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"First of all, the intelligence business is all about understanding how other people, other cultures, other countries think and feel about things, and will react in given situations."
"We can make assessments, we can make probability judgments of what will happen, but there is always going to be surprises no matter how carefully you try to engineer for the future."
VADM Tom Wilson, Director, Defense Intelligence Agency, June 9, 2001
"Between now and 2015, terrorist tactics will become increasingly sophisticated and designed to achieve mass casualties. We expect the trend toward greater lethality in terrorist attacks to continue."
Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Non-government Experts NIC 2000-02, December 2000
Intelligence Structure
In May 2001, President George W. Bush directed CIA chief George Tenet to establish an external and an internal commission to perform "a comprehensive review of U.S. intelligence," the first such reviews since a series of panels in 1996. The commissions, whose reports are due in September, were to conduct "independent but parallel reviews" that looked at intelligence threats and priorities, existing intelligence capabilities, new technology for intelligence collection and analysis, and further structural reorganization.
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Types of Intelligence
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SIGINT (Signals Intelligence): intelligence derived from communications, electronic, and foreign instrumentation signals.
COMINT (Communications Intelligence): technical information and intelligence derived from foreign communications.
ELINT (Electronic Intelligence): technical and geo-location intelligence derived from foreign non-communications electromagnetic radiations emanating from other than nuclear detonations or radiological sources.
FISINT (Foreign Instrumentation Signals Intelligence): technical information and intelligence derived from the intercept of foreign electromagnetic emissions associated with the testing and operational deployment of non-U.S. aerospace, surface, and subsurface systems. Foreign instrumentation signals include but are not limited to telemetry, beaconry, electronic interrogators, and video data links.
HUMINT (Human Resources Intelligence): intelligence derived from collection that uses human beings as both sources and collectors, and where the human being is the primary collection instrument.
IMINT (Imagery Intelligence): intelligence derived from the exploitation of collection by visual photography, infrared sensors, lasers, electro-optics and radar sensors such as synthetic aperture radar wherein images of objects are reproduced optically or electronically on film, electronic display devices, or other media.
MASINT (Measurement and Signature Intelligence): scientific and technical intelligence obtained by quantitative and qualitative analysis of data (metric, angle, spatial, wavelength, time dependence, modulation, plasma, hydromagnetic) derived from specific technical sensors for the purpose of identifying any distinctive features associated with the target, source, emitter or sender measurement of the same. The detected feature may be either reflected or emitted.
OSINT (Open Source Intelligence): information of potential intelligence value that is available to the general public.
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Terrorism Predictions
"States with poor governance; ethnic, cultural, or religious tensions; weak economies; and porous borders will be prime breeding grounds for terrorism. In such states, domestic groups will challenge the entrenched government, and transnational networks seeking safe havens.... At the same time, the trend away from state-supported political terrorism and toward more diverse, free-wheeling, transnational networks — enabled by information technology — will continue. Some of the states that actively sponsor terrorism or terrorist groups today may decrease or even cease their support by 2015 as a result of regime changes, rapprochement with neighbors, or the conclusion that terrorism has become counterproductive. But weak states also could drift toward cooperation with terrorists, creating de facto new state supporters.
"Much of the terrorism…will be directed at the United States and its overseas interests. Most anti-U.S. terrorism will be based on perceived ethnic, religious or cultural grievances. Terrorist groups will continue to find ways to attack U.S. military and diplomatic facilities abroad. Such attacks are likely to expand increasingly to include U.S. companies and American citizens. Middle East and Southwest Asian-based terrorists are the most likely to threaten the United States.
'The trend toward more diverse, free-wheeling transnational terrorist networks leads to the formation of an international terrorist coalition with diverse anti-Western objectives and access to WMD."
Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Non-government Experts
NIC 2000-02, December 2000
Purpose of, and Challenges to, Intelligence
The overall purpose of intelligence is to provide policymakers the information they need to decide on the diplomatic, economic, and military actions needed to maintain national security.
Intelligence has two primary challenges: determining the capabilities an opponent can muster and fathoming the intentions to use employ those capabilities — the who, what, when, where, how, and how much. The latter are the hardest to determine, particularly when the opponent has little or no visible supporting infrastructure and support.
The keys to good intelligence are cooperative arrangements — "all source" — both among the various U.S. agencies and bilateral and multilateral exchanges with friendly governments. But collection is only the start; even more critical is analysis turns data into information and then into understanding about what opponents or potential opponents are doing or planning.
As in so many endeavors, intelligence requires priorities. Even though the Soviet military threat sis gone, Russia's nuclear arsenal — its safety and control — remain the primary threat to the United States. Development of chemical and biological weapons and the means to deliver them also are significant priorities.
As the world moved further and further away from the Cold War, the possibility grew that nuclear, chemical, or biological attacks might be made by non-state terrorist groups or individuals, rather than countries. But the challenge of learning the answers to the basic intelligence questions is compounded when the target is a terrorist organization because these tend to consist of small, self-contained cells of loosely affiliated groups. The members of each cell are well-known to each other but, to prevent "roll-up" of a network, only one member may know someone in another cell.
Clandestine operations — the secret or undercover gathering of information — necessitate a long-term effort that involves immersion in the language, culture, and history of a people and region. Where an indigenous capability is either inadequate or non-existent, intelligence sharing with friendly governments that might have a capability becomes imperative. In fact, the 1996 report of the congressionally mandated Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community pointed out that other countries "provide expertise, skills, and access which U.S. intelligence does not have." An important determination thus is identifying those areas of collection, analysis, and dissemination in which the United States enjoys a comparative advantage.
Combating Terrorism
Combating terrorism is traditionally included as one of the 13 types of "operations other than war" (OOTW).
Combating terrorism has two major components — antiterrorism and counter-terrorism.
Anti-terrorism, conducted during peacetime, consists of those passive defensive measures taken to minimize vulnerability to terrorism. Anti-terrorism is a form of force protection and, thus, the responsibility of military commanders at all levels. Antiterrorism compliments counter-terrorism, which is the full range of offensive measures taken to prevent, deter, and respond to terrorism. Counter-terrorism occurs in conflict and war; antiterrorism occurs across the range of military operations.
Army Military Intelligence Battalion Training Course
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Compiled by Col. Daniel Smith (USA Ret.)
CDI Chief of Research
dsmith@cdi.org
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