Insurgent sources

[max161]

I learned a long time ago to be very cautious about taking classified sources too seriously. Technical stuff (classified) is often very good but at the same time very limited. Today, you can get stuff as good or better than we got during the Cuban Missile Crisis from Google Earth! But you still can't look inside a cave in Afghanistan. HUMINT from espionage nets is essential for denied areas (like the old USSR) but a good reporter usually gets better stuff than official reporting whether from the Embassy or intel agencies in relatively open societies. One problem is that the foreign correspondents are fewer than in the old days and don't have enough time on the ground to develop the kinds of sources their predecessors did. That said, there are many more unofficial observers on the ground today and they have access to the internet. Still, you have to be careful of using what you find on the net.

Bottom line is that some of the best stuff on Al Qaeda, for example, is from open sources like Peter Bergen, Rohan Gunaratna, and Raymond Ibrahim's The Al Qaeda Reader. Note that all the world's intel agencies were surprised by the Mumbai attacks but I wouldn't be shocked to find that they were predicted in some open source (I have no knowldge that they were but it would not surprise me).

Cheers

JohnT

And in addition, when we use classified information and write classified reports the audience that can be influenced is narrow. Use as much open source as possible and keep your reports unclassified and you have a better chance of making a positive contribution.

In the intelligence realm we think "having a need to know" and compartmentalization. When we think about information from an operational perspective we think "who else should know." E.G., who needs to know that information in order to achieve an operational or strategic effect in accordance with the campaign plan.

People are enamored with classified information and think it lends credibility to what they are writing but 1) most of the classified information can be found in open sources and 2) just because it is classified does not necessarily make it more credible than open source information. John is exactly right. The researchers he mentions (and I would add Bruce Hoffman and Marc Sagemen among many others - and like it or not journalists are also some of the best information providers) provide some of the best threat analysis that we have and they write for open source consumption. Don't discount their writings just because they are not classified.