In 1986 we invented “reverse hits” in a failed attempt to get the clandestine service to allow electronic searches of its databases. In a related experience we discovered that fewer than 10 percent of the names had been properly indexed because the clerks in the basement were lazy and ignored “INDEX ALL NAMES.”
The Human Intelligence “Source Directory” is massively incomplete and corrupt because few of the organizations carrying out their own clandestine or informant operations are willing to trust CIA to maintain the inter-agency source directory. This leads to situations where multiple organizations are paying the same agent for the same information.
Clandestine human intelligence is a drop in the bucket. Instead of focusing on meta-tagging HUMINT, which has probably gotten better since we tried to bring them into the 21st Century in 1986 (they refused). What we really need is a national Open Source Agency that promotes Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS), and Open Spectrum, the tri-fecta of informed democracy and the restoration of the Constitution and the Republic.
See Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational] and within that, the second entry especially, 2009: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy.
Below is a graphic from Jim Bamford, one of our heroes, that says it all:
