On 1 January 1954, the Thai government established the Department of Administrative Intelligence under the Council of Ministers of Thailand.

It was renamed again under the premiership of Prem Tinsulanonda as the National Intelligence Agency on August 30, 1985.

Since then, it has served as the national intelligence agency directly under the Prime Minister's Office.

[6] In 2017, a plan was hatched to consolidate the efforts of 27 separate Thai intelligence agencies.

[7] News reports appearing in early 2020 indicate that Thail intelligence agency, National Intelligence Agency was a customer of Crypto AG, a Swiss company secretly owned by the US CIA and West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) that manufactured compromised encryption machines.