National Security Intelligence
Page 9
A key question looms behind discussions of intelligence threats and opportunities. How much intelligence is enough? The answer depends on the chances a nation is willing to take about the future – how much “information insurance” its leaders desire. The relationship between intelligence and risk is depicted in Figure 2.2. The fewer the risks a nation is willing to take, the more intelligence it needs. At the same time, though, the more intelligence a nation gathers, the greater the costs become – and the greater the likelihood of information overload occurring, whereby a nation finds itself inundated with so much data that it is unable to analyze what it all means. Relevant, too, is the extent of a nation's global interests. Asked if the United States collected too much information, DCI William E. Colby (1973–76) replied: “Not for a big nation. If I were Israel, I'd spend my time on the neighboring Arab armies and I wouldn't give a damn about what happened in China. We are a big power and we've got to worry about all of the world.”11
Figure 2.2 The relationship between a nation's sense of acceptable risk and its resources committed to intelligence collection and analysis
Source: Adapted from Loch K. Johnson, Bombs, Bugs, Drugs, and Thugs: Intelligence and America's Quest for Security (New York: New York University Press, 2000), p. 136.
In 2003, during the tenure of DCI George Tenet, a National Intelligence Priorities Framework (NIPF) was created as a management tool for evaluating how well the Intelligence Community was meeting its goals of stating “requirements” (key targets), along with fulfilling all the other steps in the intelligence cycle that follow the planning phase. The list of targets generated by the threat assessment is reviewed annually by the President, as well as quarterly by the Intelligence Community – with updates made along the way as required by global events and conditions.
Intelligence collection and the “Ints”
The second phase in the intelligence cycle is collection: going after the information that policymakers have requested (plus items that the Intelligence Community presumes leaders will want to know, now or later). During the Cold War, the highest intelligence collection priority was to learn about the locations and capabilities of Soviet armaments, especially nuclear weapons. This was sometimes a dangerous endeavor, as underscored by the more than forty U.S. spy planes shot down by the Soviet Union and its allies. Intelligence-gathering during the Cold War – though important – was arguably less pressing than it is today, since at least the world understood then that the bipolar tensions between the superpowers defined international affairs. Now, as Joseph S. Nye, Jr., and William A. Owens have noted: “With the organizing framework of the Cold War gone, the implications are harder to categorize, and all nations want to know more about what is happening and why to help them decide how much it matters and what they should do about it.”12
A recent analysis of worldwide ship and airplane movements suggests how difficult it is for the intelligence agencies in the Western democracies just to keep track of global transportation flows – a matter of some significance because ships might carry materials in violation of international sanctions against some countries, or, worse still, WMD bound for rogue nations or terrorist factions. Each year, “worldwide maritime activity includes more than 30,000 ocean-going ships of 10,000 gross tons or greater,” noted a DNI report in 2009, and there are “over 43,000 fixed airfields worldwide with over 300,000 active aircraft.”13 On the counterterrorism front, just during the first half of 2010 the National Counterterrorism Center received 8,000–10,000 pieces of information related to global terrorist organizations, along with some 10,000 names of likely terrorists and more than forty specific threats and plots.14
In trying to understanding this more complicated world we live in since the Cold War ended in 1991, intelligence can provide “cat's eyes in the dark,” in the British phrase, although even wealthy nations are unable to blanket the globe with expensive surveillance “platforms” designed for “remote sensing” – reconnaissance aircraft, satellites, and ground-based listening posts. The world is simply too vast and budgets are always finite. Still, satellite and airplane photography (“imagery” or, in the latest term for spy photography, “geoint,” or geospatial intelligence) plays a vital role in a nation's defenses. Imagery eased the hair-trigger anxieties of the superpowers during the Cold War. Through the use of spy platforms, both ideological encampments – the superpowers – could watch one another's armies and a Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack became less likely. As DCI Colby observed, fear and ignorance were replaced by facts for decision-makers.15 Before the United States had the capacity to accurately count Soviet bombers, ships, and missiles, Washington worried that Moscow was far ahead in armaments – the “bomber gap” and the “missile gap” that haunted America policymakers in the 1940s and 1950s. As a result of U-2 flights over the Soviet Union and, later, satellite surveillance over this vast territory with eleven time zones, the United States discovered that there were indeed bomber and missile gaps; but, contrary to conventional wisdom, they favored the United States. The Americans had outpaced the Soviets in weapons production.
George J. Tenet, who served Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush as DCI (1997–2004), referred early in his tenure to what he viewed as the basics of intelligence: stealing secrets and analyzing the capabilities and intentions of America's adversaries.16 Every intelligence agency has its own set of methods (“tradecraft”) for acquiring secrets. In the United States, these methods are referred to colloquially by the abbreviation “ints,” short for “intelligence disciplines.” Imagery or photographic intelligence becomes “imint,” short for imagery intelligence – or, as mentioned earlier, in the new terminology, “geoint.” Without the untrained eye of a professional photointerpreter, the white-and-black lines in this sophisticated photography can look more like the static of early television than landing strips and hangars on enemy bases. Signals intelligence becomes “sigint,” an umbrella designation for a spate of operations that collect against electronic targets, such as telephone and other communications (“comint” for communications intelligence) and a variety of forms of electronic intelligence (“elint”), including data emitted by weapons during test flights (“telint” for telemetry) and additional emissions from enemy weapons and radar systems (“fisint” for foreign instrumentation signals). As already noted, human intelligence – the use of agents or “assets,” as professionals refer to the foreign operatives who comprise their spy rings – becomes “humint.”
