-Big Brother Is Watching You--Big Brother Is Watching You!-

Google
Big Brother Is Watching You!
The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) has a history going back to 1914, though its present constitution dates from 1956. Each member nation has established a bureau that maintains relations with the General Secretariat in Paris. The bureaus transmit criminal information that may be of interest to other countries; they undertake, within their own countries, inquiries, searches, and arrests requested by other countries; and they take steps to implement resolutions voted by the annual assembly. Interpol can act only within the framework of national laws; criminals can be returned only if an extradition treaty is in force and the offender is a national of the country requesting return. The International Association of Chiefs of Police, with headquarters near Washington, D.C., draws its members largely from the United States and is the leading voice in the United States for professional police standards. It is active in training, research, and public relations. The International Police Association was founded in Britain in 1950 as a social organization. Although it is most active in Europe, its members come from dozens of nations worldwide. The association grants scholarships for study travel and arranges annual conferences. Municipal police reform in the United States.Most efforts to reform the police system during the late 1800s originated from reformers who were outside the occupation of policing. During the early 1900s, pressures for reform started within the police system itself. The most notable and representative police reformer was August Vollmer. Beginning his career in 1905 as the head of a six-person police department in Berkeley, Calif., Vollmer ultimately offered a vision of policing around which the nation's police rallied.

Prohibition was the worst of times for police: corruption flared, fueled by vast amounts of bootlegging profits; public confidence declined; and the profession came to be symbolized by Hollywood's Keystone Kops, who portrayed police as inept and venal. Vollmer and his colleagues were concerned about the broad social issues of policing. Changes in morals, increases in crime and corruption, and, later, the Great Depression, all were seen by reform-minded police as symptoms of the erosion of the authority of basic social institutions like the family, church, schools, and neighbourhoods. Vollmer saw the police as the vanguard for socializing America's youth. In his view police should continue their traditional law enforcement role, and when necessary they should arrest and process delinquent youths through juvenile and adult courts. Arrest, however, was an undesirable outcome. Special juvenile bureaus should be created to handle problems of children and families; police should take a more active role in casework for social agencies; police should exploit their intimate knowledge of the community and place themselves at the hub of community activities with youth and families. In addition to giving police an ideal to strive for, Vollmer also helped consolidate the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) into a truly national police organization. Under its auspices he created the Uniform Crime Reports, which became an important indicator of the health of society and of the performance of police departments. Finally, through his work on the Wickersham Commission, Vollmer exposed many unconstitutional police practices to public scrutiny, especially the practice of detectives using the "third degree" in questioning suspects.

(ITU), specialized agency of the United Nations that was created to encourage international cooperation in all forms of telecommunication. Its activities include maintaining order in the allocation of radio frequencies, setting standards on technical and operational matters, and assisting countries in developing their own telecommunication systems.The origin of the ITU can be traced to 1865, when the International Telegraph Union was established by a convention signed in Paris. The International Telecommunication Convention of 1932, which merged the International Telegraph Convention and the International Radiotelegraph Convention, provided that the International Telecommunication Union would succeed the International Telegraph Union when the convention became effective in 1934. It was made a specialized agency of the United Nations in 1947, and the convention has been revised several times. The organization of the ITU includes: (1) the Plenipotentiary Conference, which is the supreme organ of the ITU and meets every four years; (2) World Administrative Conferences, which meet according to technical needs; (3) the ITU Council, which meets annually and is responsible for executing decisions of the Plenipotentiary Conference; (4) the General Secretariat, responsible for administrative and financial services; (5) the Radiocommunications Sector, which was formed by the merger of those activities of the former International Consultative Radio Committee and the former International Frequency Registration Board that were concerned with the assignment of radio frequencies; (6) the Telecommunication Standardization Sector, which was formed by the merger of the former International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee with the standards-setting activities of the International Consultative Radio Committee and conducts technical studies and sets international standards for telecommunications; and (7) the Telecommunication Development Sector, which facilitates the growth of telecommunications in developing nations.The ITU has had its headquarters in Geneva since 1948, when it was moved from Bern.

By name of INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL POLICE ORGANIZATION, organization that exists to facilitate the cooperation of the criminal police forces of more than 125 countries in their fight against international crime. The aims of the organization are to promote the widest possible mutual assistance between all the criminal police authorities of the affiliated nations within the limits of the laws existing in those countries and to establish and develop all institutions likely to contribute effectively to the prevention and suppression of ordinary crime. A general secretariat headed by a general secretary controls the everyday workings of Interpol. (see also Index: criminal law) Each affiliated country has a domestic clearinghouse (called the National Central Bureau, or NCB) through which its individual police forces may communicate either with the general secretariat or with the police of other affiliated countries. Television and motion pictures have portrayed Interpol agents as wandering from country to country, making arrests wherever they please; such representations are false, since the nations of the world have varying legal systems and their criminal laws, practices, and procedures differ substantially from one another. No sovereign state would permit any outside body to bypass its police or disregard its laws. The main weapon in the hands of Interpol is not a universal detective; it is the extradition treaty. Interpol's principal target is the international criminal, of which there are three main categories: those who operate in more than one country, such as smugglers, dealing mainly in gold and narcotics and other illicit drugs; criminals who do not travel at all but whose crimes affect other countries--for example, a counterfeiter of foreign bank notes; and criminals who commit a crime in one country and flee to another. At its headquarters in Lyon, France, Interpol maintains a voluminous record of international criminals and others who may later fall into that category, containing particulars of their identities, aliases, associates, and methods of working, gathered from the police of the affiliated countries. This information is sent over Interpol's telecommunications network or by confidential circular.There are four types of confidential circular. The first type asks that a particular criminal be detained in order that extradition proceedings can be started. The second does not ask for detention but gives full information about the criminal and his methods. The third describes property that may have been smuggled out of the country in which a crime was committed. A fourth deals with unidentified bodies and attempts to discover their identity.

Interpol began in Europe, which is not surprising since many countries of Europe have common frontiers and a criminal can, for example, be in one of four other countries within an hour of having committed a crime in Belgium. After World War I there was a great increase in crime; one of the countries most affected was Austria, and the Viennese police president, Johann Schober, obtained his government's support in 1923 for calling together representatives of the criminal police of other countries. The representatives of 20 nations met to discuss the problems facing them, and the International Criminal Police commission was formed that year. Vienna was the home of its first headquarters, and Schober became its first president. From 1923 until 1938 the commission flourished. In 1938 the Nazis seized Austria--and Interpol with it. All of its records were taken to Berlin. The outbreak of World War II brought Interpol's activities to a standstill. After World War II, the French government offered Interpol a headquarters in Paris, together with a staff for the general secretariat consisting of officials of the French police. This offer was gratefully accepted and Interpol was thus revived, although its complete reorganization was necessary, since all its prewar records had been lost or destroyed. Interpol flourished, and by 1955 the number of affiliated countries had increased from 19 in 1946 to 55. A modern and complete constitution for the organization was ratified in 1956, under which its name was changed to the International Criminal Police Organization. The organization continued to progress, and by the mid-1980s the number of affiliated countries had risen to more than 125, representing all the continents of the world.

The principal intelligence and counterintelligence agency of the U.S. government. Formally created in 1947, the agency grew out of the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Previous U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence efforts had been conducted by the army and navy and by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and suffered from duplication, competition, and lack of coordination. U.S. allies had criticized the lack of any central intelligence function.In June 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the OSS so that the fragmented and uncoordinated strands of U.S. intelligence-gathering would be brought together under a single organization. A similar office set up for this purpose in July 1941, the Office of the Coordinator of Information, had basically foundered, but its head, Coordinator of Information William J. ("Wild Bill") Donovan, became head of the OSS upon its founding and was largely responsible for building that organization. During World War II the OSS was responsible for collecting and analyzing foreign intelligence concerning areas where U.S. military forces operated. The OSS obtained intelligence through secret agents in enemy territory, it carried out counterpropaganda and disinformation activities, and it staged special operations behind enemy lines involving sabotage, demolition, and the supplying and direction of resistance fighters. Under Donovan's capable if unorthodox direction, the OSS was remarkably effective despite the initial inexperience of most of its personnel. At its height it amounted to about 12,000 members.

The OSS was dismantled in October 1945, but the administration of President Harry S. Truman recognized the need for a coordinated postwar intelligence establishment. In 1946 the president established by executive order a Central Intelligence Group and a National Intelligence Authority. These bodies selected key personnel from the motley group assembled under wartime pressures by the OSS and tried to impose some central direction on postwar intelligence operations, although the armed forces maintained their own independent intelligence services. In 1947 Congress created the National Security Council (NSC) and, under its direction, the Central Intelligence Agency, which was to advise the NSC on intelligence matters bearing on national security, make recommendations on coordinating intelligence activities of government agencies generally, correlate and evaluate intelligence and see to its proper communication within government, and carry out such other national-security intelligence functions as the NSC might direct. CIA directors have been a varied lot, including military men (such as Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first, and Eisenhower's wartime staff head, General Walter B. Smith), a diplomat and intelligence expert (Allen W. Dulles), a business executive (John A. McCone), a veteran of the CIA itself (William E. Colby), and a political-party leader (George Bush), among others.

