Reference (2010): Human Intelligence (HUMINT) – All Humans, All Minds, All the Time [PDF & Full Text Online]

Human Intelligence (HUMINT): All Humans, All Minds, All the Time

(US Army Strategic Studies Institute, June 2010)

Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/Steele-HUMINT

Below the line: full text for automated translation.  The Amazon version is published by someone else abusing my original copyright granted only to SSI. Click on cover for free PDF download, or read full text below (which is also translatable).

2020 Note: links repaired.

Strategic Studies Institute SSI

Human Intelligence (HUMINT):

All Humans, All Minds, All the Time

Robert D. Steele

June 2010

 

REFLECTIONS

A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.

                                                                                                Thomas Jefferson

                A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.  Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

                                                                                                James Madison

                A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else.

Fedor Dostoevsky

                80% of what I needed to know as CINCENT I got from open sources rather than classified reporting.  And within the remaining 20%, if I knew what to look for, I found another 16%.  At the end of it all, classified intelligence provided me, at best, with 4% of my command knowledge.

                                                                                      General Tony Zinni, USMC (Ret)

The next revolution is well underway. … It is not a revolution of technology, machinery, techniques, software, or speed.  It is a revolution in CONCEPTS.  So far, for 50 years, the information revolution has centered on the ‘T’ in IT. … [It is now time we focused on the ‘I’, on] the collection and organization of OUTSIDE-focused information.

Peter Drucker

         FOREWORD

                For almost two decades, the author has been exploring the opportunities for strategy, force structure, and inter-agency or coalition operations in light of changes in the real world.  His first monograph, The New Craft of Intelligence: Achieving Asymmetric Advantage in the Face of Nontraditional Threats, outlined the relevance of his vision to asymmetric warfare, and has since been proven.  His second monograph, Information Operations: Putting the “I” Back Into DIME, established the technical, conceptual, and doctrinal opportunities for a world in which every soldier’s primary duty is not to be a rifleman (an inherent responsibility), but rather to apply the wisdom of Colonel John Boyd, USAF (Ret), and Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act (OODA)—to be, at all times, a consummate collector, producer, consumer, and analyst of real-world real-time information and intelligence, while also serving as a communicator at a face-to-face level.

With this third and final monograph in the series, the author, who is also the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, explores the centrality of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) in meeting the needs of the U.S. Army as well as the Department of Defense (DoD) and Whole of Government, for relevant information and tailored intelligence essential to creating a national security strategy; defining Whole of Government policies that work in harmony; acquisition of the right capabilities at the right price in time to be useful; and operations both local and global.

The author outlines fifteen distinct types of HUMINT, only four of which are classified (defensive and offensive counterintelligence, clandestine operations and covert action), with the other eleven being predominantly unclassified and also completely lacking in integrated management or innovative leadership.  The author, well-grounded in the literatures of how complex organizations fail and how resilience and sustainability can be achieved through Collective Intelligence, offers the U.S. Army an orientation to a world in which thinkers displace shooters as the center of gravity for planning, programming, budgeting as well as the proper structuring of mission mandates, force structures to be deployed, and tactics and techniques to be used in any given mission area.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.
Director
Strategic Studies Institute

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

                Robert David Steele (Vivas) is a natural-born citizen of the United States of America, resident in Virginia.   After a lifetime overseas, he became a Marine Corps infantry officer, then a service-level intelligence plans officer.  From there he moved to become a clandestine case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, serving three back-to-back clandestine tours and three Headquarters tours.  He has programmed for future imagery architectures, helped support strategic signals operations, managed global counterintelligence operations, and explored advanced information technology applications for secret operations and analysis.  He was the senior civilian responsible for founding the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a Command), and as a result of that experience subsequently has spent twenty years educating over 40 governments on the importance of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).   He is the author of the Open Source Intelligence Handbooks for, respectively, the Defense Intelligence Agency (1996), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, 2000), and the Special Forces (2005, in draft).  He has served on active duty with the U.S. Southern Command, is employed as a contractor providing OSINT to the U.S. Special Operations Command and has served the U.S. Central Command and the U.S. Southern Command in that capacity; he has lectured to all of the directors of military intelligence for NATO, the Partnership for Peace, and the Mediterranean Dialog nations; and to the leaders of the 90 national teams in the Coalition Coordination Center in Tampa, Florida..  He is the author of four seminal books on intelligence and information operations.  He is also the contributing editor of PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: Emerging Concepts for the Future (2003) and most recently, the contributing publisher of COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace (2008).  With this monograph, he concludes a twenty-year effort to reshape the paradigm for national security, proposing a Core Force, and four “forces after next,” and now begins a new emphasis on public intelligence and multinational information sharing in order to create a prosperous world at peace.  7^th Generation Warfare is about Overt Civil Affairs, “outside the wire,” connecting dots to dots, dots to people, and people to people in order to create stabilizing local wealth while also harmonizing and orchestrating charitable giving and foreign assistance investments by all parties.  His next book is INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability, and he is also sponsoring a new book on INTELLIGENCE for PEACE: Multinational Multifunctional Information-Sharing & Sense-Making, edited by Col Jan-Inge Svensson, SE (Ret).

DEDICATION

            I started my own transformation program in 1988, after standing up the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a Command), as both the Special Assistant (civilian billet) and Deputy Director (military billet), to Col Walt Breede III, USMC (Ret), USNA ’68.  It was there that we both learned that 80% or more of what we needed to do policy, acquisition, and operations support for the Fleet Marine Forces was not secret, not in English, not online, and not known to anyone in the National Capital Area.  Despite winning over the General Al Gray, USMC (Ret), then Commandant of the Marine Corps, we were unable over the course of four years, from 1988-1992, to get any of the other Services, or any of the US Intelligence Community agencies, to accept either the logic or the urgency of making a massive investment in global open sources and methods in 183 languages we still do not speak, nor of embracing the drug mission as emblematic of the asymmetric threats of the future.[1]

Despite twenty years of endeavor, training 7,500 who today lead 25,000 Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) specialists, today, in 2008, our defense and intelligence leaders (less General Tony Zinni, USMC (Ret)) still do not understand the radical opportunities inherent in what the Swedes call Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information Sharing (M4IS), to which I have added Multinational Decision Support (MDS).

I dedicate this monograph to the US Army, to the Army War College, to the Strategic Studies Institute, to the U.S. Special Operations Command, once led by General Peter Schoomaker (the father of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) in the US Army and DoD) and to the new Army Civil Affairs Brigade.  We must all recognize that there are no winners in war, and that Sun Tzu had it right in the first place: the acme of skill is to defeat the enemy without fighting—even better, to have no enemies at all.  The Singapore military has it right today: we must defeat all threats, not just armies.

HUMINT, not weapons, not Technical Intelligence, not money, not anything else, is how we create a prosperous world at peace.  I challenge the U.S. Army to learn how to Wage Peace, and I respectfully suggest that contrary to past opinion, Operations Other Than War (OOTW) are both harder, and more beneficial to all concerned, than combined arms operations.

                GO ARMY!

This monograph in PDF form at both the author’s page within the Strategic Studies Institute website, and at http://phibetaiota.net, is “digitally-enabled” and available with many active links to books and other sources cited in both the main body of the monograph, and the notes.

This monograph and the two preceding monographs can all be viewed or downloaded at the below URL, the author’s page at the Strategic Studies Institute:

http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/people.cfm?q=105

Added February 01, 2006

PDF Free: Information Operations: Putting the “I” Back Into DIME.

In the Age of Information, the primary source of National Power is information that has been converted into actionable intelligence or usable knowledge. Information Operations is the critical ingredient in early warning, peacekeeping, stabilization & reconstruction, and homeland defense.

Added February 01, 2002

PDF Free: The New Craft of Intelligence: Achieving Asymmetric Advantage in the Face of Nontraditional Threats.

This monograph is the third in the Strategic Studies Institute's “Studies in Asymmetry” Series. In it, the author examines two paradigm shifts–one in relation to the threat and a second in relation to intelligence methods– while offering a new model for threat analysis and a new model for intelligence operations in support to policy, acquisition, and command engaged in nontraditional asymmetric confrontation and competition.

See also online:

Chapter 9, “Threats, Strategy and Force Structure: An Alternative Paradigm for National Security in the 21^st Century,” in Steven Metz (ed.), Revising the Two MTW Force-Shaping Paradigm (Strategic Studies Institute, April 2001), pp. 139-163.

Chapter 12, “Presidential Leadership and National Security Policymaking,” in Douglas T. Stuart, Organizing for National Security (Strategic Studies Institute, November 2000), pp. 245-282

 

HUMAN INTELLIGENCE (HUMINT):

ALL HUMANS, ALL MINDS, ALL THE TIME

 

INTRODUCTION

This monograph was inspired by three U.S. Army encounters.

First came a pro bono engagement with the new U.S. Army Civil Affairs Brigade then commanded by Col Ferd Irizarry, USA, now in Afghanistan.  His vision for a future is breath-taking: a future in which Civil Affairs personnel are the essential facilitators for transitions to and from hostilities as well as the essential means of achieving multinational information-sharing and sense-making that is unclassified, can be shared, and helps prevent conflict while creating local stabilizing wealth.

Next came the annual U.S. Army Strategy Conference of 2008, focused on “Rebalancing the Instruments of National Power.”  The findings of that event are a perfect introduction for this monograph, and are summarized in a brief Appendix with pointers to longer summaries.

Finally came an encounter with a most professional officer, Chief of Staff for the Directorate for Human Intelligence (DH) within the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).  That individual’s open-mindedness led to an over-night drafting of the new craft of human intelligence (HUMINT) in the context of DIA’s global mission and global challenges.

My own view, formed over three decades in government service, is that the military is the one part of government that is able to move, do, and communicate on a global basis, and we need to find a way to expand that capability to empower the “Whole of Government.”  I believe the Department of Defense (DoD) must become a “core force” for the Nation, a broader deeper foundation for national security than merely war-fighting, with two major support functions:

1.  Be the basis for a coherent polity, using the universal draft with three options after a common boot camp: Armed Forces, Peace Corps, or Homeland Service.

2.  Be the global general service for multinational and inter-agency communications, intelligence, logistics, and mobility.

From Base Force to Core Force and Beyond

General Colin Powell, USA (Ret) devised the concept of a “Base Force.”  This inspired me, when invited to speak in Germany at the George Marshall Center in the 1990’s, to devise the concept of the “Core Force.”  Within DoD, the U.S. Army would be the “core of the core.”

 

 Figure 1:  Core Force with Eight Human Functions

            The Core Force, the Inner Circle, represents the services of common concern without which no world power can operate: the ability to communicate anywhere, anytime; the ability to acquire and make sense of information so as to produce decision-support (96% unclassified and shareable); and the ability to move men and materials from any point to any point in a most expeditious manner, with desolate airfields unsuitable for commercial aviation being the norm.  We can build out our Combatant Commanders as “Whole of Government” task forces, with the appropriate assistant secretaries moving their flags into the field.

The eight human functions represent the “value-added” areas where the military is uniquely qualified and competent as the primary element of government around which we can all rally.

At the very top is strategic thinking and advice to policy-makers, with one big difference: the military—at every rank—must make “speaking truth to power” vastly more important to its ethos than loyalty to the chain of command.  The Constitution is what we swear to support in our Oath of Office, not the chain of command.  Truth and morality are a primary force.

Next down are two critical domestic roles: bonding our citizenry (including immigrants regardless of age) through common training and service; and being able to address domestic challenges with military discipline and effectiveness.  I am among those who believe the National Guard should revert to being primarily a Homeland Force, and one focused on localized disaster relief and the maintenance of good order and discipline in times of crisis, while also available for short-duration (no more than 90 days) missions to aid others outside of the USA.

