Transformation and Intelligence Liaison

Scholars have not unjustly regarded American intelligence as isolated and backward in most fields before and well into the course of World War II. Nevertheless, a closer look at the emergence of new missions for U.S. intelligence agencies during this period shows that many of these developments occured in response to contacts with friendly and adversarial foreign intelligence services. Liaison relationships, moreover, were crucial to the construction of a more modern American intelligence system during and just after the war. Charting these influences shows how liaison contacts affect a developing intelligence structure, and suggests that the quality of contacts with foreign intelligence services affects not only the direction but the pace of intelligence modernization. As a converse, inhibited liaison relationships sometimes slowed useful growth.