ABSTRACT
Intelligence as a function of government plays an important role in the creation and implementation of United States (US) foreign and domestic policy. Most treatments of US intelligence take its role and function as given, and focus on describing and evaluating the existing structures and processes. These scholarly contributions effectively address different aspects of American intelligence, but a by-product of this focus on the particular is that there is much less focus on the general. So how do intelligence organisations work together, within a broader conceptual framework that puts each in context of the other’s role and function? How does American intelligence and all of its organisational components work together as a system? This chapter first emphasises the reasons why intelligence exists and how it fits into the broader framework of US government and governance before focusing on the actual ways in which intelligence supports policy-making.