Electronic security and ground truth are global missions, missions that require a degree of pervasive defense presence in cyberspace on the one hand, and a degree of pervasive but inoffensive presence—real humans with human eyes, ears, and brains—everywhere.  We have failed at both, in part because we spent too much time on Offensive Electronic Warfare, something the Chinese have mastered, and not enough time on establishing standards that protect all electronic information, not just sensitive information.

Of all the missions depicted in Figure 1, none is more important than the Ground Truth mission.  The reality is that our Embassies have become little fortresses from which few dare to venture far afield.  The diplomats are in the minority within their own embassy, and have virtually no funds for entertaining diverse constituencies, and even less so for commissioning local commercial sources of legal ethical information for specific products.  Indeed, the only people with money to spend in the US overseas community are the spies, and they insist that one commit treason before they will listen.  In combination, how we relate to the rest of the world is pathologically inept.[2]

Force on Force, and Constabulary Operations or Small Wars, are two completely different endeavors in every possible sense of the word, and require two completely distinct forces in being that train, equip, and organize for their assigned mission.  The two do not overlap and cannot be  mixed.  They can be orchestrated in those instances where one front is convention and the other unconventional, but they are not interchangeable forces.

Where  does  this leave us?  Here are the high points:

1.  Unclassified decision support—ground truth—is the single most valuable and relevant service the U.S. Army can provide to the rest of DoD and the rest of the government as well as the Nation (schoolhouses, chambers of commerce, etcetera).  Unclassified ground truth is not the purview of the spies—they have rejected that mission, leaving the way open for Civil Affairs to come the ombudsman of “best truth” outside the wire.

2.  Peer-to-peer human communication and interaction is the single most valuable aspect of a global presence.  General Zinni is on record as emphasizing the importance of long-term relationships and the important of truly understanding the character and nature of those with whom one is dealing.[3]  In this vein, the Army Strategy Conference of 2008 placed equal emphasis on the Human Terrain System (HTS) and on having a Corps of Advisors who are resident in their respective countries, not simply going in and out as Mobile Training Teams (MTT).

3.  The importance of deep cultural knowledge cannot be overstated.  Cultural Intelligence is a key factor in preventing conflict as in stabilizing & reconstructing areas torn by conflict.[4]

4.  Peaceful preventive measures, as called for by General Al Gray, USMC (Ret), then Commandant of the Marine Corps, are a primary mission of the US Army, no longer an afterthought or an unfunded deficiency.  Civil Affairs, not the tank corps or artillery or even infantry, is the King of the 21^st Century battlefield.  Real men prevent war; and if not, achieve “one man – one bullet” precision as needed.

U.S. Army, DoD, and the Republic

America is at a cross-roads.  The lack of an integrated inter-agency process for developing coherent sustainable (affordable, realistic) strategy is at a historic low point.  We have less than seven years to completely recast how we train, organize, and equip our national security capabilities, both hard and soft, and we have at least twenty years ahead of us in which we will be beseiged from all sides for having lost our legitimacy as “America the Good.” [5]

This monograph aspires to be nothing less than a manifesto for mental and cultural transformation of the US Army, the US Department of Defense, all civilian elements of our national security bureaucracy, and all external organizations such as International Organizations (IO) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) as well as Foundations.  The core concept within this monograph is this: that the US Army can

1.  Be the first within the US Government to understand—as the Singapore military understood instantly—that we must defend America against all threats, not just heavy-metal nation-state military threats.

2.  Be the first within the US Government to understand—as corporations are now rapidly appreciating—that Generation 2.0 is the first generation of young people that are not “little versions of us.”  They are Digital Natives, they have transformed themselves in the process of growing up, and most (not all)of our tried and true “boot camp” processes are history.

3.  Be the first within the US Government to understand that decision support (intelligence regardless of classification) is the key to creating stabilizing wealth and multi-cultural peace in every clime and place.

4.  Be the first within the US Government to recognize that by leveraging unclassified information in all languages, and by mobilizing and nurturing a multicultural decision support center, the US Army can create a Global Range of Gifts such that $500 billion a year controlled by others can be harmonized strategically, operationally, and tactically.

The greatest strategic error we have made has been to neglect the education and the civic engagement of our public, a public that has grown out of touch with global realities, less competitive in the international marketplace, and virtually oblivious to the corporate and federal and state and local miss-steps enacted “in our name.”  Information costs money and confuses; public intelligence makes money, guides money, and can create a prosperous world at peace.

The  US Army can combine an appreciation of external reality and a valuation of our Digital Natives by becoming the brain housing group for global inter-agency and combined operations that leverage information peacekeeping.

The figure below summarizes the relevance of this work to each of the Army’s Strategic Issues.

Global War on Terror	Understanding, confronting, altering evil belief systems; Strategic Communications as behavior & budget; reality-based metrics
Homeland Security	Cannot have a smart Army built on a dumb population..  Need to build a Smart Nation.
Regional	Systematic outreach at every level down to neighborhoods & clans & tribes
Military Change	Must train, equip, & organize inter-agency and coalition teams             with gendarme and other soft-power intelligence and operaitons
Strategy	Only reality-based comprehensive strategy will have a chance.             Cannot keep Navy and Air Force “shares” of the budget constant
Landpower	Landpower is about mind on mind, not machine on machine or even man on man.
Landpower Generation & Sustainment	Army must adapt to embrace Digital Natives, and learn how extend free education & training to multinational multiagency forces
Leadership, Personnel Management, & Culture	Everything has changed.  Information Operations are 80% of the Leadership challenge—must learn Way of the Wiki, bottom up, adjust budgets.
War & Society	We are in a total war forever: 24/7, all information, all language

Figure 2: Relevance to Army Strategic Issues

            The monograph specifically recommends the immediate conversion of the Coalition Coordination Center (CCC) at the U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM) into a Multinational Decision Support Center (MDSC) capable of Early Warning, Predictive Analysis, and Unclassified Decision Support to stabilization, reconstruction, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief operations.

Under the oversight of the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), this capability could be offered to the United Nations and other Non-Governmental Organizations as a means of better implementing the recommendations of the Defense Science Board study on Transitions to and from Hostilities.[6]  Most significantly, this would also provide a neutral multinational hub for receiving the bulk of the global information needed to make sense of the world, that is not now available to the secret national intelligence community of any nation, and serve as a foundation for harmonizing government, corporate, non-governmental, and charitable spending on assistance to all under-developed and/or unstable areas.

This work, in support of the Strategic Studies Institute, the Army War College, and the Army’s Strategic Issues, provides for the first time a review of the nuts and bolts of Seventh Generation Warfare, a level of warfare previously referred to as “Information Peacekeeping,” the logical follow-on to the six generations of warfare so ably studied and taught by Col Dr. Max Manwaring of the Strategic Studies Institute.

Warfare Era	What Do We Need to Know?
1st Generation	Easy: Where is the army?
2nd Generation	Easy: Where are the trenches?
3rd Generation	Moderate: How many with what?
4th Generation	Hard: Watch every non-state actor.
5th Generation	Hard: Watch everything on the fly.
6th Generation	Hard: Make sense of billions of bits.
7th Generation	Very Hard: 24/7, 183 languages and put our own strategy, policy, structure & budget in order.

Figure 3: War & Peace: The Seventh Generation

            In Sun Tzu’s terms, it is safe to say that today he would suggest that we do not know our enemy, we do not know ourselves, and we are thus at very high risk of failure.  More recent books examining the collapse of complex societies arrive at a similar supporting conclusion: when governments fail to adapt, to have open minds and receive reality-based information, and when they persist in policies, behaviors, and investments that are out of touch with reality, then they tend to lose legitimacy as well as efficacy, and secessionist movements repressed in the past tend to come to the fore.  Most interestingly, secessionist movements succeed in their objective primarily when the Nation they seek to separate from is engaged in arduous combat on a large scale, far from the homeland.[7]

In the Age of Information, the age of Globalization, and the age of the five billion at the Bottom of the Pyramid, there are no longer enough guns to force any decision on any population.[8]  Stabilization, Reconstruction, and a new form of engaged democracy combined with moral capitalism, orchestrating giving, and a heavy blend of sustained cultural awareness, education, and humanitarian operations, are going to be the primary functions of inter-agency and coalition forces if we are to achieve a sustainable peace in this century.

In this environment, as in the law enforcement environment, shooting is the last thing we want a soldier to do, and thinking is only thing we will want every soldier to be doing 24/7.

In this context:

• Consensus replaces Command
• Education replaces Discipline
• Information Operations evolve to demand greater budget and manpower share—no more than 10% of it secret
• Multinational replaces Unilateral
• Research—multinational research—replaces unilateral acquisition and sharing replaces hoarding
• Soft Power displaces Hard Power
• Funding Emphasis shifts from complex heavy metal weapons, to multinational open sources, shared decision support, and full spectrum peace operations.
• Training emphasizes multi-cultural, -agency, -disciplinary, and -domain information sharing and sense-making (M4IS2).

The best concise explanation of the importance of the radical departures from tradtional command, communication, education, information operations, intelligence, and research & training is to offer two competing viewpoints of what the primary role of every Army or other service person is:

Every soldier will be a rifleman; or

Every soldier will be a collector, consumer, producer, & provider  of information & intelligence.

Digital Natives

A major challenge facing this U.S. Army is the changing nature of its population, both officer and enlisted.  Below are summarized the competing—the starkly distinct—natures of the population entering on duty (Learners) and the population now in “command and control” (Teachers).

Digital Native Learners	Digital Native Teachers
Prefer receiving information quickly from multiple multimedia sources	Prefer slow and controlled release of information from limited sources
Prefer parallel processing and multitasking	Prefer singular processing and single or limited tasking
Prefer processing pictures, sources, and video before text	Prefer to provide text before pictures, sounds and video
Prefer random access to hyperlinked multimedia information	Prefer to provide information linearly, logically and sequentially
Prefer to interact/network simultaneously with many others	Prefer students to work independently rather than network and interact
Prefer to learn “just in time”	Prefer to teach “just in case” (it’s on the exam)
Prefer instant gratification and instant rewards	Prefer deferred gratification and deferred rewards
Prefer learning that is relevant, instantly useful and fun	Prefer to teach to the curriculum guide and standardized tests

Figure 4: Differences Between Incoming & Commanding[9]

            At its most fundamental, 7^th Generation Warfare is total, pervasive, sustained, nuanced, and can only be won by fighting ideas, not weapons.[10]  Soldiers must be BOTH first to fight AND fighting smart.

Sun Tsu had it right.  To defeat the enemy without fighting is the acme of a warrior’s skill.  We have wasted fifty years, and destroyed tens of millions of lives, eradicating entire cultures, because we failed to heed President and General Ike Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex, and because our flag officers have forgotten their Oaths of Commission and confused loyalty to partisan politicians, with their responsibility to respect the integrity of the Constutition and always—without exception—tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  The plague of falsified reporting, including operational test & readiness reporting and casualty as well as suicide statistics, is a disgrace to the Long Gray Line.  Duty, Honor, Country.[11]

            Brainpower, not Firepower, is what we need to bring to bear, and we need to do this 24/7 in all languages and all mediums.[12]

It is in that context that this monograph re-inventing HUMINT is respectfully presented to the U.S. Army.

 

HUMAN INTELLIGENCE (HUMINT):

All Humans, All Minds, All the Time

PREFACE

HUMAN Intelligence (HUMINT) has been moribund in the United States of America (USA) since the 1970’s if not earlier, as the USA rushed to substitute technology for thinking (intelligence producers) and partisanship for discourse (intelligence consumers) .  Counterintelligence (CI), Security, Analysts, and Consumers are included in my definition of HUMINT.  Over the course of several decades we have destroyed clandestine HUMINT, while also neglecting CI and Security, depreciating Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)[13]—which comprises 80%[14] of the harvestable foundation for HUMINT—and ignoring the educational needs of our soldiers,[15] analysts, and our consumers.

Today it can reasonably be argued that only the President of the USA receives decision-support (mediocre at best) from a $75 billion a year U.S. Intelligence Community (US IC),[16] while Cabinet officials and Congressional Committees receive none at all.  Defense officials receive 4%, “at best”[17] of what they need to know from secret sources and methods, little of that useful to the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) or other Whole of Government planning.

In this monograph I focus only on HUMINT as a broad multi-disciplinary endeavor, not on known US IC deficiencies or global data pathologies and information asymmetries not yet addressed by the US IC or the US Government (USG) as a whole.  HUMINT is defined as fifteen distinct sub-disciplinary specializations,[18] all of which must be managed as a whole in order to enable cross-fertilization among overt, covert, and clandestine sources and methods.

I conclude that in light of the lack of a Whole of Government decision-support architecture, and the clear and present danger associated with the ten high-level threats to humanity, eight of which are non-military, that the Department of Defense (DoD) is the only element of the U.S. Government (USG) able to create a 21^st Century HUMINT capability—a “Smart Nation.” [19]

Threats, Strategy, Force Structure, & Action-Spending Plans

The USG is supposed to be attending to all threats to humanity and the Nation by devising a strategy and attendant force structure (capabilities) for each element of Whole of Government operations.  The taxpayer funds are the means, the government is the ways, and a prosperous world at peace is supposed to be the end.

I have come to the conclusion that intelligence without strategy, intelligence without good governance, is inherently wasteful, fraudulent, and abusive.  This compounds the waste, fraud, and abuse that is the current condition of 60% of the USG—and 80% of the US IC—today.[20]

Implicit in this is the kernel of an idea, that defense intelligence, no matter how ably it might be conceptualized, developed, and implemented, is itself fruitless in the absence of good governance and holistic Whole of Government operations.  The current SecDef has alluded to this in his statement that “the military cannot do it alone.”[21]  This is correct, but it avoids the underlying problem: we have a government that is inherent incoherent and incapable.

The USG ignores 8 of the 10 threats to humanity.   I list them below.

01 Poverty 02 Infectious Disease 03 Environmental Degradation 04 Inter-State Conflict 05 Civil War

06 Genocide 07 Other Atrocities 08 Proliferation 09 Terrorism 10 Transnational Crime

Figure 5: Ten High-Level Threats to Humanity

The Cabinet departments receive no intelligence (decision-support) of note from the secret US IC, and are inept at creating their own unclassified decision-support—they actually represent the recipients of taxpayer largesse, not the public interest or even less so, the taxpayers themselves.  This places the burden on DoD and the U.S. Army.

The President—like all others in government—is a good person trapped in a bad system.  Neither the National Security Council (NSC) nor the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), nor the Congress of the United States with its varied staff elements including the generally superb Government Accountability Office (GAO), are capable of serving the public interest for one simple reason: we are a “dumb Nation” in which the taxpayers have abdicated their civic duty to attend to government, demand a Return on Investment (RoI) for their taxes, and exercise their responsibility to be the sovereign Republic that the government serves.

A Nation’s Best Defense

From 1988 onwards, inspired by all that I learned as a co-founder of the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a Command), I have sought to reform national intelligence, now on the tail end of the second of three eras.[22]

The first era, the era of secret war and ostensibly deniable covert actions tantamount to undeclared war, ended with the conviction of the USA in the World Court, for mining the harbors of Nicaragua.[23]  The second era, the era of strategic analysis fostered by Sherman Kent in the aftermath of World War II (WWII), lost the last of its integrity in the Viet-Nam war, when “reasonable dishonesty” and the politicization of analysis castrated the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  CIA has become a gulag,[24] both because it lost its integrity and it failed to get a grip on openly-available information.[25]

The 1980’s were an interregnum[26] and as one of the first officers to be assigned terrorism as a primary target, I can testify that we were not serious then and I do not believe we are serious now—not because we do not try, but because we do not understand the “system of systems” approach to waging peace alongside irregular warfare (my definition: one man, one bullet).[27]

Today the public is discovering that its elected and appointed leaders lack the depth and breadth of understanding—or the intelligence (decision-support)—to make sense of and address the ten high-level threats to humanity.[28]  Our leaders to date have been incapable of or unwilling to harmonize the twelve core policies[29] within our own government (to include production of a sustainable balanced budget), and also appear oblivious to the impending collapse of an overly complex “top-down” governance structure that has failed to adapt and is in no way anticipatory, coherent, resilient, or sustainable.

There is good news.  The related concepts of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), bottom-up “Collective Intelligence,” and the social creation of “Infinite Wealth” are emergent.  It is in this context that I believe we will see a rebirth of the intelligence profession.  We are at the very beginning of a new era of Smart Nations, Clever Continents, and the World Brain complemented by an EarthGame™ in which all humans have access to all information in all languages all the time.  The time has come to sharply redirect national and defense intelligence.  I suggest we begin with Human Intelligence (HUMINT),[30] and that we redefine HUMINT as being comprised of education, intelligence, and research, with the citizen (and the soldier in the field) as the prime factor.

This may not seem important to the U.S. Army at first glance, but it is, because bad decisions made in isolation from the totality of our national interests (e.g. surging in Afghanistan being treated as an isolated decision without regard to the state of the economy or of the treasury) ultimately lead to the U.S. Army being put way out on a limb.

“A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.”  Humanity Ascending is the mission, HUMINT is the foundation.[31]This is as true for the U.S. Army as it is for the Republic as a whole.

HUMINT for the President

In 1994 I conceptualized the end of the linear paradigm of intelligence, and the emergence of the diamond paradigm.[32]

Figure 6: Linear versus Diamond Intelligence Process

The linear process is what we still have in place today, and “intelligence” is placed before the President just once a day, in a largely sterile “President’s Daily Brief (PDB).  Intelligence is not “at his side” throughout the day.  Now imagine a completely new process in which the President (or whatever “decider” is being served) is exposed to the complete range of all human knowledge in all languages, most of it not secret and shareable, as needed.

Figure 7: Putting the President in Touch with Humanity and Reality

The above construct is equally applicable for every policy-maker in DoD, for every acquisition manager, for every commander, for every staff action officer all the way to every A Team commander or company commander in the field.

HUMINT for the Secretary

When General A. Gray, USMC, then Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC) directed the creation of the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (MCIC) in the early 1980’s, he was driven by the same vision that led to the creation of the Marine Corps University: no one else—not the U.S. Navy, not the U.S. Army, not the U.S. Air Force—was properly and fully addressing the needs of the Nation’s only combined arms expeditionary force.  Each of the other services developed policies, acquisition programs, and operational campaign plans based on being the biggest with the mostest, with ample time to deploy and no worries about logistics supportability.  My mission, as the senior civilian who also designed the MCIC from scratch as a Marine Captain on Reserve duty, was to create a center that would meet the Commandant’s needs for intelligence support to policy, to acquisition (both requirements for and countermeasures against), and only tangentially, to also support the Fleet Marine Force (FMF) that was in theory adequately supported by the new consolidated Joint Intelligence Centers (JIC) within each theater.

The fact that there was literally nothing at all in the secret databases about 80% of the world—the 80% where the Marines always went—and that no one at any level had access to open sources of information in 183 languages, most of it not online (still true today), only became clear after we spent the first $20 million.

As the Secretary of Defense seeks to address the “Valley of Death” in defense acquisition,[33] along with the continuing recalcitrance of the three big services reluctant to risk budget share becoming faster, better, cheaper,[34] he would do well to remember Howard Odum’s counsel on the need to understand (and I would add, influence) the system of which one is a part of.[35]  Put bluntly, not only can the military not “do it alone,” which the Secretary recognizes, the military also cannot succeed in the future unless we first restructure and rebalance all of the instruments of national power.[36]

Absent a complete make-over of national and defense intelligence as well as defense engineering, DoD will continue to operate in the context of a pathologically deficient policy-making environment divorced from holistic reality; a 1950’s government structure that is severely deficient in every respect beginning with a stove-piped planning, programming, and budgeting system (PPBS); and an international spectrum of players, what I call the “eight tribes,” [37] that is seeking leadership—intellectual and intelligence leadership or decision-support, on how to create a prosperous world at peace.[38]

The Secretary is overlooking the actionable truth right under his nose: until he asks the right question, he will continue to get the wrong answer.[39]

The Failure of HUMINT Part I (Stovepipes, Segregation, & Secrecy)

Max Weber is renowned for his theory of bureaucracy, a model or system for controlling people, things, and most importantly, information.  Under this theory, “lanes in the road” or “stovepipes” become sacrosanct fiefdoms.  Under this theory, applied in the academic world, specialization leads to segregation, and segregation ultimately leads to stupidity—ignorance of the whole, even ignorance of the role the special element plays in the whole.

Put differently, the entire body of human knowledge has been mis-directed toward reductionism, knowing more and more about less and less, to the point that no one has the whole picture.  Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made this criticism of the classified world with respect to its knowledge of missile defense intelligence, it is even truer of all unclassified knowledge.[40]

Figure 8: Scattered Knowledge

The Future of HUMINT (Broadly and Properly Defined)

Human Intelligence (broadly and properly defined) will be the heart, soul, and brain of 21^st Century intelligence, not only within governments, but within all eight tribes of intelligence.[41]  In addition to CI and Security, I explicitly include both analysts of individual technical collection disciplines and all-source analysts; and consumers at every level from President to Action Officer (AO).[42]

HUMINT at the strategic level will be about Smart Nations, Clever Continents, and the World Brain.  At the operational level it will be about multinational information-sharing and sense-making to achieve mutual objectives by harmonizing up to $1 trillion a year in spending via an online Global Range of Needs Table that harmonizes organizational budgets by location and policy objective while also inducing direct charitable giving by the 80% of the one billion rich that do not now give now.  The harmonization will occur voluntarily through the use of shared decision-support.[43]

At the tactical level, HUMINT will become the Queen of the intelligence chessboard, providing direct support to the King—any decision-maker—by harnessing the distributed intelligence of all humans in all languages all the time—both those in the specific area of interest, and those outside who have something to contribute—and by restoring human primacy in relation to all technical intelligence operations—technical will excel with HUMINT, not alone.

Financially and technically, HUMINT should control and redirect SIGINT, IMINT, and MASINT because for the first time, the managers of HUMINT will understand the HUMINT Trifecta:

1.  Educate and nurture the all-source analysts and consumers;

2. Demand Return on Investment (ROI) metrics for all sources and methods of intelligence. This will cut technical funding in half to the benefit of education, HUMINT, and research; and

3.  Provide the decision-maker with concise, contextually-grounded all-source insights in a “just enough, just in time” manner that leaves no decision—whether of policy, acquisition, or operations—without a firm foundation[44] such that we eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse.

The future of HUMINT lies in creating the World Brain[45] and the EarthGame™,[46] with clandestine and covert activities playing the vital but fractional role they merit in the larger context of all humans, all minds, all the time.  Without HUMINT, most technical intelligence is noise.  Without HUMINT, decisions will continue to be made in a vacuum, at great cost.

Figure 9: Integrated Full-Spectrum HUMINT Management[47]

In the above figure LNO = Liaison Officer and SME = Subject-Matter Expert.[48] This figure is the culmination of my thirty or so years in the intelligence business.  I will not belabor the fact that many other Nations are vastly superior to the USA in their management of “full spectrum HUMINT,” but I will mention two: the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and the Islamic Republic of Iran.[49]  What I now understand after 30 years of service is how very fragmented the single discipline of HUMINT has become.  It has no leadership of the whole, in part because the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) gave up the “M” in the 1980’s if not sooner, and in part because within the IC and DoD we are still organized into stovepipes that do not play well among themselves.[50]  This leaves the President—and all Cabinet Secretaries including SecDef—without any decision-support at all when it comes to the core presidential duty—aided by what one would hope were a fully-informed Cabinet—of ensuring that the USG is trained, equipped, and organized to preserve and protect the USA.[51]  Put most directly, managing HUMINT as I suggest will immediately enhance decision-making by the President, the Cabinet Secretaries the Congressional Committees, and Field Commanders.

