Re:Rules of Spycraft (2009) [pdf]
by Animats on Sunday December 30, 2018 @04:18AM
(#18788246)
The "Red Sparrow" series was written by a former CIA operative. There are some good books by ex-CIA people. They get censored somewhat, but the general concepts come through.
The field people in HUMINT are called "case officers". Their job is to recruit and manage spies, not spy themselves. It's a strange combination of sales, human resources, and counseling. Dulles was from that world.
The big difference today is that the targets are smaller.
Back in the Cold War era, I worked for a company that built stuff for the three-letter agencies. They were all focused on the USSR; anything else was almost a spare time activity. It was a huge culture shock to the intelligence community when the USSR went down. First there was a big downsizing in intel. Then all the little players who had been squelched by the superpowers started asserting themselves, and the US intel community struggled to figure out what to do. The agencies had the wrong expertise and capabilities. And the wrong speed. The USSR was a very slow moving opponent. The little players moved much faster.
During the Cold War, huge efforts were put into finding out very general things about what the Soviet Union was doing - how many bombers, how many missiles, where the air bases were. Big attack surface. Today, it's trying to find some tiny terrorist group and getting someone to talk.
The field people in HUMINT are called "case officers". Their job is to recruit and manage spies, not spy themselves. It's a strange combination of sales, human resources, and counseling. Dulles was from that world.
The big difference today is that the targets are smaller.
Back in the Cold War era, I worked for a company that built stuff for the three-letter agencies. They were all focused on the USSR; anything else was almost a spare time activity. It was a huge culture shock to the intelligence community when the USSR went down. First there was a big downsizing in intel. Then all the little players who had been squelched by the superpowers started asserting themselves, and the US intel community struggled to figure out what to do. The agencies had the wrong expertise and capabilities. And the wrong speed. The USSR was a very slow moving opponent. The little players moved much faster.
During the Cold War, huge efforts were put into finding out very general things about what the Soviet Union was doing - how many bombers, how many missiles, where the air bases were. Big attack surface. Today, it's trying to find some tiny terrorist group and getting someone to talk.