Essay on Governments Use of Counter Intelligence (CI)

In 1994, 74 US companies reported a total of 446 incidents where suspected targeting by foreign governments had taken place against their companies either domestically or overseas. In the overwhelming majority of these incidents, the primary object of foreign intelligence targeting was corporate proprietary information. However, while these 74 corporations reported the suspected targeting of their companies in 1994, only 16 percent felt that those losses were through foreign government theft attempts, suggesting the remainder stemmed from industrial theft or other illicit activities. Interestingly, 45 out of 95 corporations with technologies on the National Critical Technologies List reported 237 of the total number of suspected incidents. This statistic indicates that slightly more than half the targeting was against US critical information.

In all cases, the corporations that reported suspected targeting also expended resources toward safeguarding their proprietary information, employees, facilities, and telecommunication systems. These corporations responded to the threat-and steps were taken to protect their business assets.

However, only 58 percent of the 74 companies reported the incidents to the US Government. This lack of reporting hinders the government's capability to aggregate and analyze such data to provide accurate CI information back to US industry. Absent such analysis revealing priority targets or detectable trends, ad hoc and piecemeal information may be of limited use in the corporate decision making process. Hence, communication between private industry and the IC needs to be more open in both directions.

The National Counterintelligence Center (NACIC) was established in 1994 by Presidential Decision Directive/NSC-24. The NACIC's creation was one of the recommendations made by PDD-24 to improve US counterintelligence (CI) effectiveness by enhancing coordination and cooperation among various US CI agencies.

An interagency organization staffed with CI and security professionals from the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, and the Departments of Defense and State...................

ESSAY ON THE AMERICAS