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providing governments, the police, and the military with essential details, analysis, and information on the activities of subversive domestic groups or the hidden agendas of foreign countries. Intelligence agencies play a unique and highly specialized role in safeguarding national security, preventing the spread of illegal arms and nuclear weaponry, and in combating global drug trafficking. Knowledge of the Enemy Intelligencework canbe broadly defined as “knowledge of the enemy,” andmany of its techniques and priorities were formed under conditions of war. Most intelligence agencies today can date their origins to the mass intelligence activities of World War II. However, intelligence work is

also essential for nations that are at peace, providing clues to overseas economic policies, and working in unison with other countries’ intelligence agencies to ensure that international terrorists or drug or arms dealers are not being inadvertently harbored . Intelligence agencies are expert inmonitoring such activities asmoney laundering, smuggling, and fraud.Gathering information from an international intelligence network and shared community of databases and information, intelligence agencies working together are the most effective way to an- ticipate and prevent terrorist strikes and global crime. Intelligence agencies support the work of government and collect information for government use from what is known as “the field,” or territories, either throughout the domestic territory or overseas. Such information might be formed under the cover of overseas diplomacy, where diplomatic relations may yield special insight. Intelligence is also gathered from the interception of communications, by means of planted bugs , or listening devices, or via “listening stations,” which pick up fax or e-mail messages by means of cable transmission or satellite detection. Satellite and aerial photography is also of extreme significance in intelligence work, en- abling agents to assess the buildup of military activity throughout the world and to monitor nuclear testing in the arms race. However, intelligence agencies do not simply gather information.

The Abwehr Enigma cipher machine. Obtained by the Allies, it helped codebreakers to break seemingly impossibly complex German codes at Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes, in England during World War II.

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GOVERNMENT INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES