Americans love spy movies. But few understand what the U.S. intelligence community does to help political leaders navigate a dangerous and changing world.
One factor: We learn more about them from Hollywood than the agencies themselves. Secrecy is inherent to their work, like monitoring foreign military operations, courting sources in hostile governments or surveilling terrorist organizations.
Today, these agencies are under a political microscope, bracing for mass layoffs and budget cuts. But what’s happening behind the curtain? Here’s the breakdown.
$106.3 billion
The intelligence community’s annual budget — more than the Afghan war at its peak — funds 18 specialized agencies and elements within other departments, like Energy and Treasury. The CIA recruits foreign agents and runs covert operations overseas. The NSA intercepts data and decrypts codes. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency analyzes and predicts how events play out on physical terrains. All coordinate with the director of national intelligence, whose office briefs the president daily.
14th Century B.C.
The oldest record of intel gathering is Egypt’s “Amarna Letters,” hundreds of cuneiform-inscribed clay tablets that detail social upheaval and geopolitical news across Mesopotamia, as reported by the pharaoh’s emissaries to Canaan and Amurru (in modern Israel and Syria). From Moses to Sun Tzu, the Mongols to the Aztecs, historical leaders and empires have relied on intelligence from spies and other sources to understand the world and make informed decisions.
George Washington: Spymaster
Before he became the first president, he launched America’s first intel operation. During the Revolutionary War, the general set up spy rings, instituted codes and ciphers, hired a physician to invent invisible ink, and even recruited a double agent close to his red-coated counterpart, Gen. Charles Cornwallis. “Washington did not really outfight the British,” quipped one British agent. “He simply outspied us.”
13,000 spies
That’s how many men and women served the Office of Strategic Services at the height of World War II. More than half completed combat and espionage missions overseas. The OSS was our first attempt to centralize intel operations after the disastrous failure to predict the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Disbanded in 1945, it was soon replaced by the CIA, which now has about 21,575 employees, including field agents, analysts and covert operatives.
Executive Order 11905
President Gerald Ford banned political assassinations in 1976, after the Senate’s “Church Committee” uncovered CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro and others. It reported that the CIA abetted a coup in Chile, drugged and tortured Americans in mind control experiments, infiltrated civil rights groups and recruited 50 journalists as propaganda assets. It also learned that the NSA was digging through the general public’s telephone traffic. More reforms followed in subsequent administrations, limiting intel work for a generation.
45 days in 2001
Congress quickly restructured the intelligence community after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. With an increased focus on threats inside the nation’s borders, the Division of Homeland Security was created 11 days later, and the FBI launched its own intelligence unit within a few years. But perhaps the most fundamental changes were tucked away in a 300-page bill enacted that Oct. 26. The Patriot Act authorized pervasive, warrantless domestic surveillance.
7 in 10 misinformed
At least 71 percent of Americans inaccurately believe that the NSA builds spy satellites, interrogates detainees or targets foreign terrorists. Half don’t know that codebreaking is still a core mission. And it’s still not entirely clear what data or metadata the NSA collects on Americans — much of it likely stored at the Utah Data Center near Salt Lake City. One of the agency’s four such facilities nationwide, it is perhaps the world’s biggest in storage capacity.
$2 million seed money
In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital fund, made a modest investment in 2003 Silicon Valley startup Palantir, now a $6 billion analytics giant helping militaries, police and intel agencies to make predictions and decisions using big data and artificial intelligence. Practitioners still argue the merits of traditional spycraft — like HUMINT, or human intelligence — and targeted electronic intercepts, but even the DEA and FBI operate mass data collection programs.
This story appears in the May 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.