This community is atrophied no longer a close look at its past, present, and future is overdue. Japan was in ruins and its intelligence community was at its feeblest at the end of the Asia-Pacific War, a time of momentous institutional enhancement of the U.S. In January 1946, when the triumphant President Harry S. Truman created a National Intelligence Authority and the post of director of central intelligence to coordinate government-wide intelligence activities, he seized the chance to have some fun. The president gave his senior deputies black cloaks, mustaches, and wooden daggers. Who did not appreciate James Bond, George Smiley, or Jason Bourne? And who was not amused by Boris Badenov, Natasha Fatale, Maxwell Smart, or Austin Powers?1 xi intelligence apparatus-and those of its allies-were not always playgrounds for practitioners, but thanks more to novelists, screenwriters, cartoonists, and comedians than to scholars, “licensed skullduggery”-and the secret agents who practice it-became Cold War stereotypes and satirical fodder. Of course, real spies have always been among us, many associated with the wisdom of our greatest leaders. According to Numbers 13, Moses sent spies into Canaan under God’s direct order to report on the land conditions. In Kings 2, the Assyrians drew on an extensive intelligence network during their invasion of the kingdom of Judah in 701 BC.
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