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Under Reagan, the FBI's Counterintelligence budget has tripled, which means that the FBI can keep track of more suspects and conduct round-the-clock surveillance when necessary. (It can take 16 agents working in shifts to watch one suspect.) The Administration has also put an FBI agent on the staff of the National Security Council, a move that symbolizes concerns about the dangers of espionage...
Within the FBI, Webster has upgraded Counterintelligence work, formerly considered somewhat of a dumping ground, into a potential path to a senior position. He has also upgraded bureau technology: the FBI has spent millions of dollars on new computers that can cross-reference tips and information...
Despite some crack agents and top-flight hardware, however, the job of Counterintelligence remains scattershot. Four million people in the U.S. have access to classified information, but only a portion of the FBI's 8,800 agents are charged with counter-intelligence. Says Webster: "Our strategy is to focus on the known and suspected hostile intelligence officers, and through a spider-web approach, become aware of contacts they might seek to make." Still, many of the initial clues in recent cases have been tips from a spy's suspicious friends or colleagues...
...disclosed a wide array of covert operations undertaken by Special Forces. According to the Washington Post, military pilots posing as civilians have flown secret missions out of Honduras to pinpoint rebel radio transmitters in El Salvador, while other Special Forces agents have engaged in spookery normally associated with the FBI and CIA, like bugging Soviet officials in a hotel room on the West Coast...
...notably consistent in distrusting Communism as dogmatic and needlessly violent. After World War II, Niebuhr became a kind of intellectual chaplain of the cold war, defining Communism in 1953 as "an organized evil which spreads terror and cruelty throughout the world." These views did not preclude the FBI from subjecting him to a "full-field" loyalty investigation...