HUMINT, Informants and more (merged thread)
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The Fundamentals of Islamic Extremism: Psychological Considerations for Developing and Managing Counterterrorism Sources
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In this paper, several psychological considerations that may affect source development and management are identified and described. While a host of factors will influence any operation, the focus in this paper is only on the psychological factors that may be useful to those engaged in counterterrorism operations....
A response to Mr. Owen's definition
(Taken from another thread and reduced to developing sources point)
The hardest part is determining whom to kill. The answer is intelligence. Intelligence can be coerced, paid for or freely given. The question is, what is the most accurate? Coercion is rarely accurate and paid for intelligence is frequently misleading. Therefore, the best intelligence is that freely given. And, the best way to get that intelligence is to convince locals you care about the best outcome. The way to do that is to try and wins hearts and minds.
Michael C. at www.onviolence.com
When is information valuable?
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Originally Posted by
Uboat509
Michael C said:
This has certainly become the conventional wisdom but it doesn't square with my experience. Police make extensive use of paid informants and coercion is routinely used successfully in both law enforcement and military circles. My experience in Iraq further lead me to become automatically suspicious of anyone who provided me with "free" information. They usually had an agenda. People like to speak in absolutes like these but, in my experience, they rarely hold up to close scrutiny.
SFC W
Hello. I did outside the wire HUMINT in Iraq for 16 months, attached in direct support to a combat arms BN. For us it was a matter of finding people whose interests (self, family, tribe) coincided with ours at enough points to carefully time a pitch to cooperate. Sometimes this required the application of subtle but effective pressure. Arabs in general, but especially in Iraq, are experts in looking at angles for self preservation and are quick to detect bull####, while smiling to your face and telling you what they think you want to hear. Authentic self interest is the best motivator. Information in our AO was never given for altruistic reasons, or because it was the right thing to do. Ever. This is the hardest cultural lesson for beginning HUMINT folks to learn. In addition, less people over time will come forward to give accurate information to a unit whose actions derive from "movement to contact" command philosophy rather than "think to contact." Surgical and accurate kinetic operations, snatch and grabbing the right people with as small a footprint as possible, which begets more intelligence, which leads to more surgical ops....etc.. That's part of what gets people off the fence. I know S3's like to plan these large cordon and search operations, because they make great powerpoint presentations and have cool sounding code names, but shouldn't be done if smaller targeted ops are available. Again, just my experience: operations planned for the sake of operations. I've seen it. People won't risk coming forward if they don't think the unit can effectively act. 95% of our BN's kinetic operations were based on intel from my team, and were very targeted. The use of money: no problem. I don't mind paying thousands of dollars (MNCI Rewards program) to a source who is delivering HVT's. I have enough checks and balances in my AO to know when or if that is a bad idea and how to deal with it accordingly if it becomes a negative. I knew where my sources lived and who their enemies were. I wouldn't call it coercion, but we did eventually reach that point in our relationship where the source realized it might not be a good idea to screw us over. Like I said, mutual points of interest. It didn't have to be said, it was understood.
Knowing where to put pressure in a family/tribally oriented society can reap rewards, including getting members of the insurgency giving you information. Schoolhouses tends to teach in terms of black and white, which is a natural CYA motivated behavior. Counterinsurgency and, I would imagine, LE street intelligence operations should be seeing shades of gray. It was surreal at times meeting covertly with people on our HVT list, and we always made sure we had the right leverage, but the bigger payoffs are what we were looking for and what we got. I would imagine that much of what works best isn't talked about or formally taught. One tends to look at things a little differently when soldiers are dying around you.
I don't say my experience is normative for every HUMINT experience. I operated in a unique, isolated tribal area for 16 straight months, which gave me the opportunity to really master my AO and who was who. After we had proven ourselves, we had 100% support from our supported BN Commander. I'm talking in the context of actionable intelligence developed over months, which is a luxury I know many units do not have. I also had two very squared away CAT II American citizen interpreters who spoke native Iraqi Arabic - again, something that might not be normative.
By the way, sorry for jumping in here. You guys all seem to know what you're talking about and I know some of you have a lot more experience and historical perspective than I do.
Sorry I missed this earlier.
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Originally Posted by
Michael C
The hardest part is determining whom to kill. The answer is intelligence. Intelligence can be coerced, paid for or freely given.
