4.1 Overview

This lesson will take a broad look at the history, organizations, and functions of the US intelligence community. Let me give you fair warning that this week is primarily a reading week. We are going to leverage the knowledge and experience of Mark Lowenthal, who wrote your textbook Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy, now in its ninth edition. Dr. Lowenthal has thirty years of intelligence experience in both the executive and legislative branches of government, as well as in the private sector. He retired in 2005 from the government, having served three years as both the Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production and Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council for Evaluation. He now runs a national security education, training, and consulting firm called the Intelligence and Security Academy, and he is an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

My teaching approach this week is to have you read six chapters from the textbook. Fortunately, this book is very well written, the chapters are concise (short and to the point), and I found it very interesting and enjoyable reading. I want you to read the book in conjunction with the online lesson. I will provide questions to contemplate and guide you as you read each chapter. After you have read the chapter, you will complete the Lesson 4 - GRADED Quiz (#3), which you can take one time for your lesson grade.

Lesson Objectives

At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

• discuss the concept of "intelligence" as articulated by Lowenthal (chapter 1);
• trace the evolution of the US intelligence system (chapter 2);
• examine the layout of the US intelligence infrastructure
• differentiate the functions of the major agencies (chapter 3);
• identify key components of the intelligence process, including: requirements, collection, processing and exploitation, analysis and production, dissemination and consumption, and feedback (chapter 4);
• identify the functions of collection and analysis as described by Lowenthal (chapters 5-6).