Blue Fish in a Dark Sea : Police Intelligence in a Counterinsurgency [1 ed.] 9781789551402

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Blue Fish in a Dark Sea

Blue Fish in a Dark Sea Police Intelligence in a Counterinsurgency

Randall Wilson

The University of Buckingham Press

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by The University of Buckingham Press Yeomanry House Hunter Street Buckingham MK18 1EG © Randall Wilson The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher nor may be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than the one in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available at the British Library ISBN 978-1-908684-22-6

Dedication In memory of

Richard D. "Dick" Clinton April 15, 1958 - July 22, 2012

Requiescat in pace frater

Acknowledgements It is difficult to enumerate all of the people whose contributions have resulted in the book you are now reading. I will certainly endeavor to thank and credit them all but wish to explain that this simple inclusion in no way expresses the depth of my gratitude for their effort. I must begin by thanking Professor Anthony Glees and Doctor Julian Richards of the University of Buckingham (BUCSIS) for their care, support and encouragement during the period of time when I was a graduate student at that institution. Frequent conversation, email exchanges and extremely cogent commentary helped shape and guide the thesis which is the basis for this work. It is safe to say that without their wisdom and support, and especially the encouragement of Professor Glees, this work would not exist today. Equally, I must extend my thanks to Christopher Woodhead and the staff at the University of Buckingham Press. Their effort has taken a simple Master’s thesis and transformed it into something more approachable and, I hope, enjoyable to read. Where this is true, the credit is theirs; where it is not, the fault is mine alone. Thanks should also go to my colleagues from whom I have learned much. Their devotion to duty, honor and county, their instinctive self-sacrifice and inclination to service leave me humbled that I have been able to work alongside such men. Many of them remain in active service so my thanks will be in “light disguise”; The Jims, Oscar, Ron, DC, JT, Harry, “Moses”, Abe, Pete, Tim, Dave, Colonel G and my favorite Chinook driver, Mark D. My heartfelt respect and gratitude. Keep the faith. Finally but by no means last, I must thank my longsuffering wife, Cyndi, as well as our children, Gavin, Kathleen and Neal. Your patience, encouragement and never flagging support is as responsible for my completion of this work as was anything else. My love and devotion always. Randy Wilson West Africa 2013

Foreword It is fair to say I was honored to be asked to write the Foreword for this book. As a currently serving British Police Officer of Chief Inspector rank, I have had frequent exposure throughout my twenty nine year career with the world of police intelligence and counterterrorism. This includes assignments to New Scotland Yard Special Operations Department (SO11 intelligence and operations unit) as well as the British National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS). I have worked through numerous terrorist attacks, from those of a random opportunist nature to a lone wolf scenario and into the fourth wave as described by David Rapoport. I have seen firsthand the results of terrorist attacks, in particular those of July 7th, 2005. It was also my privilege to be was one of the five officers who rotated the Silver Command position for the London 2012 Olympics. The uses and purposes of police intelligence in combating the perpetrators of such events are thus quite familiar to me. I had the pleasure of serving with, and then for, Randy Wilson at the Iraqi Police training centre from 2003 to late 2004 where his knowledge and professionalism quickly came to the fore. He is one of a few men I have worked with that I can say with confidence is a natural born leader and possess a cutting intellect. He has a profound understanding of the nature of police work in nations recovering from conflict or presently engaged in a civil war. This understanding combined with an interest in the proper role of the police in such conflict led him to seek out assignments in these areas. From Iraq he was selected for both overt and covert operations in Afghanistan where he was again a major success. Randy, as the frequent examples in this book demonstrate, is well versed in the world of police intelligence and especially so as it applies to the murky world of counterinsurgency. The lessons and insights he has gained from his service assisting foreign police forces to combat terrorism and insurgency are evident in the work before you. The views he expresses may discomfort some more conventionally aligned readers but they are invariably based on real experience, thoughtfully expressed. Randy has provided here a unique overview of the ways and means of police intelligence and related that specialty to best practice in a counterinsurgency. As a British Police Officer with considerable familiarity of police intelligence, I found the section on the relationship between current counterterrorism policy in the UK and the global counterterrorism effort particularly interesting. As a personal friend of the author, I also enjoyed the operational examples placed throughout the text.

Our world today is a dangerous one, made increasingly so by those who would use violence and terror against a civilian population. The information contained in this book, if properly utilized, will be of great assistance to anyone seeking greater understanding of the role of the police in preventing such atrocity. Sincerely, James Nattrass Chief Inspector of Operations British Transport Police London Underground Division March 2013

Abbreviations ACM

Business name of the company publishing several books referenced in the manuscript. The meaning of the acronym is not known. It may be the initials of company founders or have some other meaning but does not have one aside from designating a business entity. (i.e L3 Corp etc)

AOR

Area Of Responsibility

ATF

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a Bureau of the US Department of Justice. Sometimes also seen as BATF

BUCSIS

Buckingham University Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies

BSAP

British South African Police

CIA

Central Intelligence Agency

COINTELPRO Counterintelligence Program CONTEST

Current UK CT strategy

CORDS

Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support

DEA

Drug Enforcement Administration, the main US agency responsible for domestic and international counternarcotics efforts.

EOD

Explosive Ordinance Disposal. In simple terms, the bomb squad.

FBI

Federal Bureau of Investigation

FOB

Forward Operating Base

GPS

Global Positioning System

GVN

Government of Vietnam

HBO

Home Box Office

HUMINT

Human Intelligence

HVT

High Value Target

IED

Improvised Explosive Device

ISAF

International Security Assistance Force

JLENS

Joint Land-Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System

KFOR

Kosovo Force

KGB

Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti

KUBARK

CIA cryptonym for itself

MASINT

Measures and Signals Intelligence

MI5

Military Intelligence Section 5

MP

Member of Parliament

NCO

Non-Commissioned Officer

OIA

Operational Intelligence Assessment

UXO

Unexploded Ordnance

POW

Prisoner of War

PRP

People’s Revolutionary Party

SAS

Special Air Service

SIGINT

Signals Intelligence

SOF

Special Operations Forces

SOP

Standard Operating Procedures

SUV

Sport Utility Vehicle

UCPMB

Ushtria Clirimtare e Presheves, Medvegjes dhe Bujanovcit

UDA

Ulster Defence Association

UFF

Ulster Freedom Fighters

USAWC

US Army War College

VC

Viet Cong

VCI

Viet Cong Infrastructure

Contents Preface Orientation An example from the field Differences in Intelligence The Nature of the Threat Network Neutralization The Nature of the Network Identify, Penetrate, Dismantle Human Intelligence An example from the field Stoolies, touts and hamcars The sticking points considered The delicate art of informant handling The ways and means of informant handling Lessons Learned Interrogation An example from the field A controversial topic Guilt by association Interrogation Defined Extracting the truth The Reid Method Approach Based Interrogation The best of both worlds Lessons Learned Surveillance An example from the field Seeing (and hearing) is believing Primary categories of surveillance activity Physical surveillance Technical surveillance The path less travelled Lessons learned Analysis Making sense of it all

Three levels of analysis The strategic element Actionable analysis Synthesis of police intelligence analysis functions Lessons learned Pseudo Operations Define your terms The Counterterror Conundrum Current affairs Police Intelligence in a Counterinsurgency Fitting it all together Bibliography

Preface THIS work is the result not only of research conducted in fulfillment of degree requirements of the University of Buckingham/BUCSIS but also of my experiences in the field of law enforcement, police intelligence and counterinsurgency over the past twenty four years. It has been my privilege to serve with and advise the police forces of a number of nations beset by insurgencies. These include the highly visible conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in other unhappy locations where the stakes were equally high but the coverage considerably less. The opportunity to observe, practice and learn in such environments has done much to inform my thinking and writing about police intelligence in a counterinsurgency. This effort is not meant to be an exhaustive treatment of all aspects of the subject. Instead, my aim has been to inform both the policy expert and the academic of the existence and potential uses of police intelligence in counterinsurgency. Given that my target audience is largely non-specialists, I have opted to present short examples from my own experiences in the opening sections of several chapters, as well as throughout the text, in order to provide a sort of context where such information appeared to me to be a prerequisite for comprehension of the application. The method I have selected to articulate my thoughts has been to present first an overview of what I believe are the salient points regarding the most efficacious uses of police intelligence in a counterinsurgency. Following this I have elected to present separate sections, each dealing with an overview and application of that area of police intelligence. These areas were selected as being ubiquitous in the field. I have also included a short examination of a current counterterrorism effort which I feel illustrates some important aspects of the topic. The final section is a presentation of the most salient points of the previous sections as well as a summary of the applicability of police intelligence to counterinsurgency. The existence of police intelligence and its unique but all too often marginalized capacity for uncovering and destroying the prime movers of an insurgency is, in my opinion, something which must be re-examined and enabled in all counterinsurgencies. It is by no means a panacea for civil strife but as an integral component of a combined counterinsurgency strategy, it provides a weapon which is more feared by insurgents than any number of missiles, armored vehicles or boots on the ground. Knowing who they are and where they may be found renders the insurgent visible and touchable. This is the natural role of police intelligence as this work is intended to demonstrate. It is my hope that this work will lead to additional discussion and thought on the integration and application of police intelligence to counterinsurgency. Randy Wilson West Africa 2013

Orientation An example from the field AT 0230 hours local, on a heavily overcast summer night in the Hindu Kush, a convoy of eight Afghan Ministry of the Interior vehicles wound through a narrow dirt road in southern Laghman Province. The convoy paused once to link up with a group of green Afghan National Police pickup trucks carrying a force of about 50 armed men. Then the combined group sped through the early pre-dawn darkness toward its objective, a small village where intelligence indicated that an insurgent cell was based. The ad hoc unit approached the village with vehicle lights blacked out and, upon reaching the staging area, groups of uniformed police led by undercover officers in traditional clothing broke off to secure several objectives. These included a large communal tent, a walled family compound and several smaller houses. Within minutes the early morning silence was replaced by the sounds of shouted orders, quick bursts of radio communications and the movements of men and vehicles. Before the sun rose or the muezzin called the faithful to prayer, five members of a particularly notorious insurgent cell were in custody, flexcuffed, hooded and under close guard. The police personnel spread out, moving to two nearby cache sites where they located and seized improvised explosive devices (IEDs) constructed by the apprehended cell members, several Chinese rockets and other heavy weaponry. By the time the occupants of a nearby Afghan National Army base had eaten breakfast, the combined unit of Afghan police was on the road back to its component element’s bases, one more cell dismantled in the latest successful police intelligence operation. The unit responsible for the operation was a special police intelligence unit tasked with counterinsurgency responsibilities. It had developed accurate intelligence regarding this cell and enlisted other police units to assist in conducting the operation to dismantle it. Despite many attempts over the past two years by Afghan and Coalition military units to find and neutralize them, the cell had remained in operation and was in the final stages of an ambitious plan to conduct a complex attack on a nearby American military unit. The cell was responsible for the assassination of government officials, numerous indirect fire attacks on Coalition bases as well as direct fire/IED attacks on Afghan and Coalition forces in the province. Among those apprehended were the cell leaders and its IED manufacturer. The apprehension of its leaders and major members eliminated the cell as a viable insurgent force in Laghman Province. Proper use of police intelligence techniques had made the cell vulnerable and quick action by both intelligence and operational police elements had neutered it1. This example from the field illustrates the utility and potential success of intelligence led police operations in countering an insurgency. This action and the principles behind it are not

unique to the Afghan theater nor are they unknown. The literature of counterinsurgency makes frequent reference to the efforts of the local police; however, few if any studies have been made on how the police, and specifically police intelligence, may be best utilized in combating a guerrilla foe. My purpose is to articulate the ways in which I believe that police intelligence operations may be best used in counterinsurgency and draw from historical examples to illustrate and buttress my arguments. In this book I will attempt to demonstrate that proper employment of police intelligence is a vital and often overlooked tool which, if used correctly, may lead to a lasting resolution of any counterinsurgency campaign. While the overall role of the police is itself a fruitful area for future study, the discussion will be confined to the realm of intelligence operations involving the police as I feel this is the area least examined and most likely to yield fresh insight. It is perhaps surprising that there has been little in the way of study of this specific aspect of counterinsurgency. When the police are mentioned, it is largely in the context of a supportive and adjunctive role to the efforts of more traditional military operations. One suspects that this may be due to the fact that most if not all such studies are done by members of military organizations who naturally tend to see the police through the lens provided for them by their training and experience. That is to say, they feel the primary means of success lie with the use of military units, perhaps combined with various civic actions depending upon the viewpoint of the individual scholar, but the primary emphasis remains one of an externally imposed solution created by large military organizations assisted to varying degrees by other governmental entities including the police. As a result, the specific use of police intelligence operations to combat insurgents has been subsumed in the larger discussion of counterinsurgency itself. Differences in Intelligence There are few, if any, works on counterinsurgency which do not stress the critical importance of intelligence for successful counterinsurgency operations. Experts as varied as Nagel, Kilcullen and Galula all stress the need for accurate information on the loyalties and activities of the population if the operations and grand strategies of the insurgents are to be countered.2 A moment’s reflection indicates that such factors as the difficulty in distinguishing the insurgents from the population in which they are embedded, the types of tactics typically used in this style of asymmetrical warfare and the common issue of the most visible of the counterinsurgency forces typically being from a significantly different culture than that of the host national population are all factors which require accurate intelligence to overcome and which are likely to ultimately lead to an insurgent victory if not properly addressed. These and other operational issues mean that for any counterinsurgency to be successful, it must act based upon accurate and compelling intelligence.3

