Whatever it is the United States can always be relied on to be there with the most and so it is in the field of intelligence. A United States senator has estimated that employees in the federal intelligence system now number 148,000 and this, we are told, excludes in‐house or contract agents and investigators. Another estimate has it that for every bugging device at the disposal of federal agencies there are 300 in the private sector. If we add communications, satellite and scientific personnel, then the American intelligence industry is booming as is confirmed by figures produced by The Federation of American Scientists in 1992 suggesting that the total Intelligence Budget was running at an annual sum of $29.3 billion. Whether these figures combine to boost anybody’s peace of mind is, of course, an entirely different matter.
Like any other industry the intelligence community needs educated and trained recruits and, to that end, over 40 American colleges offer courses in espionology, that is “the study of the history, organization, and methods of intelligence”, with such titles as “Espionage in the Ancient World”, “Espionage and History”, and “Intelligence and Covert Operations”. Furthermore, the Defense Intelligence College is an accredited, degree granting institution operated and controlled by the Defense Intelligence Agency. You do not fool around with these boys.
As an experienced intelligence operative himself, William Wilson long felt a need for “a reference book to consolidate all the various US intelligence services’ terms, definitions, and concepts: one document which would deal exclusively with US intelligence”. This is it. His research did not include “sensitive classified documents. What is here documented is from the published, open, military and civilian archival sources. Official sources are the military services, the director of intelligence, and the United States intelligence community”. (USINTCOM?).
A four‐page list of Acronyms and Abbreviations, from ACCOUSTINT (acoustic intelligence) through to WIM (Weekly Intelligence Message) precedes the main Dictionary which defines “the intimate language of the professionals”. It is, in fact, an extended glossary of the terminology, or jargon, of the intelligence world, much of it taken up with the abbreviations and contractions operatives seem to be at ease with: ELINT (electronic intelligence), FISA (Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act), INPOLSE (International Police Services), NLETS (National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System), and so on. Some terms have entered into general circulation: need to know, intercom, defector, bugging, spy‐in‐the sky, spook, SITREP, etc. As for the rest, most are logical in their derivation, although the origins of the last entry, “Zulu time”, are unclear. It is apparently the preferred term for Greenwich Mean Time. But, why not GMT? Perhaps it is simply regarded as a more macho term to be used by all those operatives wearing shoulder holsters. A lengthy bibliography serves to underline Wilson’s breadth of research and to indicate the scope of literature espionology can now lay claim to.
