The Citadel Pros & Cons of Intelligence Sharing & Foreign Liaison Services Case Study

Drawing from this case study, what are the pros and cons of intelligence sharing and cooperation with foreign liaison services?

Background:

“We have discussed various sources of intelligence this semester—to include human agent reports, satellite imagery, and intercepted communications—that feed into finished intelligence analyses. But one source that has emerged as critically important in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks is intelligence shared with the U.S. by foreign intelligence services. Intelligence professionals refer to this source as liaison service reporting.

Foreign liaison reporting is part and parcel of the intelligence business. The CIA shares American intelligence with foreign intelligence services. It might, for example, share intelligence reports and analyses based on national technical collection means that the recipient intelligence service would otherwise not be privy. The CIA will take great effort to “sanitize” the intelligence to be shared to protect the sources and methods involved in its production.

The CIA, in turn, will expect reciprocity from its foreign liaison counterparts. The CIA will want foreign intelligence services to provide intelligence that the CIA finds difficult to come by. Foreign liaison services have officers with cultural, religious, political, societal, and linguistic capabilities that will afford them access to quarters that are inaccessible to American CIA case officers.

Foreign liaison reporting poses challenges to CIA intelligence analysts. They must be cognizant that foreign liaison services operate under different “rules of the road” than American intelligence agencies in several respects. First, many countries do not maintain a divide between intelligence and policy responsibilities as we do in the United States. Liaison reports, therefore, run higher risks of reflecting policy interests rather than being objective reporting or analysis. Second, liaison services might provide the CIA with intelligence shaped to influence or “spin” American policy makers in one direction or another. Third, the officers who fill the analytic ranks of foreign intelligence services may not be as well educated, intellectually sophisticated, or analytically objective as their American counterparts. On the other hand, some foreign intelligence services might well have analysts who are even more expert and capable than their American colleagues. The task for the American analysts then is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of particular liaison services.

This week we will be studying a counterintelligence case study in which a foreign liaison service played a large role. The case study will illuminate the importance as well as some of the pitfalls of foreign liaison relationships. It also will introduce the analytic challenges involved with assessing potential counterintelligence dangers. We will explore more traditional counterintelligence threats stemming from nation-states next week with the use of case studies from the American-Russian “intelligence war.”

Requirements:

500 Words

APA

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