The CIA is organized into four major directorates. The Intelligence Directorate analyzes intelligence that is gathered overtly from available sources and that which is obtained covertly through espionage, aerial and satellite photography, and interception of radio, telephone, and other forms of communication. Its analyses are distributed variously as bulletins, reports, and exhaustive surveys. It also monitors foreign radio broadcasts. The Directorate of Operations is responsible for covert operations, including clandestine collection of intelligence (i.e., espionage) and special covert activities. The Directorate of Science and Technology is charged with keeping the agency abreast of scientific and technological advances, and it develops technical devices useful to the agency and supplies technical and scientific support to agency operations. The Directorate of Administration not only administers but also contains the Office of Security, which is responsible for the security of personnel, facilities, information, and such information sources as defectors from other governments. Clandestine activities are carried on under various guises--including the diplomatic cloak used by virtually every intelligence service, as well as such fronts as corporations that the CIA creates or acquires. The agency also "debriefs" business travelers, journalists willing to be so interviewed, and others returning to the United States from a sensitive or professionally interesting place. Among the CIA's major covert operations were the expulsion of Mohammad Mosaddeq as premier and the restoration of the shah of Iran in 1953, and the following year the toppling of an unfriendly leftist government in Guatemala. The attempted Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (1961) by CIA-supported Cuban dissidents was a fiasco. In 1973 and 1974 the agency was damaged by the revelation that former CIA operatives had repeatedly played illegal roles in the Watergate affair. (see also Index: Watergate Scandal)

Although it was popularly thought to have been a U.S. counterpart of the former Soviet agency known as the KGB (q.v.), the CIA is limited by the legislation that created it to intelligence and counterintelligence activities on foreign soil, whereas the KGB had numerous and major domestic intelligence-gathering and police functions. Nevertheless, the cloak of secrecy necessary to any espionage and counterespionage operation has permitted the CIA occasional excursions beyond its legal mandate. Such lapses do not long escape public notice in the United States, where the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press may collide with the effect of the CIA's secrecy and the silence required of former operatives. Moreover, in the United States the press can have an adversarial relationship with government--unlike, for example, the United Kingdom and certain other representative democracies, where official-secrets acts inhibit press freedom. Moreover, the two-party system and three-branch form of the U.S. government frequently give rise to antagonism between the legislative and executive arms. As a consequence, public debate over certain CIA activities or over its role in general is not rare.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created in September 1947. The CIA grew out of the nation's wartime experience with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and a postwar decision to create a central organization for defense. This included a partially unified Department of Defense and a National Security Council (NSC), chaired by the president. The CIA is under the jurisdiction of the NSC.World War II had shown that there was a need for a central organization to coordinate for the president all information on foreign affairs and to perform certain functions best done centrally. There were heated debates at the war's end as to how much centralization was needed. Some wanted a central intelligence setup that would eliminate army, navy, State Department, and other separate units. Others wanted to turn over all but technical military intelligence functions to the State Department. The outcome was a compromise in which the Central Intelligence Agency was created by the National Security Act of 1947, but other departments and agencies continued to maintain their own intelligence sections. Since then, the idea of a single entity has given way to the concept of an "intelligence community" comprising the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), separate army, navy, and air force intelligence staffs, State Department intelligence, the National Security Agency (NSA), a Department of Energy nuclear intelligence unit, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The National Security Act of 1947, which has remained the basic charter for the organization, assigned to the CIA five specific functions: (1) advising the National Security Council on intelligence matters related to national security, (2) recommending to the NSC measures for efficient coordination of the intelligence activities of departments and agencies of government, (3) correlating and evaluating intelligence and seeing that it is properly communicated within the government, (4) carrying out any additional services the NSC determines can best be performed centrally for existing intelligence agencies, and (5) carrying out such other functions and duties related to national security intelligence as the NSC may direct.

Out of this assignment of basic functions grew a large new agency with assignments around the globe. By the 1980s the CIA was believed to employ about 18,000 full-time employees in the United States, mainly in Washington, D.C., and several thousands more in overseas posts. Its annual budgets do not include functions performed by military and paramilitary units under the CIA's direction and control. Policy and operational guidelines for the CIA are contained in periodically revised presidential executive orders and some 40-odd secret National Security Council Intelligence Directives defining its functions and establishing jurisdictions in areas in which other intelligence agencies might have a functional claim. Since 1947 the CIA has come to perform three major assignments: (1) foreign intelligence collection, evaluation, and communication; (2) counterintelligence operations overseas; and (3) secret political intervention, psychological warfare, and paramilitary operations in foreign areas. The first two functions are clearly stipulated in the congressional statute creating the CIA; the third was assumed as a Cold War necessity and on the basis of a very free interpretation of the original charter. The CIA is managed by a director and a deputy director, both appointed by the president and subject to Senate confirmation. The director of Central Intelligence in fact wears two hats. He is head of the Central Intelligence Agency as well as being the president's principal intelligence adviser, and thus theoretically the number one man in the intelligence community--theoretically, because each of the other major units, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, or the Defense Intelligence Agency, operates somewhat autonomously. The head of the CIA is, in fact, "first among equals," and his authority has increased over the years.

The major divisions of the CIA are those for intelligence, operations, science and technology, and administration. The intelligence division, the largest, is responsible for the production of finished intelligence in its various forms--from instant news flashes to encyclopaedic surveys. Most of the thousands of workers in the intelligence division are technical specialists or research analysts. By contrast, the operations directorate, sometimes called the "Department of Dirty Tricks," has handled various clandestine operations, such as espionage missions, counterintelligence overseas, political intervention, recruitment of defectors, and a variety of covert actions in foreign areas. The science and technology division concerns itself both with new techniques of intelligence gathering and with the technological developments of other nations that may have impact upon U.S. security. The administration directorate is concerned with recruitment and training, library services, including information storage and retrieval, and various other housekeeping activities. The CIA performs the difficult dual role of independent intelligence producer and coordinator of a vast intelligence system comprising many units. The CIA produces intelligence in a variety of forms, from bulletins of current information, such as the National Intelligence Daily for top policymakers, to long-range forecasts. Under the CIA's leadership, the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB) has responsibility for the production of National Intelligence Estimates (NIE), supposedly representing the best information available throughout the government on various foreign issues and topics. The NFIB, representing all the major units of the intelligence community, includes what was formerly called the Board of National Estimates, which has been replaced by national intelligence officers with geographic and functional jurisdictions. National Intelligence Estimates have drawn mixed reviews for objectivity, accuracy, length, style, and timeliness. A National Foreign Intelligence Council operates as a companion to NFIB to deal with priorities and budgets.

The FBI's principal role in the intelligence system is in counterintelligence, limited primarily to internal security within the United States. The CIA's counterintelligence role is applied primarily overseas, while the FBI's jurisdiction normally ends at the water's edge. The FBI director operates under the attorney general in the Department of Justice. An assistant director of the FBI heads an Intelligence Division--the budget, personnel, and organization of which are secret. Increasing concern with terrorist activity has involved the FBI's Criminal Division in counterintelligence, and the FBI and CIA are known to cooperate increasingly in some areas. The Defense Intelligence Agency and agencies of the armed services also perform counterintelligence functions within their limited jurisdictions. The National Security Agency is the largest, most expensive, and perhaps least known of all American intelligence organizations. Its basic functions are signals intelligence--the making and breaking of codes and ciphers. Created by presidential directive in 1952, the NSA has remained, despite its enormous size and worldwide activities, the most secret of the acknowledged U.S. intelligence units. The directive creating the agency remains secret. Headed by a high-ranking military officer, the agency is under the secretary of defense but maintains a degree of autonomy. From its headquarters near Washington, D.C., the NSA conducts an immense variety of electronic espionage activities. Estimates of its size generally set its number of employees at about 20,000, but its activities also involve thousands of armed-service personnel, supervised by the NSA. Devices for electronic espionage of various sorts are placed in planes, on ships, or at ground installations overseas. This kind of intelligence work was brought to world attention when the USS Pueblo was seized by the North Koreans in 1968 and its crew detained for a year. The subsequent navy and congressional inquiries revealed that the ship was on assignment for the National Security Agency, with a mission to collect data on North Korean and Soviet naval operations in the Sea of Japan. (see also Index: Pueblo Incident) The Defense Intelligence Agency is the newest major member of the U.S. intelligence community. It was established in 1961 as a culmination of the increasing centralization in the Department of Defense, which began with the unification measures of 1947. The DIA was set up by the secretary of defense to improve the intelligence product available to him and to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Another purpose was to eliminate costly duplication and a tendency of the separate armed services to use their own intelligence data as ammunition in the annual competition for budget allocations.

The DIA is the foreign military intelligence arm of the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the unified and specified military commands. It supplies military intelligence for national reports and estimates, coordinates Defense Department collection requirements, and manages the defense attaché system. Persons assigned to the DIA come from each of the armed services, and more than half of the DIA staff are civilians. The Department of State, through its Bureau of Intelligence and Research, collects, analyzes, and disseminates large amounts of political, economic, and cultural information about those nations in which the United States has accredited representation. The bureau, referred to as INR in the intelligence community, operates under a director whose rank since 1963 has been that of assistant secretary of state. The bureau has the double function of meeting the requirements of the intelligence community as set by the National Security Council and the State Department's own intelligence needs. Area specialists constitute the bulk of the INR staff, which is small by comparison with those of other intelligence agencies. The Department of Energy has representation in the intelligence community through an assistant secretary for defense programs, whose responsibilities include the nuclear intelligence role of the former Atomic Energy Commission. Intelligence functions are the responsibility of a deputy assistant secretary for security affairs and a director of the Office of International Security Affairs, who oversee the collection of foreign energy intelligence and its dissemination within the government. The creation of the DIA sharply reduced the role of the separate armed forces in the high-level intelligence system. Yet each of the armed services maintains a major intelligence division for tactical and technical intelligence and for counterintelligence activities.

