One of the useful media contributions during the series of Clinton fundraising scandals was highlighting the degree to which foreign entities, including agents of unfriendly regimes, transnational gangs and various shadowy operators solicited influence in the American political process. Given the preponderant influence in world affairs possessed by the USG and our multiplicity of interests across the globe, a ” stakeholder” mentality has developed in the minds of foreign governments, corporations, political movements where they deem it vital to influence our leaders directly, openly or in secret. None of this is going away and it is going to creep further and further down the ” political food chain” as foreign entities target rising young politicians of both parties for cultivation.
Establish a Foreign Counterintelligence Agency:
What CI needs is an independent and standardized operational capability to ” go on the offensive” abroad in terms of network disruption at their ” source” and to become an institutional center to develop and implement CI tradecraft. NCIX is a major step forward but it lacks ( at least as I am reading it) true operational authorities and to the extent that NCIX can corral,cajorle and coordinate operational teams from the CIA, DIA, FBI and other agencies they are draining away assets from those agencies.
Secondly, as a practical matter establishing a foreign CI agency avoids the hair-raising political brawl over trying to establish a domestic counterpart with the attendent constitutional and legal implications. While we need something on the domestic side of the ledger it is better to work out the kinks overseas and identify some of problems to be avoided before attempting the much more delicate task of fitting CI into an open society.
ADDENDUM: I intended to link to this yesterday but Blogger being Blogger was unusable last night – check out Whirledview’s deconstruction of the Silberman Report.
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nemesisenforcer:
April 9th, 2005 at 5:59 am
My dad once asked me the question (when I was an avid reader/conisseur)of the intel game: “which is more important; intelligence or counterintelligence?” After thoughtful reflection I came to the conclusion of counterintelligence because you can’t always know what the other guy is doing, it doesn’t matter as long as he doesn’t know what you’re doing. Great post. As for me, I’d also like to see a concerted effort at a propaganda/marketing campaign. Hey, it worked for the Soviets. Look at how many hippies, journalists and leftist politicians they fooled. (not that we’d have to fool anybody into the superiority of the American way of life;)
mark:
April 9th, 2005 at 2:29 pm
Hi Nem
Thanks much. Trying to get the USG to take strategic influence seriously as an aspect of intel seems to be akin to trying to teach a pig to dance.
So far the pig just seems to be annoyed ;o)
Dan tdaxp:
April 9th, 2005 at 9:38 pm
Mark,
Great post as always.
Nem,
Good points. I wonder exactly how intelligence/counterintelligence plays into a “fog of war” and a “fog of peace.” Is it more valuable to increase the enemy’s fog of war or decrease your fog of war?
nemesisenforcer:
April 10th, 2005 at 2:56 am
Dan,
Ideally, it would be best to have both. Of course in the real world it seems you get the most bang for your buck with increasing his “fog of war” as you put it. Keeping him off balance is a good second place to knowing exactly what he’s up to (which is impossible 100% of the time.) Also, CI pays dividends with catching your foes agents and turning them, allowing traps to be set and victories to be won (of course this is most effective if you know they are believing you which can only be verified by your own sources so it’s a double-edged sword so to speak and we’re back to the beginning of this comment.) To sum up, remember, the one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind.
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