As I discuss each of the fifteen HUMINT elements in the balance of this monograph, I am acutely conscious of the failure of our national educational system.  I believe we have failed our children (and consequently our recruiting pool for the U.S. Army) in three ways:

First, we have allowed local government insiders to cheat the educational system by providing tax breaks and public land and public services to corporations, reaping handsome commissions and fees for themselves, while dramatically reducing the tax base that supports locally-funded education.[52]

Second, we have failed to update a school system initially designed around the needs of farmers (summers off) and then of factories (rote learning), and more or less beaten much of the creativity and curiosity out of our children by the time they enter the fifth grade.[53]  They have to fight their way out of the box we build around them.  We should be in year-round education with apprenticeships that nurture “whole person” growth with a full range of human trade and professional skills that are needed for localized resilience. We should be emphasizing team learning, project learning, challenge examinations based on distance learning, and real-world problem-solving.  We should be teaching the art of global multinational information access.

Third, we have broken the links between the natural world—the Earth—the human world—some call this the anthroposphere[54]—and the world of faith, spirit and mind, be it an agnostic noosphere[55] or a form of religion.[56]

Our children, in brief, have been raised in a bubble, and have not learned how to do whole systems thinking in a spontaneous or collective fashion.  At the same time, we have broken the accountability and transparency links between those who pay taxes, and the government officials that spend that revenue.

In my view, the future of HUMINT demands that we create an Open Source Agency (OSA) as called for by the 9-11 Commission,[57] and that we make OSINT our top priority for both funding and the attention of our national and defense intelligence leaders, as called for by the Aspin-Brown Commission.[58]  It is only in the context of what OSINT can do, and specifically the following, that clandestine HUMINT and the other slices of HUMINT can be fully effective.  As provided for in the Smart Nation – Safe Nation Act,[59] an OSA funded by DoD would provide the following HUMINT foundation for all eight tribes:

1.  Office of Information Sharing Treaties and Agreements (OISTA);[60]

2.  Office of the Assistant Secretary General for Decision Support (ASG DS) within the UN, and a UN-validated Global Range of Needs Table to harmonize US$1 trillion a year in spending by others;[61]

3.  Multinational Decision Support Center (MDSC), along with regional centers (one per continent);[62]

4.  A Multinational Decision-Support University to train executives (all levels) from all nations, all eight tribes of intelligence, together.[63]

I will begin my review of the fifteen slices of HUMINT in the 21^st century with a quotation from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), who invited me to testify[64] to the Moynihan Commission.[65] From their letter of transmittal:[66]

     The Commission's report is unanimous. It contains recommendations for actions by the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch, with the object of protecting and reducing secrecy in an era when open sources make a plenitude of information available as never before in history.

The United States of America (USA) has lost the ability to intelligently collect, process, exploit, and analyze global knowledge, all of it originating with indigenous humans speaking 34 core languages[67] and thousands of additional dialects and micro-languages.  This has happened because the political leadership of both parties has been captured by Wall Street and the military-industrial complex, to the detriment of diplomacy, development, and democracy, all three of which demand rigorous respect for all relevant information (96% of which is openly available according to General Tony Zinni, USMC (Ret.)).[68]  His hard-earned and practical observation is vital to the future of HUMINT:

80% of what I needed to know as CINCENT[69] I got from open sources rather than classified reporting.  And within the remaining 20%, if I knew what to look for,[70] I found another 16%.  At the end of it all, classified intelligence provided me, at best, with 4% of my command knowledge.

HUMINT since WWII has been mis-directed.  Separately I have published an early evaluation of why OSINT is so important to every aspect of military policy, acquisition, and operations, and will not belabor the point here other than to state my view that radical force structure redesign is not properly supported by military or civilian intelligence today because they don’t know how to train, equip, and organize in order to provide Whole of Government decision-support, or how to serve every level of decision across every mission area, both military and civilian.[71]

The time has come to redefine HUMINT concepts, doctrine, and practices.

HUMINT: Defining & Managing the Fifteen Slices

Today each of the 15 slices is being managed in isolation, and that must not be allowed to continue.  DoD can fix this for Whole of Government benefit.

Citizen as Sensor & Sense-Maker

In 1986, managing Project GEORGE (Smiley) in the Office of Information Technology (OIT) at CIA, I defined the needs for IT support to both clandestine operations and all-source analysis, and that is where I had my blinding flash of insight on the challenges of data entry.  The bottom line is that no one government, and less so any one agency, can afford, understand, or execute global data entry.  The only possible solution is one that harnesses the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth, i.e. all humans, all minds.[72]

In 1994 I realized that it is not possible to have smart spies in the context of a dumb nation, and in 2006, working with Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), I realized that 50% of the dots needed to prevent the next 9-11 (or to respond to a natural disaster such as Katrina) will be bottom-up dots from citizens and cops on the beat.  Those dots have no place to go today in 2010, nine years after 9-11.  We need unclassified state-based fusion centers in which sensitive information from all eight tribes can be processed,[73] and that is why the Smart Nation – Safe Nation Act[74] that I devised includes US$1.5 Billion to create 50 state-based Citizen Intelligence Centers and Networks to be manned by the National Guard (which can hold both local law enforcement commissions along with foreign intelligence clearances), the other US$1.5 Billion funding foreign open source information acquisition and processing initiatives that harness all that the UN System and our multinational partners can help us access, exploit, and share from schoolhouse to White House, and world-wide.

The one thing the USA can do for our future generations is to get a grip on HUMINT in all its forms, and help the eight demographic challengers[75] implement the World Brain and the Earth Game™ via free cells phones for the poor, and call centers that teach the poor “one cell call at a time.”[76]

A LINUX quote can be adapted here.  They say “Put enough eyeballs on it, and no bug is invisible.  I say, “Put enough minds to work, and no threat, no policy, no challenge will withstand the collective intelligence of We.[77]

From a HUMINT perspective, there are at least three priceless (hence, unaffordable by any one government) citizen-based contributions to national intelligence:  as a source of personnel; as a source of overt observation; and as a source of clandestine and counterintelligence help.             The USG has failed over time to be effective across all three of these vital domains.[78]  This is one reason I believe in Universal Service (and the right to bear arms) as the foundation for liberty within a Republic with a sovereign people.[79]

The near-term importance of the citizen-observer is not well understood by leaders in government or corporations or even most non-profit organizations in part because those leaders are 10-20 years behind in their understanding of what modern technology makes possible.  In brief, the spread of cellular telephones including cell tower in remote regions powered by solar energy[80] or ambient energy[81] has made possible the integration of three wildly productive factors: citizen “eyes on,” web data templates, and cellular Short Message Service (SMS) inputs with geospatial attributes and photographs.

Below is a very short list of applications that exist today, many of them award-winning and all of them suitable for rapid migration to all locations and across all issues.[82]

Blood Testing	Mobile phone hacked to be a portable blood tester capable of detecting HIV, malaria, other illnesses
Child Malnutrition	UNICEF, Net Squared (USAID 1st Prize)
City Problems	ClickFix transparency anywhere in the world
Corrupt Officials	Indonesia pilot project.
Crisis Response	InSTEAD GeoChat
Crop Disease	Africa pilot, treating disease via cell phone
Disease	12 sources, close to 100 diseases, each plotted individually, can zoom in on any country
Election Irregularities	VoterReport India, Electoral Commission Intervention, Forged Votes, Inflammatory Speech, Other Irregularities, Violence, Voter Bribing, Voter Name Missing, Voting Machine Problems
Environmental Monitoring	Mobile phone photos plus GPS enhance citizen-scientist responsiveness, utility, and credibility
Flood Warning	FloodSMS
Genocide	Eight stages start with easy to detect demonization
Roadway Fatalities	SafeRoadMaps
Sexual Harassment	Egypt pilot project
Traffic	Many locations, volume, noise, pollution
Vandalism	Anonymous texting as it happens, England
Violence	India, elsewhere, on verge of 911 SMS plotting
War Actions in Gaza	Aljazeera, distinguishes among Air Strikes, Announcement, Deaths, Israeli Casualties, Israeli Forces, IAid, Casualties, Protests, Rocket Attacks.

Figure 10: Direct Cell Phone Report Systems Using SMS

Educating the rest of the world, free, is part of this slice, I leave it at that.[83]

Soldier as Sensor (Overt/Open Signals)

In this monograph the term soldier embraces both military and civilian personnel serving domestically or overseas.  The concept of the “strategic corporal” is well established,[84] both by Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, and more recently (1999) by General Charles Krulak, USMC.[85]  The concept of “commander’s intent” is also well-established, having been given global cachet by General Al Gray, USMC, then Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC).[86]

However, our soldiers continue to be treated as a “quantity” good rather than a “quality” being.  Up to this point, we have trained, equipped, and organized our military around high-cost, high-maintenance technologies without regard to the needs or abilities of the individual solider, and we have not treated the individual soldier with the respect each merits when properly educated, trained, led, and listened to.          The soldier is the ultimate HUMINT asset.[87]

Especially troubling to me is the continuing resistance to the concept developed by the Swedish military and enhanced by myself:[88]

     Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2)

In my view, Whole of Government training, equipping, and organizing, led by the US military and using US military training facilities, can most fruitfully be enhanced by making it multinational and multi-functional in nature.  A stellar example of success is offered by the annual STRONG ANGEL exercise, an annual series of civil-military demonstrations that show methods for civilian and military agencies around the world to work effectively together within a disaster response.      It is especially noteworthy for providing TOOZL, an analytic and communications toolkit on a flash-drive, consisting of Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS) that anyone can use without cost.[89]

Here again, we see the vital need for education and training in the context of a national strategy, a military strategy, a robust nation-wide education system, continuing adult education, and multinational information-sharing.

            HUMINT starts in the classroom and is then augmented in real-life.  It is essential to the success of the secret elements of HUMINT that we plan for the fullest possible exploitation of the non-secret elements.  Patrolling by infantry is how we patrol to create a 360 degree human safety network.[90]  Similarly, we have allowed our Force Reconnaissance—our deep humans—to be reduced in numbers, experience, and utility.  On the battlefield, it is force reconnaissance that emplaces “close in” technical devices.

Operational Test & Evaluation (OT&E)

I realized that Operational Test & Evaluation (OT&E) must fall under the oversight of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (USD(I)) because speaking “truth to power” cannot apply only to “red” forces, and now as we understand it, to “white,” “yellow,” and “green” forces, but to our own “blue” forces as well.  Lies kill one’s comrades.  We must stop lying to ourselves!

This first became apparent to me in 1988 when the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (MCIA) pioneered “strategic generalizations” about the real-world.  Bridge-loading limits (30 ton limits on average across the Third World), line-of-sight averages (under 1000 meters), hot and humid aviation days (the DoD standard for OT&E is warm and not humid), the list is long.

What the four Services build and buy in isolation from one another has virtually nothing to do with the actual ten high-level threats to humanity, not even to the single inter-state conflict threat (number four on that now universally-applauded list).  Indeed, the Services have been caught manipulating threat databases so as to justify bigger systems with more complex elements, to the point that the systems not only cannot go over any normal bridge in the Third World, need one contractor per soldier to maintain in the field, and are irrelevant against 80% of actual needs.  This is unprofessional.

