The National Resources Division (NRD) is the Central Intelligence Agency component responsible for foreign intelligence collection conducted inside the United States. It was created in the 1980s, during the Reagan administration, by CIA Director William J. Casey.[1][2]
The division does not engage in domestic espionage — “it’s illegal for the CIA to spy on U.S. soil.” Its function is rather to collect foreign intelligence from American businesspeople, corporate executives, and other private-sector travelers returning from “denied areas” — countries in which the CIA cannot maintain a clandestine presence because the operational risk is unacceptable. At the time of the division’s founding, denied areas included China, the Soviet Union, and Cuba.[2][3]
Method
NRD case officers approach U.S. business leaders overtly. “We’ll just go and say, ‘Hi, we’re from the CIA, here’s our business card. We know you’re a patriotic American — can we ask you some questions about your recent trip?’ And they always say yes.”[3]
The division maintains offices throughout the United States, “all over America — you’d never know they were there.” Nothing about the operation is clandestine; the activity is “all on the up-and-up.”[4]
Output
The division produces “an insane amount of intelligence.”[4]