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Journal
• Your goal is to write 3-4 paragraphs of 4-5 sentences each about the top three points/issues you learned about during the previous two weeks.
• You should put an emphasis in your blog on what was your top takeaway from the previous two weeks’ topics.
Intelligence Analysis; Policy & Practice Week 1 Lecture Notes
• Lowenthal Chapters 1 & 2
• Clark pgs. 22-33.
• Week 1 Lecture Notes
What is Intelligence?
Good question! What is this secretive part of national and homeland security?
How does it integrate into decision and policy-making procedures and what value does it add to our defense, homeland security and foreign policy efforts?
First, the gathering, analysis and use of intelligent information have been around since humans took their steps and documented for the first time in the Old Testament. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel. From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, everyone a chief among them.”1 It is a natural step in decision-making. Intelligence can be a means for decisionmakers to gain an edge or to reduce risk. Review the paper Decision Advantage in the Required Readings folder for more thinking on that. To the uninformed, intelligence is information, but to us security professionals, we know better. First, intelligence for the most part is classified or secretive. This causes much friction and controversy, as the intelligence process tends not to be a transparent government process to the American public. Consider the past controversy regarding the National Security Agency’s alleged spying on Americans and the most one involving possible spying on American citizens by DHS intelligence—this issue and other directly related ones from our history will be examined later in this course. There is good reason for the secrecy part of intelligence—much intelligence would lose its value if all knew it. Second and most important, intelligence is information that meets the needs of decision-makers and has been collected, analyzed and produced to meet those needs. For more information on intelligence, review the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) Consumers Guide to National Intelligence. 1 Numbers Chapter 13 “Keep giving me things that make me think.” Henry Kissinger to DCI Richard Helms (George, Roger, Intelligence in the National Security Enterprise; An Introduction, Georgetown Univ Press, 2020.) 2 Intelligence is much more than information. It is knowledge that has been created by humans for use by humans. It is information with meaning to support operations, policymaking, planning, etc. I think it is good to remember Mark Lowenthal’s saying, “All intelligence is information; not all information is intelligence.” See Figure 1.1 below for a graphic representation of how information is transformed into intelligence. Figure 1.1: Information into Intelligence. Why Should I Care? One personal goal I have for each of you in this class is to become a much more informed taxpayer regarding the role of intelligence at all levels of our government. So, as taxpayers, do you know how much this secret part of the federal government costs each year? An estimated $75 billion dollars! For more historical information on the federal government’s intelligence budget, check out the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) website. Later in the class, we learn about the budgeting process within the context of intelligence oversight. 3 As a professional, you want good intelligence as it can enable you to do more with less. Intelligence is a force multiplier as well as a means of conducting less risky operations. This is true for business ventures too. Fabled Chinese general and philosopher Sun Tzu was a believer in intelligence: “It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.” Models of Intelligence I choose to use the Lowenthal book, Intelligence; From Secrets to Policy, for this class for several reasons, but one of the primary ones is his use of three models to think about intelligence. • Intelligence as process: Intelligence can be thought of as how certain types of information are required and requested, collected, analyzed and disseminated. We learn much about the intelligence process aka the intelligence cycle throughout the class. • Intelligence as a product: Intelligence can be thought of as the product of the processes. This is the actual intelligence information provided to its consumers (reports, assessments, targeting data, etc.). • Intelligence as organization: Intelligence can be thought of as the unit that carry out its various functions (CIA, DIA, FBI’s National Security Div, Treasury Dept’s OFAC, IBM’s competitor research, etc.). Using these three models, anytime someone starts talking about intelligence with you, ensure you place the conversation within one of these models. Lowenthal’s models are based upon the thinking of Sherman Kent, the grandfather of intelligence analysis in the US. Kent joined the CIA in the early 1950s after serving in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War 2 and teaching at Yale University. Kent is also known for better defining the role of the intelligence analyst/officer. His belief that “intelligence analysis is a service arm to policymakers and that it should not be a formulator of objectives, a drafter of policy, or a maker of plans” is a good rule of thumb on how intelligence professionals engage with their customers. The intelligence community’s engagement with its customers will be further explored in Week 5. 4 Summary There is not standard or legislated definition of intelligence in the government at any level (much like the definition of terrorism) so I have adopted Lowenthal’s, which he calls a “working concept.” “Intelligence is the process by which specific types of information important to national security are requested, collected, analyzed, and provided to policy makers; the products of that process; the safeguarding of these processes and this information by counterintelligence activities; and the carrying out of operations as requested by lawful authorities.