Well source motivation can and does often alter radically, and what he/she says and does may actually conflict with the facts.
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The question is, what is the most accurate? Coercion is rarely accurate and paid for intelligence is frequently misleading. Therefore, the best intelligence is that freely given.
Operational experience from Malaya, Aden, Kenya, Colombia, Sri-Lanka, Cyprus, and Northern Ireland would not support those statements. Money and sex are huge motivators. Physical and psychological coercion can and work.
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And, the best way to get that intelligence is to convince locals you care about the best outcome. The way to do that is to try and wins hearts and minds.
....and between that ideal and the real world is a whole mess of compromises.
The murky world of the supergrass
The other day the BBC reported on the video evidence given by Saajid Badat in a current US terrorism trial:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17821854
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It is the first time a convicted UK terrorist has entered into an agreement with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to give evidence in a trial against other alleged terrorists....Prosecutors earlier said Badat's "main motivation" in helping had been to prove he had renounced terrorism with actions as well as words....He saw himself and others like him as victims manipulated and exploited by Bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, they said.
This has now been followed up in this wide ranging article:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...upergrass.html
Which ends with:
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...we should not idealise such figures, nor ignore the injustices that reliance on the honesty of criminals and terrorists sometimes entails. But supergrasses do afford a glimpse into the moral squalor of terrorist organisations, while their existence will surely shake the confidence of al-Qaeda cells and their operations. That is something in itself.
Infiltrating AQ: a double edged sword?
Infiltration of an enemy is a well known tactic, it does have unintended consequences sometimes. The story of the Dane Morten Storm has been around awhile and in May 2013 Mark Stout, now JHU and then @ The International Spy Museum, conducted a recommended Q&A:http://www.spymuseum.org/multimedia/...ists-in-yemen/
Clints Watts provided a summary a week ago:http://selectedwisdom.com/?p=1185
No mention was made of a possible unintended result, which today was given a lurid headline in the Daily Mail, citing a CNN interview:
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Was Kenya mall massacre 'mastermind' backed by CIA cash? Disturbing claims by 'double agent who worked with terror suspect for years'
Link:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2nME8w2l5
MI5 community informer speaks
With official approval a Muslim community informer for the British Security Service (MI5) was interviewed by BBC Radio Four Today programme. You can listen to the short six minute podcast:https://audioboo.fm/boos/1819839-the...unity-informer
The initial approach to him was made by the police, so the person may not be an MI5 informant, but one run in concert by the police and MI5. He repeatedly refers to the role as providing clarification on a person, whether they are linked to extremism.
Game of Pawns - a FBI film
A curious public information film aimed at US students planning to visit and study in China, in part for the methods, but also the timing of the release now - as teh subject was arrested in June 2010:
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The "Game of Pawns: The Glenn Duffie Shriver Story" video dramatizes the incremental steps taken by intelligence officers to recruit Shriver and convince him to apply for jobs with the U.S. State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Link to YouTube film (28 mins):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8xlUNK4JHQ
Or the official FBI link:http://www.fbi.gov/news/news_blog/st...ligence-threat
Or Wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Duffie_Shriver
Al Jazeera Investigates - Informants
Just started to watch this 48 minutes long documentary, the focus is on FBI informants:
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Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit takes you inside the shadowy world of FBI informants and counterterrorism sting operations. Following the 9/11 attacks, the FBI set about to recruit a network of more than 15,000 informants. Al Jazeera's investigative film tells the stories of three paid FBI informants who posed as Muslims as they searched for people interested in joining violent plots concocted by the FBI.
Link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMRns...ature=youtu.be and the summary:http://webapps.aljazeera.net/aje/cus...nts/index.html
Three informants are shown, alongside FBI photos and audio - presumably from court trials, such as the 'Liberty City Seven'.
Not sure what to say so far.
Mission Almost Impossible
A Sunday NYT review of Morten Storm's book '‘Agent Storm: My Life Inside Al Qaeda and the CIA' by Scott Shane which ends with:
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In the end, his loyalty to the intelligence agencies proved no more lasting than his allegiance to Al Qaeda. Nearly as fed up with the spies as with the jihadists, Storm decided to go public and says he turned down an offer of $400,000 to keep his mouth shut. The result is a valuable window on both sides in a lethal underground war.
Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/bo...ten-storm.html
Jason Burke, of The Observer, hada review in July 2014:http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...n-storm-review
See for more reviews:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Agent-Storm-.../dp/0241003776 and http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_no...n%2Cstripbooks
A valuable window to both sides of a lethal underground war
A review on WoTR, which ends with:
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Today, when so many young Western Muslims are flocking to Syria and Iraq to join the ranks of genocidal insurgents such as the al Nusra Front and the Islamic State, this book’s insights could not be more important.
Link:http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/joi...ow-to-guide/#_
The New Spymasters by Stephen Grey
A fascinating book that crams in so much, even if it has an overwhelmingly Anglo-US focus - the Soviet era KGB and East German HVA get a mention. The historical setting is good, using Russia in 1917 as one and Northern Ireland for another. Oddly very little from Israel.
Then the 'new world' intrudes with the demise of the 'Cold War' and the 'new jihadist terrorist' threat taking centre stage.
A few puzzling references appear to non-warfare threats, notably multinationals moving billions and whether in the future there is a national political requirement to spy on them. What would have been the impact of a spy in some of our banks prior to the 2008 "crash" ?
The interplay between HUMINT and TECHINT (in all its varieties) is covered well.
I have made a lot of notes to think further about and some online, anonymous research in 2016.
Yes the author is a journalist and his Amazon bio states:
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Stephen Grey is a British writer, broadcaster, and investigative reporter with more than two decades of experience reporting on intelligence issues. He is best known for his world exclusive revelations about the CIA's program of "extraordinary rendition," as well as reports from Iraq and Afghanistan. A former foreign correspondent and investigations editor with The Sunday Times, he has reported for The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, and Channel 4, and is currently a special correspondent with Reuters. Grey is the author of Ghost Plane.
"Insiders" on both sides of the Atlantic have expressed their admiration for the book, including details they thought were not in the public domain.
Amazon (US):http://www.amazon.com/New-Spymasters...y+stephen+grey
Amazon (UK):http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Spymaste...s+stephen+grey
The spies of tomorrow will need to love data
A broad brush article by Gordon Corera, the BBC's Security Correspondent, on the future facing primarily MI6 aka SIS, the UK overseas HUMINT agency:http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/arch...-gordon-corera
He ends with:
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It's becoming ever harder to keep secrets. For spies, this new world means deconstructing everything they do and analysing it for new opportunities and weaknesses, seeking out new sources of data and the latest tools to exploit. Every new trick they use to spy on someone else needs to be tested to ensure it doesn't offer an opportunity to the other side. Nation states are working hard to exploit the insights that data offers in a new arms race of technology-driven espionage. To the victor the spoils. To the loser - as with the rest of the tech-based world, but with greater consequences - defeat and irrelevance.
HUMINT in CT Ops: Understanding the Motivations and Political Impact
I rarely spot the FBI's open bulletin, but today via Twitter I caught this article and it is even more topical as the author is a Belgian Federal Police officer. The full title is 'Using Human Sources in Counterterrorism Operations: Understanding the Motivations and Political Impact':https://leb.fbi.gov/2016/april/using...litical-impact
In Conversation with Mubin Shaikh
Via Perspectives on Terrorism (a free on-line journal):
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This interview with former undercover agent Mubin Shaikh can help academics and security practitioner sunderstand the key role played and the challenges faced by covert human intelligence sources within domestic terrorist groups. The interview highlights the identity crisis, the personal factors, and the allure of jihadi militancy that initially drove Mubin Shaikh to join a Salafi jihadist group. It investigates Shaikh’s process of disengagement from the Salafi jihadist belief system and his rediscovery of a moderate, inclusive, and benevolent form of Islam. It explores his work as an undercover agent for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team responsible for disrupting domestic terrorist groups. The “Toronto 18” terrorist cell, the key role played by undercover agents in preventing terrorist action, and the challenges posed by entrapment are also discussed.
Link:http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/...e/view/502/990
An Alternative Framework for Agent Recruitment:From MICE to RASCLS
Thanks to a "lurker" for this pointer to a 2013 article in the CIA's history bulletin, even if the title is rather odd by using two abbreviations:https://www.cia.gov/library/center-f...%20RASCALS.pdf