This paper will highlight the development of human intelligence (HUMINT) and the importance of it in intelligence operations. HUMINT can provide information in areas that technical intelligence cannot and also drive the collection requirements of these disciplines when additional evidence is needed. HUMINT is critical in espionage efforts and has undergone the greatest changes from the start of the Cold War to the launch of the War on Terrorism.
Definition of HUMINT
Human Intelligence or HUMINT is intelligence that is collected through espionage commonly by sending clandestine officers to foreign countries in an attempt to recruit spies and gather valuable information. HUMINT can be collected through overt methods, openly known, or
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It would progress through ONI, and later the Army’s military information section, with the use of military and naval attaché’s worldwide providing intelligence on naval bases, shipyards, weaponry, and anything else that would be of use on the U.S. Navy’s possible adversaries. Attaché’s used secret agents to gather information that they couldn’t collect themselves and during the war when the demand for intelligence increased; the Army’s attaché system wouldn’t be established until the U.S. entered WWI. After WWII, President Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 which created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); one of the three primary purposes to create a window into Stalin’s thoughts and ambitions particularly when it came to Western Europe. When it was reasoned that U.S. espionage should remain covert, CIA, under the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947, was directed to conduct HUMINT operations; operations grew enormously from 1948 to 1952.
Importance of HUMINT
The authors of the Dulles Report in 1948 indicated that communist countries provided little open source intelligence and that clandestine means were the only way to gain any information. Even today, CIA employs several intelligence disciplines which utilize human, signals, geospatial, measurements and signature intelligence which combined and analyzed correctly, result in successful operations. However, when
The CIA is one of the U.S. foreign inteligency agencies, responsible for getting and analyzing information about foreign government, corporations, individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the U.S. government. The State Department's Bureau or inteligence and reserch and theDefense Department'sdefense inteligence agency comprise the other two. Its headquarters is inLangley, Virginia, across the Potomac River from D.C. The Agency, created in 1947 by President Harry S. Trueman, is a descendant of the Office of stratigic Services(OSS) of World War 2. The OSS was dissolved in October 1945 but
After World War II American intelligence had the need to be transformed. The inexperience along with bureaucracy and poor coordination among American intelligence officers obligated the United States intelligence community to change dramatically in order to confront the new challenges that emerged after the end of WWII. From Early America through WWI the intelligence system of the United States of America was involved in operations in which they had to construct intelligence systems virtually from scratch (Andrew 1995). Human intelligence was already developed, but with certain limitations and other intelligence disciplines were underdeveloped and very seldom sophisticated. After WWI America recessed and settled in a period of peace. The
Since 1947, when the Central Intelligence Agency was created, the United States has had an organization that has the sole purpose of conducting covert operations, collecting information, and providing that same information to the respective personnel. Although, this, by some, has been considered conflictual as the CIA is handling those three actions. It is considered that this may be a conflict of interest in a means of, the same people that are collecting information, creating a bias opinion, are conducting the covert action being carried out. This could create a bias work environment. Due to the professionalism and 60 years of success to show for it, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Clandestine Service (NCS) conducting
As we have seen throughout the entire history of warfare, ancient world terrorism, political intrigue and elitist terrorism of the middle ages, and into modern terrorism, intelligence is of vital importance on both sides. Armed forces have always used intelligence of some form be it sneaking up a hill and scouting what is on the other side to the use of modern platforms such as
The 9/11 attacks opened the avenue for a scrutiny of the performance and ability of the intelligence community to detect any threats to the safety of the United States. The media, politicians, reformists and other interested parties would not comprehend how such an attack would happen without the knowledge of the intelligence community. However, it is important to consider the fact that the attack was one of its kind and could not be approached with the resources and expertise used in other initiative such as the cold war. Therefore, the need to restructure the intelligence community arose from the view that it was still operating in the mindset and spirit of the cold war even in the modern era that had seen a revolutionary change of warfare
The Cold War with the Soviet Union and its allies started almost immediately after the end of WWII, and would be the next step for the U.S intelligence community. The signing of the National Security Act of 1947 by president Truman drastically restructured the military and intelligence community, creating the Department of Defense (DoD) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) while establishing a clear chain of command (CIA, 2008). With the establishment of the CIA and director of central intelligence, The National Security Act of 1947 the U.S had a permanent and legitimized intelligence community, one that could start to develop and refine their own methods of operation and traditions (Lowenthal, 2017). The National Security Act of 1947 would go largely unchanged for 57 years, not being severely altered until 2004.