But what kind of intelligence is required? The somewhat obvious answer is that this must be actionable intelligence at a local, tactical level.4 It must be intelligence which makes visible the invisible infrastructure of insurgent networks, leadership and logistics. And it must be intelligence which is tied directly into a responsive action element. The more traditional strategic intelligence targets, things such as estimates of economic growth, the ferreting out of political intent and the analysis of open source materials to form predictive policy level products, is of much less applicability to counterinsurgency intelligence. Likewise the traditional military intelligence focus on enemy order of battle, capability and tactics is of limited use in correctly identifying the insurgents hidden among the population and rendering them vulnerable to decisive engagement. The need to know who is an insurgent or merely a sympathizer and who a citizen wishing only to be left to pursue their affairs in peace is essential to operational planning.5 The latest theories on counterinsurgency point to the need to develop the capacity of the indigenous security forces in order to create sustainable success in defeating an insurgency. This would of necessity include such a discretionary intelligence targeting capacity.6 As mentioned earlier, the focus of this book is the examination of one facet of that intelligence capacity; the police and the local level intelligence that is inherent in their existence. The police are expected to know who is who in their jurisdiction. They are frequently recruited from the local community where they serve. They speak the language, know the terrain (both human and natural) and understand the subtle indicators of hostility or evasion which escape the notice of those not part of the local community. In short, the police, due to the potential benefits of their placement and access within the population where the insurgents operate, are logically well suited to obtain the types of actionable intelligence necessary for the successful prosecution of a counterinsurgency campaign. Additionally, they would seem to be some of the best placed of the indigenous security forces to conduct operations based upon this intelligence.7 Mention was made above of the fact that some differences exist between police intelligence and military or national security intelligence. The differences in the areas of collections and analysis are not great but those in the areas of organizational orientation are significant. Military intelligence is oriented toward supporting the actions of parent or associated units and as such takes tasking directly from its consumers. Its activities are usually focused on operational problems of the consumer and its role and orientation is the same as the consumer. In other words, a regimental commander whose armored unit is trained and oriented toward defeating a conventional military threat will be supported by intelligence assets who share this orientation.8 From SIGINT to MASINT to HUMINT, this orientation determines methodology and, in the case of an insurgency, has a considerable impact upon success.9 For the conventional military mind, doctrine trumps all and few are able to rise above the school solution and seek creative engagements with the situation at hand. As will be discussed later, this has sometimes limited the effectiveness of military intelligence in conducting counterinsurgency operations.10

National security intelligence organizations are far more flexible in their approach and occasionally their ethics. The concerns and wide subject ranges of national security issues requires a more elastic approach to problem solving and national security intelligence organizations are frequently at the forefront of successful counterinsurgency programs. The primary issue which may limit their effectiveness is the concern for strategic intelligence rather than tactical or operational intelligence. Thus a national intelligence agency engaged in a counterinsurgency effort may elect to focus, as indeed the CIA did in Vietnam, on penetration of higher echelon commands rather than on establishing district or regional networks from which actionable information might be derived.11 This leaves us with police intelligence. Like military intelligence it is focused on providing tactical and operational intelligence to parent and associated units. It is however, also part of a force which must of necessity exist in and among the population and which, except in extreme cases, is not going away. Military units are reassigned, redeployed or are otherwise impermanent elements in any given locality. Not so the police. By the nature of their duty they are expected to always be in the same area and although individual members may transfer from station to station, the organization and its intelligence service remains. This longevity combined with the requirement for police to know their community, something that occurs simply by living among the community and which is greatly enhanced by any effective policing strategy, means that police intelligence may be not only oriented toward actionable intelligence in the short term but may also provide a long term understanding of personalities, grievances and power sharing arrangements which can inform a counterinsurgency strategy. While the comfort zone of military intelligence is providing support to a combatant command engaged in conventional war and that of national security intelligence is in learning secret information to assist in national policy decisions, that of police intelligence is on knowing who is doing what, when and where on their “patch”. Police intelligence brings a different focus toward investigating crimes and criminal organizations. To the police, insurgents are merely a particularly well-armed and dangerous ongoing criminal enterprise. The orientation toward military combat, the amount of weaponry and types of tactics used by insurgents requires a modification of police tactics and weaponry when dealing with them but the basics of police investigation and intelligence gathering remain the same as insurgent organizations display the same characteristics and vulnerabilities as do more ordinary criminal ones. Increasingly, experts are noting these similarities between organized crime and insurgent networks. The relationships between players in both endeavors are strikingly similar and the techniques of law enforcement investigation are becoming more and more frequently referenced in counterinsurgency.12 The focus for police intelligence is in knowing, with the degree of certainty which permits direct action, who among a population otherwise undifferentiated, is involved in criminal activity, where and when this activity has or will take place and based upon this knowledge, providing the catalyst which creates effective

operations targeting these specific offenders rather than the community as a whole. This is exactly what is required in order to separate guerrillas from honest citizens. It is not an area of intelligence that falls within the comfort zone or normal practice and training of either national security or military intelligence practitioners. Police intelligence organizations, with their local action oriented focus, their placement and access among the population and their intimate knowledge built up over time of the area they police are uniquely suited to counter insurgent organizations.13 The Nature of the Threat Prior to attempting to articulate the most effective means of employing police intelligence in operations against insurgent organizations, it would seem prudent to first examine the nature of the threat. Sun Tzu’s advice regarding the necessity to understand both oneself and one’s foe is well taken.14 Without a proper understanding of the threat and, more importantly, the component parts of the threat, one cannot determine points of leverage, weaknesses which might be attacked nor those critical nodes without which the threat cannot continue to exist. This being the case, it will be useful to briefly examine insurgency itself in order to determine its nature and identify an Achilles heel common to all insurgencies. Dr. Steven Metz and Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Millen, in a Strategic Studies Institute report for the US Army War College, define insurgency as; “...a strategy adopted by groups which cannot attain their political objectives through conventional means or by a quick seizure of power. It is used by those too weak to do otherwise. Insurgency is characterized by protracted, asymmetric violence, ambiguity, the use of complex terrain (jungles, mountains, urban areas), psychological warfare, and political mobilization—all designed to protect the insurgents and eventually alter the balance of power in their favor.”15

This definition fits well with those provided by other institutions and scholars as all emphasize the asymmetrical nature of the conflict, the use of both clandestine and covert means of projecting force on the part of a small minority which is difficult to distinguish from the rest of the population and the political and civil nature of the conflict.16 Indeed, the ambiguity noted by Metz and Millen is perhaps the most frequently mentioned characteristic of an insurgency and one which creates the greatest difficulty for the counterinsurgent. (They also quite usefully discuss the various types of insurgency and explain that the typical Maoist style insurgency is not a one size fits all model for insurgencies) The issue boils down to the inability of the security forces to readily identify the insurgents and take effective action against them. This inability to distinguish friend from foe tends to create a defensive mindset, one which becomes increasingly risk averse and focused on force protection rather than engaging insurgent forces.17 It also leads naturally into excessive uses of force as frustrated troops use the firepower designed for conventional warfare to counter the threats presented by a guerrilla opponent. The reflexive use of artillery

and airpower, for example, in combating an insurgency often does more harm than good as the effects of collateral damage tend to turn the population away from the security forces and to some extent legitimize the insurgents.18 Being able to know which persons in a given operational area are actually insurgents, where they may be found and then killing or capturing them is an obviously difficult task when the insurgents look, act and live in a fashion identical to that of the population of the region. The covert nature of the insurgent lifestyle when combined with the cultural gap which exists between a foreign counterinsurgent force assisting a host nation and/or the confidence gap which often exists between the host national population and national security forces means that the insurgent fighters are usually seen as wily, elusive and impossible to find until they strike. Of course, the insurgent propaganda machine plays heavily upon this theme and highlights any excessive use of force by security elements while simultaneously presenting the insurgency as the proper replacement for a corrupt and foreign dominated régime.19 This difficulty in identifying and engaging insurgent military forces while a significant challenge is, however, not the only issue facing counterinsurgents. In almost all historical cases in modern times, the counterinsurgency forces were more than a match for the insurgent forces in open battle. Indeed, this disparity in military strength is the single most compelling factor in the selection of guerilla tactics in order to overthrow the current political system, as the definition of insurgency supplied by Metz and Millen above indicates. In cases where the insurgents either come out to fight in a roughly conventional manner or are forced to do so through actions of the security forces, the results are usually a one sided victory for the counterinsurgents. This means that while the ability to successfully engage insurgents militarily is important, it is less important than the existence and nature of the insurgency. Force on force engagements, satisfying though they may be when you have only a “hammer in your toolbox”, are only a symptom of the true problem. The solution to insurgency is generally held to be political and civil rather than military and it is those political and civil grievances which tend to drive insurgencies, at least initially, and which give them whatever legitimacy and status they may enjoy in the eyes of the population.20 While some forward thinking scholars have proposed that the solution to insurgency lies in a combination of redress of political grievance combined with civil development but all under the shadow of a powerful military machine. However, the history of insurgency tends to demonstrate that no two insurgencies are alike in their root causes or in the combination of political and civil solutions which might lead to the disintegration of the rebel cause. In fact, history has shown repeatedly that without establishing local security first, there is little chance of being able to implement civil actions or garner benefits for political reforms.21 This being the case, it seems reasonable to look for a common factor in insurgency which is susceptible to the actions of counterinsurgents and which, if properly addressed, will outweigh the considerable advantage the covert nature of insurgency conveys upon its

practitioners. The greatest challenge, in my view, to the leaders of a counterinsurgency, is to find this common factor as well as a means whereby it may be effectively attacked. I believe that such a factor exists and that it is common to all insurgencies. This factor is one which is susceptible to police intelligence in particular and one which I feel the police are best suited for exploiting. This factor is the network of facilitators and leaders which serves as the neural pathway, the directing brain, of the insurgency. Network Neutralization While the tactical advantage conveyed to guerrillas by their ability to hide among the population is considerable, the same is true of ordinary armed criminal gangs. Discovering the identities, hideouts and intended actions of such gangs is standard police work. The larger, better armed and more violent a given gang may be, the more likely it becomes that public pressure for their capture will result in the commitment of considerable investigative and intelligence resources. Criminal gangs do often morph into insurgents and there is a significant intermingling of criminal and insurgent personnel and activity in most campaigns.22 The reasons vary but the need to raise finances, obtaining otherwise illegal weapons and other items and the ease with which political motivations may become personal are among the reasons most frequently cited.23 Few people would suggest that a police force, adequately resourced and competently led, is incapable of distinguishing criminal from citizen or of using the painstaking techniques of investigation to locate them. Likewise, those acquainted with police intelligence anticipate that the relevant organizations are able to gather detailed information about a given organization’s members, penetrate the organization with informers and agents and ultimately apprehend them based upon this and other investigatory efforts. Indeed, society, regardless of where it falls along the political continuum, expects such conduct from its police and if anything, takes umbrage when it perceives that the police have failed to act efficiently in this manner. The tactical advantage for a criminal organization of being embedded among the population is not seen as a severe or even significant impediment to the successful use of police intelligence and investigatory procedures. The simple fact is that the uncovering of criminal organizations, their subsequent penetration and ultimate dismantling is a basic police task albeit one that is rather more complicated to enact than to articulate. The important point to be learned from this examination of standard police capacity is that the police, when properly trained, equipped and led, are quite capable of making visible an otherwise invisible group in society. There is nothing magical about this ability although it may sometimes seem that way to military or national security intelligence entities who struggle with the difficulties of wringing out information in the format with which they are comfortable from an uncommunicative and seemingly indifferent population. The difference

lies in the areas of comfort zone and orientation which were mentioned earlier. Investigations backed up by focused intelligence work are a skill any halfway competent police force can deploy in a counterinsurgency. The problem, in my view, is that all too often, this skill set is pushed aside or otherwise marginalized in favor of an operational strategy which relies upon military predominance, some combination of civil affairs and military action (carrot and stick) or is lost altogether as the police are forced into a role as light infantry and lose the all-important ability to move among the population.24 It would seem logical that a force with the ability to render visible the opaque ties which bind individual guerrillas together into a network capable of threatening a nation’s stability would be among those first strengthened and empowered in a counterinsurgency. Sadly, for a variety of reasons, this is not the case.25 The Nature of the Network At the risk of redundancy, a brief look at the vital importance of the network for the existence of an insurgency will be in order. In simple terms, without the network of dedicated cadre who tie the individual cells of lower level fighters together, an insurgency is merely a disparate collection of locally active armed thugs. The centrality of the network to an insurgency’s existence may be best illustrated by the record of one of the most famous networks in history. This network, and the conflict in which it was involved, were seminal in forming the present American view of counterinsurgency as well as being an example which has heavily influenced all later commentators on the subject.26 This network is the Cong San Viet Nam more commonly known as the Viet Cong. During the Vietnam War, the primary guerrilla force seeking the overthrow of the government of South Vietnam was the Viet Cong (VC) The VC operated a “shadow government” throughout the areas where they were located. This shadow government or Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI) was established in the South as a means of directing, controlling and coordinating the actions of the guerrilla units scatted throughout South Vietnam. This shadow government, a creation of the People’s Revolutionary Party (the Communist Party of South Vietnam/Cong San Viet Nam) had committees at national, regional, provincial, district, and village level which corresponded to those of the Government of South Vietnam (GVN). In addition to supplanting, to whatever extent it could, the legitimate representatives of the GVN, the VCI worked to support the armed struggle as carried out by the main force units. This support included providing rest areas, medical assistance, food and clothing supplies and local guides, gathering intelligence and conducting pre-operational reconnaissance as well as other logistical and administrative activities. In addition to these responsibilities, the VCI was also active in collecting taxes, encouraging the local population to join the anti-government struggle, providing political indoctrination and identifying the supporters of and informers to the GVN in their home

areas. Perhaps most significantly, the VCI was the structure through which the Communist Party sought to exert control of the population and to separate it from any attachment to the South Vietnamese government. It did this through extensive propaganda efforts, through the selective use of terror and intimidation tactics as well as through providing an alternative if coercive organization to handle basic social issues. In short, the VCI was essential to both the conduct of the guerrilla war and the politicization of the masses in favor of the Communists. It is safe to say that without the VCI, the guerrilla war could not be successfully prosecuted by the People’s Revolutionary Party (PRP). It was thus an essential element of the war effort by the Communist forces.27 As the example of the Viet Cong Infrastructure illustrates, the network is essential to the conduct of an insurgency. This has been true of all the insurgencies of the late 20th Century to the present time. The Irish Republican Army and its various offshoots, the Malayan National Liberation Army, the National Liberation Front in Algeria as well as the various groups comprising the Iraq insurgency and the Taliban in Afghanistan, all displayed the same reliance upon an organized network of managers, leaders and facilitators in order to be operationally effective. Allowing for some slight changes in local conditions, the example would remain an accurate depiction of the function and utility of the network to that insurgent organization. The point I wish to make is that in order for an insurgency to function, it must have a network which supports, directs and operates its geographically diverse component parts.28 It is through these networks that military supplies arrive which enable the insurgent to project force in excess of that available to those armed only with individual arms. An excellent example of this force augmentation would be the supply of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and the components for their manufacture and use without which much of the power projection of the insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan would be lost.29 It is the network which provides coordination between groups, resolves disputes, allocates funding and assists with recruitment and medical care. Finally, it is the network which provides the public face of the insurgency and which on a local level arranges for the concealment of the guerrilla among the people through bribery, propaganda and intimidation. While local cells will often make their own arrangements based upon clan and kinship, the knowledge that they represent something larger than themselves lends weight to their discussions and makes the rest of the population reluctant to betray them. It is this connectivity, the belonging to a cause which is national or even international in scope which distinguishes an insurgent cell from a criminal gang. Although there is often considerable overlap, criminal groups are generally locally focused and rarely move beyond a parochial involvement with crime unless a significant power vacuum exists. Even then, their basic motivation is profit through illicit activity rather than gaining political power for its own sake. When criminal gangs fill a power vacuum and usurp the functions of government locally it is in order to provide additional security for their criminal actions.30 This is not true of insurgents who seek to overthrow the existing power structure and replace