Within each of the ints, intelligence professionals fashion ingenious techniques for purloining secrets from adversaries – say, the contents of a laptop computer owned by a foreign government scientist in charge of weapons engineering. The methods can range from sophisticated devices that track foreign military maneuvers through telescopic lenses on satellites orbiting deep in space, to the planting of miniature microphones in the breasts of pigeons trained to roost on the window ledges of foreign embassies. Best of all would be a reliable asset close to a senior official in another country, perhaps a staff aide, a chauffeur, or a lover.
A CIA U-2 photograph of Soviet missiles emplacements in Cuba, 1962.
Source: Studies in Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency.
Another prominent int is “osint” or open-source intelligence: information gleaned from non-secretive sources, such as libraries or foreign media. Is there information in the public domain about whether the desert sands near Tehran are firm enough to support helicopters, or must an intelligence asset be deployed to find out the answer? This was an important matter in 1979, when the Carter Administration planned a rescue of U.S. diplomats held in the U.S. embassy in Iran. The DCI at the time, Admiral Stansfield Turner, had to send a special intelligence unit into Iran – a dangerous undertaking – to answer this question. The sand proved firm enough, but the mission eventually had to be aborted when U.S. military rescue helicopters collided in the desert before heading into Tehran. Today, the DNI's Center for Open-Source Intelligence studies
what information is missing in the early drafts of intelligence reports that will have to be acquired through clandestine means.
Since the end of the Cold War, roughly 90 percent – some say as much as 95 percent – of all intelligence reports are made up of osint material, such as information from Iranian blogs on the Internet which can offer revealing glimpses into that secretive society. Based on this statistic, some critics have suggested that policymakers should obtain their information about world events from the Library of Congress and close down the secret agencies, saving the nation $50–$80 billion a year; yet the Library of Congress does not have agents around the world to gather the secret (and sometimes most important) “nuggets” of information that go into intelligence reporting; nor does it have the long experience of the secret agencies in analyzing foreign countries, putting together national security reports, and disseminating them in a timely manner to the right decision-makers around the bureaucracies in Washington, DC.
The newest and most technical int – measurement and signatures intelligence or “masint” – can be valuable, too. Run chiefly by the DIA, here the methodology involves testing for the presence of various materials, say, telltale vapors emitted by the cooling towers of foreign nuclear plants that might contain radioactive particles. These particles could indicate the presence of a “hot” reactor engaged in uranium enrichment. Other chemical and biological indicators might reveal the presence of illicit materials – perhaps waste fumes in a factory that point to the production of nerve gas. Between 1994 and 2008, for example, the intelligence unit in the U.S. Energy Department reportedly spent some $430 million on nuclear detection equipment at international border crossings, especially along Russia's frontiers.17
One of the most celebrated technical collection programs carried out by the CIA was an effort in 1974 to raise a disabled Soviet submarine from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, an operation known as Project Jennifer. Officials in the Agency realized from satellite photography that the Soviet vessel, at the time skimming along on the ocean's surface, had experienced a fire on board, causing it to sink rapidly beneath the waves. Under orders from DCI William Colby, the Agency called upon Howard Hughes for assistance in retrieving the submarine. The eccentric billionaire was in the business (among other lucrative pursuits) of mining the ocean floors for valuable ore, such as magnesium. He owned a ship, the Glomar Explorer, capable of lowering wire cables deep enough into the Pacific to capture the submarine and pull it to the surface. Hughes agreed to help (in return for a tidy $350 million) and the recovery mission was under way. The dramatic attempt to raise the sub was only partially successful; half the prize fell back into the ocean, as the submarine was accidentally sliced in two by the Glomar's wire jaws. Still, the Agency viewed the capture of half a Soviet submarine, which carried nuclear missiles and advanced communications equipment, as quite a coup. Unfortunately, the Project Jennifer operation was leaked to the media and a return trip to snare the rest of the ship was impossible once the Soviet Navy had been alerted to its position in the ocean. The actual contents of the captured half of the submarine remain classified, but insiders claim that the project was worth the costly price tag. Critics, though, questioned why the Agency decided to pay a king's ransom for access to an obsolete submarine.18
Humint versus Techint
