Today, as never before, the threats to classified and sensitive information are immense and growing: computer attacks are increasing, competitive secrets are at risk and information warfare is on the rise. The resurgence of terrorism, the rise of economic spying and upswing in computer crime recently led U. S. intelligence officials to list these threats as principal national security concerns. Keeping pace with the changing threat dynamics and requirements of government security is a formidable task.
The CIA and NSA are two of the government’s agencies that have been involved in the use of science and technology during the past 80 years in national security. And the advances that took place over those years would held them become more formidable in maintaining the stability in national security. Scientific intelligence production in the CIA began with a Scientific Branch in the Office of Reports and Estimates. On December 31, 1948, the branch was merged with the Nuclear Energy Group of the Office of Special Operations to form the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI).
In its early years OSI faced opposition from outside the CIA with regard to two issues: the extent of its authority over other elements of the intelligence community and its belief that its work should involve the technical analysis of foreign weapons systems such as guided missiles – the latter being a sore point with the military service intelligence organizations. In addition, the operations elements of the CIA did not believe they should take OSI direction with regard to the collection of scientific intelligence.