it with one more to their liking. The nature of criminal organizations is capitalistic and largely apolitical while that of insurgent organizations is political by definition. This increases the necessity for a network if the insurgents are to be more than merely well-armed thugs. Identify, Penetrate, Dismantle If the various cells of guerrilla fighters are the body of an insurgency then the network is its nerve system and the brain which controls and directs its activities. If this brain can be disrupted, if the nerve system can be damaged beyond repair, the insurgency itself will be rendered incapable. Identifying the network, penetrating it to acquire actionable intelligence and then dismantling it so as to leave any remaining insurgents bereft of leadership and supplies while also discrediting them in the eyes of the local people is a strategy which has been attempted in a number of counterinsurgencies.31 Unfortunately, in most cases, while the police were involved in many of these efforts, they were in a lead role on only a few occasions. This book’s purpose is to examine what are believed to be the best ways for police intelligence to lead the way in dismantling insurgent networks. It is my belief that in order for a counterinsurgency force to succeed in dismantling the insurgent network it should use the host national police intelligence as the driving force behind its operations. Only then will the insurgency lose legitimacy in the eyes of the people both by its failure to protect itself and by the increasing demands that will be made by the insurgents of the populace. The insurgency will be then reduced to uncoordinated groups lacking the protection of the people, easily located and defeated by the greater strength of the government forces. Indeed, the lesson of Ernesto Guevara’s defeat and death in Bolivia is that without a secure place among the people and without their cooperation and the ability to establish a network to support operations, an insurgency is doomed to be tracked down and defeated.32 An insurgency which is flourishing but which finds its infrastructure under effective attack, its leadership nodes identified and eliminated and its supply networks compromised, will soon find itself in the same state as Che in the Bolivian highlands. In his book, “On Guerilla Warfare”, Mao Tse-Tung stated that “the guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea”33. If the guerrilla is the fish in this famous dictum and the people are the sea, then police intelligence is the blue fish which lives and moves and hunts within that sea as easily as does the guerrilla. All modern counterinsurgency theories rely upon some form of separating the people from the insurgent.34 This book contends that the use of police intelligence will allow for a different approach; that of separating the insurgent head from the insurgent body with the result that the body is seen as an infection by the people and loses its protective camouflage. This study will attempt to bring this singular organizational skill set into focus in terms of

its utility in counterinsurgency. It will do so in the next sections by first examining some of the ways in which police intelligence operates and relating those techniques to counterinsurgency. Finally, it will draw some conclusions based upon this examination and recommend a way in which police intelligence may be used to turn the tide in a counterinsurgency.

____________________ 1 The incident described above took place in July, 2010. The author was present as an advisor to the police intelligence unit

referenced. 2 See John Nagl’s Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2002) pp 91-93, David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1964). pp 18-42 and David Kilcullen, “Countering Global Insurgency,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 28 (August 2005), pp 43-45. 3 Ibid. 4 Clark, David. The Vital Role of Intelligence in Counterinsurgency. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2006 p 2 and Organizing Intelligence for Counterinsurgency. Teamey, Kyle and Sweet, Jonathan. s.l: Military Review, 2006 p 24. 5 Field Manual 3-24/Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5, Counterinsurgency (Washington, DC; Department of the Army/Department of the Navy 2006) 5-29, also Byman, Daniel. Going to war with the allies you have. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2005 p 9. 6 Jones, Seth G. Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008 pp 7-10. 7 R Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam, Studies in International Security: 10, London: Chatto & Windus, 1967, p 85. See also Robert Kormer as quoted in W Rosenau, US Internal Security Assistance to South Vietnam: Insurgency, Subversion, and Public Order, London and New York: Routledge, 2005, p 91. 8 See for example FM 2-0 Intelligence. Washington, DC. Department of the Army 2004, for a discussion of military intelligence deployment and focus of responsibility. 9 Hammes, Thomas. The Sling and the Stone. Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press, 2006 pp 192 -195. 10 Millen, Raymond and Metz, Steven, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century: Reconceptualizing Threat and Response, Carlisle, PA: US Army War College[USAWC] Strategic Studies Institute, November 2004, pp 16, 29-30. 11 Mark Moyar, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and counterterrorism in Vietnam, Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 2007, pp 82-84. 12 David Kilcullen, “Countering Global Insurgency,” Journal of Strategic Studies, 28 (August 2005) pp 14, 40. See also Matthew R. Modarelli, “Military Police Operations and Counterinsurgency” in Small Wars Journal (www.smallwarsjournal.com) for an in depth discussion of the similarities between insurgent and criminal networks. 13 Rosenau, William. Low Cost Trigger Pullers. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008 pp 3-8. 14 Tzu, Sun. The Art of War. United States: Pax Librorum Publishing House, 1910 p 13. 15 Millen, Raymond and Metz, Steven, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the 21st Century, p 4. 16 See Jones, Seth G. Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan p 19 for additional definitions of insurgency. Also see Felix, Christopher. A Short Course In The Secret War. Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 2001 pp 22-27 for an explanation of the differences between covert and clandestine activities. 17 Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Marine Corps. A Tactical Handbook for Counterinsurgency and Police Operations. Quantico, VA: US Marine Corp, 2008 pp 3-4. 18 Byman, Daniel. Going to war with the allies you have pp 15-16 and Millen, Raymond. Small Wars Journal. Aligning a Counterinsurgency Strategy for Afghanistan. [Online] January 21, 2009 p 5. 19 Millen, R. Aligning a Counterinsurgency Strategy for Afghanistan pp 4-5. 20 See Nuzum, Henry. Shades of CORDS in the Kush: The flase hope of “unity of effort” in American counterinsurgency. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2010 for an evaluation of current efforts in Afghanistan in this regard. 21 Millen, R. Aligning a Counterinsurgency Strategy for Afghanistan p 3. 22 Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Marine Corps. A Tactical Handbook for Counterinsurgency and Police Operations p 4 and Manwaring, Max G. Street Gangs: The new urban Insurgency. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2005 pp 8-11. 23 Williams, Phil. Criminals, Militias and Insurgents: Organized Crime in Iraq. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College

(USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2009 pp 47-51. 24 Rosenau, William. Low Cost Trigger Pullers. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008 pp 913. 25 Ibid. 26 Metz, Steven. New Challenges and Old Concepts: Understanding 21st Century Insurgency. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 2007 p 1-2. 27 Dale Andradé and James H. Willbanks, CORDS/Phoenix: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future, Military Review, March–April 2006, p 17. 28 Kilcullen, David. Counterinsurgency New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010 pp183-198. 29 Atkinson, Rick. The Washington Post. The Military’s Struggle to Defeat IEDs. [Online] October 3, 2007. 30 Manwaring, Max G. Street Gangs: The new urban Insurgency pp 10-12. 31 Arnold, James R. Jungle of Snakes: A century of counterinsurgency warfare from the Philippines to Iraq. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press, 2009 pp 38-40, 97-99 and 168-171. 32 See Salmon, Gary Prado. The Defeat of Che Guevara: Military Response to Guerrilla Challenge in Bolivia. Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990 for a complete history of the Bolivian campaign. 33 Tse-Tung, Mao. On Guerrilla Warfare. Seattle, WA: Create Space, 2013 (Re-Issue). 34 Metz, Steven. Rethinking Insurgency. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2007 pp 3-7.

Human Intelligence An example from the field THERE was nothing to distinguish the small compound on the narrow curving street from any of its neighbors. This section of Kabul was relatively prosperous; the family compounds had high walls and secure gates, occasionally with a male family member sitting outside to act as a guard and greeter. The street was near several main routes of travel through the city but in itself formed a quiet side route used primarily by locals. A dusty Toyota truck pulled to a halt in front of a small compound near the curve that was the street’s main feature. Three men in local dress emerged from the truck, one a distinguished looking elder with a bushy grey beard, another middle aged with a red beard and the third a youth dressed in jeans and a t shirt. The older men in traditional dress paused for an exchange of greetings in Dari with the man sitting in a chair beside the entrance gate to the compound. Moments later they slipped through the gate now held open by the younger man and disappeared from view. The compound was a family dwelling but also the business premises of a local engineering and construction firm. Occasional visitors to the firm were a normal feature of the neighborhood routine. Fifteen minutes after the Toyota arrived, another vehicle, this one a Corolla, battered and dinged, pulled to a stop across the street. Three more men, all in local clothing, exited. One, a tall, large man in his late twenties, escorted an older man to the same compound. The remaining man nodded at the gate watcher before moving down the street and dropping into a squat. Here he blended into the scenery, just another man waiting patiently in the shade of a small tree. Inside the compound, the new arrivals walked to a small room in the far back of the main building. Here they were greeted by the first group, pleasantries were exchanged and chai was served. Soon all were seated in a circle, speaking earnestly with their heads close together. The discussion went on for an hour until finally the men rose, exchanging handshakes and hugs. All the participants departed quickly in reverse order of their arrival, scanning the street through the gate’s porthole before exiting. The event just described was a clandestine (as opposed to covert, a distinction of some importance1) meeting between members of an Afghan police intelligence unit and an informant who was the second in command of a Taliban cell based in Char Dara District, Kabul Province, Afghanistan. The informant had been recruited in a previous operational endeavor and was being run as a penetration of both his cell and the larger network of which it was a part. Intelligence gained through this source led to several preemptive interdictions of suicide vests and IEDs en route to end users, the arrests of four cell members and the kill/capture of three High Value Targets.2

Stoolies, touts and hamcars The use of clandestine or undercover police officers to infiltrate target organizations is a staple plot device for movie makers. Likewise the concept of the informer, a member of the target organization who themselves are cooperating with police, is a familiar one. Most people have read a book or watched a movie where these activities were essential to the plot. The latitude for drama created by the nature of undercover police work is such that it is an inexhaustible storehouse of possibilities for the creative mind. This same latitude however, creates a great deal of concern on the part of liberal democracies which are involved in a counterinsurgency and who support or engage with a host national police intelligence organization which uses these tactics. While it is obvious to all but the most impassioned observer that significant differences exist in the role of the police in countering an insurgency and the role they should play in a more ordered society, the expanded role can be summed up simply as that of the police taking the additional responsibility for creating and maintaining “security” as well as crime prevention and detection. 3 Without straying too far afield from the objective of examining the ways in which police intelligence has used informants in past counterinsurgencies, it will be helpful to nonspecialist readers to first examine the issues surrounding the use of police informants in normal times. This will allow for a better perspective on their use in a campaign to thwart a guerrilla movement as well as permit concentration upon the main objective. Jerry Ratcliffe in his book “Intelligence Led Policing” refers to the “demonization” of police intelligence.4 This negative characterization occurred as a reaction to the actions and abuses of police agencies in monitoring potentially subversive activities and persons of interest. While the original intent may have been innocent enough, i.e. the defense of the realm/republic, the activity itself rapidly morphed into one which focused only upon those groups deemed politically undesirable to sitting administrations or the heads of the agencies involved. Even more damaging to the reputation of police intelligence were the revelations of actions taken under the authority of these agencies which, in intelligence terms, could only be described as covert actions.5 In particular, the actions of COINTELPRO of the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in regards to Dr. King were egregious enough to create a move away from any involvement with intelligence by most American police agencies. To a lesser extent the same concerns played out through the Western world in the 1950s through the 1970s with the result that intelligence as a police practice was seen as questionable at best and at worst a form of activity antithetical to democratic values. The end result was that most activity in policing which could logically be called intelligence was given other names and frequently disassembled into separate components such as Records, Organized Crime Groups etc. Only those police agencies such as Special Branch sections of UK style police agencies or national level law enforcement such as the

FBI whose charter involved intelligence activities remained in the “intelligence” game. Even then they were faced with considerable suspicion from the public in regards to their activities.6 Nonetheless, the standard business of policing requires the police to undertake actions designed to allow them to not only solve past crimes but also to prevent future ones. It is this desire to be proactive, to learn about criminal activity before it occurs and to then take steps to prevent it that creates a need for informants.7 To be sure, informants are also extremely useful in assisting in determining “who done it” but even then the word of an informant alone is merely the starting point for solid investigative work. The use of informants, especially for proactive policing (that is to say intelligence collection), raises the greatest concerns for civil libertarians. These concerns center on the fact that in order for an informant to be of any use to police investigators, the informant must generally be part, to a greater or lesser extent, of the criminal world. Often the informant is a member of the criminal gang being targeted and continues to commit crimes while aiding the police. An additional concern is whether it is reasonable to rely on the word of a known criminal. The final issue is a general public distaste for the “Judas”, one who betrays his or her companions for personal gain. Indeed, the profit motive for informers is, along with their recurrent criminal past, the main area attacked by defense counsel seeking to gain acquittal for a suspect whose case involves the use of an informant.8 Of course, not all informants are criminals, some are merely people whose life and livelihood bring them into close and continuing contact with ongoing criminal activity and which thus permits them to be of use to the police. This is an important point in terms of counterinsurgency and one to which I will return. It should be noted that all of the concerns expressed above with regards to criminal informants apply equally to informants in a counterinsurgency setting. It may be helpful to examine each of the concerns mentioned above in relation to a counterinsurgency. The ties between ordinary police intelligence and police intelligence as part of a counterinsurgency will, I hope, become more clear while simultaneously permitting a discussion of the uses of informants in such an environment. After examining each point briefly I will discuss the art of informant handling as it relates to these concerns in a counterinsurgency environment. The sticking points considered The first area of concern regarding the use of police informants is that an informant is generally involved to some extent with members of the target organization and may indeed be a member themselves. This might be a social connection such as a spouse, a romantic attachment or extended family member but some connection must exist in order for the informant to have information of use to police intelligence. This is generally referred to as

