PA483

025648

The course is intended to provide students with a framework for understanding how the United States came to have the intelligence system that it possesses today. After briefly developing a concept of the basic functions of intelligence (the organized collection and analysis of information and conduct of covert action that support the formulation and execution of US national security policy) the course will look at the evolution of US intelligence activity as it increasingly embodied those functions. The largely chronological approach will begin with early intelligence organization during the Revolutionary War, then proceed through halting developmental steps during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It will finally look at the major organizational expansion of intelligence activity from the 1940s onward. An overarching theme will be the linkage between the growth of intelligence organizations and the growing need for information by US policymakers increasingly involved in the international environment. Each class meeting will include lecture and discussion. Particularly in covering 20th century developments, the course will involve reading of declassified intelligence documents.

GRD - Regular Grades A, B, C, D, E

Undergraduate

PA583