Intelligence professionals make a distinction between humint and technical intelligence (“techint”) collection – the latter an acronym that lumps together all of the machine-based means of gathering information. The vast majority of funds spent on collection go into techint. This category includes geoint and sigint satellites; large, land-based NSA listening antennae; and reconnaissance aircraft, like the U-2 and A-12 spy planes in the United States, and their successor the SR-21, as well as the popular Predator, a UAV fielded over Afghanistan, Iraq, and other nations in the Middle East and South Asia following the 9/11 attacks. The Predator and its cousins, such as the larger Reaper and small (some even insect-sized) drones, are attractive to intelligence planners because of their mobility and their capacity to spy without endangering the life of a pilot. When the larger UAVs are equipped with missiles, they are able not only to spy but also to obliterate targets that appear in their camera lens. Awed by the technological capabilities of spy machines, nations spend sizable amounts of funds on their construction and deployment, prodded by the intelligence component of the “iron pentagon” lobby. One recent satellite program cost $9.5 billion, according to reliable newspaper reporting, and that amount was for one of the simpler types of satellites used only in daylight hours and clear weather.19
This fascination with intelligence hardware has continued into the Age of Terrorism, even though these platforms are apt to be less useful against ghost-like terrorists. Cameras on satellites or aircraft are unable to peer inside the canvas tents, roofed mud huts, or mountain caves in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, and Iraq where ISIS members meet to plan their deadly operations, or into the deep underground caverns where North Koreans construct atomic bombs. As an intelligence expert notes, often one “needs to know what's inside the building, not what the building looks like.”20 Another group of intelligence officers has emphasized that “technical collection lends itself to monitoring large-scale, widespread targets….”21 This approach is less effective against discreet and carefully concealed WMD or terrorist cells.
Still, at times, techint can be a strong arm of counterterrorism – especially sigint telephone interceptions and spy cameras on low-flying drones. For example, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders have been forced into hiding for fear of being spotted by U.S. geoint machines. As Richard Barrett notes: “This lack of face-to-face contact with their subordinates and the enemy is sapping their authority. Taliban leaders have also had to limit their telephone communications for fear of giving away their locations, and have had to find less reliable and efficient ways to discuss strategy and pass orders to the field.”22
In contrast to techint spending, the United States devotes just a single-digit percentage of its annual intelligence budget to foreign humint. Moreover, within five years after the end of the Cold War, the CIA had experienced a 25 percent decline in case officers around the world, with fewer than 800 in the field. The FBI reportedly has more “special agents” (the Bureau's term for operational officers) in New York City than the CIA has counterparts across the globe.23 On occasion, sigint satellites capture revealing information about adversaries – say, telephone conversations between international drug lords. The photography yielded by geoint satellites is of obvious importance on such matters as the whereabouts of Chinese naval vessels; trucks transporting ISIS soldiers into Iraq; the unloading of missile parts carried in the hulls of Chinese freighters steaming toward Karachi ports (despite official denials in Beijing and Islamabad); Hamas rocket emplacements in Gaza; or the construction of nuclear reactors in Iran. In the case of terrorism, though, a human agent well situated inside ISIS or Al Qaeda could be worth several costly satellites.
A category of humint tradecraft is the use of intelligence officers operating under deep or non-official cover, known as NOCs. In contrast to officers working from official U.S. government facilities with official cover (OC), a NOC exists outside in the local society – say, as an archaeologist, investment banker, or oil-rig operator. Acting as a NOC can be a difficult assignment. The intelligence officer must keep his or her cover during the day, then undergo a metamorphosis at night into a spy in search of local recruits. Further, the NOC often operates in remote locations where, as a senior CIA operative has put it, “diarrhea is the default setting.”24 Convincing middle- or upper-class Agency recruits to adopt a life of hardship over the comfort of working inside a U.S. facility overseas with fellow Americans under OC can be a hard sell. The NOC role can be dangerous as well, because an intelligence officer in this role operates without U.S. government immunity. If caught while engaged in espionage activities, he or she is likely to be arrested and imprisoned by
local authorities and released to the United States only when – and if – an exchange of prisoners can be arranged.
Frequently, NOCs burn out from shouldering two jobs, one for cover and one for espionage. Or they may decide that the cover occupation is more remunerative than being a spy. For example, the CIA trained one NOC to serve as an investment banker overseas in a Third World capital. After almost a year of working long hours during the day as a banker, then donning his cloak and dagger in the evening, the NOC resigned, moved to New York City, and made four times his Agency salary, plus bonuses, from a well-known financial firm in Manhattan. The costly training of this individual reaped little payoff for the CIA.
For all these reasons, the Agency has shied away from the use of NOCs, although other nations have adopted this approach with great effectiveness – such as the Soviet Union in New York City during the Cold War, with a strong reliance on journalistic cover for its NOCs. Clearly an OC officer is not going to meet a member of ISIS at an embassy cocktail party, but a NOC operating in, say, Pakistan might have a chance of recruiting a local “cutout” (an intermediary asset) who can in turn attempt a recruitment pitch to an Al Qaeda or Taliban operative. Embassy parties, though, will remain a useful means for meeting potential recruits from major target countries, like Russia, as was the case during the Cold War.