Placement and Access or P & A. Without proper Placement within a target group and equally without Access to information of interest, an individual, no matter how willing to cooperate, is of no use to any intelligence entity.9 As was noted above, this Placement might simply be as a member of the community who lives nearby a house used as a meeting and assembly point for insurgents. Access might be no more than the ability to observe when certain persons or vehicles arrive or depart and the maintenance of a log or placement of a phone call to a police handler. In fact, this type of otherwise uninvolved informant, one whose taskings are limited to observation from a distance and reporting periodically, is something which most counterinsurgency doctrine strives to achieve by winning “hearts and minds” and thus turning the general population into this type of environmental informer. An example of this occurred in Liberia, in an area where cross border drug smuggling was rampant. An elderly man, not otherwise distinguished in the community and in the lower income bracket of an already depressed community, approached the local Serious Crimes detective with information regarding a group who used the largely abandoned building next to his home as a drop point for trans-shipment of illegal drugs. This information was disregarded by the detective but mentioned by him to his colleague responsible for Regional Intelligence. This officer then contacted the walk in informant, verified his information through independent observation and forced an unwilling Chief of Police to execute an operation which apprehended several smugglers and a truck load of narcotics. The reluctance of the Serious Crime detective and Chief to take action was later found to be due to their involvement in the smuggling effort. The combination of an alert and willing citizen, with coincidental placement of value, and a dedicated police intelligence officer resulted in not only the apprehension of key members of a smuggling ring but also the uncovering and removal of corrupt officials.10 The concept of the environmental informer is valid but often misses the point easily understood by experienced and therefore somewhat cynical police, which is that such cooperation most often occurs when the police are seen as an ally. This view of the police is rare indeed in any area where either an insurgent cell or a narcotics trafficking gang will feel comfortable. This type of uninvolved informant, one whose Placement and Access is environmental rather than personal, is also less common due to the fact that most people who live in areas where insurgents or criminal gangs feel safe enough to establish regular haunts and patterns of easily observable activity, are afraid of the violent nature of such groups and do not readily volunteer information. Many others feel they have more in common with the subjects of police interest than they have with the police or the system they represent. This dynamic is more pronounced in an insurgency particularly since the forces of law and order have already failed in their basic duty.11 Most cases of an environmental informant also include, as was the case in the example above, a pre-existing relationship of some type between the informant and a member of the security forces. It is the creation of opportunities

for the establishment of these types of relationships that is one of the major rationales behind community policing.12 Of course, in a counterinsurgency, such outreach activity is often impossible in an insurgent dominated area. Thus, while informants of this nature do sometimes become available, the norm is for the informant to be either a member of the target organization or involved on the periphery of its activity. A saying commonly encountered among North American police informant handlers encapsulates this as “plots hatched in hell are never known by angels”. This more usual Placement and Access will of necessity include the informant having knowledge and being guilty of criminal activity. It is not infrequent for the informant to actually be involved in lower level criminal activity in order to maintain their Placement within the group as well as avoid suspicion.13 While it may be reasonable to disagree about what level of criminal activity is permissible for an informant, or for that matter about the type of activity permissible to a police officer directly penetrating a criminal organization, the concern, for the purposes of this book, is less with the setting of boundaries than with their enforcement as part of the effective handling of the informant. A frequently encountered concern in police intelligence in a counterinsurgency is that informants are permitted to act with few if any restraints as members of an insurgent organization in order to permit them to function effectively as informants. This is an area where it is easy to simply claim that the ends justifies the means, an argument with considerable merit as one struggles to understand how means might be justified absent reference to the ends they serve, but one which ultimately fails as a standalone argument when one considers that gaining the confidence and support of the population is a necessity for defeating an insurgency. Having a police intelligence asset who, however useful his contributions might be, is eventually exposed as having been committing serious criminal actions while engaged as an informant is extremely counterproductive. The case of Brian Nelson, the Ulster Defense Association (UDA)/Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) member is an excellent example of this type of concern.14 For a number of years, Nelson, serving as the Intelligence Chief for the UDA after being recruited by UK military intelligence, passed on information gained from his handlers to UDA and UFF direct actions teams. Although the exact number and identities of the Republican members and supporters killed as a result of his targeting efforts is still vociferously debated today, there is no doubt that he was party to five murders as he was convicted of conspiracy charges for those specific crimes. Given that such cases are, in terms of public perception, always tried in the court of public opinion, the end result was a feeling, even among supporters of the government, that trust had been violated. There is considerable evidence indicating Nelson’s provision of critical information in a number of killings. Even more disturbing, there are indications, more substantive than the usual shrill outrage when one’s own ox is gored, that UK security forces may have provided intelligence to Nelson with the understanding that it would be used for this and other paramilitary purposes.

While a certain amount of information would of necessity have been passed to/through him in order to maintain him in his position and thus obtain better intelligence in return, the indications are that the intelligence provided to Nelson was of a more extensive nature than the mere parsing out of low level or even moderately useful intelligence in order to retain or obtain optimal placement and access for a valuable source. As noted previously, the “court of public opinion” is the one which counts when it comes to the “hearts and minds” of the population. A case such as this, where sufficient indications exist to allow a credible argument by the insurgents of government collusion in the murder of its citizens, is one which sets back all other governmental efforts to create and broaden a gap between the insurgents and the people. Whatever good intelligence Nelson may have provided on the inner workings and plans of the loyalist paramilitaries will remain overshadowed by the fact that the uncovering of the free rein he was given, perhaps aided by his handlers, to continue the most egregious criminal activities, gave considerable support and aid to the Irish Republican Army and assisted their cause rather than that of the counterinsurgency. The existence of clearly defined boundaries, whatever those may be, and the enforcement of those boundaries through skillful handling of the informant is thus important if an informant is to be useful rather than detrimental to police counterinsurgency efforts. Of equal concern in a counterinsurgency is the fact that the potential for an informant who remains a member of an insurgent group to lead his police handler or other security forces into an ambush is far greater than that same possibility in dealing with more common criminal activity. Direct lethal attacks on police officials are usually seen as risky and counterproductive in criminal circles although individuals may elect to act rashly in the heat of the moment. In an insurgency the police are seen as a legitimate target and the intelligence branch of the police are particularly feared and thus targeted. The possibility that an informant, who may have been acting as a double agent for the insurgency all along or who may have been discovered and “turned”, is thus setting security forces up for an attack must always be present in the minds of police intelligence personnel. The suicide bombing conducted by Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balaw in December 2009 against the Central Intelligence Agency at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Chapman in Afghanistan is merely the latest and most dramatic example of this concern.15 In this case, a meeting was scheduled between a valuable source, later identified as Humam Khalil AbuMulal al-Balawi, and a number of CIA officials. The source had been recruited by the Jordanian security services, one of whose officers was present. He had been providing accurate, actionable intelligence for some time; intelligence that led to successful drone strikes on lower level insurgents. The meeting was in anticipation of a much more important level of intelligence, reputedly the whereabouts of Ayman Al Zawahiri, then believed to be the operational commander of Al Qaeda. Accounts vary as to the number of times the source had previously visited the FOB or

even if he had. Whatever the facts may be, it is certain that he was unsearched until entering the final perimeter and gaining close proximity to the assembled team of intelligence officers. The source, an apparent double agent for the insurgency all along, then detonated an explosive vest he was wearing, killing most of those around him. The CIA later stated that it was the most significant loss of life they had suffered since the 1983 US Embassy bombing in Lebanon.16 As will be apparent to informed readers, many of the standard informant handling procedures which should have prevented or at least lessened the effectiveness of the attack were ignored. In a counterinsurgency the commitment of all intelligence entities to upholding the boundaries of informant conduct and the adherence to informant handling procedures is paramount. Failure can easily result in more than a lost case and released suspects. The issue of the informant’s potential continued involvement in criminal or insurgent activity is often coupled with a very valid concern for the veracity of the information provided. It is common for informants to lie, shade the truth or attempt to focus police action onto a rival. This is particularly common in narcotics trafficking groups and is not unknown in counterinsurgency.17 Romantic partners especially, may seek to use the police as a means of gaining revenge for a perceived wrong and this driver may be strong enough to induce an informant to manufacture information or evidence in order to direct police action in a way consistent with this motive. Informants may also provide limited amounts of information in the hope that only those they wish to see discomforted become the target of police scrutiny. It is also not unknown for an informant to lie simply in an attempt to buy time, ingratiate themselves with a naive or inexperienced handler or in return for monetary compensation. The fact that the informer, in most cases, is already established as a criminal or insurgent who therefore has less credibility and greater motivation for falsehood than does the average citizen, means that all informant information must be treated with carefully concealed suspicion. The basic rule of dealing with informants is to assume that everything they say is either an outright fabrication or some self-serving shading of the truth.18 While this may seem a bit negative and call into question why informers should be used at all if such questions of reliability and veracity exist, the fact is that without the information provided by someone with inside knowledge, most criminal, and by extension insurgent, organizations are opaque to police scrutiny.19 The need for informants is considerable and the concerns for veracity are many and extremely well founded. The solution, such as it is, lies in the proper handling of the informant, a subject I will address shortly. A final consideration in the use of informants is the fact that the vast majority of informant transactions with the police involve the exchange of money for information. The specific amounts vary greatly depending upon jurisdiction and agency. Some informants are paid a regular salary, on average somewhere between 500 and 1,000 US dollars a week. These should obviously be well placed sources with a record of providing quality intelligence which has been verified although such is not always the case. Others are paid on a case by

case basis with the amount depending upon the quality (generally the degree of specificity) in the information or the resultobtained from it (thus an informant who introduces an undercover officer and vouches for him may be paid for the service, provided it is successful). The one commonality is that no informant should ever be paid any amount on “spec”. That is to say, payment is solely for performance which has been of benefit to the informant handler’s agency. This is a hard rule for military and national security handler’s to accept as they are frequently more interested in a vacuum cleaner approach to information collections and will subsequently pay for gossip and a re-packaging of common knowledge on the street. In a counterinsurgency, sources soon learn this and some have been known to travel from one location to another, selling a low grade product multiple times to HUMINT collectors who are limited in their ability to leave a secure environment.20 This is not due to a lack of care or diligence on the collector’s part but to a system which grades them on number of reports submitted and separates them from the end result. Police intelligence, in which the informant handler is often also the case agent and where the information is expected to produce tangible results, puts a different emphasis on the role of the handler, making him or her responsible for the information disseminated in a way absent from most military and national security efforts. The immediacy of focus in police intelligence, a subject dealt with in greater detail in the chapter on Analysis, tends to eliminate a sense of information for information’s sake. While in many cases the informant may be also “working off’ a criminal charge, that is to say cooperating with the police in order to obtain dismissal or reduction in the charges or penalties they are facing, money is often a medium of the exchange.21 During an insurgency the mitigation of criminal charges may or may not be a motivating factor for an informant. What is certain is that most police intelligence sources during an insurgency are motivated in ways identical to those of classic espionage. These include adventure seeking, revenge, ideology and solidarity but the most common in current history is money. Combined with a sense of family as displayed by such cases as the Walker spy ring, the lure of money appears to be a primary motivating factor in espionage. In the Walker case, John Anthony Walker Jr. while serving in the US Navy, found himself in financial difficulties. He approached the Soviets and sold a code card. Finding this lucrative, Walker then enlisted the help of a growing number of family and friends to create a long term network primarily focused on US Naval communications data. The code data and other classified communications information transmitted to the Soviets by Walker’s ring is claimed to have significantly affected the balance of power during the Cold War. Estimates vary but some sources state Walker earned over a million dollars in compensation for his activities. When arrested and de-briefed, Walker and his fellow conspirators, all gave monetary compensation as the primary motivating factor in their treason.22 As in any human endeavor, it is rarely possible to pin down motivation to a single factor however, in the case of criminal informants it can be safely said that money is very often the

one main driver regardless of what other motivations may exist or be expressed.23 The fact that an informer is at least to some extent motivated by fiduciary gain means that the quality and comprehensiveness of the information they provide must be called into question at all times by the police agency employing the informant as well as by anyone about to rely upon such information in order to undertake operational activities. This too is a part of the handling process as well as an issue to be address through proper analytical tradecraft.24 The delicate art of Informant handling There are numerous techniques and safeguards which are meant to offset these valid concerns and which, if used properly and stringently, are able to prevent a miscarriage of justice.25 The common term used to refer to actions taken to prevent informer misconduct is Positive Control of the Informant. This establishment of Positive Control uses techniques and methods which will vary from agency to agency and indeed, from informant handler to informant handler. However, its primary purpose is to supply, according to rules and procedures promulgated by the agency involved, the types of boundaries needed to control the informant’s behavior while acting in collusion with the police. Positive Control is the enforcement of those boundaries in all interactions with the informant as well as safeguarding against the informer’s potential criminal/insurgent activity when beyond the direct oversight of the handler. While a complete examination of the art and science of informant handling is beyond the scope of this book, it would be lacking if it did not address some of the issues involved in maintaining positive control of a police informant. Establishing and maintaining Positive Control of an informant is a difficult but essential task for the police source handler. In a counterinsurgency environment, the dangers to the handler as well as the public are greatly increased because the motivations and capabilities of insurgents are generally far in excess of those of more ordinary criminals. Failure to establish and maintain control of the informant can result in wasted time and money, failed operations based upon faulty intelligence, the use of security forces to settle private quarrels and the loss of police and other security force lives in ambushes or kidnappings. Kidnapping is of particular concern as insurgents tend to prioritize as targets those of their opposition which they feel are most likely to make them visible to the mass of the population. Accounts by police and others involved in human intelligence efforts in counterinsurgencies are rife with examples of efforts on the part of the insurgents to kill or capture those involved in this activity.26 It is undoubtedly obvious that this alone should motivate informant handlers to follow procedures and exercise sound judgment. Yet, despite what may seem obvious, police informant handlers often disregard these dangers and expose themselves and their comrades to considerable risk. An example of this complacency occurred to the Afghan special police intelligence unit referenced in the opening chapter. Due to the successes the unit was experiencing, they were seen as a threat

by local insurgent cells. One such cell sent an informant to contact one of the Afghan case officers, a young relatively inexperienced officer transferred from the Counter Terrorism section. This young officer’s identity was known to the cell through a coincidence of familial connection. The purported informant was actually a recruit being run by the cell. He will be referred to as hamcar in the remainder of this example as it was the term used in Dari for informants. His mission was to establish a relationship with the unit which permitted him to make them time and place predictable. In order to achieve this goal, the hamcar (a penetration in intelligence terms) provided information about a small cache of weapons which were subsequently located and seized. Having thus established some bona fides, the hamcar then gave information on a number of rockets in a transit hide. He added a sense of urgency by stating that the rockets would be moved that evening and used the following night. The unit, following Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) in such cases, sent undercover officers to reconnoiter the scene. They reported all was as the hamcar described. They were careful not approach the supposed cache site but scouted the immediate area for signs of ambush etc. Upon confirmation that the physical terrain matched that provided by the hamcar, the unit requested assistance from a sister unit, including an EOD element from ISAF SOF. The combined unit “responded” to the remote location indicated by the hamcar. The terrain was such that there was only one approach practical for vehicles although it did allow for two separate approaches at a junction nearby the objective area. The undercover police officers on the scene left an officer to watch the area around the cache site while the remainder “staged” along the approach route in order to provide guidance and spot any hostile activity. The combined unit halted at the junction just prior to entering the objective area (a group of ruined houses in a rural setting) in order to refine the final orders and report its position and progress to HQ. During this halt, unbeknownst to anyone but the handler, the hamcar left, stating that he had received a phone call advising of a family issue which required his immediate presence. The handler, being inexperienced and treating the hamcar like a trusted colleague rather than a suspected source, waved him on his way and failed to mention the event to his chain of command. The unit continued on its way, enveloping the small area of ruined houses, placing security and confirming the absence of anyone near the cache site with the undercover officer who had remained. The next step was to call for the hamcar to come forward from the vehicle in which he was transported, usually in a police uniform and wearing a balaclava to hide his features. There was considerable consternation when it was learned that the hamcar had been permitted to retain his cell phone, make and receive calls on it and then depart prior to reaching the target area. A heavy rain which had fallen earlier now resumed, making the roads almost impassible and increasing the difficulty for EOD of searching the cache site. This they did, despite the evident dangers associated with the task. Several long pipes were clustered together at the site in a way that made them resemble BM-1 rockets

commonly used by the insurgents. These had trip wires in the area around them but no IEDs were discovered. The EOD team assessment was that the cache was a “come on”, a false event meant to permit the observation of a unit’s tactics and personnel, facilitate an ambush or both. The presence of trip wires, each of which required a careful painstaking procedure for investigation, meant the operation was considerably delayed, something which the combined unit felt was deliberate and designed to permit an ambush team to assemble. The continued heavy rain, up to this point merely an environmental annoyance, now proved a blessing as a nearby leg of the planned return route was so flooded as to be impassible. The unit withdrew along the same route as it had arrived, a routing normally contrary to SOP but which circumstances forced upon them. The hamcar was nowhere to be found although approximately six months later the unit learned, through other proven sources, that an IED ambush had been emplaced a day earlier on the intended return route, specifically on the leg to the junction which was rendered inaccessible by the heavy downpour. Thus what would most likely have been a successful attack by the insurgent cell was thwarted by a fortuitous combination of weather and terrain.27 A great deal of the effort in handling an informant is psychological. This includes determining the true motivations of the informant regardless of those he or she may initially profess as well as making an accurate assessment of character so as to determine which of several “approaches” to handling this particular individual will be most likely to yield good results.28 In this specific area, informant handling resembles interrogation with its equal emphasis on understanding one’s interlocutor and manipulating interactions and environment in order to achieve greater veracity.29 Knowing what makes an informant “tick” is critically important to the success of any long term relationship. In many cases in a counterinsurgency, however, the informant may be unlikely to be available for a long term effort. This can be due to such factors as the importance of the information being brought by the informant requiring an operational response which will inevitably expose or otherwise prevent the informer from continuing undetected in the enemy ranks. It may be due to the informant’s desire to simply even a score or cash in on a reward and then remove themselves from the theater of operations entirely.30 It may equally be due to a decision on the part of the police informant handler that while some information gleaned from an informant is useful, there are too many other risks associated with a long term relationship, the continued participation of the informant in criminal or terrorist activities being a primary factor for this decision. In short, while the establishment of a long term relationship in which the informer retains the Placement and Access which enables them to provide useful information is the ideal, frequently the friction of the counterinsurgency environment prevents or renders unwise such an arrangement. Despite the brevity which may be forced unto an informant handler in developing and controlling a source, there are a number of fairly standard principles from which theater specific techniques are derived and which may be applied equally to long, medium and short term informant relationships with police intelligence. These generalized

techniques, adapted for local conditions and by individual informant handler ingenuity, are the means whereby the boundaries are set and behavior checked and verified to the extent this is possible in a wartime environment.31 .

The ways and means of informant handling Many of the standard control procedures are simple and easily understood. One of the most common initial procedures involves obtaining as much biographical detail on the informant as possible, both initially and in subsequent meetings. Often this can be disguised as the normal polite conversation between people engaged in a mutual effort. Care is, of course, taken to prevent the handler from revealing personal details themselves in these exchanges but the overall goal is to obtain a picture of the informant’s background and history which will allow for other resources to be brought to bear in order to determine his potential veracity, usefulness and relationships, hidden or otherwise, which might create problems in handling the informer. If a potential informer claims, for instance, to have grown up with a specific insurgent target and to have attended school with him and yet there are no records of the potential source in the census or at the school in question while records of the target exist, there is some cause for concern that the source may be overstating his access. An example of the importance of biographical vetting occurred when a potential source offered his services to a police intelligence unit operating in the Balkans. The “Walk-In” provided, as part of his initial screening process, a biography including details of his family and the village in which he claimed to have grown up. Investigation by the unit revealed that the family claimed by the potential source did in fact have a son by the name he was using but that this son had died in the war. The potential source turned out to be a fabricator wishing to find a way to earn money by providing “intelligence” that was largely bazaar gossip32. This, while merely one example of the use of biographical information in handling an informant, is hopefully illustrative of the general application. The more information one has, the more crosschecking one can perform with the result that one can have greater or lesser confidence in unrelated unsubstantiated information provided by the informant based to a large degree upon the level of candor and veracity displayed in seemingly unimportant biographical information.33 A second common procedure is to require the informant to perform some small but easily verifiable task. This will generally be something that exposes the informant to no risk but will also be something which the informant does not realize is insignificant aside from its purpose as a test. In training source handlers, one exercise presented to student handlers for possible use with new informants involves tasking an informant with observing and verifying the presence of an individual in a setting where the informant will be uncomfortable. For example, a male informant in a society with extremely traditional values might be

asked to make this observation in a club or other venue that caters to homosexuals. A female might be tasked to a strip club. Anything that takes the informant out of their comfort zone is acceptable. The venue is then surveilled and the actions of the informant recorded. Some do not show but claim to have done so. Others attend as directed but are so visibly unhappy as to draw attention to themselves. In a few cases, the degree of comfort and familiarity shown by the informant reveals an additional biographical detail hitherto concealed. In all cases, the point is to determine the informant’s willingness to perform a seemingly meaningless task when required as well as to better assess their personality and conduct when they feel they are unobserved. The action must obviously then be one which can be observed and verified, in real time when possible, and the informant must be rewarded in some way for successful completion. This testing may and should be repeated periodically throughout the term of a relationship with an informant. It is possible for an informant who is negatively motivated or who is a double agent34 for the insurgency or another hostile entity to pass initial tests but to subsequently trip up on a simple periodic test due to relaxation and a sense of being successful in penetrating/deceiving the handling agency. Obviously, an informant who fails to perform any such test but who claims to have done so or to have attempted to do so but to have been prevented is due for a serious re-evaluation and possible arrest and interrogation. A companion principle to this is the setting and maintenance of strict procedures for meeting and debriefings. An informant, who is habitually late, misses appointments with frequent excuses and who fails to deliver as promised is one who is controlling the handler. Care must be taken to ensure that there is no sense of relational equity between handler and informant however cordial and collegial the actual conversations may be.35 Surveillance of the informant is also a valuable method of establishing control. This would include the instances where surveillance of a specific target be it an individual or location happens to include the informant as he/she interacts with the target. Knowing important details about the informant’s actions when he or she believes they are out of the eye of the police can frequently allow the handler to give the lie to an informer on minor untruths and thus establish a more disciplined approach to the informant’s activities. Equally it can alert police intelligence to a potential problem with an informant as well as provide a means by which to check the veracity of an informant’s account of an event, lifestyle or relationship. Surveillance is an important part of police intelligence and will be addressed as such later in this work.36 In a counterinsurgency where the stakes and risks to police intelligence personnel are higher than they are in dealing with more common albeit still violent criminal gangs, the use of protective searches of the informant before a meet is extremely important. Indeed, in the attack at FOB Chapman which was mentioned earlier, one of the reasons for its considerable success was that searches which should have occurred earlier at two separate occasions were waived and intelligence personnel left protective cover to greet the informant which allowed him to detonate the explosive device he was wearing when finally approached for a search by

security personnel at that point.37 The reasons for this lax approach to security and the proper handling of this informant are varied but certainly include a lessened sense of potential danger due to a past history with this informant who had produced valuable information for some time, a desire to not offend an important source by treating him as if he was not a trusted member of the team and a sense that the opposition lacked the ability to run a long term penetration complete with genuine and valuable information simply in order to gain trust and provide the opportunity for an attack of this nature. Incredible as it may seem to those who have not experienced it firsthand, even in a war zone with daily reinforcement of the dangers involved, many become complacent and shortcut security with excuses which are based upon rapport or other interpersonal issues. The example from FOB Chapman serves to illustrate the extreme danger of this complacency. It is not the only example, merely the most widely known and dramatic in recent times. Searches of the informant for the safety of the handler and other personnel as well as to determine that he/she is not carrying any recording or other prohibited devices is a control procedure that does a great deal to establish the proper relationship between the informant and the police handler.38 Another common technique involves one of the banes of the police officer’s life, record keeping. Accurate and thorough records of the informant need to be kept and updated as events occur. It is often important to know who first mentioned a given subject and in what context and circumstances. Equally it may be important to know when an informant first displayed knowledge of a subject or claimed to know nothing of the matter. Careful and periodic checking of an informant’s record against other events and informants does a great deal to reveal an informant’s veracity and motivations and to assist in determining when and where false or misleading information has been feed to police intelligence. This is most obviously a function of analysis although handlers should keep and make use of detailed records which will not only aid them in handling the source but will assist anyone who follows after them or who is charged with counterespionage activities on behalf of the police.39 Analysis itself is a crucial element of police intelligence and will be addressed separately. A final common control procedure is in the payments made to informants. Given that monetary compensation is most frequently encountered as a primary or at least secondary motivation for informing, the payment provided must be based solely upon the quality of information provided, its level of accuracy and detail and its timely delivery. As was mentioned earlier, payment should be for results only. An informant who is motivated by fiduciary gain will frequently provide limited information hoping to sell the remainder in the future. The same informant will also attempt to market gossip as intelligence and may simply resort to generating their own information based upon nothing other than their imagination.40 The danger of an informant who falsely accuses a personal enemy and enjoys both the discomforting of that person as well as a monetary reward is obvious and, in a

counterinsurgency, quite common.41 Payment is one of the most easily accessible control mechanisms available to a police handler and should be used judiciously in order to motivate the informant by making clear the perils, via lessened or withheld payments, of less than satisfactory performance. Careful use of monetary or other rewards as both positive and negative motivators is another way in which the power inequity between handler and informant may be subtly but definitely denoted. There are many other techniques used to obtain and maintain positive control of an informant. These may include the use of the polygraph, the use of technical means to monitor the informant’s activities and the use of psychological manipulations.42 In a counterinsurgency it may prove difficult at best to apply any of these methods and where they are available they will generally be at the disposal of large entities and directed toward informants of significant interest to those agencies. When one is dealing with the efforts of a host national police intelligence agency in a counterinsurgency, it is likely that such additional options will be the exception rather than the rule. It is important however, to recognize their existence and occasional usefulness when available. They can often play a valuable part in the establishment of positive control. It is also important to note that in cases of a short term relationship or even a “one off” type informant, the standard techniques of informant handling are valuable and can prove a useful protection against miscarriages of justice, attempts by insurgents to penetrate or manipulate police intelligence and even simple attempts by the informant to con his/her handlers. Absent these strictures, any case relying significantly upon an informer runs a serious risk of compromise.43 In a counterinsurgency, as has been noted previously, the stakes are much higher and the need for positive control of the informant is thus elevated. Lessons Learned This examination of police human intelligence operations can be summed up simply. The primary element making the police a viable counterinsurgency force is their placement and access among the population who are the center of gravity in an insurgency. This natural placement by the nature of their duty combined with the familiarity built up by constant presence and interaction provide considerable opportunity for police intelligence to recruit and successfully run human intelligence sources against an insurgent network. Indeed, the penetration of criminal networks for the ultimate purpose of physically apprehending its members is a core competency of police investigatory and intelligence efforts. The skill sets needed for penetration and dismantling of an organized criminal network using human sources are essentially the same as those required for doing the same with an insurgent network. With skillful and careful handling procedures, police intelligence is enabled to make visible the invisible network of agents, supporters and facilitators and to conduct or cooperate in operations which kill or capture these otherwise hidden foes.

When less than adequate means are used to control and execute human intelligence operations however, disaster on a both a tactical and national strategic scale can result. In short, while one of the most dangerous threats to an insurgency is properly operated police human intelligence, improperly run human intelligence operations are one of the most damaging events for a counterinsurgency. Police human intelligence is a two edged sword of considerable potency, requiring skill and care in its use but it is also one easily adapted from its more common purpose of crime fighting to that of effectively confronting and defeating an armed insurgency.

