An Introduction to Counterintelligence
CI is defined as the effort made by intelligence bodies to prevent their hostile counterparts from successfully gathering and collecting useful intelligence. It is the role of intelligence cycle security to preserve the process embodied in the intelligence cycle by combining a variety of disciplines which often have to take account of a wide range of potential threats, making complete threat assessment a very complex task.
The majority of governments make CI agencies separate and very distinct from their intelligence collection agencies. In many countries, the CI is spread across several organizations and there is frequently a domestic counterIntel service which is perhaps part of a larger law enforcement organization.
Great Britain applies this model with great success with their separate service known as MI5. Although MI5 does not have any direct police powers, it works closely with a limb of the police known as Special Branch, they can carry out arrests and conduct warranted searches.
Military organizations will normally have their own counterIntel forces, capable of conducting offensive, protective and counter-espionage operations. The term ‘counter-espionage’ is generally specific to countering human intel, but, since virtually all offensive counterIntel involves exploiting human intel, the term ‘offensive counterintelligence’ is used often to avoid confusion.
In contemporary models of practice, a variety of operations are associated with counterintelligence. Firstly, ‘defensive analysis’ or the practice of looking for vulnerabilities in one’s own organization, and, exercising regard for risk versus benefit, bridging the discovered gaps.
Secondly, ‘offensive counterespionage’ is the set of methods that neutralizes discovered foreign intelligence service (FIS) personnel and arrests them or, in the case of politicians, expels them. Alternatively, it exploits FIS personnel to gain intelligence for the allied side and or actively uses the FIS personnel to harm the hostile FIS.
Contemporary CI missions have broadened somewhat exponentially now that threat is no longer restricted to the FIS. Threats have increased to include threats from non-national or trans-national groups, including internal enemies, organized crime and transnational based groups. Yet, ‘FIS’ remains the general term for defining the threat faced by counterintelligence agencies.
Finally, ‘counterintelligence force protection source operations’ (CFSO) are human source operations conducted abroad and are designed to close the existing gap in national level coverage in protecting a field station or force from terrorism and espionage.