Despite the best efforts of the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) and of course the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition (USD(A)), DoD is easily twenty years away from being globally-relevant and effective at Operations Other Than War (OOTW), now more fashionably called Stabilization & Reconstruction (S&R) Operations, with a side dish of Irregular Warfare (IRWF), not to be confused with Information Operations, (IO, a mutant mix of public relations and psychological operations on steroids, with zero intelligence).

I finally realized the insanity of a multi-service array of capabilities that are not understood by Presidents or even the Commanders who oversee them when I learned that we sent ten Tomahawks to kill Bin Laden.  They took six hours to reach his camp, passing over Pakistan, which assuredly alerted him.[91]  More recently, we have been using drones to kill clusters of individuals, mostly bystanders.  We are oblivious to the long-term human impact of our actions.

I have come to the conclusion that not only must all weapons, mobility, and communications systems be validated by USD(I) across the requirements and procurements process, and in OT&E, but that specific operational plans require USD(I) validation as well.  We have to stop carpet bombing villages, and get down to one man-one bullet efficacy while nurturing everyone else.

Inspector-General (Organizational, USG, International)

Inspector-General (IG) endeavors in the past have spanned the full spectrum from over-zealous investigations of minor infractions through largely ceremonial and entirely predictable inspections of administrative minutia.

More recently, efforts by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to integrate IG functions across the sixteen agencies nominally under his authority, and the equally recent emergence of interest in transnational or regional IG collaboration within select intelligence, military, and law enforcement communities, are both worthy of note.[92]

Every graduate degree in public administration requires a course in program evaluation, and it is there, not in regulatory compliance and after-the-fact investigation that the IG can make a real contribution.  The IG, like each of the other slices in the larger HUMINT “pie” must be an integrated part of the totality of full-spectrum HUMINT with an intimate constructive—not punitive—relationship with and among all slices.

A Director of OMB, which has done some good things in its search for common solutions, might consider the varied IG cadres as an extension of OMB’s reach, and work hard to restore the management function of OMB while also redirecting the IG function toward improved remediation and oversight of requirements definition, capabilities acquisition, and operational efficacy.

The GAO can no longer be shut out of the US IC.  Easily 80% of secrecy is being used to avoid accountability,[93] and as paradoxical as it may sound, transparency is something that is desperately needed within the secret world, at least with respect to financial inputs and consequential outputs.  In my view, at least half if not two-thirds of the entire US IC budget could be, should be, available for redirection by the President toward education, Whole of Government and multinational intelligence (decision-support) that is not secret, and research focused on the eradication of the ten high-level threats to humanity, eight of which are now ignored.

At the same time, we need to question the entirety of our military assistance budget.  In brief, we need an IG inspection of our fundamental assumptions about war and peace in the 21^st Century.

At the strategic level, the IGs should all be in alliance with the GAO and OMB and GSA, seeking to define completely new 21^st Century objectives that are transformative of the means, ways, and ends of government, not just seeking to be more efficient and “legal” with old means, old ways, and old ends.

Security Observation/Remote Webcams/Floating Periscopes

Humans are the essential element in security observation and in the exploitation of distributed security cameras including the new wireless (and some solar-powered) webcams.  Based on my own experience, I find three general areas that could be improved:

First, no one country can be covered by a single security plan, even one that distinguishes among mission, facilities, movement, and individuals.  In one particular country, we found the need for three separate security surveillance and preparation plans, one for the north, one for the south, and one for the capital city.  Indeed, I am reminded of General Tony Zinni’s extremely useful observation that Viet-Nam was actually six wars: a) Swamp War, b) Paddy War, c) Jungle War, d) Plains War, e) Saigon War, and f) DMZ War; each with its own lessons, tactics, and sometimes equipment differences.[94]

Second, we have been slow to empower our distributed forces with both modern security surveillance technology, and the tactical processing power needed to do “face trace” or find other anomalies that might be missed by the human eye.[95]  In contrast, the Metropolitan Police of London (“Scotland Yard”) have dramatically reduced crime and increased arrests by using a city-wide array of surveillance cameras with very clever humans exploiting them from a central location that also has access to distributed culturally-astute interpreters of body language in context.

Third, between solar power, relay stations, and satellite communications, there is no reason why we cannot field persistent ground surveillance, for example, along the Somali coast.  In my view, we are spending too much time worrying about close-in force protection, and not nearly enough time thinking about and practicing distributed observation for early warning.  I might mention in this regard that when I was asked to review the new counter-terrorism plan for one service in the aftermath of 9-11, I found them to have doubled-up everything that existed previously, with zero innovation.  My short response was “move your virtual perimeter out 100 kilcks, brief every waitress and gas station attendant and truck driver in that circle that you can, and give them a number that is answered 24/7 as well as an incentive to call in.”

Security is a form of static HUMINT combined with “on demand” HUMINT, and only a robust educational program can make it effective.[96]  Working with elements of the UN Department of Safety & Security (DSS) I have found a real hunger for creating completely new forms of “smart security” that emphasize the human factor rather than the physical.  We can all do better.

Document Exploitation/Imagery

Based on conversations I have had with peacekeepers and others, we appear to have enormous opportunities for improvement.  I am told, for example, that it still takes 4-6 weeks for ten pages of captured Dari documents to be     translated and returned to the tactical commander, there being no practical or responsive Dari translation capability within Afghanistan.[97]

I have two reactions: first, given the number of individuals living in Afghanistan that speak and read Dari while also being reasonably fluid with English, I see our security mind-sets interfering with tactical needs for rapid exploitation of captured documents.  There are a number of ways to achieve time and risk-based security while meeting the needs of the tactical commanders.  I can do Dari translations from the field within 4-6 hours.  Why is this still a problem?  Old minds and processes.

My second reaction is to wonder why we have not implemented a global grid using www.telelanguage.com, and field digitization (to include pen-based digitization) that can go directly from the field to a Dari translator on call in that given instant.  Below is an illustration of generic capabilities since 1997.

Figure 11: Global Collection, Translation, and Annotation[98]

This area is urgently in need of a multinational burden-sharing network.  I consider eleven nations trivial—90 nations is my standard.[99]

All-Source Analysts & Global Experts

Although the classical definition of HUMINT emphasizes clandestine collection and covert action (agents of influence, propaganda, paramilitary operations), I believe that in an age when 80-90% of the information from humans is overt, and secret intelligence provides, “at best,” 4% of a combatant commander’s information, we have to re-think HUMINT.

I respectfully submit that both CIA, with its policy of hiring very young people unproven at clandestine or analytic tradecraft, and DoD, with its policy of using enlisted personnel for many tasks that in my view require a liberal arts college education, are in error in their current approach to manning.

I believe that over the next ten years we must migrate away from putting new hires into anything other than OSINT exploitation, and emphasize mid-career hires for the senior all-source analytic positions as well as HUMINT collection and CI positions (the latter retaining their life’s pattern as legitimate cover).

At the same time, we must empower all-source analysts with the resources and the multinational social skills with which to leverage global experts regardless of nationality, and with the ability to draw on the MDSC for reach-back to all eight tribes of any given country.

As a general rule of thumb, I believe each division manager should have US$1 million a year; that each branch manager should have US$250,000 a year; and that each individual analyst, no matter how junior, should have US$50,000 to spend, on a mix of external expertise, combined travel to conferences or in-house seminars and sounding boards—anything that is legal to buy.[100]

It costs less than US$1,000 to identify the top 100 published experts in any field based on citation of their work, and another US$1,000 or so to communicate with each of the published experts so as to identify the top 25-100 unpublished experts.  Every analyst should such a network “on call.”

In the overt arena, clandestine case officers skilled at “tradecraft” cannot cut it.  It takes a substantive expert with tangible rewards to offer in the form of legally shareable information, privileged access, unconventional insights, or straight-up modest consulting fees (at little as US$250, as much as US$5,000) to work the global overt expertise grid.

Notably absent from my thinking are beltway bandits and their costs.[101]      I am skeptical about the value of “butts in seats,” and also a strong proponent of centralized OSINT contract management along with rigorous metrics for accountability, as well as a “buy once for all” OSINT acquisition system.  I believe the U.S. Army must develop both strategists and foreign area specialists within its own ranks, not as an out-sourced function, and must nurture these individuals over the course of a career, not “one tour and out.”

Defense Attaches, Technical Liaison

This category includes every human assigned any form of inter-national or inter-agency responsibility, and I especially wish to include our officers assigned to Military Groups (MILGRP), to the schools of other nations, and to all “external” billets including fellowships at think tanks, command exchange tours, and so on.  Civilian intelligence personnel distributed among the Combatant Commands are now under D/DIA oversight, and that is a good start for DoD.  Country Teams remain a kludge of singleton representatives from multiple agencies that often out-number (and out-spend) the diplomats, and by no stretch of the imagination can any Embassy be considered to be “coherent” in how every person is harmonized to create a whole.[102]

In my view, we are long overdue for a top to bottom review of how DoD as a whole, and each individual service, handle the selection, assignment, and on-going oversight and exploitation of all officers as well as non-commissioned and enlisted personnel serving in external billets.  The same is true for all the other agencies, most of which are incapable of addressing contingencies or fielding task forces that are trained, equipped and organized for short- to long-term operations under conditions more often than not hazardous.[103]

For this group, very possibly the “center of gravity” for HUMINT as a whole, I have a few thoughts.

1.  There is no substitute for continuity in-country and on the desk in Washington, D.C.  We need to get serious about deep language training and repetitive area tours.  Ideally I would like to see 6-8 year assignments with assured promotions, and staggered tours so the second officer arrives midway through the longer tour of the person being replaced eventually.

2.  MILGRPs are a wasted asset from an IO point of view.  I had an excellent talk with a MILGRP liaison officer at the U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) in 1994, and learned that MILGRPs have no information sharing or sense-making responsibilities to speak of—they are there to focus on moving US military equipment into the local pipeline.  That needs to change.

3.  Even if the rest of the US IC and the rest of the USG are not ready for Whole of Government operations, DoD needs to take the lead.  A good start would be to create a special sense-making unit within DIA/DH that deals overtly and respectfully with every single DoD body (and in the ideal, with every other USG “singleton” body” assigned to an external billet world-wide), while treating the 137 Defense Attaché (DefAtt) locations as the core mass, building from there.

Human Terrain Teams (HTT)

Rarely does one encounter a program that is at once so well-intentioned and also so very badly managed.  While there must certainly be two sides to the story, and a good manager will engage in compassionate listening and a 360° evaluation before making changes, I understand from multiple sources that this program is out-of-control to the point of being dangerous to both the individuals being mis-directed into the program, and the commanders and troops ostensibly receiving this “support.”  I believe this program must immediately be subordinated to D/DIA and therein subordinated to DIA/DH, which should be expanded to provide leadership and management, including resource oversight, for all fifteen slices of HUMINT.

In its own words,[104]

     [Human Terrain System] HTS is a new proof-of-concept program, run by the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), and serving the joint community. The near-term focus of the HTS program is to improve the military’s ability to understand the highly complex local socio-cultural environment in the areas where they are deployed; however, in the long-term, HTS hopes to assist the US government in understanding foreign countries and regions prior to an engagement within that region.

TRADOC is running this as an experimental program, and they don’t appear to have the knowledge— or even the network to acquire the knowledge—needed to manage this potentially valuable global grid of culturally-astute SMEs.[105]

I am troubled by the various photographs that contrast heavily-armed, heavily-armored individuals wearing sunglasses and trying to do the “hearts and minds” deal without the skills to assimilate themselves and be effective.

Overall, program management, personnel selection, insistence on clearances, a marginal training program, and very badly managed in-country assignments and oversight appear to demand an urgent and complete re-direction of HTT.