____________________ 1 A clandestine activity conceals its true nature but is not necessarily itself concealed. Thus two friends meeting for coffee,

one of whom verbally passes vital information to the other, may be observed without its purpose being revealed to the observer. Covert activities, in contrast, are those where the activity must be concealed, generally due to its illicit nature, and, of primary importance, where the sponsor is not plausibly identifiable. By this definition, few legitimate law enforcement activities are covert. 2 The meeting described took place in December 2009. The author was present as an advisor to the Afghan police intelligence unit which was handling the penetration. 3 Rosenau, William. Low Cost Trigger Pullers. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008 pp 12-13. 4 Ratcliffe, Jerry. Intelligence - Led Policing. Portland, OR: Willan Publishing, 2008 pp 27-28. 5 Davenport, Christian. Understanding Covert Repressive Action. Park MD, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2005, Vol. 49 pp 122 -124 and Hewitt, Steve. Snitch: A History of the Modern Intelligence Informer. New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010 pp 8-12. See also Shulsky, Abram N. Silent Warfare: Understanding the world of intelligence. New York: Brassey’s, 1993, pp 86-95 for a more traditional definition of covert action. 6 Ratcliffe, Jerry. Intelligence - Led Policing pp 27-28. 7 Hewitt, Steve. Snitch: A History of the Modern Intelligence Informer pp 66, 123. 8 Fitzgerald, Dennis G. The Champion. Inside the Informant File. [Online] National Association of Defense Lawyers May 1998. [Cited: June 10, 2010.] http://www.nacdl.org/CHAMPION/ARTICLES/98may03.htm. 9 Shulsky, Abram N. Silent Warfare: Understanding the world of intelligence p 11, Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy. Washington DC: CQ Press, 2009 p 97 and Hitz, Frederick P. Why Spy? Espionage in an Age of Uncertainty. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2008 pp 15 -16. 10 This series of events took place in 2005, during the author’s tour as an advisor to the local police intelligence unit in question. 11 United States Military Academy. Irregular Warfare Message of the Month. Policing Society in Counterinsurgency. [Online] November 2006. [Cited: June 3, 2010.] http://www.usma.edu/dmi/IWmsgs/11-06-Policing.pdf. 12 Ratcliffe, Jerry. Intelligence - Led Policing pp 66 – 70. See also Barker, Alan. Shadows:Inside Northern Ireland’s Special Branch. Edinburgh, UK: Mainstream Publishing Company, 2004 pp 111-113 for an example of an “environmental” informant made possible through this type of policing. 13 Fitzgerald, Dennis G. Inside the Informant File and Madinger, John. Confidential Informant: Law Enforcement’s Most Valuable Tool. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press LLC, 2000 p 234. 14 Dillon, Martin. The Dirty War. New York, NY: Routledge, 1990 pp 440- 442 and Geraghty, Tony. The Irish War. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, p 156. 15 George Friedman, Scott Stewart. Stratfor. The Khost Attack and the Intelligence War Challenge. [Online] January 11, 2010. [Cited: January 11, 2010.] http://www.stratfor.com. 16 Readers wishing a detailed examination of this incident are encouraged to obtain Warrick, Joby. The Triple Agent. New York, NY: Vintage, 2012. I would also be remiss if I did not clarify that my use of this example is in no way meant to denigrate the memory of the officers lost during this tragic event. Rather it is presented as an example from which others may learn and avoid such pitfalls in the future. The willingness to serve and ultimate loss of life says all that needs to be said in regards to these officers’ character. 17 Levine, Michael. The Weakest Link. 2, Macomb, IL: Law Enforcement Executive Forum, 2009, Vol. 9 and Lee, Gregory D. What Motivates Confidential Informants. San Jose, CA: Third Degree Communications, 2008. 18 Fitzgerald, Dennis G. Informants and Undercover Investigations: A Practical Guide to Law, Policy and Procedure. Boca Raton, FL: Taylor & Francis, 2007 pp 19-27 for an examination of informant motivations and Madinger, John. Confidential Informant p 12. 19 Ratcliffe, Jerry. Intelligence - Led Policing pp 133 -134. 20 This issue was especially noted during the author’s last two years in Afghanistan. The emphasis, for military intelligence, was on the production and dissemination of reports. The disconnect between the person collecting any and all info so

numerous reports could be generated, counting on analysts to sort the wheat from the chaff, and the end user of the information thus generated was vast. This disconnect was much less evident when dealing with our ISAF SOF partners where the person generating the report, lived, ate and worked with the people whose lives would be risked based on the information gained. This was much closer to our model and greatly enhanced our mutual operational efforts. 21 Lee, Gregory D. What Motivates Confidential Informants. 22 See Ealy, Pete. Family of Spies: Inside the John Walker Spy Ring. New York, NY: Bantam, 1988 for a good summation of the Walker ring. 23 Herbig, Katherine L. and Wiskoff, Martin F. Espionage against the United States by American citizens 1947 to 2001. Montgomery, CA: Defense Personnel Security Research Center, 2002 pp 40-41; Lee, Gregory D. What Motivates Confidential Informants; Fisher, Lynn. Espionage: Why does it happen? Washington DC: Department of Defense Security Institute, 2003 pp 3-4 and Hewitt, Steve. Snitch: A History of the Modern Intelligence Informer p 141. 24 See Analysis for additional discussion on analytical tradecraft. 25 Levine, Michael. 2, The Weakest Link, Macomb, IL: Law Enforcement Executive Forum, 2009, Vol. 9 and Fitzgerald, Dennis G. Inside the Informant File and Madinger, John. Confidential Informant pp 123-132. 26 Hewitt, Steve. Snitch: A History of the Modern Intelligence Informer p 24. 27 This was the first such attempt by insurgent elements to directly attack the special police intelligence unit. It was not the last. The incident described took place in 2010. The author was present as an advisor to the special police unit. The event served to permit a re-organization of personnel, something that pruned some incompetent officers and addressed training and more deliberate operational procedures. Thereafter no operation occurred without the hamcar being present and incommunicado. His fate and that of the unit were intertwined. The hamcar in this incident was brought to justice approximately a year after this incident occurred. 28 See Buckley, John. Human Source Management System: The use of psychology in the management of human intelligence sources. s.l: HSM Inc, 2007 for a complete and exhaustive treatment of this subject. Also Madinger, John. Confidential Informant pp 71-100. 29 Miller, Chris and Mackey, Greg. The Interrogators New York, NY: Back Bay Books, 2004 pp 57-60. 30 See Barber, Noel. The War of the Running Dogs. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1987 pp 56-57 for an example. 31 Hewitt, Steve. Snitch pp 34-36. 32 This incident occurred in 2002. The author was present as the head of the unit involved. 33 Buckley, John. Human Source Management System pp 221-222 and Fitzgerald, Dennis G. Informants and Undercover Investigations pp 221-223. 34 See Shulsky, Abram N. Silent Warfare, pp 124-126 and Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence p 157 for a definition and detailed examination of double agents. 35 Buckley, John. Human Source Management System pp 270-273, 284-286. 36 Fitzgerald, Dennis G. Informants and Undercover Investigations pp 141-149, 171-175. 37 George Friedman, Scott Stewart. Stratfor. The Khost Attack and the Intelligence War Challenge. [Online] January 11, 2010. [Cited: January 11, 2010.] http://www.stratfor.com. 38 Fitzgerald, Dennis G. Informants and Undercover Investigations pp 147-149. 39 Ibid pp 115-117. 40 Shulsky, Abram N. Silent Warfare, pp 18-19. 41 This statement is based upon author’s experiences and interviews with members of the Special Operations community in Afghanistan and Iraq. The desire to turn foreign counterinsurgents against clan or tribal enemies was a frequently encountered issue. 42 Fitzgerald, Dennis G. Informants and Undercover Investigations pp 171-182. 43 The Weakest Link. Levine, Michael. 2, Macomb, IL: Law Enforcement Executive Forum, 2009, Vol. 9 and Fitzgerald, Dennis G. Inside the Informant File and Madinger, John. Confidential Informant pp 169-171.

Interrogation An example from the field THE suspect sat quietly in a folding metal chair. The room was small, rectangular and brightly lit. Despite the fact that the United Nations was now in effect running the province of Kosovo, the suspect shivered as the only door into the room opened. Shortly thereafter the suspect found himself engaged in conversation with an American police officer and a British army officer. The American spoke quietly with the suspect for some time, learning of his background, family history and other innocuous subjects which gradually led to the suspect’s attitude changing from one of fearful anticipation to cautious participation. Once his posture and tone were indicative of this change, the American officer leaned forward and began to calmly state the case against him. He outlined the stop of the suspect’s vehicle by a British military patrol, the discovery in his vehicle of a hidden compartment containing explosives and the penalties for possessing these as part of an insurgent organization. The suspect hastily interrupted to deny his affiliation and knowledge. The officer calmly spoke over this denial, again repeating the evidence and assuring the suspect of his guilt. His demeanor still friendly, the officer suggested that perhaps the suspect had merely been pressured into joining since the area where he lived was a stronghold of the extremist group. The suspect gladly accepted this as an excuse and agreed this was so. The suspect was a member of the Ushtria Clirimtare e Presheves, Medvegjes dhe Bujanovcit (UCPMB), an insurgent organization then still active in both Kosovo and Serbia. The officer then noted that although he knew the suspect to be guilty, he felt he was a victim as well. The officer wished to help him but needed some additional detail to understand how the suspect had been involved. His manner and confidence were outside the experience of the suspect who, having partially admitted his guilt, now was led carefully though a discussion of his activities on behalf of the organization. The officer played upon a number of themes during this discussion, offering rationales for cooperation which, when combined with the unusual treatment he was receiving, induced the suspect to provide a wealth of information. Eventually, after two hours, the interrogation came to a close. There would be additional sessions in other locations but for now, the initial effort had resulted in both a confession and additional intelligence information.1 A controversial topic The act of interrogation is fraught with pitfalls ethical, moral and tactical. Indeed, there are few areas of police intelligence activity which garner more attention and polarize viewpoints

as solidly as does this topic. Interrogation is a sub-set of human intelligence collection efforts2 but given the controversy surrounding its use as well as the complex technical nature of various interrogation methods, it is the intention of this chapter to conduct a separate examination of the utility of interrogation in police intelligence operations in a counterinsurgency. Whilst it is recognized that this chapter merely scratches the surface of this topic (one worthy of further extensive exploration) the focus will remain on the practical aspects of the uses of interrogation by police intelligence in counterinsurgency efforts. In order to determine the best practices of police in counterinsurgency interrogation, it will be necessary to examine the alternative methods provided in the past and, indeed, the present for their effectiveness and suitability. Contentious questions of moral value and legality will be left aside for the more easily determined ones of utility. While such considerations are entirely appropriate, they can rapidly distort the narrow focus of this work beyond the examination of best practice in police intelligence. Instead, I will content myself with noting those areas where moral concerns and practicality overlap to recommend or proscribe a given course of action. Guilt by association Any mention of interrogation tends to quickly conjure up images of dank basements complete with wooden chairs, truncheons, bright lights and heavily built men of untender disposition. It is, in the mind of the general public, so closely associated with torture that the two terms are virtually synonymous in common use. Countless works of fiction and film play upon this interrogation as torture theme while the debate on the use by American officials and foreign client states of what are somewhat disingenuously termed harsh interrogation methods has only increased the mental linkage.3 The truth however, is that proper interrogation is quite far removed from the gratuitous application of force in order to elicit information.4 This is not to say that coercive methods of interrogation are not used by police in counterinsurgency to say nothing of during ordinary investigation efforts. Poorly trained police who are used to relying on force to obtain compliance tend to regard brutal interrogation methods and outright torture as an acceptable way of doing business. It is equally true that proper interrogation of captured or surrendered insurgents and suspected supporters is one of the most valuable human intelligence tools in the police counterinsurgency toolkit.5 What is at stake is the determination of the best methods for extracting this information without compromising other essential elements of counterinsurgency operations, the most obvious being the winning of the proverbial hearts and minds of the people. In examining this contentious practice it will be helpful to begin by looking at what interrogation is, what it is meant to achieve and where it fits within the realm of intelligence collection.

Interrogation Defined Interrogation has existed from the dawn of recorded history. Although opinions differ as to its ancient purpose,6 in modern times interrogation has been seen primarily as a means of extracting information from hostile subjects rather than as a way to punish or provide a means of atonement to the subject. It is, at its heart, the art and science of obtaining accurate information from subjects who are unwilling to provide it.7 Methods of conducting interrogations run along a continuum with simple polite discussion at one end and extreme savagery at the other. If the subject is willing to provide information and is motivated to be as accurate as possible, the conversation is generally termed an interview or debriefing. The use of the term interrogation implies the use of various techniques to overcome a covert or overt intent to conceal the information desired or to otherwise distort it into a form useless to the interrogator.8 The interrogator is intent on obtaining information from his interlocutor, information the subject is motivated to deny him or to mix with untruth to his own benefit. When one considers that in counterinsurgency the police interrogator is most likely to be questioning a suspect who is known or reasonably believed to have information regarding the insurgents’ plans, identities and locations, the similarity between military and police interrogation is greatly increased. Indeed, it is this specific area, the provision by American government experts of interrogation training to police and security forces of frequently repressive governments during the 1970s and 1980s, which created a firestorm of debate regarding the limits of permissible interrogation techniques by the forces of a liberal democracy.9 This controversy has recently been revisited due to the use of a system of harsh interrogation techniques becoming prevalent in the interrogations of suspects involved with Islamic terrorism.10 While the focus of this recent international discussion has been upon the specific methods which may legally be used in an interrogation in support of the “Global War on Terror”, the purpose of interrogation itself does not change with the circumstances in which it is employed. The ways and means used to advance the interrogator’s cause shift and alter based upon the situation at the time but the essential point of interrogation, the extraction of accurate information from an uncooperative subject, remains constant. Extracting the truth General police interrogation is usually narrow in focus. That is to say, it is designed to obtain information and/or a confession in regards to a specific case.11 Police interrogation is generally conducted by the officers charged with investigating a given case and suspects are often never interrogated by anyone seeking to acquire a wider degree of knowledge of criminal activity, organization and networking. This is much less true when one enters the world of organized crime and counter gang investigations.12 Here police interrogations tend

to include questions regarding larger issues such as social networks, structures and locations used for storage, sanctuary and transshipment points. The difference is largely one of focus as all police interrogations are designed to obtain information upon which actions may reasonably be taken. While in the more commonly encountered case specific sense the action to be taken is criminal prosecution, in the more intelligence driven environment it is often simply the discovery of individual data points and the linkages between them which will itself enable future operations to counter the network thus displayed. Criminal prosecution, assisted by a confession or other incriminating statements obtained during interrogation, is merely one type of action made possible by proper interrogation techniques. In a counterinsurgency environment, it tends to take a back seat to the more important task of uncovering the hidden insurgent network in order to permit decisive engagement. Statements of prosecutorial interest made during such interrogations are a positive side effect rather than the purpose of the activity itself.13 The focus in counterinsurgency is thus less on criminal evidence collection than on actionable intelligence collection. This brings us to the question of how, exactly, do police conduct an interrogation and what if any changes are required if the focus changes from primarily criminal prosecution to network discovery. There are several primary methods of interrogation taught to police professionals in liberal democracies. All are informed to a significant degree by the rules imposed upon the police regarding the collection and presentation of evidence, the conduct of trials and various rights of the accused. While the specifics in each area vary it is generally accepted that all liberal democracies aver the right of an accused person to competent legal counsel during questioning, the right against forced self-incrimination, the presumption of innocence in a legal sense and the total prohibition on the use of force to compel answers.14 This being the case, interrogation by police is generally an effort to obtain useful, which translates to incriminating, information from an unwilling subject while not running afoul of the locally specific legal aspects of the primary rights enumerated above. As may be imagined, this requires a great deal of caution on the part of the police and no little amount of frustration. Proper interrogation techniques are designed to give the police a sense of empowerment in an endeavor where the deck is seemingly stacked against them. They are very limited in their design due to the intent to produce legally admissible evidence in court. They are also based upon careful observation of human behavior patterns and rely in the end upon the skill of the interrogating officer for any degree of success.15 Although there are significant variations in the legal structures which directly affect police interrogation there are also some commonalities of approach which seek to achieve the interrogator’s goal without encroachment upon the local articulation of the suspect’s rights. It would be outside the scope of this examination to detail all the methods used in each country which one might reasonably consider a liberal democracy. Instead I will examine one method

