The National Resources Division (NR) is the domestic division of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

. Its main function is to conduct voluntary debriefings of U.S. citizens who travel overseas for work or to visit relatives, and to recruit foreign students,

diplomat A diplomat (from grc, δίπλωμα; romanized ''diploma'') is a person appointed by a state or an intergovernmental institution such as the United Nations or the European Union to conduct diplomacy with one or more other states or internati ...

s and business people to become CIA assets when they return to their countries.

History

The division was formed in 1991 by the merger of the CIA's Foreign Resources Division and the National Collection Division. The Foreign Resources Division was created in 1963 as the Domestic Operations Division and given the responsibility for clandestine operational activities of the Clandestine Services conducted within the United States against foreign targets. Its eventual function was to locate foreign nationals of special interest who resided in the United States and recruit them to serve as CIA assets when they returned home (or to some other foreign location). The National Collection Division collected

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as the ...

from U.S. residents who had traveled abroad, including

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophica ...

s, technologists,

economist An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are ...

s, and energy experts returning from foreign locations.

References

External links

CIA homepage
{{Central Intelligence Agency Central Intelligence Agency domestic surveillance operations