As organized in 1985, Army intelligence comprised six directorates: Intelligence Resources Management; Foreign Liaison; Counterintelligence (the army's traditional "CIC" security service); Intelligence Systems, made up of departments for long-range planning, signals intelligence, human intelligence, imagery, and intelligence systems integration; Intelligence Automation Management; and Foreign Intelligence, which includes departments for requirements, scientific and technical, and intelligence, which is subdivided along geographic lines. Also attached to the Intelligence directorate are a "Red Team," a field operating agency giving staff support in war games, and a Current Intelligence Division. The U.S. naval intelligence has evolved into a complex Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), with five major divisions: Military Information; Intelligence Research and Development; Intelligence Policy and Estimates; Special Projects; and Plans, Programs, and Systems Architecture. Each division reports to the ONI secretariat, which has staff assistants for such categories as communist strategy and doctrine, foreign intelligence agency liaison, intelligence community coordination, and routine management duties. The deputy director of ONI for plans, to whom this entire structure reports, serves also as commander of the Naval Security Group Command, which has code-making and code-breaking responsibilities. In addition, the Naval Intelligence Command, under the other deputy director of ONI, handles staff support for all other areas except codes and ciphers. The air force, like the navy, has been accorded by technology a frontline intelligence position. The assistant chief of staff, intelligence, is charged with the responsibility for planning, directing, and supervising air force policies and organizations covering a worldwide range of intelligence activities. A special responsibility is to be a sentinel against technological, strategic, or tactical surprise. These various functions are performed under two main directorates. One is the Division of Estimates, which supervises departments for weapons, space, and technology; strategic threat; regional estimates; and general-purpose threat. The other is the Directorate of Plans and Systems, which oversees a complex set of activities, including groups for management, planning, and collection. There is also an Electronic Combat Intelligence Group, which reports directly to the assistant chief of staff, intelligence. Also coming under air force operational control is the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), one of several highly secret units for surveillance by satellite, including photographic, signal, and electronic intelligence. The existence of NRO is not officially acknowledged, but it has functioned since the early 1960s, and its importance and size grow with advancing surveillance technology. It is perhaps the most expensive, and one of the most useful, sources for intelligence

European power politics, the pursuit of imperialist foreign policies, and advances in military and communications technology required an increasing amount of strategic intelligence. Intelligence bureaus spread throughout Europe, producing a corresponding growth in counterintelligence.Nevertheless, most European nations entered World War I with inadequate intelligence services. That war is now often cited as one that none of the combatant nations intended, suggesting in itself a tragic intelligence failure. The French intelligence service had been torn by internal intrigue, after having already been weakened by the Dreyfus affair, and other services had been shaken by scandals. Miscalculation of German military strength in 1914 was a prime example of intelligence failure.German intelligence had also deteriorated. The German General Staff of 1914 evidently placed little faith in the information supplied to it. For the Germans, policy seemed to dominate intelligence. The Russians had great initial success against the Austrians because of the treason of an Austrian general staff officer, but subsequently Russian intelligence performed no better than that of other nations in World War I. The British were successful in breaking German naval codes and in their Middle Eastern intelligence operations. The Germans carried on successful activities in Persia and scored limited espionage successes in the United States. The United States had no central intelligence. At the beginning of the war, army intelligence was a small section within the general staff, comprising two officers and two clerks; by the war's end, this service had grown to 1,200 officers and civilians. Patently, most were amateurs. Navy intelligence was equally deficient.
The intelligence lessons of World War I, along with advances in technology, especially electronics and aircraft, resulted in a proliferation of intelligence agencies in the 1920s and '30s. The growth of such agencies was further stimulated by the advent of regimes with expansionist foreign policies in the U.S.S.R., Italy, Germany, and Japan. These produced, in reaction, counterintelligence organizations in the democracies. World War II led to the creation and expansion of intelligence services everywhere. The United States, which had virtually no peacetime intelligence services, created its first full-fledged organization for intelligence and secret operations, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The war imposed intelligence requirements never before faced by the major warring powers. This was primarily the result of accelerating technology. Air warfare in particular required vast new offensive and defensive intelligence operations, and the growth of radio broadcasting produced a new art of psychological warfare that demanded intelligence services for the analysis of its effects. Even with all the new developments, intelligence forecasting remained a precarious trade. The Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, the unexpected German resilience under Allied bombing attacks--in these and other instances the decision makers failed to profit from their elaborate intelligence networks.

However, there was one area of enormous profit. Perhaps the most significant intelligence exploit of all times was the Ultra secret--in which the British, with prior help from the Poles and the French and possessing a German Enigma encoding machine, broke the German military code and read most of the signals between Hitler and his field commanders throughout the war. Put simply, the Ultra operation involved intercepting German signals that had been mechanically enciphered by an Enigma machine, decoding the messages that the German high command assumed were impenetrable, and distributing the information secretly to appropriate headquarters. In essence, throughout much of the war, the Allied side was reading the mind of the Axis command. As the war progressed, Hitler's increasingly centralized control of operations on all fronts made German military operations especially vulnerable. On those occasions when the Allies were caught by surprise, such as the American defeat at Kasserine Pass, the Allied defeat at Arnhem, and the Battle of the Bulge, either the Germans had used land lines for communication, or Ultra intercepts had been misused. World War II was followed by the Cold War, in which the intelligence organizations of opposing blocs became combatants. In every major nation huge new bureaucracies were created. Usually these consisted of interlocking and often competitive secret agencies, vying for new assignments and sometimes withholding information from each other. The world soon became familiar with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States. Somewhat less well known were Great Britain's MI-5 and MI-6, the KGB and the GRU of the former Soviet Union, the SDECE of France, China's Social Affairs Department, and the Mossad of Israel. At the same time, the exploits of spies and counterspies became a subject for mass media fiction. Books, movies, and television moved the spy to centre stage, sometimes in a comic but often in a deadly serious role. All of this tended to glamorize what is most often a painstakingly tedious, or even at times a disgustingly immoral and distasteful, occupation.

The largest investigative agency of the United States federal government. Generally speaking, it is responsible for conducting investigations where a federal interest is concerned, except where another agency of the federal government has been specifically delegated that duty by statute or executive fiat. In pursuance of its duties, the bureau gathers facts and reports the results of its investigations to the attorney general of the United States and his assistants in Washington, D.C., and to the United States attorneys' offices in the federal judicial districts of the nation.The bureau is a part of the Department of Justice, responsible and subordinate to the attorney general of the United States. The bureau, headquartered in Washington, D.C., has field offices in large cities throughout the United States and in Puerto Rico. In addition, the bureau maintains liaison posts in several major foreign cities to facilitate the exchange of information with foreign agencies on matters relating to international crime and criminals. The head of the bureau, whose title is director, was appointed by the attorney general until 1968; thereafter, by law, he became subject to appointment by the president of the United States with the advice and consent of the Senate.The bureau has a large staff of employees, including between 6,000 and 7,000 special agents who perform the investigative work. These special agents, the majority of whom have 10 years or more of service with the bureau, are usually required to have either a legal or an accounting education. In 1908 the then attorney general of the United States, Charles J. Bonaparte, established the Bureau of Investigation within the Department of Justice to answer the need for a federal investigative body. In 1924 Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone (later to become chief justice of the United States) appointed J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) as its director and ordered that the bureau be reorganized. Reappointed to that post by successive attorneys general, Hoover was primarily responsible for the development of the bureau and its professional standards in law enforcement, though his frequent overzealousness and occasional persecutions have been criticized.Law enforcement in the United States remains principally a responsibility of state and local governments. However, trends toward centralization, the adoption of federal regulatory legislation, the passage of many substantive federal criminal laws, and the need of local law enforcement for supportive services (such as central FBI fingerprint files and laboratory facilities) have increased the responsibilities and duties of the bureau.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has investigative jurisdiction with respect to most federal criminal laws and other matters in which the United States is or may be a party in interest. This responsibility extends to some 180 areas of the criminal law (ranging from aircraft piracy and antiracketeering statutes through kidnapping to white-slave trafficking), and, in addition, the bureau is charged with collecting evidence in most civil cases in which the United States is or may be a party.The principal exceptions to the bureau's federal criminal investigative jurisdiction lie in specialized fields. These include narcotics violations and immigration matters (which fall in the jurisdiction of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, both in the Department of Justice); tax, customs, and currency violations (the Internal Revenue Service, Bureau of Customs, and the Secret Service, all of which are agencies of the Treasury Department); security frauds (the Securities and Exchange Commission); and postal violations (the U.S. Postal Service). Between 1961 and 1968 Congress enacted significant legislation protecting civil rights, addressed to such matters as elections and discrimination in public facilities, education, and employment. During this same period, a growing awareness of the existence of large organized criminal syndicates stimulated federal criminal legislation directed to their control. These laws and programs formulated by the Department of Justice greatly expanded the investigative role of the bureau. The bureau's responsibilities in the internal-security field include matters relating to espionage, counterespionage, sabotage, treason, sedition, and related internal-security matters. In connection with these duties, the bureau is responsible for correlating information on internal-security matters and disseminating it to other interested federal agencies. The bureau is represented on the United States Intelligence Board, a body created by the president's National Security Council.Investigations of applicants and employees of the federal government who have or may be considered for sensitive positions are conducted by the bureau.

