The Pros And Cons Of HUMINT Intelligence

As victory in WWII appeared imminent, the USAAF under General Hap Arnold commissioned studies to assess the impact of strategic bombing in the war. In addition to results about strategic bombing, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) concluded that “the U.S. should have an intelligence organization capable of knowing the strategic vulnerabilities, capabilities and intentions of any potential enemy.” In spite of the aforementioned dearth of intelligence on the USSR, very specific information was needed for military and political leaders to make decisions regarding their strengths, weaknesses, and capabilities. Additionally, the strategic bomber forces needed a list of verified targets in case conflict with the USSR broke out. In order to fill the major voids in information the US civilian leaders employed a bifurcated approach: human intelligence (HUMINT) obtained through agency operatives, and signals (SIGINT) and imagery (IMINT) intelligence acquired

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

Intelligence analysis?is the process of taking known information about situations and bodies of strategic, operational, or tactical importance, characterizing the known, and, with appropriate statements of probability, the future actions in those situations and by those entities (Richards, 2010).?The descriptions are drawn from what may only be available in the form of deliberately deceptive information; the?analyst?must correlate the similarities among deceptions and extract a common truth. Although its practice is found in its purest form inside national?intelligence agencies, its methods are also applicable in fields such as business intelligence?or?competitive intelligence.

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

Isaac Asimov in “What is Intelligence Anyway?” addresses the question of how society determines intelligence. While in the army, Asimov scored impressively high on an aptitude test and, for a few hours, a huge fuss was made out of him. When Asimov then had to return to KP duty as a buck private he realized that while impressive, his test score did not hold much value. Throughout life, he found that registering high test scores was almost second nature to him. Getting high scores gave him confidence in the fact that he was highly intelligent and he expected everyone else to think that as well. Over time, Asimov came to conclude that scores are merely a reflection of one’s ability to answer questions designed by the test maker. He used an example

In conducting the Counterinsurgency agent networks and noncombatant-targeted violence study, researchers attempted to identify how and why recruited foreign agents become subjects of violence. The researchers, also attempt to identifying in what manner and why this transpires is crucial for emerging intelligence methods to improve and implement effective Counterinsurgency standard operating procedures.

Intelligence in this day in age is a vital component of a countries security. The newest proposal increases intelligence spending between 2 and 3 billion dollars, a total adding to nearly $35 billion. In addition to military enhancement, the FBI and other law enforcement/intelligence agencies will also be included in this proposal. A new system has been proposed by President Bush that all information be shared among all agencies. DoD, FBI, and the Department of Counterterrorist Center have drawn closer together to create a Terrorist Threat Integration Center to evaluate information blended from all sources associated with terrorism and to act upon those findings accordingly.

Gathering of correct and reliable information about possible planned activities, methods, resources, bases etc of terrorist organizations is crucial to prevention of terrorism. The right information at the right time can help avert disastrous attacks, saving countless lives. Most nations have extensive mechanisms and organizations in place to collect intelligence to protect their citizens, such as the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), British MI5, Russian FSB, Israeli Mossad etc. the 27 members of the EU all have financial intelligence units, acronym

Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) is the collection of information from internet, cellphone, radar, laser, and high-tech electronic warfare emitters and sensors (Gay, 2005). SIGINT could be used to intercept communications between Hezbollah leaders and commanders in the field to Hezbollah command centers in Lebanon. SIGINT can also be intercepted with leaders and influencers in Iran and Syria focusing on Hezbollah funding sources, political support, weapons movements and counterintelligence measures against the Israelis. Imagery Intelligence (IMINT) could be used to identify the suspected weapons movements from Syria to forward positions in Lebanon. Weapons pipelines from Damascus Syria to Lebanon could be vulnerable to drone and satellite imagery as most weapons supplied by Iran come

In the intelligence community, there are some collection challenges, redundancy is one of the issues always to be mentioned. Redundancy can affect the core of the intelligence work ethics, resources management, budging, work force, future planning, and development methods. Also, the capability of the intelligence agencies and departments to predict attacks, analyze the indications and warning (I&W). The congress oversight of the intelligence community and the operations of the sixteen agencies imbedded in the community, to regulate the funds and allocate proper budget, also to monitor that the rights of US person are not violated in any collection method.

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.

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

Intelligence is a dependable instrument of its own to generate information that establishes the base of National Security in the United States. Intelligence has been used since the beginning of history to provide information on enemy threats and how to prevent a mass disasters. It has been used for wars, national security, military tactics, etc. Intelligence has been available since the revolutionary war and our first president George Washington and other leaders of the world have used intelligence to protect their countries. Intelligence is the dominant and the backbone of homeland Security and it is ceaseless learning about it. National Intelligence agents train tirelessly to fight and create

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).