which in its focus and use of carefully calibrated interactions may serve as an example of the types of interrogation efforts generally practiced by the police in liberal democracies. Other variations and approaches most certainly exist but an exhaustive recitation of each will not advance the cause and will certainly try the reader’s patience. The example will thus serve both as a specific reference in terms of technique and as a general type in terms of application to police intelligence. The Reid Method One of the defining features of the Reid Method, and indeed most police criminal interrogation methods, is the creation of a distinction between interviews and interrogation. An interview is seen as distinct from an interrogation, indeed a number of interviews are a likely prerequisite to an interrogation as considerable information must be collected and analyzed before a suspect may be identified and interrogated. The interview is designed to be as relaxed as possible as one of its primary objectives is the evaluation of the mental and emotional state of an interlocutor as well as the collection of his or her information. In many cases the interview is merely the gathering of information related to the case and while helpful in a subsequent interrogation, the subject of the interview is not the suspect to be interrogated. In this way an interview resembles the screening process of a military interrogation effort. In both cases basic biographical facts are sought, relational information is noted and an assessment of the subject’s mental and emotional stability and intellectual capacity is made.16 One of the primary purposes of the interview process is the screening out of a pool of potential suspects those who seem innocent of any guilty knowledge from those who do not. The detection of deception is a primary purpose of the interview as it permits identification of suspects and better investigative and ultimately interrogatory focus.17 While basic facts including a person’s observations of a crime or crime scene and their biographical and employment details are collected during an interview as a matter of routine, the process may also be used to select out those most likely to be guilty for follow up investigation and/or interrogation. In order to identify those who may be concealing criminal knowledge from those innocent of such intent, the police rely upon several techniques. These include structured questioning where the interrogatives are posed in such a way as to draw out certain responses indicative of guilt as opposed to those of innocence. They may also involve the presentation to a subject of a group of pictures with a simple narrative being solicited from the subject for each picture. The types of narrative responses provided by guilty parties generally differ markedly from those of the innocent which may assist the police in selecting subjects for further investigation and/or interrogation.18 Other techniques involve neuro-linguistic programming, a system of evaluating an

interlocutor originally designed for the practice of conversational therapy but frequently applied to police interviewing and interrogation.19 Knowledge of these factors can be a considerable assistance to the police interrogator attempting to “read” a person and gauge their level of veracity.20 During this conversation, and occasionally the presentation of additional screening materials such as photographs or structured written questions, the subject of the interview is being assessed for not only the content of the conversation but also their truthfulness, basic communications strategy and methodology when at ease and any influencing factors such as mental impairment, difficulties with the language used or impairment due to alcohol or drugs. Only after review of all information available, examination of the results of as many interviews as possible and consideration of the available evidence does the police investigator conduct an interrogation.21 Once a suspect has been identified and the police are reasonably sure of his guilt, an interrogation may occur. Standard practice stresses that it is improper to interrogate subjects without first being reasonably certain of their guilt, both to lessen the likelihood of an innocent person providing a false confession and because the entire tone of an interrogation in the Reid Method is adversarial and accusatory.22 Where the interview may be characterized as an open conversation during which the police seek information, take notes and elicit information while evaluating a subject, the interrogation is a one sided conversation in which the interrogator emphatically states the suspect’s guilt, overrides attempts to deny, presents a theme which allows rationalizations already present in the suspect’s mind to be introduced as morally exculpatory and draws the suspect into a confession.23 The sole purpose of interrogation in this setting is to elicit a confession, an acknowledgment however trivial, of guilt which may then be used to leverage greater detail from the suspect. This detail may be used to bolster the criminal case, permit additional investigatory efforts or serve as the basis for a search or arrest warrant. It is also occasionally useful in identifying a suspect who is innocent as the process used is designed to create certain reactions from guilty parties and to note consistent reactions of a different nature from those who are innocent.24 It will be useful to the examination of best practice in police counterinsurgency interrogation if the stages of the Reid Method of interrogation are discussed in brief detail. The applicability of this process will be addressed later in this chapter however it will be necessary to have a basic understanding of the process in order to understand the possible application After the initial affirmation of the suspect’s guilt, the interrogator, as mentioned previously, begins to develop a theme. This is some form of excuse for the criminal action be it a robbery, theft, murder or other criminal activity. The theme attempts to mimic the suspect’s own rationalizations for the crime and is designed to lead the suspect toward confession. The interrogator may try out several themes but, based upon the results of previous case work and the interview, one or two major themes will suggest themselves.

Again, the innocent will have no interest and will continue to protest as to an innocent man the suggestion that a theft might have been justified by the victim leaving valuables in a tempting, easily accessed location is of no consequence and may even be outrageous.25 Once the suspect’s preference for a given theme is established through his verbal and non-verbal reactions, the interrogator will frequently encounter objections. These are rhetorical devices meant to distract from the theme development and the crime itself. They are encountered almost exclusively from guilty individuals and will consist of the presentation of some factor which they hope will divert the interrogator’s attention and certainty.26 A robbery suspect may claim to not own a specific weapon, a rapist to not have known the victim. Whatever the denial the interrogator uses it to further his theme. Objections come in a variety of types and interrogators are trained in the correct responses to use to further develop the theme and lead the suspect closer to confessing. Often at this stage a suspect who is guilty becomes withdrawn and disinclined to continue the conversation. They may actually elect to physically withdraw from the room if possible. This is largely governed by local law regarding suspect’s rights however in all cases interrogators are taught to attempt to regain the suspect’s attention through several methods depending upon their assessment of the suspect’s personality and the acceptance of the theme. The interrogator will then present an alternative question, one which is based upon the theme and which offers a considerably more benign view of the crime on one hand and one which is dramatically more deserving of censure on the other. The objective is to allow the suspect, by now largely convinced of the interrogator’s case, to agree to a theme based reason for his crime which lessens his feelings of guilt while denying a more heinous motivation. A thief may elect to answer that he stole to feed his family not too feed a drug habit while a murderer may choose to deny deliberation in favor of a heat of passion rationale. In all cases the alternative question is posed in such a way as to require merely an acknowledgement such as a nod or a simple yes. An example of the formation of an alternative question was given in the opening of this chapter. In that case, the interrogator presented the theme of involuntary involvement due to societal pressure and then asked, “UCPMB are known terrorists. They kill and murder innocent civilians. But I don’t think you’re like them. You’re not a bad person. The truth is that everyone in ‘X’ neighborhood is involved with them and you felt you had to be as well. Isn’t that right?” Once the suspect nods or indicates verbally their agreement with the lesser of the two alternatives they have effectively admitted their guilt and the natural desire to explain themselves is now played upon to elicit details and additional information.27 This elicitation is important as it helps to establish the voluntary nature of the confession, provides additional details which indicate the truth of the confession (i.e. details only the guilty party would know) and provides additional avenues of investigation which may be used to apprehend accomplices or conclude other open inquiries.28 It is in regards to the last two areas where we will find the most applicability to counterinsurgency efforts by police

intelligence. The Reid Method as described above is typical of the criminal interrogation activities of police in a liberal democracy. As was mentioned, other approaches exist but all involve reliance upon first establishing a basic understanding of the circumstances of the case, developing an understanding of the person(s) being interviewed and the use of authority and psychology to coerce a guilty party into admitting guilt while eschewing the use of force, threats or improper promises. Evaluating the standard Many objections to these methods exist. An almost universally encountered objection to standard police criminal interrogation is that it is somehow morally repugnant for the police to use outright falsehood and deception to induce a suspect to provide a confession. Many also decry the emotionally coercive nature of the interrogation process and imply a level of immorality which is however, not universally shared and has even been the subject of some exposition by moral philosophers.29 Other critics claim that innocent parties, in particular the young and the mentally challenged, are likely to be forced by these methods into falsely confessing. While the debate on the specific utility within a given legal system of these methods of criminal interrogation is beyond the scope of this book, it should be noted that few examples of false confession exist when adequate safeguards and professional conduct are factors in the case.30 A more cogent concern, from the point of view of counterinsurgency intelligence interrogations by police, is that these methods, however justified and permissible in a given legal context, are primarily criminally oriented and are not designed to elicit the network specific information necessary to prosecute operations to dismantle an insurgency. The focus of an interrogation designed to create a desire to confess is the confession... it is not the creation of a state of mind open to discussion of any and all issues which might be of interest to the police. Therefore, while the accusatory style interrogation combined with the non-accusatory interview may be of some use in counterinsurgency policing, it seems most likely to be limited to those cases where a confession will then open the door to other approaches to elicitation. These might include discussions of the benefits of cooperation, the use of the confessed activity to implicate someone whom the suspect desires to protect from police scrutiny or any other ploy which might elevate the interrogation from the realm of the merely criminal to that of the counterinsurgent. While all insurgent activity is by and large criminal, not all criminal activity is of such a nature and degree of threat to the state as insurgency and it may be reasonably supposed that generic criminal prosecution would take a back seat to the prosecution of counterinsurgency. While in the normal course of events, police interrogation focused on support of a

criminal prosecution will suffice, in a counterinsurgency the interest lies less in obtaining an admission of guilt from a suspected insurgent but rather in obtaining from an interrogated subject as much accurate information about the workings of the insurgent organization and infrastructure as he or she may, however unwittingly, posses.31 The mere admission that one is a member of a legally proscribed organization or that one has committed an offense in support of insurgent aims, while useful criminally, is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of utility to counterinsurgency. Thus it behooves the police when interrogating suspects with insurgent ties to focus the main part of their effort on areas which will enhance the destruction of the insurgent network by whatever means rather than merely upon obtaining support for a criminal prosecution. This makes the use of interrogation tactics which are predicated on the obtaining of a statement against legal interest of little value to police in a counterinsurgency environment if these techniques are all that are available. An answer that begs a question A significant element of the premise articulated in the opening chapter is that proper use of police intelligence would allow the uncovering of insurgent networks but leaving them open to proactive engagement. The real interest for the police interrogator focused on countering an insurgent network is in uncovering details which outline the network, uncover its members and explain its operational tactics and locations. In this way counterinsurgency resembles the actions of police attempting to penetrate and thwart a narcotics trafficking ring or an organized criminal group. The difference lies in the fact that in the former, the uncovering of the network is merely an aid to the process of eventually bringing criminal charges against its members while for the later the penetration of a network’s secrets is designed to enable what are now termed kinetic operations and, only possibly, eventual prosecution. While the destruction of an insurgent safe house by a missile strike may well be deemed acceptable in a counterinsurgency, the same action aimed at a group which traffics in stolen merchandise would be seen as extremely excessive and an abuse of state authority. It is generally accepted however, that the stakes in an insurgency are higher and the compelling interest of the state in survival requires greater effort when dealing with armed revolt than when faced with mere criminality. What is needed are interrogation techniques which lead not merely to an acknowledgement of legal culpability while according the suspect all due process of law and preservation of legal rights but rather an extraction of all relevant information which may or may not then be used in a court of law. It would appear obvious that standard police actions in interrogation as an element of the state’s ability to preserve order and uphold law are in some ways inadequate to the additional responsibilities thrust upon them in countering an

insurgency. What then is to be done? Should the police merely restrict themselves to the criminal aspects of an insurgency and when dealing with the extraction of critical information from suspected insurgents pass them on to military units for interrogation? The close interweaving of criminal activity with insurgent activity argues against this approach on the grounds of simple practicality. Additionally, in all previous modern insurgencies the police have borne the brunt of the insurgent’s ire as they are seen as more threatening and are usually more vulnerable than are most military units.32 To restrict police interest merely to criminal prosecution only would be to deny the reality which is that the police are an important and vital element in a coherent counterinsurgency strategy. To attempt to parse each encounter between police and insurgent for correct adjudication into either an insurgent pile to be dealt with by military only or a criminal pile to be dealt with by police is likely to be a frustrating and ultimately futile effort benefiting no one but the insurgent. It would seem clear then that in a counterinsurgency, the intelligence branch of the police must assume an expansion of their lawful interest beyond that of primarily post event collection of evidence to the wider scope of the collection of intelligence with a focus on actionable intelligence.33 In the specific area of interrogation we are then left asking, how can this shift be made and what tactics and techniques should be employed? KUBARK and the fruit of the poisonous tree There is a natural tendency when seeking an answer to a perplexing problem to turn to a similar issue which may offer a viable solution. Such has been the case with the need for police intelligence interrogation to expand from the merely criminal when dealing with a counterinsurgency. In the case of police interrogation, solutions were sought in the methods and tactics used by military and national security intelligence interrogators.34 These methods, while arguably suitable for a military or national security intelligence agency conducting a hot or cold war in defense of the national interest, were often seen as inappropriate for use by police agencies by those opposed to a particular sitting government, a given counterinsurgency or the use of police as counterinsurgents in general. Often the opposition to expanded police interrogation interests and methods was a combination of all of these. While the world’s police in the early and middle 20th Century were not adverse to the use of force to compel confession by those they believed guilty of criminal activity, the focus remained that of obtaining a confession in order to assist in prosecution. As the nature of conflict changed in the years following the Second World War, the police of various countries beset by insurgency found themselves in need of more than confessions, however they may have been obtained. The local police and other security providers, and their foreign backers, found that they required methods which enabled them to uncover the details of insurgent

