Attaining Perfect Intelligence – part 2
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Part II – The intelligence working plan: the beating heart of the intelligence organization
In order to implement the plan ordered by the political leadership and put into action according to the blueprint of the organizational top echelon, intelligence organizations require a great deal of organizational, technological, operational and diplomatic effort. This input is called for in order to position the output resulting from the overall high-budget intense work.
Most intelligence organizations worldwide make ample use of the following tools to realize their missions:
SIGINT – Signals Intelligence – Intelligence gathering using technical means: the flood of information in is this day and age dictates a clear and precise definition of the intelligence objectives and the data required concerning them. Once those have been defined and designated, a range of tools are implemented in order to garner the data and deliver it covertly to HQ. Intelligence objectives are quite often people (at times instruments, machinery or military installations, but these are of course operated by people).
- Engaging cellular providers and receiving content (audio) and data on cellular calls, complete with text: who called whom and when, positioning data and modus operandi
- Engaging with Internet providers to receive surfing data, complete with time and date, content and behavioral patterns
- Emails: content, recipients
- Visual recording means (cameras and video recorders) or audio recording means (recording devices) used vis-à-vis intelligence objectives
- Sensors for specific targets, e.g. chemical or radiological
- Proximity, heat and infra-red sensors and so on
- Aerial imagery captured by aircraft, unmanned autonomous systems and satellites
- Surfing social media, forums and other forms of OSINT (Open Source Intelligence)
HUMINT – Human Intelligence – through spies, operatives and collaborators: Human intelligence affords numerous advantages complete with serious disadvantage. Using spies and agents in enemy territory and overseeing them is considered a special ‘skill’ incorporating psychology, a great deal of imagination, courage and boldness, in addition to the toll it takes in terms of large resources, personal risk, general perils and at time political hazards. In many cases, the gulf between adversaries – separated by language and jargon, culture and religion, customs and ways of life – can only be breached by real-life agents who are able to pass on to their handlers coveted “golden intelligence news”.
Diplomatic cooperation: when a country’s intelligence organization is tasked with intelligence gathering in an enemy country, this sometimes calls for ‘a marriage’ of sorts between certain intelligence organizations, even ones whose respective countries do not have any diplomatic relations, but do share common goals and needs – as well as a mutual adversary. The cooperation between India and Pakistan in the 1980s against the invasion of the Soviet Union to Afghanistan is one of the relatively known examples, but there have been many such examples throughout history.
Such intelligence cooperation, often the outcome of an ad hoc alliance (sometimes agreed upon stealthily) between rival governments (and sometimes between friendly ones), reap operational benefits. Such cooperation agreements between rivals with a mutual adversary go a long way in promoting the overall intelligence map, especially thanks to the relatively low risk involved in implementing intelligence means under diplomatic guises.
Intelligence cooperation is not entirely devoid of risks. The most common and prominent among these risks is a political crisis over the discovery of intelligence operations under the facade of legitimate diplomacy (such as the recent deportation of a US operative stationed in Berlin under the cover of a diplomatic mission).
The third and final part in this series will focus on the process of receiving raw intelligence data, screening the data, appraising and assessing it, and eventually disseminating intelligence products to the various military consumers and political recipients.