The existing web pages are replete with known errors (e.g. this is not the first time this has been thought of),[106] inflated claims, and a reading list that would make any real anthropologist weep.[107]   This program appears to need a complete make-over. [108]

            Done right, HTT should be inter-disciplinary and multinational, and should not require clearances at all.

Interrogator-Translator Teams (ITT)

I have a special affection for Interrogator-Translator Teams (ITT), and a real sense of awe at the capabilities of new forms of forward-deployed tactical analysts who among other achievements sniffed out Saddam Hussein’s final hide-out, something no national intelligence capability was able to do.

For the purposes of this monograph I want to broaden the ITT category to include Military Police (MP), Civil Affairs (CA), Combat Engineers (CE), and all the folks that come into contact with both Prisoners of War (POW), which in the Marine Corps is an S-1/Adjutant housekeeping job rather than an S-2 intelligence exploitation job, and with civilians, including our logisticians (who are constantly starved for intelligence support at the same time that they have so much to offer in terms of practical insights about access and trafficability).

In peacetime it has often troubled me that ITT as well as CI personnel tend to be farmed out to take care of all the Temporary Additional Duty (TAD) demands on a given Headquarters, and at the Battalion level, to find the least-desired Marine officers going into the S-2 job.  Of course my knowledge is dated, but some things never change.

I believe the time has come to both fence all intelligence personnel from non-intelligence assignments, and to dramatically augment the assignment of intelligence personnel down to the squad, platoon, and company level.  I have been enormously impressed by the initiative of some company commanders in Afghanistan, taking everyone with an IQ above 120 or whatever number needed to get at least six smarter than average individuals, to create company level ad hoc field intelligence analysis units.[109]

I participated in two force structure studies when serving the Marine Corps as the second-ranking civilian in Marine Corps intelligence, and my arguments for reducing shooters and increasing thinkers consistently went nowhere.

Now is the time for the USD(I) and D/DIA to take a fresh look at HUMINT across the board, taking great care to define HUMINT as all humans, all minds, all the time, and working from there.  HUMINT is no longer something that can be isolated as an arcane specialization—not only can the commander not delegate “intelligence,”[110] but the intelligence staff officer must conceive and execute a new form of HUMINT campaign plan that simultaneously educates, trains, informs, empowers, and ultimately protects every member of the inter-agency team that is being supported, and that is both conscious of—and able to exploit—every human several times removed in their respective networks.[111]

Soldier as Sensor (Patrolling, Force Reconnaissance, Covert “Hides”)

Patrolling is a fundamental element of infantry operations, and appears to rise and fall in cycles.  Its companion, force reconnaissance, also tends to rise and fall.  There is no substitute for a human brain attached to human eyes and ears, particularly when real-time contextual understanding and warning is needed.  While Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and Forward Air Controllers (FAC) and Aerial Observers (AO) can be most helpful, it is the human on the ground that produces “ground truth,” a “360 degree” appreciation that cannot be achieved by any combination of technologies, close-in or remote.  This is as true of peacekeeping operations as it is of full-spectrum hostilities.[112]

Professor Richard Aldrich, whose chapter, “From Ireland to Bosnia: Intelligence Support for UK Low Intensity Operations,” has a special lesson for us with respect to the importance of placing soldiers in covert “hides.”.  I quote the following from page 92, without further comment.

     In both Ireland and Bosnia, units on the ground appreciated the importance of a holistic approach to intelligence. Intelligence was vital to support even the smallest units and every patrol devoted time and attention to intelligence gathering. Patrols were often high-profile affairs whose main function initially was to reassure public and to assert authority. In both environments, patrols required intelligence support from covert observation points to reinforce their security. Substantial numbers of covert observation posts had to be established in order to reduce the number of patrol incidents. In Ireland, soldiers, often trained by the members of the SAS, would lie in cover with binoculars, high-powered telescopes, and night vision devices for days or weeks on end in order to observe specific individuals or areas. Such covert observation posts could link with patrols in order to dominate an area. But the work exposed them to attack if their location was uncovered by passing civilians.[113]

He goes on to observe:

     In both Ireland and Bosnia, tactical intelligence gathering was lent an additional importance because the flow of intelligence from the higher echelons to those on the ground was weak. Intelligence at ground level flowed up, but not down.[114]

I also believe that a great deal more can be done in using force reconnaissance to emplace close-in remote monitors, including webcams and live audio devices, in enemy encampments and criminal enclaves.[115]

Defensive Counterintelligence

We now cross the line from the first eleven “overt” elements of HUMINT, and move into the final four, each replete with classified sources and methods that cannot be discussed here.[116]

My first point is that CI is a completely distinct specialization, not to be confused with clandestine HUMINT.  The first requires the detection, without warning, of the “in-house” suspect of illegal or even unsanctioned activities and disclosures potentially threatening to the USA.[117]

Despite the fact that Presidents (e.g. Ronald Reagan)[118] and Senators (e.g. Durbin, Hatch, Rockefeller, and Shelby)[119] leak and destroy sensitive capabilities overnight and without any recrimination, defensive CI is supposed to be the pro-active means by which we prevent, detect, and deceive those who seek to betray our national security enterprise from within.  Contractors, in my view, are 80% of the challenge.

Aldrich Ames (CIA) and Robert Hansen (FBI) are noteworthy failures of defensive CI.  Ames was driving a Jaguar and paid cash for a $450,000 house.  When asked to investigate his claim that his Colombian wife inherited the money, the CIA Chief of Station (COS) in Bogota blew off the request.  Hansen, a study in contradictions, from ostensibly devout Catholic to worshipping a stripper, failed to arouse any serious attention.

Defensive counterintelligence, as best I can tell, has three major failings today:

First, it is considered—at least within CIA—to be a backwater and a dumping ground, an undesirable assignment and one that I believe still lacks good leadership, not for lack of good people, but for lack of appreciation.

Second, the culture of the U.S. Intelligence Community is one of “once in, can do no wrong.”[120]  This is compounded by a lack of contractor-focused CI.[121]

Third, the data access system of systems of the U.S. Intelligence Community is not designed to track individual access or specific document access across the board.  Individuals receive generic “CODEWORD” clearances and then have relative carte blanche access.  We are not using information technology well for CI, either defense or offensive.

To appreciate defensive CI and needed reforms, read Merchants of Treason: America’s Secrets for Sale,[122] and Traitors Among Us: Inside the Spycatcher’s World.[123]  There are other books, but these two capture the essence of why defensive counterintelligence really matters.

            Defensive CI is much easier if we reduce unjustified secrecy.

Offensive Counterintelligence

Offensive CI is very similar to clandestine HUMINT, but with a very special focus that is rarely taken seriously.  It demands the obsessive identification of individuals responsible for penetrating our own organizations, rather than—as with defensive counterintelligence—the identification of our own nationals who might be vulnerable to recruitment for the purpose—whether witting or unwitting—of betraying secrets.[124]

Within the CIA, this can be dumping ground, but more often than not is simply an “additional duty” and not given the emphasis that it merits.  In my own case, it was one of two full-time jobs I was assigned (and gladly so, I was a real masochist in my CIA days), and I was literally the only person in CIA paid to think about penetrating the US targeting element within the clandestine service of a specific denied area country.

An emerging aspect of offensive as well as defensive CI is to be found in the cyberwar and electronic security arena.  The Chinese appear to have mastered the art of riding the electrical grid into computers that are otherwise not on the Internet.  Based on my own experience with the Special Communications Center (SPINTCOM) at the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (MCIA), it is all too easy to feed naïve Lance Corporals “free” games that they then insert into the SPINTCOM computers to fritter away the late night hours.  The complexity of the cyberwar arena is not well understood in the US—I tried to flag this with a $1 billion a year budget in 1995, pulling together expert advice from, among others, the top NSA consultant on cyber-security. [125] Today NSA is asking for $12 billion a year, and in all likelihood will focus more on expanding its access to every datum about every person in America, and be less successful at helping create a fireproof national grid.  The situation is not made any better by the fact that virtually all of our Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems are on the open Internet as a result of companies deciding in the 1980’s and 1990’s that they could save money by not having stand-alone systems impervious to hacking, doing so in part because we lack a national industrial security strategy and policy.

My personal inclination is to place Security and Defensive CI under one deputy director, while placing Offensive CI, Covert Action (CA), and Clandestine HUMINT under another Deputy Director.  The third—and the principal Deputy Director— would manage the first eleven slices of overt HUMINT.  I believe that managing overt HUMINT together with CI and clandestine HUMINT will add enormous value at virtually no additional cost.[126]

Covert Action HUMINT

There is no finer overview on covert action that is legally available to the public than Alfred Cumming, Covert Action: Legislative Background and Possible Policy Questions (Congressional Research Service, February 9, 2009).

Traditionally since the National Security Act of 1947, covert action has been (in theory) the exclusive province of the CIA and defined in general terms as agents of influence (pushing governments to do things against their own best interests but favored by US policymakers); propaganda (media manipulation); and paramilitary operations including coups, instability operations, sabotage of perceived threats (e.g. a nuclear or bio-chemical facility).  Support activities such as Air America or Southern Air Transport, and administrative activities such as money laundering (to include the creation or complete subordination of entire banks), the acquisition of enemy weapons for use by our own “false flag” forces, and more recently, rendition and torture, all fall in this arena.

I am persuaded by my own direct experience and a lifetime of reading that US policymakers are not sufficiently informed, nor ethically grounded, and therefore should not be authorizing covert actions, with two exceptions: the capture or assassination of key terrorist or gang leaders and the interdiction of key ingredients of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) weapons of mass destruction (WMD).[127]

Covert actions violate the Geneva Convention, and harken back to the first era of national intelligence, “war by other means.”

The very definition of covert action, “an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicity,”[128] is sufficient to suggest that covert action flies in the face of reality and sustainable consensus, and is largely not achievable—the US Government cannot keep most secrets.

I include in covert action the funding of foreigners including foreign intelligence services that skim half the money and do evil in our name.[129]

There is no substitute for reading Al Cumming’s brilliant nine-page unclassified information paper.  The USG at this time lacks a strategic analytic model for understanding all ten high-level threats to humanity and for harmonizing Whole of Government operations across all twelve core policies, and the USG is largely incapable of competently directing or executing covert actions, a few isolated operations not-with-standing.

Clandestine HUMINT

From where I sit, CIA has become useless.  It refuses to abandon official cover and it has proven incapable of scaling up non-official cover despite spending tens of millions if not more on up to 21 “pseudo-companies,” 20 of which had to be shut down recently.[130]  At the same time, CIA’s young case officers (C/O) and analysts (the majority of the CIA analytic population now has less than five years employment at CIA) deprive CIA of any claim to special competence in HUMINT or all-source intelligence.[131]

DoD has until recently been unwilling to challenge CIA, and kept most of its clandestine activities in “hip-pocket” mode, as best I can tell from open sources.  Now I believe that DoD recognizes that if it wants to achieve world-class intelligence capabilities across the board, it must create them for itself, and I write this monograph in part to help DoD get it right.

In clandestine HUMINT, something I care deeply about, one needs to nurture leaders with open minds, and ideally leaders with very strong backgrounds in unconventional and irregular operations.  Nothing handicaps clandestine HUMINT more than conventional mind-sets (i.e. uniformed leaders lacking clandestine experience), combined with lawyers afraid of their own shadow.[132]

I helped think about the clandestine service of the future, and saw clever recommendations ignored by a succession of CIA leaders.  Here are the five slices of clandestine HUMINT that I would like to help create completely apart from CIA, which I would convert into a single Classified Technical Intelligence Agency (CTIA), with one floor for each of the technical disciplines.  The existing D/CIA could become the Deputy Director of National Intelligence (DDNI) for Technical Collection Management, while the D/DIA becomes the DDNI for Human and Open Source Collection Management, as well as All-Source Analysis.[133]

1/5: Exceptionally talented entry-level citizens to serve as lifers

1/5: Mid-career US citizens who have created their cover & access

1/5: Mid-career foreign nationals who have created cover & access

1/5  Mid-career case officers from other countries on rotation

1/5 “It’s just business” one time business deals with no further ado

Although CIA counter-terrorism managers have done some very good hiring—I love the quote, “The college degree can come later” when hiring a foreigner with skills as a GS-15—on balance we need a new non-official service.[134]

HUMINT Requirements & Collection Management

The US IC still does not have a serious requirements & collection management system (RCMS), not least because it considers the President its only “real” client; it has not trained a cadre of specialist requirements officers; and it persists is disregarding the value of OSINT while focusing on triage among the classified disciplines.

