Federal Government Intelligence Agencies - Research Paper Example

The question that is addressed in the study is “Has the abundance of federal government hired contractors working in the Intelligence Community increased the effectiveness and efficiency in providing the most timely, accurate, and relative intelligence in support of the war-fighter, or have contractors become a product of the enabling federal government; allowing contractors to resemble corporate money makers in an expanding ideology of technological complexity and vast duplicity?” It has been found out that there is difficulty in coming up with a definite answer to the question as there are many issues that are not yet properly addressed by the Government.

The Post 9/11 World grapples with the reality not only of terrorism but also of the increasing necessity of a concerted effort in coming up with a truly responsive and effective anti-terrorism measure.1 This necessity is a result of the truism that the threat of terrorism after the 9/11 event has turned the home front into a battlefront.2 As such, the integral and active role of all concerned governmental agencies together with the support of the public becomes fundamental in tackling terrorism.

In this regard, one cannot deny the vital and pivotal role of the Intelligence Community in the War on Terror. The Intelligence Community is composed of “17 diverse units located in six different cabinet departments and two independent agencies. A large proportion of the IC’s employees are accounted for by the “big six” including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

”3 The Intelligence Community makes available the necessary knowledge and information indispensable in counter-terrorism measures as it “collects data, process information, integrate collected data with other data, provides an analysis of what has been assembled, evaluation of the data and interpretation of the analyst or analysts”.