Intelligence was only gathered on foreign military forces up until J Edgar Hoover’s FBI was tasked with watching radical groups who may have something to do with national security as we know it today; only the FBI’s role in IC ended with the outbreak of WWII (Moore
The Intelligence Community is a cooperative federation of sixteen separate United States government agencies that worked separately and together on matters of foreign relations and national security. One of these agencies is the Central Intelligence Agency which is to collect, analyze, evaluate, disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the President and senior US government policymakers in making decisions relating to national security. Therefore this paper will discuss Central Intelligence Agency history and the role it plays in combating acts of terrorism.
Intelligence is the knowledge that provides security for our country; experience comes from our analysts and ability is derived from our freedoms. Over many decades all of this has been accomplished without the use of advanced technology, mainly through highly trained operatives who have infiltrated and obtained information from both foreign and homeland enemies. The current advancements have provided options that ensure the safety and efficiency of intelligence operations, surveillance being a
Production of intelligence has change drastically since the Cold War. During the Cold War, the main intelligence gathering methods were mainly organized on the collection side, using SIGINT, IMINT, and HUMINT. Today we face a new enemy, where we must change our typical intelligence gathering methods. As we changed our methods,
The beginning of our present day Counter Intelligence (CI) began after WWII with the combined efforts of the U.S. X-2 branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Special Intelligence Services (SIS). These offices gave way to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) responsible for countering activities of foreign intelligence services in the U.S. and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) responsible for coordinating U.S. counterintelligence activities in foreign countries. Within the framework of the development of the United States of America there was not a devised explanation for the use of intelligence within the armed forces. Spies were present during the Revolutionary war. Washington had a spy ring organized called the Culper Ring organized by Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, spying on the British in New York City. The Culper spies sent messages back to Washington divulging information on British activities at their headquarters based in New York city, as explained in Alexander Rose’s book “Washington’s Spies: the story of America’s first spy Ring”. The need for a CI mission in the U.S. during the Cold War after WWII was paramount to the protection of the U.S. against enemy treats and ability to gain information that would support the U.S. power to negotiate. During WWII the OSS and the SIS mirrored the British intelligence services structure and in combination developed methods of signals intelligence that helped to break
The United States Intelligence community draws on advanced technology and analytical techniques. An intelligence process that sets objectives, collects, analyzes, and report findings, with feedback loops integrated throughout. Explicitly, the intelligence community advantages technology and tradecraft within a proscribed process. However, estimation of threats and decision-making are outcomes of human thinking. Analysts and policymakers create mental models, or short cuts to manage complex, changing environments. In other words, to make sense of ambiguous or uncertain situations, humans form cognitive biases. Informed because of personal experience, education, and specifically applied to intelligence analysis, Davis
Central to threat assessment is intelligence to help develop our own targets to deter or punish state sponsors. In this regard, the development of long-term human source intelligence [HUMINT] is often cited as a vital component in building our ability to preempt attacks. Critical to threat assessment is the need to get smarter, not just in protecting against the threat from outsiders, but smarter about the threat posed by people with legitimate access. This includes acts of carelessness by insiders. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. We need to continue our efforts to enhance our vigilance to minimize any potential threats posed by third country nationals- for example, threats posed by outsiders working at U.S. embassies and military installations overseas.
Intelligence is one of the first lines of defense used by the United States to protect the Country against both foreign and domestic threats (Johnson, 2010). There are many ways and methods of intelligence collections employed by the intelligence community such as “spies, eavesdropping, technical sources, and openly available materials” etc (Clark, 2013). Method used also depends on many factors such as available resources, time, agency involved, and intelligence collection source. U.S Intelligence agencies use different collection and analytical method that suit their collection function, structure and pro¬cess. For example, DNI/OSC relies on open source (OSINT), CIA uses human intelligence (HUMINT) tactic, DIA uses measurements and signatures intelligence (MASINT), NSA employs signals intelligence (SIGINT), and NGA utilizes imagery intelligence (IMINT) techniques for their intelligence collections (Clark, 2013).
Counterintelligence (CI) involves actions aimed at protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage from penetration and disruption by hostile nations or their intelligence services (Lowenthal, 2014). Three main components of Counterintelligence include collection, defensive and offensive. The collection is the ability to gather intelligence information about rivalry capabilities against own nation; defensive part of CI involves measures to prevent and thwart other nations ' attempts to penetrate into own nation 's intelligence system; while an offensive aspect deal with running double agents to penetrate, manipulate, exploit, and control targeted adversaries. CI is said to be the most essential aspect of the intelligence disciplines, in the sense that it helps in collecting vast quantities of secret information and produce an excellent analysis of intelligence, although, ineffective counterintelligence measures may diminish confidence in the final results (Van Cleave, 2013).