As a consultant to ICMAP,[135] I pointed out the obvious, to little effect: that the IC was asking Question #4 of the following four questions, and ignoring the first three:

1.  Can we FIND our answer in what we already have?

2.  Can we GET our answer from someone we know?

3.  Can we BUY our answer from the private sector?

4.  WHICH classified systems should we TASK?

One of the unique advantages of HUMINT is its ability to receive and act on questions that are full of nuance, ambiguity, and complexity.  Whereas the technical collection disciplines have to be told “what, when, and where,” in the case of HUMINT, we only have to get three things right:

1.  Understand the question.

2.  Know who knows (the human source will sort out the nuances);

3.  Connect the source with the client or debrief the source.

The major obstacles to HUMINT success are, in this order, our consumers, out-dated security guidelines, and ignorant lawyers.[136]  To be successful, HUMINT managers must first educate all those “inside the wire.”

HUMINT costs less, requires less time, and is much more responsive than technical collection, in part because with HUMINT, “processing” is embedded all along the human chain, from source to collector to analyst to consumer.

I will end this brief overview with the very last sentence of Jim Bamford’s most recent book, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency:[137]

Eventually NSA may secretly achieve the ultimate in quickness, compatibility, and efficiency—a computer with petaflop and higher speeds shrunk into a container about a liter in size, and powered by only about ten watts of power: the human brain.

HUMINT Inter-Disciplinary Support

Without getting into classified sources and methods, it is none-the-less necessary to emphasize the vital role that HUMINT plays in tipping off and supporting the technical collection disciplines.  By way of context, the technical collection disciplines are vacuum-cleaners in contrast to the precision of HUMINT, and suffer further from lacking the processing power to detect—in real-time—the anomalies and patterns or to translate—in real-time—the most important conversations.  Hence, HUMINT can be—but usually is not—a vital “force multiplier” for the technical disciplines.

            SIGINT relies heavily on HUMINT for the acquisition of code books from the field.  It should rely heavily on HUMINT for the identification of specific communications devices that are being used to communicate using clandestine methods such as steganography, or bland conversation that is heavily laden with covert meaning, but in reality the HUMINT discipline has failed to develop as broadly and deeply as it should among indigenous sources, in part because the field of multinational clandestine HUMINT is in its infancy.  SIGINT also relies heavily on HUMINT for the emplacement of close-in technical monitoring devices, the procurement of listening posts, and the handling of real-time monitors and translators for close-in collection.

            IMINT tends to be self-sufficient but because of its genesis as a precision collection system with very high resolution, it still does not do wide-area surveillance.  While IMINT still cannot see under jungle canopy, into caves, or even into urban areas in any sort of coherent manner, when told exactly where to look, IMINT can add value.  The advent of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) has dramatically increased IMINT value at the tactical level, but the processing and the connection from the collection platform to the end-user in the field are still severely deficient.

            MASINT depends heavily on HUMINT for collecting samples (e.g. of water downstream from a suspected bio-chemical factory) or for emplacing close-in devices that seek to collect signatures in the form of smells, air composition, or other electro-magnetic anomalies characteristic of specific capabilities.

            Cyber-War, both offensive cyber-war and defensive cyber-security, is in its infancy, the warnings and the substantive recommendations of the early 1990’s having been ignored.  The importance of HUMINT in Cyber-War cannot be over-stated, but will certainly be ignored by the new “cyber czar.”  Both Offensive and Defensive CI—HUMINT sub-disciplines—should play a major role in both defensive protection and offensive penetration of cyber-space.

All four of the above technical collection disciplines should, but do not, rely heavily on OSINT.  Although NSA has a fine effort to leverage OSINT in targeting telecommunications (for example, using OSINT to study the emergent Chinese cellular capabilities), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) makes use of commercial source imagery, in reality both NSA and NGA are so heavily defined by their legacy systems that they have yet to make the fullest possible use of OSINT in all languages and mediums.  MASINT is very new and has sought to leverage OSINT, but MASINT relies too heavily on beltway bandits (very large vendors) and the latter are not skilled at global OSINT in all languages using HUMINT intermediaries—they prefer to sell the government “butts in seats” surfing the Internet, a means of running up very large bills (and 200% overhead charges) without actually drilling down to exactly what is needed and could be obtained at very low cost if they truly understood multinational open sources and methods.

Remembering that OSINT is a part of HUMINT, the figure below illustrates how OSINT should be managed, both to relieve the classified disciplines of requirements that can be answered with open sources and methods, and to enhance the efficacy of the classified sources and methods.

 

Figure 12: OSINT &Classified HUMINT in Relation to Other INTs

Conclusion: The HUMINT Playing Field

General Al Gray created the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (MCIA) because he understood that expeditionary and constabulary operations were unique, and that intelligence support for the USMC was not to be had from others.

I now believe that HUMINT must be elevated to be the “first service” (inclusive of OSINT) and that the intelligence directors or advisors to agency heads, Cabinet Secretaries, and commanders, among others, must be, above all, skilled at HUMINT requirements definition and consumption as well as sharing all information they touch on their own.  Below is my illustration integrating the three main consumer groups and the ten threats and twelve policies they must address, while also depicting the internal HUMINT capabilities, the external HUMINT network of “eight tribes” and the M4IS2 environment.

Figure 13: HUMINT Field—Sources, Targets, and Consumers

            The military is responsible for defending against all threats, not just armed threats.  I believe that the Republic is facing the most serious threats to its survival, threats both domestic and foreign, and that DoD and DIA must rise to these challenges if we are to preserve and protect the USA in the 21^st Century.

HUMINT and Whole of Government Force Structure

I have participated in two Force Structure studies and written a number of chapters and articles on strategy and force structure.[138]  The guidance of Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) remains eternally valuable [139]

     I am constantly being asked for a bottom-line defense number.  I don’t know of any logical way to arrive at such a figure without analyzing the threat; without determining what changes in our strategy should be made in light of the changes in the threat; and then determining what force structure and weapons programs we need to carry out this revised strategy.

HUMINT must strive to meet the needs of all consumers across all agencies of government, in large part because the civilian successes help avoid a need for the military interventions and mobilizations; and because the future is unaffordable as things now stand.  The USA is insolvent, the government is chaotically incoherent, and only intelligence-driven leadership can save us.  General Al Gray nailed it in 1988,[140] listing the differences between conventional and emerging threats:.

Conventional Threat Governmental Conventional/Nuclear Static Orders of Battle (OOB) Linear Development Rules of Engagement (ROE) Known Doctrine Strategic Warning Known Intelligence Assets

Emerging Threat Non-Governmental Non-Conventional (Asymmetric) Dynamic or Random OOB Non-linear (e.g. Off the Shelf) No Constraints (ROE) Unknown Doctrine No Established I&W Net Unlimited 5th Column

Figure 14: Déjà vu—USMC Knew All This in 1988 (21 Years Ago)

            In 1998 the US Army Strategy Conference addressed force structure needs, on the next page is a depiction of the “Four Forces After Next” that I presented in 1998 to general acceptance.[141]  In 2008 the same annual conference addressed the same question, the findings in 1998 having been ignored, and we have yet to see any grasp of “Whole of Government” strategic planning and programming from the White House, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), or the Cabinet Secretaries.[142]

            Now is the time for the President and Secretary of Defense to think “big.”[143]

Only DoD can move, deliver, and communicate globally on a no-notice basis, and this is why DoD should be the “Core Force” for all future Whole of Government operations.  This is a concept I developed in the 1990’s for a briefing to East and West European Parliamentarians at the George Marshall Center, a concept I continue to believe in that prizes DoD as the hub of inter-agency operations,  both domestically and internationally.

Figure 15: DoD as a HUMINT Force for Peace, Security, & M4IS2

            It merits comment that three of the core force elements are thinkers rather than shooters, three are shooters able to think, and the last—constabulary stabilization operations—is an even mix of thinkers and shooters.

I will not belabor Sun Tzu’s wisdom about the acme of skill being victory without fighting, but I will point out that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is waging peace (irregular warfare) with Presidential-level trade missions, massive loans, major construction projects, and free headquarters buildings for regional organizations (no extra charge for the embedded audio-visual remote monitoring devices).  They have also mastered cyber-warfare, something I and others warned about in the early 1990’s.[144]

From where I sit, the USG is “scattered,” and only DoD can get us on track.

Below is my 1998 depiction of the “Four Forces After Next,” updated to show the IO implications.

Figure 16: Four Forces After Next with IO Attributes

            I venture to suggest that CIA is never going to offer Whole of Government intelligence suitable for deciding how we train, equip, and organize both military and civilian elements of the USG.  In fairness, DoD does not use intelligence properly to support all policy makers, all acquisition managers, and all commanders, staff, and action officers across the inter-agency spectrum of need, but there is no reason why it cannot do so beginning immediately.  It merits comment that because of the size of its budget—the largest discretionary spending element in the total USG budget—how DoD applies intelligence really makes a huge difference.  If DoD commits to non-fossil fuels (which also have very low heat signatures), it can move an entire industry overnight.  Similarly, what DoD does in the way of personnel policies impacts on the Whole Nation.  I believe we need to restore Universal Service, but with a huge difference—only volunteers are joined to the Armed Forces and the Peace Corps, all others are directed into  Homeland duties.[145]

            If DoD will take the lead with respect to most if not all of HUMINT, we all win.  “A Nation’s best defense is an educated citizenry.”

HUMINT Technologies—Enabling Not Defining HUMINT

Where HUMINT has been failed by the Information Technology (IT) function is with respect to desktop analytics and very large-scale processing.  Today, the very best “shop” I know is J-23 at US SOCOM, and they are still having to deal with over twenty distinct software packages that no one has been able to integrate.[146]  If we shift to F/OSS, as many governments are doing, this will help.

As we move into multinational HUMINT operations we will encounter a need to share very large databases with very strong encryption as well as geospatial attributes, and we will need to do this at machine speed.

I believe the next revolution in HUMINT will be found in helping both overt and covert analyst and operators connect the dots in the first two phrases of the HUMINT cycle: spotting and assessing, while also exploiting much more ably all that comes from the handling phase of the HUMINT cycle.[147]

            Multinational information-sharing and sense-making is going to be the primary means by which we add value to both shared and unilateral HUMINT.  Near-real-time M4IS2 is the center of gravity, NOT unilateral ops.

One technology and its application that has impressed me greatly is biometrics.  Used to anonymously identify sources prone to selling their knowledge to multiple buyers, it may prove to be the most sensational deconfliction device around, and scale to allow for multinational source deconfliction along with visualization of multinational networks of sources relevant to any given geospatial area of interest or topical domain.

We can do better on hand-held reporting devices with embedded encryption, as well as at rest encrypted storage of anything that leaves a secure facility.

Human-emplaced sensors, including disposable sensors that melt down in 24 hours, as well as brown-water electronic picket lines are of interest to me.  The ability to sense explosives regardless of the container, something I identified as a requirement for the Marine Corps in 1988, remains unmet.[148]

Telelanguage, mentioned earlier, and regional information-sharing and sense-making centers can double as call centers for secure calls from the street (a global Early Warning network no government can afford, that is on 24/7). should allow for tactical real-time document exploitation as well as tactical real-time translation of any dialect, 24/7, no matter where one is in the world.

