Intelligence Community

Overview

The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is a federation of executive branch agencies and organizations that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and the protection of the national security of the United States. These activities include:

• Collection of information needed by the President, the National Security Council, the Secretaries of State and Defense, and other Executive Branch officials for the performance of their duties and responsibilities;

• Production and dissemination of intelligence;

• Collection of information concerning, and the conduct of activities to protect against, intelligence activities directed against the United States, international terrorist and international narcotics activities, and other hostile activities directed against the United States by foreign powers, organizations, persons, and their agents;

• Special activities;

• Administrative and support activities within the United States and abroad necessary for the performance of authorized activities; and

• Such other intelligence activities as the President may direct from time to time.

The "INTs"

The Intelligence Community has been built around major agencies responsible for specific intelligence collection systems known as disciplines. Three major intelligence disciplines or “INTs” — signals intelligence (SIGINT), imagery intelligence (IMINT), and human intelligence (HUMINT) — provide the most important information for analysts and absorb the bulk of the intelligence budget.

U.S. intelligence community

The 16 members of the U.S. IC are the Central Intelligence Agency; Department of Defense’s Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, Army Military Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency, Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, and Office of Naval Intelligence; Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis and Coast Guard Intelligence; Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Administration; Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research; and Department of Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.

The Intelligence Community, through the IC-IRC, coordinates and shares information with DOD, US-CERT, and other incident response organizations in order to safeguard the integrity of Intelligence Community networks. The IC-IRC uses procedures to ensure that the Director of Central Intelligence and the President are kept informed of any activity that could jeopardize the ability of the Intelligence Community to accomplish its mission. In the event of a cyber emergency, the Intelligence Community exercises its authorities and uses its resources and expertise to provide foreign threat-based analysis and to assist in efforts to gain attribution regarding a cyber attack.