National Security Division NSD

After the September 11 attacks and the 9/11 Commission's findings that intelligence and law enforcement had failed to share information, Congress created the National Security Division in the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2006. It brought together the department's counterterrorism and counterespionage prosecutors and its intelligence lawyers under one Assistant Attorney General, the first new litigating division in decades.

The division prosecutes terrorism, espionage, leaks of classified information, illegal exports of sensitive technology, and sanctions violations. Its Office of Intelligence prepares and presents the government's applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and oversees how the FBI and intelligence agencies use surveillance authorities. It also represents the department on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews foreign purchases of American companies for national security risks.

The division enforces the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people working in the United States on behalf of foreign governments and political parties to register and disclose their activities, a law that drew new attention through prosecutions of political figures in the late 2010s. In 2025 the Attorney General directed that criminal FARA charges be reserved mainly for conduct resembling traditional espionage, a shift supporters saw as ending selective prosecutions and critics saw as weakening defenses against foreign influence.