Counterintelligence Policies

One of threatening crime these days in the U. S. is terrorism like the 9/11 tragedy and other similar terrorism attacks. The reason is obvious that such attacks turn out to be suddenly happened that scare most people to go into public venues like malls, office buildings, bus or railway stations, and other places of interests. Prior to 9/11 tragedy, the U. S. experienced impressive economy growth in terms of GDP in which, according to CIA Factbook, “before 2001 the country became the largest and the most powerful economy in the world with a per capita GDP of $36,200” (”CIA Factbook 2001”).

However, the situation turned upside down when terrorists attacked the Pentagon and Two Buildings of World Trade Center in September 2001. It turned out that the 9/11 brought the country’s economy to experience a great suffer since some industries experienced great losses and slow growth afterwards. In order to prevent such huge loses in the future; U. S. government takes some necessary actions in both foreign and domestic policy especially regarding the home country defense initiatives (counterintelligence) to protect U. S. citizen from foreign espionages that threatens the U.S. nation security, which also impacts the country economy.

Concerning the counterintelligence issues that the U. S. faces, therefore, the thesis statement for this paper is “As foreign intelligence action becomes threats to the U. S. national security, what goals and policies that U. S. counterintelligence has within the past six decades and in the future and what factors in the counterintelligence initiatives that need fixing to improve future successes in counterintelligence” Counterintelligences in the U. S.

A great power is the result of the great pressure. This condition highlights the roadmap of the U. S. counterintelligence initiatives within the past six decades. To date, United States is still perceived as the most powerful nation on the earth that suggests many actions threat the country to challenge their defense system. Due to the current position as a super power country, such actions to the country’s land will take months or even years of preparation since the attackers must have reliable information about the country’s defense before prior to execute it.

Since any attacks to the country take some times by sending the intelligence, therefore, the country has to have the capability to counteract any intelligence performed by country’s counterparts by securing vital information about their national security plans. One of action to secure it is through counterintelligence. Historically, counterintelligence started several decades ago when John Jay became the first coordinated a national level of counterintelligence efforts.

At that time, the goal of committing the counterintelligence is to lead a legislative committee to investigate a plot to sabotage defense and infrastructure targets in New York. In his investigations, Jay employs at least 10 agents; a few of the famous ones are Nathaniel Sackett, Elijah Hunter and Enoch Crosby. All of his agents were operating under enormous pressure. Some were undercover; being unmasked meant death to all of them (Rose P. K. , 1999). Enoch Crosby is the best secret agent that John Jay has.

He uses various to retrieve information about the pro-British’s activities. After he get “to famous” for his work in one place, he was assign to another area, joining another pro-British Colony (Rose, 1999).

In addition, one of recent cases in counterintelligence was on the arrests of two Chinese, Fei Ye and Ming Zhong, who found guilty for their actions of committing economic espionage, highlights the importance to conduct counterintelligence to secure the U. S. critical resources including trade secrets. The cases occurred when they found to bring the stolen trade secret in their luggage in San Francisco International Airport in November 2001. According to their statement, they intend to take the trade secrets of two well-known IT companies in the U. S. -Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Transmeta Corporation- to support and profit the development of the respective industry in China (Department of Justice, 2006).

Similarly, the case of 9/11 attack also highlights that the country experiences information leaks about sensitive defense material that let the tragedy happens. Other leaks of information might cause another threats to America in the future. Here is where American Counterintelligence takes a vital role. American Counterintelligence has found that leaks of information have often happened in the United States governmental and intelligence environments. It turned out; the history of Americans sold out their country goes back a very long way.