In full JOHN EDGAR HOOVER (b. Jan. 1, 1895, Washington, D.C., U.S.--d. May 2, 1972, Washington, D.C.), U.S. public official who, as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from 1924 until his death in 1972, built that agency into a highly effective, if occasionally controversial, arm of federal law enforcement. Hoover studied law at night at George Washington University, where he received degrees as bachelor of laws in 1916 and as master of laws in the following year. He entered the Department of Justice as a file reviewer in 1917, and two years later he became special assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, in which post he oversaw the mass roundups and deportations of suspected Bolsheviks (Communists) after World War I. He was named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (as it was then called) in May 1924 and confirmed as director seven months later. Finding the organization in disrepute because of the scandals of the Harding administration, he reorganized and rebuilt it on a professional basis, recruiting agents on merit and instituting rigorous methods of selecting and training personnel. He established a fingerprint file, which became the world's largest; a scientific crime-detection laboratory; and the FBI National Academy, to which selected law enforcement officers from all parts of the country were sent for special training. In the early 1930s the exploits of gangsters in the United States were receiving worldwide publicity. Hoover took advantage of this to publicize the achievements of the FBI in tracking down and capturing well-known criminals. Both the FBI's size and its responsibilities grew steadily under his management. In the late 1930s President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave him the task of investigating both foreign espionage in the United States and the activities of communists and fascists alike. When the Cold War began in the late 1940s, the FBI undertook the intensive surveillance of communists and other left-wing activists in the United States. Hoover's animus toward radicals of every kind led him to aggressively investigate both the Ku Klux Klan and Martin Luther King, Jr., and other black activists in the 1960s. At the same time, he maintained a hands-off policy toward the Mafia, which was allowed to conduct its operations nationwide practically free of FBI scrutiny or interference.

Hoover habitually used the FBI's enormous surveillance and information-gathering powers to collect damaging information on politicians throughout the country, and he kept the most scurrilous data under his own personal control. He used his possession of these secret files to maintain himself as the FBI's director and was apparently able to intimidate even sitting presidents by threatening to leak damaging disclosures about them. By the early 1970s he had come under public criticism for his authoritarian administration of the FBI and for his persecution of those he regarded as radicals and subversives. He retained his post, however, until his death at age 77, by which time he had been the FBI's chief for 48 years and had served 8 presidents and 18 attorneys general.

(NSA), U.S. intelligence agency within the Department of Defense that is responsible for cryptographic and communications intelligence and security. The NSA grew out of the communications intelligence activities of U.S. military units during World War II. The NSA was established in 1952 by a presidential directive and, not being a creation of the Congress, is relatively immune to Congressional review; it is the most secret of all U.S. intelligence agencies. Its director is a military officer of flag rank, i.e., a general or admiral.The agency's mission includes the protection and formulation of codes, ciphers, and other cryptology for the U.S. military and other government agencies, as well as the interception, analysis, and solution of coded transmissions by electronic or other means. The agency conducts research into all forms of electronic transmission. It operates posts for the interception of signals around the world. Being a target of the highest priority for penetration by hostile intelligence services, the NSA maintains no contact with the public or the press. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created in September 1947. The CIA grew out of the nation's wartime experience with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and a postwar decision to create a central organization for defense. This included a partially unified Department of Defense and a National Security Council (NSC), chaired by the president. The CIA is under the jurisdiction of the NSC.World War II had shown that there was a need for a central organization to coordinate for the president all information on foreign affairs and to perform certain functions best done centrally. There were heated debates at the war's end as to how much centralization was needed. Some wanted a central intelligence setup that would eliminate army, navy, State Department, and other separate units. Others wanted to turn over all but technical military intelligence functions to the State Department. The outcome was a compromise in which the Central Intelligence Agency was created by the National Security Act of 1947, but other departments and agencies continued to maintain their own intelligence sections. Since then, the idea of a single entity has given way to the concept of an "intelligence community" comprising the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), separate army, navy, and air force intelligence staffs, State Department intelligence, the National Security Agency (NSA), a Department of Energy nuclear intelligence unit, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The National Security Act of 1947, which has remained the basic charter for the organization, assigned to the CIA five specific functions: (1) advising the National Security Council on intelligence matters related to national security, (2) recommending to the NSC measures for efficient coordination of the intelligence activities of departments and agencies of government, (3) correlating and evaluating intelligence and seeing that it is properly communicated within the government, (4) carrying out any additional services the NSC determines can best be performed centrally for existing intelligence agencies, and (5) carrying out such other functions and duties related to national security intelligence as the NSC may direct.

Out of this assignment of basic functions grew a large new agency with assignments around the globe. By the 1980s the CIA was believed to employ about 18,000 full-time employees in the United States, mainly in Washington, D.C., and several thousands more in overseas posts. Its annual budgets do not include functions performed by military and paramilitary units under the CIA's direction and control. Policy and operational guidelines for the CIA are contained in periodically revised presidential executive orders and some 40-odd secret National Security Council Intelligence Directives defining its functions and establishing jurisdictions in areas in which other intelligence agencies might have a functional claim. Since 1947 the CIA has come to perform three major assignments: (1) foreign intelligence collection, evaluation, and communication; (2) counterintelligence operations overseas; and (3) secret political intervention, psychological warfare, and paramilitary operations in foreign areas. The first two functions are clearly stipulated in the congressional statute creating the CIA; the third was assumed as a Cold War necessity and on the basis of a very free interpretation of the original charter. The CIA is managed by a director and a deputy director, both appointed by the president and subject to Senate confirmation. The director of Central Intelligence in fact wears two hats. He is head of the Central Intelligence Agency as well as being the president's principal intelligence adviser, and thus theoretically the number one man in the intelligence community--theoretically, because each of the other major units, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, or the Defense Intelligence Agency, operates somewhat autonomously. The head of the CIA is, in fact, "first among equals," and his authority has increased over the years.

The major divisions of the CIA are those for intelligence, operations, science and technology, and administration. The intelligence division, the largest, is responsible for the production of finished intelligence in its various forms--from instant news flashes to encyclopaedic surveys. Most of the thousands of workers in the intelligence division are technical specialists or research analysts. By contrast, the operations directorate, sometimes called the "Department of Dirty Tricks," has handled various clandestine operations, such as espionage missions, counterintelligence overseas, political intervention, recruitment of defectors, and a variety of covert actions in foreign areas. The science and technology division concerns itself both with new techniques of intelligence gathering and with the technological developments of other nations that may have impact upon U.S. security. The administration directorate is concerned with recruitment and training, library services, including information storage and retrieval, and various other housekeeping activities. The CIA performs the difficult dual role of independent intelligence producer and coordinator of a vast intelligence system comprising many units. The CIA produces intelligence in a variety of forms, from bulletins of current information, such as the National Intelligence Daily for top policymakers, to long-range forecasts. Under the CIA's leadership, the National Foreign Intelligence Board (NFIB) has responsibility for the production of National Intelligence Estimates (NIE), supposedly representing the best information available throughout the government on various foreign issues and topics. The NFIB, representing all the major units of the intelligence community, includes what was formerly called the Board of National Estimates, which has been replaced by national intelligence officers with geographic and functional jurisdictions. National Intelligence Estimates have drawn mixed reviews for objectivity, accuracy, length, style, and timeliness. A National Foreign Intelligence Council operates as a companion to NFIB to deal with priorities and budgets.
The FBI's principal role in the intelligence system is in counterintelligence, limited primarily to internal security within the United States. The CIA's counterintelligence role is applied primarily overseas, while the FBI's jurisdiction normally ends at the water's edge. The FBI director operates under the attorney general in the Department of Justice. An assistant director of the FBI heads an Intelligence Division--the budget, personnel, and organization of which are secret. Increasing concern with terrorist activity has involved the FBI's Criminal Division in counterintelligence, and the FBI and CIA are known to cooperate increasingly in some areas. The Defense Intelligence Agency and agencies of the armed services also perform counterintelligence functions within their limited jurisdictions.

The National Security Agency is the largest, most expensive, and perhaps least known of all American intelligence organizations. Its basic functions are signals intelligence--the making and breaking of codes and ciphers. Created by presidential directive in 1952, the NSA has remained, despite its enormous size and worldwide activities, the most secret of the acknowledged U.S. intelligence units. The directive creating the agency remains secret. Headed by a high-ranking military officer, the agency is under the secretary of defense but maintains a degree of autonomy. From its headquarters near Washington, D.C., the NSA conducts an immense variety of electronic espionage activities. Estimates of its size generally set its number of employees at about 20,000, but its activities also involve thousands of armed-service personnel, supervised by the NSA. Devices for electronic espionage of various sorts are placed in planes, on ships, or at ground installations overseas. This kind of intelligence work was brought to world attention when the USS Pueblo was seized by the North Koreans in 1968 and its crew detained for a year. The subsequent navy and congressional inquiries revealed that the ship was on assignment for the National Security Agency, with a mission to collect data on North Korean and Soviet naval operations in the Sea of Japan.
The Defense Intelligence Agency is the newest major member of the U.S. intelligence community. It was established in 1961 as a culmination of the increasing centralization in the Department of Defense, which began with the unification measures of 1947. The DIA was set up by the secretary of defense to improve the intelligence product available to him and to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Another purpose was to eliminate costly duplication and a tendency of the separate armed services to use their own intelligence data as ammunition in the annual competition for budget allocations. The DIA is the foreign military intelligence arm of the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the unified and specified military commands. It supplies military intelligence for national reports and estimates, coordinates Defense Department collection requirements, and manages the defense attaché system. Persons assigned to the DIA come from each of the armed services, and more than half of the DIA staff are civilians.

