CHAPTER FIVE

Collection— Challenges and Techniques

The CIA exists because of the U.S. government’s need for information relating to any real or perceived threats to the nation’s national security. The business activities of the Agency are collection, analysis, and reporting. It sounds sexier to emphasize efforts to thwart terrorist attacks and influence events abroad, such as national elections, but those are covert actions that may follow from good intelligence reporting and are undertaken only with presidential direction and coordination within the executive branch.

THE CHALLENGE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION

As the chart at the beginning of Section 2 shows, regardless of the product the Agency or business organization ends up delivering to its ...

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