OSC (CIA Open Source Center) does not do Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). It does OSIF (Open Source Information) and then compounds that inadequacy by classifying what it does produce. Its outreach, as with outreach across the US national security archipelago, is trivial to the point of being unprofessional. To better understand the persistent inadequacies of the OSC (that also destroyed the perfectly good, even stellar, Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) valued by academics world-wide), see: 2004 Modern History of Public Intelligence and the Opposition.
To understand how the OSC (and NATO) have completely neglected OSINT in favor of OSIF, see this commentary from the father of OSINT for NATO:
A partial excuse for OSC's incapacity is the internal fractionalism within CIA — the Directorate of Operations (DO), traditionally focused on clandestine human intelligence (HUMINT) and overt debriefings of legal travelers in the USA, refused to let OSC do overt human exploitation that is easily 80% if not more of the total open source information terrain. Beyond that OSC suffers the same culture, history, and language short-falls as any US organization that insists its employees all have secret clearances, and lacking indigenous human access, cannot overcome their myopic perspective.
There are only three people associated with CIA that we consider respectably informed about OSINT as it could be but it not: Joe Markowitz, Carol Dumaine, and Kevin Sheid.
Everything published in the past 20 years on OSINT in CIA's house journal, Studies in Intelligence is mediocre. For two books that grasp the larger picture and that we strongly recommend, see:
Review: No More Secrets – Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence
Review: Open Source Intelligence in a Networked World
For informed views from over 250 international experts who actually know something about OSINT, see:
- Historic Contributions (253)
- Directory (List) (1)
Here are some of the OSINT overviews we consider useful:
