ABSTRACT
The intelligence mission, in the domestic setting, is governed by a patchwork of legislative, executive, and judicial decisions. Two impulses have driven the developments. On one side are the measures that respond to threats against U.S. interests. These include President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s (FDR) 1934 and 1936 taskings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Homeland Security Act, the President’s Surveillance Program (PSP), and the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (IRTPA). On the other side are decisions driven by skepticism. For instance, although the National Security Act of 1947 was a recognition that the United States needed an organized intelligence community, it also showed the influence of deep-seated concern, in the American political psyche, regarding domestically oriented intelligence authorities. Similarly, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) emerged in the wake of the scandals that plagued the intelligence community during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
