BIGOT LIST—A narrow, select group of people with access to the reports from a particularly sensitive agent or espionage operation.
CIA—Central Intelligence Agency, which conducts foreign-intelligence operations and intelligence-gathering abroad; has no authority to operate domestically and no arrest power.
CLASSIFICATION—The systematic division of sensitive military, intelligence or policy information.
Confidential is the lowest level of classification and consists of material the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to cause some form of damage to the national security.
Secret information consists of material the disclosure of which could be reasonably expected to cause “serious damage” to the national security.
Top-Secret information includes material the disclosure of which could be expected to cause “exceptionally grave” national-security damage.
COUNTERINTELLIGENCE—Activity designed to neutralize, thwart or capitalize on the intelligence activities of foreign intelligence services, including the penetration of a foreign service with a “mole,” or agent who reports back on the work or on agents of the hostile service.
COVERT ACTION—Clandestine activity designed to influence events in foreign countries without the United States or CIA role being known; action can range from low-level placement of propaganda to an attempt to overthrow a government deemed to be unfriendly.
DCI—Director of Central Intelligence, the overseer and coordinator of all U.S. intelligence agencies, and simultaneously the head of the Central Intelligence Agency; also the President’s chief intelligence adviser.
DDCI—Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, the deputy to the DCI and No. 2 at the CIA.
DDI—Deputy Director for Intelligence, the head of the CIA’s analytic directorate, which evaluates, weighs and summarizes raw intelligence reports.
DDO—Deputy Director for Operations, the head of the CIA’s clandestine or espionage branch, called the Directorate of Operations (DO), which manages the CIA stations abroad and conducts covert action, recruits and manages human intelligence sources and assists in other sensitive intelligence-gathering abroad.
DIA—Defense Intelligence Agency, the coordinating intelligence agency in the Defense Department that reports to the Secretary of Defense, but is subject to the coordinating authority of the DCI.
DO—Directorate of Operations. See DDO.
FINDING—The presidential authorization for covert action, almost always in writing; a short directive in which the President states that he “finds” that a certain “covert action” is important to the national security.
INR—Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the State Department intelligence office.
INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY—a term used to refer to all the U.S. intelligence agencies and employees; the DCI is the most senior member.
NFIB—National Foreign Intelligence Board, the heads of all U.S. intelligence agencies, that acts as a board of directors for U.S. intelligence and approves the formal estimates, NIEs and SNIEs. It is chaired by the DCI, and members include representatives from the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, the NRO and the intelligence services of the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the FBI, and the Departments of State, Energy and the Treasury.
NID—National Intelligence Daily, a top-secret UMBRA (see SCI) summary of the main intelligence items from the previous day; about 150 copies are printed and circulated.
NIE—National Intelligence Estimate, a formal written forecast of future events in countries, of leaders or of various intelligence, military or economic problems, representing the best collective judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies and the DCI.
NIO—National-intelligence officer, a senior analyst responsible for a region or a special intelligence area, who reports to the DCI.
NRO—National Reconnaissance Office, the low-profile agency responsible for satellite and other aerial overhead intelligence-gathering; it also reports to the Secretary of Defense, but its activities are coordinated by the DCI.
NSA—National Security Agency, the largest and most secret intelligence agency; it intercepts worldwide signals intelligence (SIGINT) and conducts eavesdropping operations abroad, using listening posts, satellites and other sophisticated collection technology. Military and diplomatic codes of some foreign nations are broken; the NSA is also charged with protecting the communication and cryptographic systems and codes of the United States.
NSC—National Security Council, the President and his senior foreign-policy-makers, including the Vice-President and the Secretaries of State and Defense. The DCI and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff serve in advisory roles. The NSC staff is headed by the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs, or national-security adviser, who reports to the President.
NSDD—National Security Decision Directive, a formal written order from the President directing his senior advisers and departments on major foreign-policy matters or procedures; the orders are usually classified and are numbered in sequence.
NSPG—National Security Planning Group, the key gathering in the Reagan Administration of the President and his top foreign-policy advisers, including the Secretaries of State and Defense and the DCI; for practical purposes the NSPG replaced the NSC as the chief decision-making body in the Reagan Administration.
OSS—Office of Strategic Services, the American intelligence service during World War II, headed by William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan.
PDB—President’s Daily Brief, the most sensitive and exclusive intelligence items, which are summarized and sent to the President, the Vice-President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the DCI, the national-security adviser and a few other senior White House aides.
PFIAB—President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a nonpartisan group of fourteen senior Americans who monitor intelligence performance for the President; a largely honorary body which at times, however, becomes involved in intelligence controversies.
SCI—Sensitive Compartmented Information, the process of further restricting access to the most sensitive information by imposing special controls and handling. Compartments of such information for a particular operation or sensitive source or method of collecting intelligence are generally given code words. Individuals in the government from the President on down must be granted specific code-word access to each compartment. Code words are selected at random. Some employed by the NSA for signals intelligence include RUFF, ZARF, SPOKE, MORAY and two of the most restrictive involving decoded messages, UMBRA and GAMMA. VEIL was the code word for the covert action compartment during the last several years of the Reagan Administration.
SNIE—Special National Intelligence Estimates, shorter formal evaluations completed in weeks or days on topics deemed to be of unexpected or urgent national-security interest.