            HUMINT can and should be applied to IT discovery & development.[149]

HUMINT:  the Essence of the Republic, of Defense, of the U.S. Army

American national security has been severely undermined by decades of excessive spending on strategic technologies at the expense of tactical human-centered technologies; by a lack of integrity (or more kindly, perspective) across the board among our Executive and Legislative branch leaders; by a confusion between loyalty to the Constitution (we swear an oath to defend it) and loyalty to the chain of command; and by information asymmetries and data pathologies that have prevented the art and science of intelligence—decision-support—from developing.[150]

I believe that HUMINT, properly understood, is about education, intelligence, and research in the public interest.  HUMINT is predominantly overt, and to the extent that overt HUMINT is properly managed, clandestine HUMINT and covert HUMINT as well as both defensive and offensive counterintelligence, can be ethical, precise, and consequential.

George Will published a collection of his Op Ed pieces once under the title Statecraft as Soulcraft.[151]  I firmly believe that HUMINT is the pinnacle of the intelligence profession, for it deals with most gloriously complex, challenging, and potentially enlightened (now most dangerous) species on the Earth.

HUMINT has spent the last quarter-century being displaced by the technical collection disciplines in every sense of the word but one: results.  One good HUMINT asset, whether overt or covert, is worth more and costs less than any constellation of complex technologies whose product cannot be processed in a timely fashion, and that require tens of thousands of human beings to create, maintain, and exploit.

America today needs multiple forms of healing, from how we elect our leaders to how we govern ourselves to how we preserve and protect the Republic.  In every single instance, it will be HUMINT, not some arcane collection of technologies, that discovers, discriminates, distills, and delivers education, intelligence (decision-support), and research—whether from direct human observation or with support from technologies—for the benefit of humanity.

Machines are programmed and perform at the lowest common denominator of the sum of their human contributors.  Humans, in contrast—properly led, properly trained, properly equipped—are uniquely capable of “on the fly” innovation, catalytic insights, nuanced expression, compassionate listening, and a myriad of other “tradecraft” as well as socio-cultural skills that no machine will ever master.

HUMINT is  the essence of the Republic, and “only integrity is going to count.”[152]  Integrity. 

E Veritate Potens.

What Has Changed?

I thought to conclude with two charts, and then offer some recommendations for the future direction of U.S. Army HUMINT.  Below is the old standard MOOSEMUSS with the traditional definitions on the left and the modern alternative definitions on the right.

M – Mass – Concentrate Combat Power at decisive time and place.	Mass: the aggregate commons sense of the public, sharing wisdom
O – Objective – Direct every military operation against a clearly defined, decisive and obtainable objective.	Objective: the collective good achieved through appreciative inquiry and sustainable precisely because it reflects group consensus
O – Offensive – Seize, retain and exploit the initiative.	Offensive: neutralize any attack with swarm offense and dissipation defense.
S – Surprise – Strike the enemy at a time, a place and in a manner for which he is unprepared.	Surprise is for the stupid.  Cast a wide net, put enough eyes and ears on it and no bug is invisible.
E – Economy of Force – Allocate minimum combat power to secondary efforts.	Expansion of Force:  here comes everybody, an Army of Davids, the network is the computer
M – Maneuver – Place the enemy in a position of disadvantage through flexible application of combat power.	Maneuver to have no enemies but instead to create infinite stabilizing wealth and robust communities
U – Unity of Command – For every objective, ensure unity of effort under on responsible commander.	Unity of Purpose within all groups and at all levels (local, provincial, national, regional global) is the only sure deal
S – Security – Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage.	Security “just in case” is evil and expensive; the best security comes from good intention & trust building
S – Simplicity – Prepare clear, complicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure understanding.	Sensibility is the root of all good – if it makes sense, others will agree; if it does not, you should not be doing it

Figure 17:  Principles of War versus Principles of Peace

When combined with the ten high-level threats to humanity that LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret) and others defined in the report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Opportunities, we cannot help but observe that the current U.S. national security strategy ignores all but two of these threats.  Some opportunities for the U.S. Army are identified below.

High-Level Threat	US Army Opportunities
Poverty	Stability Guarantees for Demilitarization Civil Affair Brigade as Cadre for Global Army
Infectious Disease	National Guard medical at home & abroad Universal draft & culture of fitness Healthy environmental standards for all National Guard as natural cure data source
Environmental Degradation	Precision intervention & reconstruction Rapid response disaster relief
Inter-State Conflict	Free cell phones and connectivity to all Free knowledge on demand in all languages Global Range of Gifts Table to house level
Civil War	End US support for the 42 dictators we love End overseas bases and deployments Focus on peaceful preventive measures
Genocide	End small arms trade as SOF interdiction
Other Atrocities	Global biometrics to stop trade in humans Screen and do not train gang members
Proliferation	End US role as world’s #1 merchant of death Regional small arms interdiction networks
Terrorism (Large Scale)	Flag officer integrity—keep eye on the ball Use Rangers to interdict Bin Ladens Regional harmonization of efforts Tactical excellence in “track & whack”[153]
Transnational Organized Crime	Create international law enforcement cadre Use Rangers to take down key node

Figure 4: Summary of Threat Opportunities for US Army

“Unclassified decision-support to all parties” has been removed from each of the blocks above, in part to emphasize that it is the foundation for everything the U.S. Army might seek to do, and therefore must become as pervasive and ingrained in every concept and doctrine so as to redefine the U.S. Army as the world’s first Information Operations (IO) force in being.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Embracing the U.S. Army as a “whole person” organization, the following recommendations are intended to both create a “smart Army” that is globally mobile and effective, while also making the U.S. Army the single most effective hub for both inter-agency Whole of Government operations, and multinational multifunctional operations.

1.  Civil Affairs Command.  I respectfully recommend that Civil Affairs be upgraded to at least a three-star command but ideally a four-star command that embraces military police, medical, engineering, and other human-to-human specializations, retaining the regional structure but creating regional brigades in which the US battalion is the “core force” for a multinational brigade that includes non-governmental and other non-military force structure.  PSYOP is long over-due for being phased out.  A new blend of Strategic Communications and OSINT could be developed under the Civil Affairs Information Management rubric, with decision-support and multinational information-sharing as a primary mission area.

2.  Global Health.  The USA is completely lacking in domestic surge capacity across the board.  There is an urgent need for field hospitals and mobile medical units that can be deployed on a world-wide basis to contain diseases that might otherwise jump on an airplane and come home; these capabilities would also be structured for rapid redeployment to the home front as needed.

3.  Environmental Engineering.  The Corps of Engineers can be brought into the 21^st Century and made a globally-potent force if its culture can be modified and humanized.  Poverty creates more environmental damage and more disease and more crime than any natural disaster, at the same time that most natural disasters are actually acts of man (paving over watersheds increasing the virulence of storms).  Sustainable design is the combat zone of the future.  Just as the Army needs strategists, so does it need engineers capable of Earth engineering.

4.  Communications.  Nokia has developed cell phones that recharge on ambient energy and do not need an electrical grid in support.  We are at the very beginning of an era where face to  face human communications are the acme of skill, and vastly more important than force of arms for the simple reason that there are not enough guns on the planet to force our way.  Communications educate, education creates stabilizing wealth.  Crowded spectrum is an issue right now.  The U.S. Army could take the lead in devising Open Spectrum communications and fielding a multinational Communications Corps working in tandem with the Civil Affairs Corps to free individuals from ideologues by giving them the means to “jack in” to the global grid directly.

5.  Logistics.  We cannot afford to meet the needs of the five billion poor, but we can offer the world a Global Range of Needs Table that leverages other people’s time and money.  In tandem the Civil Affairs Corps and the Communications Corps could make it possible for one trillion dollars a year of funds from organizations as well as the one billion rich (80% of whom do not give to charity now) to voluntarily harmonize their programs and spending, while individuals use Army-documented needs online to do peer-to-peer giving.  There are some programs now that do this, all tiny.  A global grid is needed, and the U.S. Army can offer it up as a spin-off of its global ground-truth observations.

6.  Biometrics.  In my view, the greatest threat to the internal stability and the long-term effectiveness of the U.S. Army is the raw fact that it is training the Taliban in Afghanistan and criminal gang members in the USA.  A global effort is needed to create a biometric database of every person of interest who should NOT be trained by the U.S. Army, who should NOT be admitted to a Western country.  Mobile teams from the U.S. Army can install and service these devices while surveying law enforcement capabilities.

7.  Track and Whack.  The carpet bombing approach to community neutralization does not work.  The U.S. Army is perfectly suited to develop a global multinational track and whack program that is legitimized by an international court and includes internationally-posted convictions and demands for surrender followed by “one man – one bullet” administration of punitive and preventive justice.  This cannot be done outside of international law.  It MUST have global legal validity.

Appendix:  Army Strategy Conference of 2008

            Elsewhere I provide 29 pages of detailed notes on this superb recent conference, as well as a 14-page article on the conference submitted to the Joint Forces Quarterly.[154]

Here are the bare bone highlights from the 2008 conference:

• Challenges more complex, threats more dispersed
• Super-empowered individuals and non-traditional social networks
• Five D’s must be carried out simultaneously:
  • Diplomacy
  • Defense
  • Development
  • Domestic Capability (Private Sector mobilized by Commerce)
  • Decision Support (Unclassified intelligence, harmonizing efforts)
• Preventive action, influence of others, and support to indigenous are key
• Pearl Harbor had three long-term negative effects:
  • Military took over national security process
  • Technical intelligence took over the budget
  • We substituted technology for thinking, have a strategic deficit
• Not exercising U.S. influence in an intelligent cost-effective manner.
• We are weakest in Irregular warfare (waging peace)
• Security must be redefined—high-level threats respect no boundaries
• US Government handicapped in multiple ways:
  • Very little stability—constant churn in people and budgets
  • Lack inter-agency culture of collaboration
  • Lack flexible, sustainable, responsive budgets
  • We can influence rather than command, bad at both
  • We have a huge Historical Knowledge gap
  • We have a huge Cultural Knowledge gap
  • Human terrain program lacks resources
  • Less than 1% of DoD budget spent on social sciences[155]
  • New money pays for tools, not data[156]
  • There is  no coordination of research across agencies or services
  • Innovators are too low in the chain
  • Bureaucratic turf wars continue to set us back, at home and overseas
• GOOD NEWS:
  • 24/7 reachback, when it is available, is deeply valued
  • Human Terrain System (HTS) credited with reducing kinetic 60-70%
  • After 9/11 NGOs more open to joint efforts
  • 38,000 NGOs have substantial budgets and capabilities
• BAD NEWS:
  • DoD must give up major systems to fund peace operations
  • We are being destroyed by adversary Information Operations (IO)
  • Simplest things are now virtually impossible (e.g building a road fast)
  • Lack ability to field full range of expertise across all departments
  • Agencies and services continue to game the system, not collaborate
  • USG is a systemic failure—horizontal challenges, vertical organizations
  • We cannot answer question: what is being spent by all in one place?
  • We have no integrators or strategic connectors in the USG
  • “Indications & Warnings” are not coming from the secret side

• WE NEED:
  • Brutally honest roles and missions debate
  • Resident military advisors everywhere (not bases)
  • Advisor Corps equivalent to 18th Airborne
  • Many more multinational students who could become leaders
  • Deep lasting relationships at every level in every country and organization
  • Ability to understand and leverage all actors

I must stress that the above points are extracted from detailed notes of what was said by scores of speakers and participants within the 2008 conference and represent my personal interpretation of what was said to the assembled audience.[157]

Endnotes