The Department of State, through its Bureau of Intelligence and Research, collects, analyzes, and disseminates large amounts of political, economic, and cultural information about those nations in which the United States has accredited representation. The bureau, referred to as INR in the intelligence community, operates under a director whose rank since 1963 has been that of assistant secretary of state. The bureau has the double function of meeting the requirements of the intelligence community as set by the National Security Council and the State Department's own intelligence needs. Area specialists constitute the bulk of the INR staff, which is small by comparison with those of other intelligence agencies. The Department of Energy has representation in the intelligence community through an assistant secretary for defense programs, whose responsibilities include the nuclear intelligence role of the former Atomic Energy Commission. Intelligence functions are the responsibility of a deputy assistant secretary for security affairs and a director of the Office of International Security Affairs, who oversee the collection of foreign energy intelligence and its dissemination within the government. The creation of the DIA sharply reduced the role of the separate armed forces in the high-level intelligence system. Yet each of the armed services maintains a major intelligence division for tactical and technical intelligence and for counterintelligence activities. As organized in 1985, Army intelligence comprised six directorates: Intelligence Resources Management; Foreign Liaison; Counterintelligence (the army's traditional "CIC" security service); Intelligence Systems, made up of departments for long-range planning, signals intelligence, human intelligence, imagery, and intelligence systems integration; Intelligence Automation Management; and Foreign Intelligence, which includes departments for requirements, scientific and technical, and intelligence, which is subdivided along geographic lines. Also attached to the Intelligence directorate are a "Red Team," a field operating agency giving staff support in war games, and a Current Intelligence Division. U.S. naval intelligence has evolved into a complex Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), with five major divisions: Military Information; Intelligence Research and Development; Intelligence Policy and Estimates; Special Projects; and Plans, Programs, and Systems Architecture. Each division reports to the ONI secretariat, which has staff assistants for such categories as communist strategy and doctrine, foreign intelligence agency liaison, intelligence community coordination, and routine management duties. The deputy director of ONI for plans, to whom this entire structure reports, serves also as commander of the Naval Security Group Command, which has code-making and code-breaking responsibilities. In addition, the Naval Intelligence Command, under the other deputy director of ONI, handles staff support for all other areas except codes and ciphers. (see also Index: United States Navy, The)

The air force, like the navy, has been accorded by technology a frontline intelligence position. The assistant chief of staff, intelligence, is charged with the responsibility for planning, directing, and supervising air force policies and organizations covering a worldwide range of intelligence activities. A special responsibility is to be a sentinel against technological, strategic, or tactical surprise. These various functions are performed under two main directorates. One is the Division of Estimates, which supervises departments for weapons, space, and technology; strategic threat; regional estimates; and general-purpose threat. The other is the Directorate of Plans and Systems, which oversees a complex set of activities, including groups for management, planning, and collection. There is also an Electronic Combat Intelligence Group, which reports directly to the assistant chief of staff, intelligence. Also coming under air force operational control is the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), one of several highly secret units for surveillance by satellite, including photographic, signal, and electronic intelligence. The existence of NRO is not officially acknowledged, but it has functioned since the early 1960s, and its importance and size grow with advancing surveillance technology. It is perhaps the most expensive, and one of the most useful, sources for intelligence. After the end of World War II the vast U.S. military establishment was dismantled, its strength falling from 12,000,000 men and women to about 1,500,000 in 1947. The navy and army air forces remained the world's strongest, however, and the U.S. monopoly of atomic weapons seemed to ensure security. In 1946 the United States formed an Atomic Energy Commission for purposes of research and development. The armed forces were reorganized under a secretary of defense by the National Security Act of 1947, which also created the U.S. Air Force as an independent service. In 1949 the services were brought together in a single Department of Defense, though each retained considerable autonomy. In that same year the Soviet Union exploded its own atomic device, opening an era of intense nuclear, and soon thermonuclear, competition. Social and economic development. Peace brought with it new fears. Demobilizing the armed forces might result in massive unemployment and another depression. Or, conversely, the huge savings accumulated during the war could promote runaway inflation. The first anxiety proved groundless, even though government did little to ease the transition to a peacetime economy. War contracts were canceled, war agencies diminished or dissolved, and government-owned war plants sold to private parties. But, after laying off defense workers, manufacturers rapidly tooled up and began producing consumer goods in volume. The housing industry grew too, despite shortages of every kind, thanks to mass construction techniques pioneered by the firm of Levitt and Sons, Inc., and other developers. All this activity created millions of new jobs. The Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, known as the G.I. Bill of Rights, also helped ease military personnel back into civilian life. It provided veterans with loans, educational subsidies, and other benefits.

Inflation was more troublesome. Congress lacked enthusiasm for wartime price controls and in June 1946 passed a bill preserving only limited controls. Truman vetoed the bill as inadequate, controls expired, and prices immediately soared. Congress then passed an even weaker price-control bill, which Truman signed. Nevertheless, by the end of the year, most price and wage controls had been lifted. In December the Office of Price Administration began to close down. As a result the consumer price index did not stabilize until 1948, when prices were more than a third above the 1945 level, while wage and salary income had risen by only about 15 percent. Truman's difficulties with Congress had begun in September 1945 when he submitted a 21-point domestic program, including proposals for an expansion of social security and public housing and for the establishment of a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act banning discrimination. These and subsequent liberal initiatives, later known as the Fair Deal, were rejected by Congress, which passed only the Employment Act of 1946. This clearly stated the government's responsibility for maintaining full employment and established a Council of Economic Advisers to advise the president. Truman's relations with Congress worsened after the 1946 elections. Voters, who were angered by the price-control debacle, a wave of strikes, and Truman's seeming inability to lead or govern, gave control of both houses of Congress to Republicans for the first time since 1928. The president and the extremely conservative 80th Congress battled from beginning to end, not over foreign policy, where bipartisanship prevailed, but over domestic matters. Congress passed two tax reductions over Truman's vetoes and in 1947, again over Truman's veto, passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which restricted unions while extending the rights of management. Congress also rejected various liberal measures submitted by Truman, who did not expect the proposals to pass but wanted Congress on record as having opposed important social legislation. By 1948, Truman had won support for his foreign policy, but he was expected to lose the presidential election that year because of his poor domestic record. Polls showed him lagging behind Dewey, again the Republican nominee, and to make matters worse the Democratic Party splintered. Former vice president Henry A. Wallace headed the Progressive Party ticket, which pledged to improve Soviet-American relations whatever the cost. Southerners, known as Dixiecrats, who were alienated by the Democratic Party's strong civil rights plank, formed the States' Rights Democratic Party and nominated Governor Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president. These defections appeared to ensure Truman's defeat. Instead Truman won handily, receiving almost as many votes as his opponents combined. His support came largely from labour, which was upset by the Republican passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, from blacks, who strongly supported the Democrats' civil rights provisions, and from farmers, who preferred the higher agricultural subsidies promised by the Democrats, especially at a time when commodity prices were falling.

The Democrats regained control of Congress in 1948, but Truman's relations with that body continued to be troubled. In January 1949 he asked for a broad range of Fair Deal measures, with uneven results. Congress did approve a higher minimum wage, the extension of social security to 10,000,000 additional persons, more public works, larger sums for the TVA and for rural electrification, and the Housing Act of 1949, which authorized construction of 810,000 units for low-income families. Truman failed, however, to persuade Congress to repeal Taft-Hartley, to reform the agricultural subsidy system, to secure federal aid to education, to adopt his civil rights program, or, most importantly, to accept his proposal for national health insurance. He succeeded nevertheless in protecting the New Deal principle of federal responsibility for social welfare, and he helped form the Democratic agenda for the 1960s. In a world in revolutionary ferment, the authentic intelligence officer occupies the centre of great debates over national security policy. At issue in most of the debates are questions of power, probability, and time. A prime task of the modern professional intelligence officer, military or civilian, is to try to answer questions for the policymaker about power and about behaviour probabilities, within a time scale. For a chief of state trying to decide a question about nuclear armaments, for example, an ideal intelligence system would provide precise knowledge of a potential enemy's power, the probability of that enemy's behaviour or reaction in given contingencies, and a time schedule for the most likely sequence of events. These are basic problems for all intelligence services. Information as to how these services address their problems is highly uneven. More is generally known about the U.S. system than any other, a good deal about that of the old Soviet Union, and comparatively less about other systems. Intelligence systems follow three general models: the U.S., which was followed by former West Germany, Japan, South Korea, and other nations that came under U.S. influence after World War II; the old Soviet, which was imitated in large measure by most communist-governed nations; and the British, on which were patterned the systems of most nations with true parliamentary governments. Although people may doubt that they have any personal involvement with cryptology, most adults depend on it to protect their interests or rights in several areas. For example, the personal identity number (PIN) that must be entered into an automated teller machine (ATM), along with a bankcard to corroborate that the card is being used by an authorized bearer, may either be stored in the bank's computers in an encrypted form (as a cipher) or be encrypted on the card itself. The transformation used in this type of cryptography is called one-way; i.e., it is easy to compute a cipher given the bank's key and the customer's PIN but computationally infeasible to compute the plaintext PIN from the cipher, even though the key is known. This is to protect the cardholder from being impersonated by someone who has access to the bank's computer files. Similarly, the communications between the ATM and the bank's central computer are encrypted to prevent a would-be thief from tapping into the phone lines and recording the signals sent to the ATM to authorize the dispensing of cash in response to a legitimate user request and then later feeding the same signals to the ATM repeatedly to deceive it into dispensing money illegitimately. (see also Index: credit card )

Another example is the means used to prevent forgers from counterfeiting winning lottery tickets. Unlike currency, which typically involves state-of-the-art engraving as well as specially compounded inks and watermarked or tagged papers that make counterfeiting difficult, lottery tickets are simply printed on pasteboard much like the admission tickets used by movie theatres and hence are easily counterfeited if one knows what to print on the ticket. Each ticket, however, has two numbers printed on it--one being the identifying number that will be announced when a winner is selected and the other being an encrypted version of this number. Thus, when the winning number is made known, the would-be counterfeiter is unable to print an acceptable forgery unless he also has successfully cryptanalyzed the lottery's cryptosystem. The two preceding examples involve only the use of the authentication feature of a cryptosystem, although secrecy is incidental to the communications between the ATM and the bank's central computer. A novel application that involves all aspects of cryptography are "smart" credit cards, which have a microprocessor built into the card itself. Smart credit cards first saw general use in France in 1984 and promise to supplant in large part the simple plastic cards currently being used. Cryptology is essential to the functioning of these cards in several ways. The user must corroborate his identity to the card each time a transaction is made in much the same way that a PIN is used with an ATM. The card and the card reader execute a sequence of encrypted sign-/countersign-like exchanges to verify that each is dealing with a legitimate counterpart. Once this has been established, the transaction itself is carried out in encrypted form to prevent anyone, including the cardholder or the merchant whose card reader is involved, from eavesdropping on the exchange and then later impersonating either party to defraud the system. This elaborate protocol is carried out in such a way that it is transparent to the user, except for the necessity of entering a PIN to initiate the transaction. There are many other novel areas in which cryptography plays a role in everyday life. In electronic mail, which has had a pilot test in the United States and was already in operation in France by 1984, the only way to provide an "envelope" for the messages is by some form of encryption. Increasingly, the data bases in which personal tax, income, credit-rating information, and other related data are compiled have become shared resources, remotely accessible to read from or to write into, so that cryptographic protection is vital for safeguarding the rights of the individual. Recognizing the threat to national security posed by breaches in computer-system security and attempts to eavesdrop on telecommunications, the U.S. government has taken steps to counteract the problem. Executive approval in 1984 of National Security Directive 145 led to the establishment of the National Telecommunications and Information Systems Security Committee, whose objective is to provide telephone and computer security for the federal government and its contractors. Clearly, information security--and this generally means cryptographically protected information--is one of the major problems faced by postindustrial society, and as such touches almost every aspect of private and commercial life.

A large five-sided building in Arlington county, Va., near Washington, D.C., that serves as headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, including all three services--Army, Navy, and Air Force. Designed by George Edwin Bergstrom, it was built in 1941-43 to bring under one roof the U.S. War Department offices then housed in widely scattered buildings. On its completion it was the world's largest office building, covering 34 acres (14 hectares; including a 5-acre [2-hectare] central court) and offering 3,700,000 square feet (343,730 square m) of usable floor space for as many as 25,000 persons, military and civilian. Built of structural steel and reinforced concrete with some limestone facing, the structure has five floors, excluding the mezzanine and the basement. The building consists of five concentric pentagons, or "rings," with 10 spokelike corridors connecting the whole. A huge concourse within it provides a shopping centre for Pentagon workers, and beneath this concourse are bus and taxi terminals. Parking areas adjacent to the building can accommodate as many as 10,000 cars, and a heliport for the Pentagon was added in 1956. The Pentagon papers  contain a history of the U.S. role in Indochina from World War II until May 1968 and that were commissioned in 1967 by U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. They were turned over (without authorization) to The New York Times by Daniel Ellsberg, a senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies.The 47-volume history, consisting of approximately 3,000 pages of narrative and 4,000 pages of appended documents, took 18 months to complete. Ellsberg, who worked on the project, had been an ardent early supporter of the U.S. role in Indochina but, by the project's end, had become seriously opposed to U.S. involvement. He felt compelled to reveal the nature of U.S. participation and leaked major portions of the papers to the press. On June 13, 1971, The New York Times began publishing a series of articles based on the study, which was classified as "top secret" by the federal government. After the third daily installment appeared in the Times, the U.S. Department of Justice obtained in U.S. District Court a temporary restraining order against further publication of the classified material, contending that further public dissemination of the material would cause "immediate and irreparable harm" to U.S. national-defense interests.

The Times--joined by The Washington Post, which also was in possession of the documents--fought the order through the courts for the next 15 days, during which time publication of the series was suspended. On June 30, 1971, in what is regarded as one of the most significant prior-restraint cases in history, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, freed the newspapers to resume publishing the material. The court held that the government had failed to justify restraint of publication. The Pentagon Papers revealed that the Harry S. Truman administration gave military aid to France in its colonial war against the communist-led Viet Minh, thus directly involving the United States in Vietnam; that in 1954 President Dwight D. Eisenhower decided to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam and to undermine the new communist regime of North Vietnam; that President John F. Kennedy transformed the policy of "limited-risk gamble" that he had inherited into a policy of "broad commitment"; that President Lyndon B. Johnson intensified covert warfare against North Vietnam and began planning to wage overt war in 1964, a full year before the depth of U.S. involvement was publicly revealed; and that Johnson ordered the bombing of North Vietnam in 1965 despite the judgment of the U.S. intelligence community that it would not cause the North Vietnamese to cease their support of the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam. The release of the Pentagon Papers stirred nationwide and, indeed, international controversy because it occurred after several years of growing dissent over the legal and moral justification of intensifying U.S. actions in Vietnam. The disclosures and their continued publication despite top-secret classification were embarrassing to the administration of President Richard M. Nixon, who was preparing to seek reelection in 1972. So distressing were these revelations that Nixon authorized unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg, efforts that came to light during the investigation of the Watergate Scandal.

The abbreviation of DEOXYRIBONUCLEIC ACID, organic chemical of complex molecular structure that is found in all prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells and in many viruses. DNA codes genetic information for the transmission of inherited traits.
A brief treatment of DNA follows. For full treatment, see Genetics and Heredity, Principles of; Nucleic Acids. DNA was first discovered in 1869, but its role in genetic inheritance was not demonstrated until 1943. In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick determined that the structure of DNA is a double-helix polymer, a spiral consisting of two DNA strands wound around each other. Each strand is composed of a long chain of monomer nucleotides. The nucleotide of DNA consists of a deoxyribose sugar molecule to which is attached a phosphate group and one of four nitrogenous bases: two purines (adenine and guanine) and two pyrimidines (cytosine and thymine). The nucleotides are joined together by covalent bonds between the phosphate of one nucleotide and the sugar of the next, forming a phosphate-sugar backbone from which the nitrogenous bases protrude. One strand is held to another by hydrogen bonds between the bases; the sequencing of this bonding is specific--i.e., adenine bonds only with thymine, and cytosine only with guanine. The configuration of the DNA molecule is highly stable, allowing it to act as a template for the replication of new DNA molecules, as well as for the production (transcription) of the related RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecule. A segment of DNA that codes for the cell's synthesis of a specific protein is called a gene. DNA replicates by separating into two single strands, each of which serves as a template for a new strand. The new strands are copied by the same principle of hydrogen-bond pairing between bases that exists in the double helix. Two new double-stranded molecules of DNA are produced, each containing one of the original strands and one new strand. This "semiconservative" replication is the key to the stable inheritance of genetic traits.

Within a cell, DNA is organized into dense protein-DNA complexes called chromosomes. In eukaryotes, the chromosomes are located in the nucleus, although DNA also is found in mitochondria and chloroplasts. In prokaryotes, which do not have a membrane-bound nucleus, the DNA is found as a single circular chromosome in the cytoplasm. Some prokaryotes, such as bacteria, and a few eukaryotes have extrachromosomal DNA known as plasmids, which are autonomous, self-replicating genetic material. Plasmids have been used extensively in recombinant DNA technology to study gene expression. The genetic material of viruses may be single- or double-stranded DNA or RNA. Retroviruses carry their genetic material as single-stranded RNA and produce the enzyme reverse transcriptase, which can generate DNA from the RNA strand.Since the 1970s, biologists have made major advances in understanding the molecular nature of genes and their functioning through the use of the powerful experimental techniques of recombinant DNA. The term recombinant DNA literally means the joining or recombining of two pieces of DNA from two different species. Recombinant DNA techniques allow an investigator to biologically purify (clone) a gene from one species by inserting it into the DNA of another species, where it is replicated along with the host DNA. Actually, the term includes a variety of molecular manoeuvres, including cleaving DNA by microbial enzymes called endonucleases, splicing or recombining fragments of DNA, inserting eucaryotic DNA into bacteria so that large quantities of the foreign genetic material can be produced, determining the nucleotide sequence of a segment of DNA, and even chemically synthesizing DNA. Gene cloning ranks as one of the most significant accomplishments involving recombinant DNA. This procedure has enabled researchers to use E. coli to produce virtually limitless copies of donor genes from other organisms, including human beings. To perform gene cloning, researchers first use a class of bacterial enzymes called restriction endonucleases to remove from the donor cell a fragment of double-stranded DNA that contains the genes of interest. Restriction endonucleases can be thought of as "biological scissors"; each of these enzymes cleaves DNA at a specific site defined by a sequence of four or more nucleotides. Once the desired DNA fragment has been removed from the donor cell, it must somehow be inserted into the bacterial cell. This is usually done by first inserting the donor DNA into a plasmid, one of the small, circular pieces of DNA that are found in E. coli and many other bacteria. Plasmids generally remain separate from the bacterial chromosome (although some plasmids do occasionally become incorporated into the chromosome), but they carry genes that can be expressed in the bacterium. Furthermore, plasmids generally replicate and are passed on to daughter cells along with the chromosome. By treating a plasmid with the same restriction endonuclease that was used to cleave the donor DNA, it is possible to incorporate the foreign DNA fragment into the plasmid ring. This can occur because the restriction enzyme cleaves double-stranded DNA in such a way as to leave chemically "sticky" end pieces. It is thus possible for the sticky-ended fragment of foreign DNA to attach to the complementary sticky ends of the cut-open plasmid ring. This laboratory procedure, called "gene splicing," is the major operation of recombinant DNA technology.

