FBI Counterintelligence Duties

Article information contributed by FBI Special Agent Shane C.

What are the FBI's Counterintelligence Duties?

The primary duty of the FBI is to work foreign counterintelligence, whereas the CIA is the United State's spies in the rest of the world. If the United States wants to know what Iran's nuclear capabilities are, the CIA is in Iran trying to determine where Iran is as far as development of nuclear weapons or energy.

Now, if the CIA has spies in all these different countries around the world, then one can expect that those countries have their spies here in the United States. The FBI's job is to identify those spies in this country and somehow get them out.

Many spies from other countries are here working under a diplomatic cover, where they have diplomatic immunity. Once they are found out, the FBI can't do much about it, but kick them out of the country and tell them not to come back unless they don't want to go outside their consulate. Usually these spies take off to Canada or another country and start spying there until they are booted and will pick up in another country.

The FBI's job is to figure out specific information about these suspected spies and determine if the information is true or not. The best way to do this is by developing sources or people who have this information or are close to those people being investigated. These sources can provide you with that information to confirm that the suspected spy is in fact a spy or not. All this has to be done without tipping off the source that you are looking for these individuals.

This is a basic analysis of how the FBI operates its counterintelligence division and how the CIA is different from the FBI. I hope this gives the reader a better understanding of the FBI's role in counterintelligence.