Week 2 Class Notes (Chapter 2 Lowenthal)
Historical Origins During the various French & Indian Wars on the North American continent, prior to 1765, both sides (France, Great Britain and sometimes Spain) used both military and civilian scouts, including Native Americans, to gather tactical level intelligence on each other’s military movements. Roberts’ Rangers, an American manned scout unit, working for the British, became famous for its reconnaissance missions behind the French lines. In the years preceding the American Revolution, Americans interested in seeking independence set up Committees of Correspondence to share information between communities. Out of that collaboration and as the threat of violence grew in the early 1770s, Committees of Safety were formed to “alarm, muster, and cause to be assembled” the colonial militia and Minutemen. In Massachusetts and neighboring colonies, a robust system of passing near-real time threat information was created using a network of alarm riders and audible signals (gunshots, church bell ringing). When Paul Revere started his famous ride, his actual mission was to activate this intelligence dissemination network. Within a few hours, most of eastern Massachusetts was alarmed and riders had also reached New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and the Province of Maine (belonged to Massachusetts then). That alarm system allowed for the mobilization of thousands of New England militia to respond to the British. Quite a feat considering the level of technology that existed in 1775! Upon taking command of the Continental Army, George Washington started immediately incorporating the intelligence function into his army’s operations. Some of the highlights of Washington’s intelligence efforts include: • Knowlton’s Rangers, a special small army scouting unit used to gather information on the British Army. Current US Army Intelligence traces its roots to the creation of the Rangers in 1776. • Culper Ring, a ring of civilian and military spies working in Long Island and Manhattan to maintain surveillance on the main British Army base. Of note, the AMC television series, Turn, is based upon this spy ring. “There is nothing more necessary than good intelligence to frustrate a designing enemy, & nothing requires greater pains to obtain.” George Washington 2 My favorite Washington intelligence story, and one that is somewhat controversial to historians1 , is his use of John Honeyman, a cattle drover as a double agent. The time was December 1776—the “time that try men’s souls”— things looked bleak for the Continental Army assembled on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. Washington hired Honeyman, (Washington was his handler—we will learn more about HUMINT “handlers” later in the course.) a cattle drover, to be a double agent. Honeyman was to become a HUMINT source for the British while maintaining his loyalty to the Americans. Honeyman’s civilian job was to buy cattle in one town and move them to other towns to sell in the towns along the Delaware River—a perfect cover for collecting information in a large area. Honeyman did the job perfectly and planted disinformation on Washington’s Army with the British and Hessian commanders while providing tactical intel on British troop dispositions to Washington. One story I recently learned more about was the efforts of John Jay, a future Supreme Court Justice, who led the first possible counterintelligence investigation that led to the unraveling of the plot to kill or kidnap George Washington just before the British landed in New York in 1776. Jay might have been the true first American counterintelligence officer and this effort was just the first of many remarkable things he did for our fledgling country.2 Once assuming the Presidency, Washington initiated use of secret intelligence operatives as an executive branch mission but only on a case-by-case basis. His first Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, used a “wheel cypher” to encode his messages initially when he was the American Minister to France from 1784-89 and then when serving in the new federal government in 1790s. 1 Historians sometimes disregard the Honeyman story, as there are no first-hand sources on it. The story was kept in the family for decades and passed down by oral history stories to new generations. I, for one, like it and believe it. 2 Meltzer, Brad, and Mensch, Josh. The First Conspiracy; The Secret Plot to Kill George Washington, Forty-Four Steps, Inc, NYC, 2018. 3 Subsequent presidents used spies and covert activities in the War of 1812 and the Mexican War of 1846. The next step in the evolution of American intelligence was during the Civil War. Technology improvements such as the telegraph were innovations that were capitalized by the opposing armies for disseminating information, and probably the first cases of SIGINT interception in the US. My favorite development was the first use of aerial surveillance and imagery when the Army of the Potomac utilized a balloon corps! Allen Pinkerton and others developed HUMINT networks on both sides to good effect. But in the end, the value of the intelligence process was ignored once the fighting stopped. Figure 1. Civil War Reconnaissance Balloon.3 The Civil War also witnessed the development of the first multi-source intelligence analytic effort in the US Army. Led by Major General George Sharp USA—some call him the father of all-source intelligence, the Army’s Bureau of Military Intelligence supported the operational and tactical intelligence needs of the Army of the Potomac.4 The Bureau analyzed information ranging from OSINT newspapers to deciphered semaphore messages. Overall, the Bureau produced
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