ThreeLetterAgencies can be further contracted to the ThreeLetterAcronym TLA, which of course may stand for either ThreeLetterAgencies or ThreeLetterAcronym. surely abbrieviation, most are not acronyms
US spook ThreeLetterAgencies:
- CIA - CentralIntelligenceAgency
- FBI - Federal Bureau of Investigation
- NRO - National Reconnaissance Office
- NSA - National Security Agency
- DOD - Department of Defense [Formerly the Department of War]
- DHS - Department of Homeland Security (US)
- DEA - Drug Enforcement Agency
- DOE - Department of Energy
- CID - Counter Intelligence Defense
Non-US spook
ThreeLetterAgencies:
- BVD - Binnenlandse VeiligheidsDienst? (Internal Security Agency; Dutch) [now replaced by the AIVD, see below]
- BND - Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service; German)
- DSD - Defence Signals Directorate - Australian communications monitoring agency
- GPU - Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie (State Political Administration)
- KGB - Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopaznosti (Committee for State Security)
Questionable if spook:
- NIH - National Institutes of Health
- OSF - Open Software Foundation (come on, this isn't even a government agency!)
- CDC - Centers for Disease Control
Are there any spook agencies with fewer or more letters in their name?
- ASIO - Australian Security Intelligence Organization
- MI5/MI6 (5 and 6 are numbers...)
- FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency)--if you believe the militiaistas in the US, this agency (which coordinates disaster relief) is in fact an organization designed to suppress public opposition if and when a coup occurs. (This particular theory was very common during the Clinton administration--strangely, the militia movement in the US has vanished since Bush was elected.)
- BATF Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. A separate paramilitary/police agency (within the US Department of Treasury, not the Department of Justice), primarily concerned with weapons smuggling. (At one point, bootlegging was the raison d'etre of this organization). Even more unprofessional than the FBI.
- BCIS Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (formerly the INS). Not true spooks (especially now that the part of the INS that went about rounding up illegal immigrants is now a separate department), but still a royal pain in the ass to deal with.
In the film version of
My Favorite Martian, SETI was portrayed as a spook US government agency, complete with jack-booted machine-gun-waving MenInBlack
?, and Wallace Shawn as a pre-eminent government scientist. (Inconceiveable!)
Are numbers allowed?
A misinformed person (me) asked: "I don't know much Hebrew, but wouldn't MOSSAD be spelled with three letters? (Since vowels are optional)"
Surprisingly (to me, as I know enough hebrew to read it, but basically zero vocabulary), Mossad (usually used as haMossad, or 'the Mossad') is actually four letters. While it is true that 'vowels are optional' in the general case, both the 'oh' and 'oo' vowels are a special case. Each has two forms; one form which, like other vowels, is optional; and another form which is based on the letter vav (pronounced 'v', of course), adorned with a dot. Mossad, then, uses this second form of the 'oh' sound, so it is written (without vowels) mem-vav-samech-dalet. For more on the Mossad, including where I found this out (from their logo), see http://www.fas.org/irp/world/israel/mossad/. For the hebrew alphabet, so you have some idea what I'm talking about, see http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm. Also... if the Mossad isn't a TLA, does that make them spookier or less spooky than the others? -- AdamBerger (Thank you Adam!)
I'll soon RefactorByCondensingQuestionAnswerPair.
A picture of the Mossad Logo, indeed showing 4 letters:
You're looking at the second line from the bottom. Remember, Hebrew is read right to left. The first letter is the 'h' of hamossad; after that, you see mvsd.
ExtendedThreeLetterAgencies? or perhaps Suffixed or Prefixed TLAs:
- GCHQ - Government Communications Head Quarters
- NKVD - Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (People's Commissariat of Interior Affairs)
- CSIS - Canadian Security Intelligence Service
- DGSE - Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (Cheese-Eating Surrender Spooks, of Rainbow Warrior fame)
- ROFL - Research Organization Foundation Library Is this for real?
- BOSS - Bureau Of State Security (apartheid-era South Africa)
- AIVD - Algemene Inlichtingen- en VeiligheidsDienst? (General Intelligence and Security Agency; Dutch) [Former BVD]
- KNMI - This is the Dutch weather bureau, and I don't remember how the acronym expands, but some people jokinly say it should be Kan Niet Meer Inschatten (roughly translated: "can't get it right anymore".)
And now, some non-spook TLAs:
- ABC - [American|Australian] Broadcasting Commission
- ACB - Australian Cricket Board
- ACM - The Association of Computing Machinery
- BBC - British Broadcasting Commission
- BIA - Bureau of Indian Affairs
- CAA - Civil Aviation Authority
- DOT - Department of Transportation
- EPA - Environmental Protection Agency
- FAA - Federal Aviation Administration
- FDA - Food and Drug Administration
- FHA - Federal Housing Administration
- FSF - Free Software Foundation
- GAO - General Accounting Office
- GSA - General Services Agency
- HHS - Health and Human Services
- HUD - Housing and Urban Development
- ICE - Immigration and Customs Enforcement
- IHS - Indian Health Service
- IRS - Internal Revenue Service
- MCC - Marylebone Cricket Club
- OMB - Office of Management and Budget
- SSA - Social Security Administration
- WHO - World Health Organization
- WWW - World Wide Web
Now you know why your taxes are so high (
AmericanCulturalAssumption, but applicable to any modern democracy).
Ironically, US taxes are very low when compared to other 'western' nations :)
WHO is part of the UN ne c'est pas? Let's have some non-US TLAs!
- NOS - Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (Dutch Broadcast Association)
- WDA - Welsh Development Agency (http://www.wda.co.uk)
- MOD - Ministry of Defence (That's British for the DoD.)
- MOT - Ministry of Transport (as in, "she's got a nice chassis, but the MOT's run out!)
- NFU - National Farmer's Union
- EEC - Now called the EU (a trade block that sometimes thinks it's a country)
- NHS - The British National Health Service
- BCS - British Computer Society
- APL - A Programming Language (!) That's not an agency, right?
- OPP - Ontario Provincial Police
- MTO - Ministry of Transportation Ontario (?)
- CTA - Can't think of anymore (it's almost time for the sun to rise!)
Some criminal Indian TLAs
- RAW - Research and Analysis Wing
- CBI - Central Bureau of Investigation
- CID - Criminal Investigation Department
Forgot the very famous Pakistani agency here
- ISI - Inter-Services Intelligence
Where I work - DavidGrayWright
- NEC - Nippon Electrical Corporation - I think
Three Letter Agencies