The molecular biologist then uses the plasmids as vectors to carry the foreign gene into bacteria. This is accomplished by exposing bacteria to the plasmids. Plasmids are highly infective, and so many of the bacteria will take up the particles; to insure maximum uptake the bacteria are often treated with calcium salts, which makes their membranes more permeable. The incorporation of the plasmids into the bacterial cells marks the transfer of the genes of one species into the genome of another. Alternatively, bacteriophages are sometimes used as vectors to carry the foreign DNA into the bacteria. As a result of the high infectivity of plasmids and the rapid growth of E. coli, investigators can quickly culture large numbers of bacteria, many of which will have incorporated the foreign (often human) DNA. (As many as 1 109 bacteria can grow in one millilitre of medium overnight.) Researchers can select the bacteria that contain the foreign DNA by attaching to the fragment of DNA a gene that confers resistance to an antibiotic such as tetracycline. By treating the culture with tetracycline, all bacteria that have not incorporated the gene for resistance will be killed. The remaining cells can be grown in enormous numbers, most of which will contain the cloned fragment of foreign DNA. The cloned DNA can be removed from the bacterial culture as follows. First, the bacteria are broken apart and the DNA content is separated by centrifugation. The DNA fraction is then heated, which causes the double-stranded molecules to separate into single strands. Upon cooling, each single strand will reanneal, or hybridize, to another single strand to which it is complementary (adenine opposite thymine, cytosine opposite guanine). This form of molecular hybridization has made possible the use of the complementary DNA (cDNA) as a probe for picking out the desired gene. Investigators also use DNA to pick out a specific gene from a large piece of genomic DNA. In some cases where a cell makes large amounts of specific mRNA (such as globin mRNA in human red cells), the extracted mRNA can be treated with reverse transcriptase to produce cDNA. When labelled with a radioisotope, this then becomes a cDNA probe for the human globin gene. The technique for isolating and hybridizing the fragment of interest is called "southern blot" analysis. The huge number of copies attained by gene cloning enables researchers to analyze the cloned DNA exhaustively, down to its nucleotide sequence. Nucleotide sequencing is accomplished by performing a series of biochemical manoeuvres on small, endonuclease-produced fragments (oligonucleotides) and then placing them in the correct order. Remarkably, molecular biologists have automated the entire procedure so that a "gene machine" can determine the nucleotide sequence of a gene in a relatively short time. In fact, if the amino-acid sequence of a protein is known, researchers can formulate the nucleotide sequence that produced it and then synthesize the gene. This has been done for insulin.

As has been discussed, a given restriction endonuclease can produce a very large number of discrete DNA fragments, which can be inserted into vector DNA incised by the same endonuclease. Researchers can clone the fragments as described above to produce a so-called library of genomic DNA. This library can be used to study the natural gene whenever a new probe is obtained. A given restriction enzyme generally will produce fragments that are the same for all individuals. However, different people occasionally vary in the size of specific fragments. This is due to the fact that in any string of several hundred bases in human DNA there occur single base changes, usually harmless substitutions that either change or remove the enzyme site. These fragment variations, known as restriction-fragment-length polymorphisms, are inherited and hence form genetic markers that can be used to trace mutant genes to which they are linked. If the fragments are separated by agarose gel electrophoresis and overlaid with a radioactively labelled cDNA probe, only the fragment whose DNA is complementary to that of the probe will hybridize with it. This hybridization can be detected by exposing the DNA fragments to photographic film; the resultant image is called an autoradiograph. When restriction-fragment-length polymorphisms are present, different-sized fragments will hybridize with the same probe. Linkage studies between a disease-producing mutant gene and a polymorphism will locate the gene to either the polymorphic or "wild-type" (i.e., normal) fragment. If large family studies show that the gene is linked closely enough to the fragment so that recombination is rare, this technique can be used for diagnosing the presence of a genetic disease for which the biochemical defect is unknown. One further result of the ability to analyze gene structure at the molecular level has been the discovery of its remarkable plasticity. Investigators have found sequences of nucleotides that have the capacity to move from one position on the chromosome to another, often carrying neighbouring sequences with them and thus rearranging the DNA. These "jumping genes"--known as transposable elements, or transposons--have been found in both procaryotes and eucaryotes. In the higher mammals, including humans, they are the source of the tremendous diversity necessary for antibody production by the immune system (see below Immunogenetics). It is also possible that some forms of cancer may develop as a result of these rearrangements.

In addition to producing copies of genes for molecular analysis and for use in medical diagnosis, recombinant DNA procedures have been used to convert bacteria into "factories" for the synthesis of foreign proteins. This is a tricky operation, for not only must the foreign DNA be inserted into the host bacterium, but it also must be incorporated into an operon so that its product will be expressed. Despite the technical difficulties, investigators have achieved the expression of foreign genes within E. coli. This fact has tremendous potential in medicine, as the "engineered" bacteria can be used to produce therapeutically valuable human proteins. Insulin, growth hormone, and antihemophilic globulin (the clotting factor missing in persons with hemophilia) are three such proteins that have been commercially "manufactured" via recombinant DNA in E. coli. As a result of this "engineering," the host bacterium has been provided with new genetic properties. Both the scientific and lay communities have expressed concern over the creation of microorganisms with new genetic properties. Perhaps this genetic tailoring of infectious agents like E. coli could visit new and devastating epidemics on the population or could introduce cancer-causing genes into infected people. In the United States, federal agencies, with the assistance of molecular biologists, have laid down stringent guidelines to ensure the control of microorganisms containing the recombinant plasmids. The most effective measure has been the requirement to use strains of E. coli that have been modified so that they can survive in the laboratory but not in nature (and hence are not infectious). In addition, the guidelines require a physical containment system that securely seals off the laboratory, thereby preventing the escape of the bacteria from the facility. Molecular biologists have also called attention to the fact that recombinant processes are constantly occurring in nature, albeit at a slower rate.

DNA TYPING, in genetics, method of isolating and making images of sequences of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). The technique was developed in 1984 by the British geneticist Alec Jeffreys, after he noticed the existence of certain sequences of DNA (called minisatellites) that do not contribute to the function of a gene but are repeated within the gene and in other genes of a DNA sample. Jeffreys also determined that each organism has a unique pattern of these minisatellites, the only exception being multiple individuals from a single zygote (e.g., identical twins).The procedure for creating a DNA fingerprint consists of first obtaining a sample of cells containing DNA (e.g., from skin, blood, or hair), extracting the DNA, and purifying it. The DNA is then cut at specific points along the strand with substances called restriction enzymes. This produces fragments of varying lengths that are sorted by placing them on a gel and then subjecting the gel to an electric current ( electrophoresis): the shorter the fragment the more quickly it will move toward the positive pole (anode). The sorted, double-stranded DNA fragments are then subjected to a blotting technique in which they are split into single strands and transferred to a nylon sheet. The fragments undergo autoradiography in which they are exposed to DNA probes--pieces of synthetic DNA that have been made radioactive and that bind to the minisatellites. A piece of X-ray film is then exposed to the fragments, and a dark mark is produced at any point where a radioactive probe has become attached. The resultant pattern of these marks can then be analyzed. An early use of DNA fingerprinting was in legal disputes, notably to help solve crimes and determine paternity. The technique was challenged, however, over concerns about sample contamination, faulty preparation procedures, and erroneous interpretation of the results. Efforts have been made to improve reliability. If only a small amount of DNA is available for fingerprinting, a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) may be used to create thousands of copies of a DNA segment. PCR is an automated procedure in which certain oligonucleotide primers are used to repeatedly duplicate specific segments of DNA. Once an adequate amount of DNA has been produced, the exact sequence of nucleotide pairs in a segment of DNA can be determined using one of several biomolecular sequencing methods. New automated equipment has greatly increased the speed of DNA sequencing and made available many new practical applications, including pinpointing segments of genes that cause genetic diseases, mapping the human genome, engineering drought-resistant plants, and producing biological drugs from genetically altered bacteria.

DNA AS AN INFORMATION CARRIER: TRANSCRIPTION AND TRANSLATION OF THE GENETIC CODE
As has been stated, the Watson-Crick model provides an explanation of how a gene can carry hereditary information in the form of a chemical code. This section will describe the genetic code and explain how it governs the biochemical processes of the cell. (see also Index: translation)Before turning to the language of the code, it is necessary to explain what it is that the code specifies. It is now known that genes encode instructions for the production of proteins, which are largely responsible for the structure and function of the organism. Proteins are large, complex molecules consisting of one or more polypeptide chains that, in turn, are composed of amino acids linked together by peptide bonds. Proteins play many roles in organisms. Some proteins make up structural components of the organism; an example is the protein collagen in vertebrate animals. Others perform particular functions; for example, the protein hemoglobin transports oxygen in the blood of mammals, and the proteins of the immune system (immunoglobulins) protect against diseases in many members of the animal kingdom. Still other proteins regulate the rate of specific biochemical reactions in cells. This latter class of proteins, called enzymes, functions as biological catalysts. Enzymes permit chemical reactions to occur with extreme rapidity at temperatures normal to living cells. Without these proteins, the molecular interactions would require much longer periods of time and much higher temperatures, and they would lose their specificity. It is certainly no exaggeration to say that life depends on enzymes. Among eucaryotes, DNA never leaves the cell nucleus, despite the fact that protein synthesis takes place on the ribosomes, structures that lie in the cytoplasm (i.e., in the portion of the cell outside of the nucleus). Even among procaryotes, which have no membrane-enclosed nucleus, the DNA does not directly carry its instructions to the ribosomes. In both kinds of organisms, this function is performed by a type of RNA that copies the DNA message and carries it to the site of protein synthesis. Aptly enough, this RNA is called messenger RNA, or mRNA for short. The copying of the DNA instructions into messenger RNA is called the transcription function of DNA, to distinguish it from the replication function discussed above.The sequence of the genetic letters, A (adenine), T (thymine), C (cytosine), and G (guanine), in the DNA is first transcribed into the corresponding sequence of the letters A, U (uracil), C, and G in the messenger RNA. This occurs through the action of the enzyme RNA polymerase. This enzyme synthesizes RNA in a test tube from a mixture of the A, U, C, and G bases, but it does so only in the presence of a primer DNA. The sequence of the bases in the primer is copied in the RNA. The steps involved in this process are as follows: (1) the DNA double helix unwinds by breaking the hydrogen bonds between the corresponding bases in the paired strands; (2) the RNA polymerase forms the bonds between the RNA bases that are complementary to the bases in the DNA; and (3) the messenger RNA thus formed passes into the cytoplasm and becomes attached to a ribosome. Ribosomes consist of proteins and another type of RNA, ribosomal RNA (rRNA).

The process of protein synthesis is represented diagrammatically in Figure 6. The information contained in the sequence of the bases (letters) in the messenger RNA is then translated into a sequence of amino acids in a protein. This requires the presence of still another molecule that is capable of recognizing the code for a specific amino acid and selectively making the amino acid available at the right point in the protein synthesis, a soluble RNA fraction within cells that can bind amino acids. Soluble, or transfer, RNA (SRNA, or tRNA) is a single-stranded molecule that forms about 20 percent of the total cellular RNA. If amino acids and a source of energy (usually ATP) are added to a mixture of transfer RNA's, reversible binding of the amino acids to the RNA molecules occurs. Furthermore, each amino acid is bonded to a specific transfer RNA molecule by a specific activating enzyme. There are at least 20 different kinds of transfer RNA's and activating enzymes that correspond to the 20 amino acids commonly found in proteins. The amino acid-transfer RNA complex becomes attached to the ribosome with its messenger RNA molecule; the addition of the amino acid to the growing polypeptide chain then occurs. A sequence of three nitrogenous bases (anticodon) on the transfer RNA molecule pairs with a complementary sequence (codon) on the messenger RNA molecule, which is held in the correct position by the ribosome. Once the recognition has occurred, a peptide bond is formed between the amino acid bound to the transfer RNA and the growing polypeptide chain.The accuracy of the model described in Figure 6 has been confirmed by the achievement of protein synthesis in the test tube. This synthesis requires a DNA template (primer DNA), precursor nucleotide molecules, ribosomes, transfer RNA's, amino acids, and a set of enzymes and certain other factors. The processes of transcription and translation, as described above, can be represented thus: DNA  RNA protein. Soon after its elucidation, this understanding of the genetic control of protein synthesis became known as "the central dogma" of molecular genetics. Included as part of the dogma was the belief that reverse transfer of information does not occur; in other words, there is no storage of information in the protein molecules and no transcription of protein back into nucleic acids or of RNA back into DNA.The central dogma has since been modified to accommodate the discovery that reverse transcription of RNA to DNA does occur, as first demonstrated in some viruses. These viruses, called retroviruses, have a genome composed of RNA. When retroviruses enter a host cell, they produce an enzyme called reverse transcriptase. This enzyme permits the transcription of the viral RNA into DNA, which then may become incorporated into the genetic material of the host cell.

A second modification was necessitated by the discovery that not all DNA codes for protein synthesis. As discussed below, some of the noncoding DNA is involved in regulating the biochemical processes of the cell. The amount of noncoding DNA is small in procaryotes, but in eucaryotes it may be most of the cell's DNA. It is necessary to understand how the four letters--A, T, C, and G--specify, or code, for 20 different amino acids. If a single letter coded for an amino acid, only four amino acids could be specified. If two bases were needed to specify an amino acid, then 16 different combinations could be constructed, again an insufficient number (20 amino acids must be accounted for). Combinations of three letters allow 64 different words to be constructed, more than the necessary minimal number. A three-letter, triplet, code could be constructed in at least three different ways: (1) with words overlapping; (2) with words not overlapping and punctuated; and (3) with words not overlapping and not punctuated. An overlapping code is composed of words that overlap each other--i.e., the letters of any given word may belong to one, two, or three words. The DNA might contain, for example, the sequence AGCGTTACG; the first word is AGC, the second CGT, and so on. This type of code is improbable, because of the restrictions it would place upon the possible sequence of amino acids in protein. As the example above shows, if the first word is AGC, the second word must begin with C, etc. Examination of amino-acid sequences in a protein such as hemoglobin indicates that any amino acid can follow any other--a possibility not allowed for by an overlapping code. If the code is nonoverlapping, a problem of distinguishing words from each other arises. DNA contains no spaces separating the words as in written sentences; therefore, there must be other indications of specific starting points for messenger RNA synthesis. The base sequence AGC AGC AGC . . . could be punctuated by the presence of a fourth base, T, between each AGC triplet. This would reduce the number of possible triplets to 27. That a punctuated code of this type is not realized is seen from the evidence of the degeneracy in the code for some amino acids. The degeneracy means that some amino acids are coded for by more than one triplet, and a punctuated code does not allow enough words. A second objection to this type of code comes from a consideration of the effects of mutation on the coding sequence. If one of the punctuation marks mutates to another base, or a coding base mutates to a punctuation mark, the resulting sequence will be complete nonsense functionally.

The third possibility is a nonoverlapping, nonpunctuated code, in which the reading starts from a specific point. In all organisms studied in this respect this is the method of coding used. A knowledge of the base sequence in the messenger RNA and the resulting amino-acid sequence in protein reveals the code for each amino acid. The triplet UUU, for example, is the code for the amino acid phenylalanine, corresponding to the sequence AAA in the DNA. Poly-A (AAA) and poly-C (CCC) are messenger RNA's codes for lysine and proline, respectively. Other triplets were tested for their coding abilities by synthesizing messenger RNA molecules with varying proportions of the two bases. If, for example, a mixture of the two bases U and C in a 5 : 1 proportion are synthesized into RNA, the possible triplets and their probable frequency in the synthetic messenger RNA can be easily determined. The triplet UUU will be most common and will appear with the frequency 5/6  5/6 5/6; the triplets UUC, UCU, and CUU will appear in the frequencies of 5/6  5/6 1/6; the triplets UCC, CUC, and CCU will be the next most frequent and will appear with a frequency of 5/6 1/6 1/6; while the triplet CCC should appear only 1/216 of the time. A messenger RNA of this composition should result in the incorporation into protein of eight different amino acids. In fact, only four amino acids were present in the protein produced; this means that several of these triplets encode for the same amino acid and therefore that the code is degenerate.

The RNA code triplets (or codons) and the amino acids for which they stand are shown in Table 3. Triplets have been discovered that encode for starting and for stopping the synthesis of protein chains in E. coli. Many proteins of E. coli begin with the amino acid methionine. Two different transfer RNA's for methionine are known to exist, only one of which functions to initiate protein synthesis. After synthesis of the protein, an enzyme may remove a portion of the beginning of the chain to eliminate the obligatory methionine molecule. The second transfer RNA for methionine allows this amino acid to be incorporated into the middle of a polypeptide. Termination of the synthesis of a polypeptide chain is signalled by three different RNA codons that do not specify an amino acid: UAA, UAG, and UGA. These triplets were discovered as nonsense mutations that produced premature cessation of protein synthesis in many different genes. Specific proteins called release factors can read these codons and release the polypeptide chain from the ribosome.

Insight Magazine reported in their May 1998 issue hackers can cripple military as well as civilian computer networks,according to defense officials who witnessed a simulated attack on vital electronic facilities of the U.S. Pacific Command.Using software easily obtained from hacker sites on the Internet.Experts at the N.S.A said the hackers could have shut down the U.S. electric power grid and render the control-command elements of the Pacific Command useless with a war game named Eligible Receiver. "The attack was actually run in a two week period and the results were frightening."says a defense official involved in the game.Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon put the best spin he could on the war game."Eligible Receiver was an important and revealing exercise that taught us that we must be better organized to deal with potential attacks against our computer systems and information infrastructure." The secret exercise began last June after months of preparation by 50 to 75 NSA computer experts who,without warning,targeted computers used by U.S. military forces in the Pacific and in the U.S.The hackers proved that foreign nations can wreak havoc using programs widely available on the darker regions of the Internet.The hackers broke into unclassified military computers and also gained access to systems that control the electric power grid for entire United States.If they wanted to they could have disabled the grid,leaving the entire country in the dark.
Knocking out the electrical power grid throughout the U.S. was just a sideline for the NSA cyberwarriors.Their main target
was the Pacific Command,which directs 100,000 troops who would be called on to deal with wars against North Korea or
China.The hackers foiled almost all efforts to trace them.FBI agents joined the Pentagon,but they located only one of several
NSA groups,a unit based in the U.S. "It's a very difficult security environment when you go through different hosts(ISP's) and different countries and then pop up on the doorstep of Keesler Air Force Base in MS,and then go from there into Cincpac",the official says,using the acronym for the Commander in Chief,Pacific.The bottom line:The Military and other networks were unprepared for the attack."They just were not security aware.",says the official.Many military computers used the word "password" for their confidential access word. When the Pentagon was hacked into it later found out  that it wasn't a foreign nation,terrorist at all,but two teenagers in California and one teenager in Israel.This should frighten everyone as Big Brother can't even secure their own systems but wants to increase their surveillance on U.S. Citizens.

  DIGITAL DOLLAR

  DIGITAL DOLLAR---


SEARCH &SHOP ON THE GOOGLEBAR

Google

---------