Agency

The CIA was created by the National Security Act of 1947 as the successor to the wartime Office of Strategic Services. Its Directo...

Established by President Truman in 1952, the NSA intercepts foreign communications and protects American government networks. Head...

Founded in 1908 and shaped by J Edgar Hoover, who directed it from 1924 to 1972, the FBI combines criminal investigation with coun...

The DIA was created in 1961 under Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to unify intelligence across the military services. It manages...

The NRO, formed in 1961 after the first Corona satellite successes, designs, launches, and operates the reconnaissance satellites ...

Founded as NIMA in 1996 and renamed in 2003, the NGA analyzes satellite imagery and geospatial data for defense, intelligence, and...

The OSS was created in 1942 under General William Donovan as the first centralized American intelligence service. It ran espionage...

ONI was established in 1882 to catalog foreign warships and coastal defenses, and its reporting proved vital during the Spanish Am...

INR provides all source analysis directly to diplomats and the Secretary of State, focusing on the intersection of intelligence an...

Founded in 1909 as the foreign section of the Secret Service Bureau, SIS collects intelligence abroad and is known to the public a...

MI5 was founded in 1909 to counter German espionage and has worked against subversion, sabotage, and terrorism ever since. It oper...

GCHQ began in 1919 as the Government Code and Cypher School, the cryptanalytic successor to wartime Room 40. Its wartime home at B...

SOE was formed in 1940 on the instruction of Winston Churchill to set Europe ablaze. It armed resistance movements, blew up infras...

The Cheka was founded by Felix Dzerzhinsky in December 1917 as the emergency commission for combating counterrevolution and sabota...

The KGB operated from 1954 until the dissolution of the USSR as the umbrella of Soviet intelligence. Its First Chief Directorate r...

The FSB took over KGB domestic functions after 1991 and received its current form by 1995. Headquartered in the Lubyanka, it runs ...

The SVR inherited the KGB First Chief Directorate when the Soviet Union ended, operating from the Yasenevo complex in Moscow. It r...

The GRU, the main intelligence directorate of the general staff, has gathered military intelligence since the Russian civil war. I...

Mossad was established in 1949 as the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations and reports directly to the Prime Minister...

The Shin Bet, also called Shabak, was chartered secretly in the early 1950s to protect the state from espionage and terrorism. It ...

Aman is the directorate of military intelligence of the Israel Defense Forces and for decades delivered the national intelligence ...

The BND grew from the Gehlen Organization, the network of former German officers run by the CIA in the early Cold War, gaining leg...

The Ministry for State Security ran domestic surveillance and foreign espionage for East Germany from 1950 to 1990, deploying info...

The Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure succeeded the SDECE in 1982 and collects foreign intelligence from the Boulevard ...

The Abwehr served as German military intelligence through the world wars, led from 1935 by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. Its World War ...

The AIVD succeeded the BVD in 2002 and monitors espionage, terrorism, and proliferation threats to the Netherlands. Its oversight ...

Sakerhetspolisen, written with an umlaut and known as Sapo, protects Sweden against espionage, terrorism, and threats to the const...

The MSS was created in 1983 by merging party and government intelligence elements into a single civilian service. Western governme...

The ISI was created in 1948 to coordinate intelligence across the Pakistani armed forces and reports to the Prime Minister through...

RAW was established in 1968 after the intelligence failures exposed by the 1962 war with China, operating under the direct control...

The Intelligence Bureau is counted among the oldest intelligence organizations in the world, with roots in the special branch crea...

The RGB was organized in 2009, consolidating North Korean clandestine military intelligence and special operations under one comma...

The PSIA monitors threats to public order in Japan, from extremism to foreign espionage. Its monitoring of the Aum Shinrikyo cult ...

The service began as the Korean Central Intelligence Agency in 1961 under President Park Chung-hee and acquired a dark reputation ...

The Five Eyes grew from the 1946 UKUSA agreement, in which the United States and Britain divided signals interception and agreed t...

Interpol, founded in Vienna in 1923 and reconstituted after World War II, connects police forces rather than running agents or arr...

ASIS was formed in 1952 to collect foreign intelligence for Canberra and remained officially unacknowledged until the Hope Royal C...

CSIS was created in 1984 after the McDonald Commission documented abuses by the RCMP Security Service, separating intelligence fro...

The NKVD absorbed the political police, the OGPU, in 1934 and became the instrument of the Great Terror of 1936 to 1938, carrying ...

Formed in April 1943 under Viktor Abakumov, SMERSH, an acronym of the Russian phrase for Death to Spies, hunted German agents, des...

The Okhrana, the security department of the Russian imperial police, was built up after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in ...

Formed in 1919 from the naval codebreakers of Room 40 and their army counterparts, the Government Code and Cypher School worked on...

Room 40 was set up in the Admiralty Old Building in 1914 under Sir Alfred Ewing, with Captain William Reginald Hall, Director of N...

Herbert Yardley ran the Cipher Bureau, known as the Black Chamber, in New York after the First World War with State Department and...

Established by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 after the 9/11 Commission criticized poor information ...

The Department of State Security, known as the Securitate, was founded in 1948 with Soviet guidance and became the main instrument...

The Cipher Bureau of the Polish General Staff recruited mathematicians from Poznan University, and in December 1932 Marian Rejewsk...

ASIO was created in 1949 under Prime Minister Ben Chifley, prompted partly by VENONA decrypts that revealed Soviet espionage in Ca...