of the challenges is there is a wide range of potential threats so threat assessments must be completed.

Many governments organize counterintelligence agencies separate and distinct from their intelligence collection services for specialized purposes. In most countries the counterintelligence mission is spread over multiple organizations, though one usually predominates. There is usually a domestic counterintelligence service, perhaps part of a larger law enforcement organization such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States. Military organizations have their own counterintelligence forces, capable of conducting protective operations both at home and when deployed abroad. Depending on the country, there can be various mixtures of civilian and military in foreign operations.

My definition of counterintelligence is, information gathered and activities conducted to protect against espionage, foreign intelligence gathering activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted by or on behalf of foreign governments or elements thereof, foreign organizations, or foreign persons, or international terrorist activities.