American Intelligence During The Cold War

The United States has always done intelligence gathering and analysis throughout the years. The extensive Intelligence Community we have today is a direct result of the Cold War era. The Intelligence Community grew from the 1980’s, to more than 100,000 federal employees working throughout 25 organizations specializing in numerous different aspects of collecting and analyzing data. After the Cold War ended the number of agencies and employees were reduced due to reduction in budgets and the military intelligence suffered the deepest cuts. However, the vast intelligence capacity had grown so large during the Cold War era that our enormous capacity still remains today.
The IC was established to head off plans of attack like 9/11. Sadly there were so many intelligent disconnects and weaknesses the attacks were not prevented. The 9/11 Commission was formed after the attacks to find the weaknesses and see how effective US intelligence was. The Commission found six problems pertaining to the Intelligence Community, which included barriers to performing joint
A particular change was the creation of two intelligence entities, the Office of Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center. Currently the IC is organized for ultimate effectiveness of intelligence gathering and distribution among the 17 member agencies. Each agency is authorized to act individually, however, they all share a common mission of gathering and conveying information to the president and other key officials. Indeed the government intelligence capacity has grown over the last several decades. It now involves a wide range of intelligence gathering analysis and sharing of information that’s ascertained, into clear comprehensible intelligence and dispersed to the president, policy makers and military commanders. (Bullock, 2016, p.