networks, the specifics of command nodes, personalities, logistical routes and safe haven locations. These were difficult to simply force from a suspect as it was known in the intelligence realm that information gained through force was often less complete than that gained through compliance.35 Means were sought whereby the host national security forces and in particular the police, might be able to better interrogate a suspect with an eye toward counterinsurgent intelligence rather than prosecutorial support. The means most frequently resorted to were encapsulated in a 1968 publication by the Central Intelligence Agency entitled KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation. While many variations existed, the basic combination of techniques articulated in the KUBARK manual are identifiable in the counterinsurgency interrogation practices of military and police entities to the present day.36 This full spectrum of coercive or enhanced interrogation techniques grew originally from a concern for understanding the effects of Communist “brainwashing” techniques which were encountered during the Korean Conflict and elsewhere as a part of the Cold War. 37 It was an issue of considerable importance to the various security agencies of the West when prisoners of war, notable dissidents and others who opposed Communism were presented in showcase trials during which they made confessions or admissions in support of Soviet or Chinese objectives. The fact that the individuals had been subjected to some form of methodical treatment in order to break down their innate resistance and induce cooperation was evident.38 It was also evident that the procedures used were more complex than mere brutality. Recent experience during the Second World War with Nazi security forces had aptly demonstrated that while possessing a certain crude effectiveness operationally, brutality was ultimately not sufficient to induce compliance in a committed resistor. This knowledge, combined with the information from returning prisoners of war and others who had experienced various forms of the new implemented interrogation techniques, established that something was being done to break the will to resist and that this something was based upon a better understanding of the human psyche and its protective mechanisms. The very real lack of clarity on both the effects of these techniques as well as the techniques themselves heightened the sense of concern as the unknown is always more frightening than the known. Given the tenor of the political atmosphere, the intense polarity politically in geopolitics and the stage of development of the various disciplines of cognitive science, it was easy to believe that less principled opponents had discovered ways and means of mind control or at least effective behavior modification techniques which, applied to resistive subjects, rendered them compliant and unable to continue mental resistance. Research into the science which might lie behind brainwashing was conducted at the behest of various governments in the West but the primary funding source was the government of the United States. Research was conducted in Canada39 and other countries with an eye toward determining the effects of a mélange of techniques upon a subject’s ability to lie effectively, to maintain secrecy by not divulging a particular piece of information and upon general cognitive abilities and

personality. This research was published in peer reviewed journals as well as held in classified files. The researchers were bona fide medical and scientific professionals attempting to their best ability to determine answers to the questions posed by their government employers.40 The consensus, slowly formed over a period of years, was that a combination of techniques, mixed and matched as the interrogator felt would be most effective, would produce what was termed regression.41 Regression was seen as a return by the subject to a more dependant, infantile mental and emotional state, one where the interrogator, controlling as he or she did, the entirety of the subject’s life, would stand in loco parentis and thus the subject would be more likely to wish to cooperate and simultaneously less able to resist their previous externally provided conditioning to resist. That is to say, the subject would subconsciously and without the ability to control the process, begin to lose the ability to control what they revealed and would gradually come to a sort of Stockholm Syndrome relationship with their interrogator.42 The results of various studies and experiments were combined and extrapolated to arrive at this conclusion which, despite no complete implementation under the controlled conditions of the laboratory, was prepared and presented as a potential panacea for dealing with interrogation of hostile subjects. This category included members of hostile security services, armed forces, guerrillas and any other “subversive” element. The end result of this process of experimentation, study and combined extrapolation was the KUBARK manual.43 While the desirability of possessing a means whereby the secrets held by an enemy might be obtained with reasonable certainty as to the veracity of the information gained would seem an unarguable position, the means used in the KUBARK manual and others of its nature, were the subject of considerable objection and controversy. While it may be telling in a political sense that objections were raised most frequently by those in general opposition to the policy of confrontation and containment adopted toward the Soviet Union and Communist China and that support for KUBARK methods was most often found among those in favor of such policy intent, the political motivation behind the objections does not in and of itself render those objections moot. The use, by government agents and particularly the police, of coercive techniques upon the citizens of a nation should always be subject to examination and inquiry. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a liberal democracy doing otherwise and remaining within the category of liberal democracy. The upholding of the rights of the individual against the coercive powers of the state is one of the key features of the concept of liberal democracy.44 Thus, regardless of the possible politically derived motives of those raising objections, then or now, it behooves one to examine their contentions in order to establish methodology for government action which is consistent with the national interest and conscience. Indeed, this would appear to be even more important at present as the debate regarding interrogation is once again split along political fault lines and this politicization of the dialogue obscures the fundamental concern. The issue requires calm and reasoned

examination free from polemic or political bias. Sadly, one does not see much hope for this. With the KUBARK techniques, the primary contentions were that the methods used were tantamount to and often indistinguishable from outright torture. Some semantic contortions may be detected in arriving at this conclusion in some cases but the basic issue remains.45 The issue is that the use of these techniques is meant to induce physical and mental suffering, whether permanent in its effects or not, with emotional distress and other effects sufficient in and of themselves to overcome a subject’s desire to refuse to cooperate. This was seen as an undesirable, even ignoble goal, regardless of the means used. When those means included, as they did, sensory deprivation, stress positioning, temperature controlled environments used to increase discomfort, sleep deprivation, time distortion and various means of creating physical pain such as pouring icy water onto a subject, the full effect was seen by many as torture by another name.46 These then, were the primary techniques used, in various combinations and often with a certain ingenuity, in order to attempt to create the desired mental condition of cooperation. It is not particularly useful to this discussion to dwell overlong and in needless detail upon the means used in implemented or coercive interrogation. Much has already been written on these subjects, often in considerable salaciously gratuitous detail, and a recitation of such would not advance an understanding of the topic at hand. It suffices for the present purpose to acknowledge that coercive interrogation attempts to avoid creating any permanent physical injury but remains much less concerned with mental or emotional damage which may remain after the event.47 The techniques advocated by KUBARK have also been used to train military and other personnel to withstand coercive interrogation and to avoid permanent and/or disabling injury, mental or physical, is uppermost in the trainer’s mind.48 The use of training which results in a trainee being less capable than prior to training is obviously something any institution will avoid. This fact is occasionally encountered as a justification for the use of such techniques upon hostile subjects. This argument generally takes the form of “if we do this to our own with no ill effect, how can it be impermissible to use the same methods on a declared foe”. While not addressing a number of issues which are in play when the interrogation is real, the argument does resonate with those who have undergone such training. 49 The KUBARK techniques stress the need for breaking down the subject’s sense of self, for making the subject feel they are responsible for the continued treatment they are receiving and the isolation of the subject from normal routine and a sense of a larger world. The structure of events so as to make the subject feel that discomfort and continued interrogation is self-inflicted is a particular refinement which is central to the approach and is generally found in any interrogation practice where the interrogators had received KUBARK or similar instruction regardless of what other elements might be combined.50 A further commonality was the avoidance of what might be termed physical torture which left scars and distinguishing marks. This was perhaps a direction more easily issued than meet. Indeed, while the use of physical brutality such as burning, electrocution, cutting

and beating were generally eschewed by KUBARK and other such manuals, the evidence gleaned from the field indicated that such excesses were the norm once the barriers to restraint had been broken down. Brutality, it would appear, led to greater brutality and desensitivity to the humanity of the victim.51 The argument against the use of these techniques was principally that such behavior was abhorrent to the values which the forces applying the techniques were claiming to uphold as well as counterproductive in that they forced the population to fear the government rather than rally to it. The counter argument ran along the lines that such harsh methods were needed in order to break through the wall erected by indoctrination and conditioning and that the means used, while admittedly unpleasant, were justified by both practical necessity and the desirability of the goals in whose service the techniques were employed. In short, both sides argued for moral superiority or at least need. It is here that the means advocated by KUBARK are most vulnerable to criticism as such methods tended to produce less than complete surrender of a determined resistive subject and the institutionalization of these methods often resulted in a wide spread acceptance of torture and abuse as a sort of “mission creep” or unintended consequence.52 While a certain utility for the use of these techniques was established, overall the practical results tended all too often to be a degradation of the relationship between security forces and especially the police and the general population as the permissibility of the interrogation environment allowed escalation into outright torture. This is, of course, extremely counterproductive in an insurgency setting and one of the strongest arguments against the unregulated use of KUBARK and similar methods of interrogation.53 The fruit does not fall far from the tree The history of the KUBARK manual and the introduction of its techniques and methods into the repertoire of police and security forces whose national interest was tied with that of the Western democracies and the US in particular would be a footnote of history were it not for the events of September 11, 2001. Public perception and distaste with the excesses resulting from the introduction of these and other counterinsurgency techniques had resulted in an official shift away from anything resembling coercive interrogation and into an approach based methodology. The complexities of counterinsurgency being something for which the American government and its executive arm had never developed a taste,54 the unraveling of intricate terrorist style plots which originated far from its borders and involved multiple countries and personalities proved a difficult task for systems set up to counter a conventional overt threat presented by a national entity. This was true not only in the purely military realm where large aircraftcarrier based groups, for example, were ineffectual at countering the threat presented by a decentralized and anonymous enemy but also in the intelligence realm where systems

designed for dealing with known quantities were unable to adapt to the overload of both quantity and quality of subjects being presented.55 Added to this difficulty in recalibration, and assisted perhaps by a certain level of hubris which declared that the US as the strongest nation on the planet then whatever approach was used was de facto the best approach, was the genuine fear of another unanticipated mass casualty event. This very reasonable and cogent fear and the level of perceived appropriate reaction in countering the unknown but undeniable threat consequently rose in conjunction with the US homeland security threat level. The fact that it was evident that terror cells could plan and execute complex operations with catastrophic results, combined with the fear that such events or worse would be repeated, created an environment in which previously forbidden methods were now again being used. Even a prominent liberal champion of human rights and the rule of law advocated the development of torture warrants to permit outright medieval treatment of terror suspects when it was reasonably certain that they held knowledge of an imminent threat.56 This atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, fed by strong political personalities in the US and a general sense that the West was under attack, led to the relaxing of official sanctions against harsh or coercive interrogations and opened the way for the resumption of standard KUBARK style practices in those cases of the most serious terrorist suspects. The case of Khalid Sheik Mohammad became a cause célèbre and was often used to justify the resumption of such techniques and in particular the use of waterboarding.57 The use of coercive interrogation techniques in combinations extremely reminiscent of the KUBARK Manual was permitted in the case of Khalid Sheik Mohammad and others held to be of importance in the international Jihadist hierarchy. Claims of success, and plots foiled, were countered by claims of disinformation being introduced deliberately by the subjects as well as the frequently repeated claim that a suspect subjected to too many of the techniques would simply say whatever he or she believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to end the coercive element of the interrogation. It also appears that the uses of drugs and hypnosis were eschewed, for practical rather than moral reasons.58 Whatever the relative truth of these claims may be, it is evident that the US and allied states resumed the use of “implemented interrogation practices”. The benefits are uncertain as, indeed, they must be, given that many of the successes could not be revealed if those revelations might prevent future successful action or permit an enemy to adjust their plans.59 It is a truism of intelligence that successes are rarely known while failure is widely published.60 The point is less concerned with the known degree of success achieved from the reestablishment of coercive interrogation than that the previously disavowed KUBARK style techniques had been officially revived. Before examining an alternative more suitable to police intelligence procedure than the KUBARK derived harsh interrogation methods, it will

be instructive to examine the question of outright, unambiguous torture as an interrogation tool. Medieval methods – the torture option While many have decried the use of coercion by government agents in any form and in particular during interrogation, that fact remains that reasonable people can and do disagree as to the acceptable degree of pressure which the agents of the state may apply in the course of their duties. Many factors play into this discussion. The current articulation of human rights and the state’s responsibility to guard them balanced by the state’s duty to provide a secure society in which all may be free to act in a legal fashion without fear of criminal threat is one. Contentious as this subject is, all debaters tend to agree upon the eschewing of the use of extreme physical force during any type of interrogation. While one end of the spectrum may declare the high pressure of a typical police interrogation to be torture and those at the opposite end view waterboarding as admittedly harsh but certainly not torture, all can easily identify and agree upon some activities as outright and incontestable examples of torture. Beatings, rape, electric shock, cutting and mechanisms such as the bastinado or rack are typical of the range of activities which are undeniably torture. Much of the debate is focused on the semantics involved and fueled by political controversy which eclipses the more basic issue. Leaving these aside for the moment, we will briefly examine torture itself as it relates to police intelligence in a counterinsurgency. Torture is generally recognized as inefficient for the extraction of useful and accurate information.61 This is due to the basic desire of the subject to make the torture stop and his or her willingness to say whatever is needed, regardless of veracity, to achieve this goal. Additionally, subjects possessed of an extreme of will or commitment may withstand prolonged torture, even to the point of death. A final factor militating against the efficacy of torture is that it generates fear and distrust of authorities who are known to practice it. This fear and distrust, in the modern age, is counterproductive to the defeat of an insurgency and while of some limited situational utility, is ultimately self-defeating.62 Those who fear and distrust their government and its agents are not likely to provide the type of assistance and intelligence which is needed to root out an insurgency and, counterproductively are far more likely to provide exactly this type of support to the insurgents. Of even greater concern for police intelligence is the fact that the use of torture displaces them from their position of access among the people turning them into marginalized outsiders no longer privy to casual interaction and trust which is the lifeblood of the police. If this situation develops or is permitted to continue, then the police are reduced considerably in their effectiveness as a counterinsurgent force. Given these issues, one is left wondering why torture is so prevalent. It is frequently the court of first resort among criminals interrogating a prisoner and is all too often encountered

among poorly trained police and other security elements in an operational context. A reasonable person is well justified in asking what would cause such interrogation efforts when the detrimental effects are well know? The answer is twofold. First, many of the security forces of a nation beset by an insurgency are undereducated and unfamiliar with the facts about using torture as an interrogation method. Thus they resort to what seems a good solution based upon the situation as their experience. A compounding factor is the reluctance of advisors and other elements from liberal democracies, who may themselves be reluctant to instigate torture, to act in a way which is seen as interference with local authority or which undermines a sense of common interest. There can be a sense that if they do it on their own it isn’t our business. Additionally, official policy often encourages the advisor to not interfere but instead requires them to remove themselves from the scene.63 This reluctance to dissuade an ally from doing something one would not do or is not permitted to do, is exacerbated by personal involvement at the operational level. Issues of integration and acceptance play a role in the decision to turn a blind eye towards torture when the actors are local rather than international.64 The second part of the answer is that torture is rarely about the extraction of information. While the interrogation may begin as an attempt to extract information, when such efforts are stymied the escalation to the use of torture is instinctive and punitive. The unanswered question or denial creates frustration which is met with a slap or punch. This quickly escalates if restraint is not present.65 The point is that torture, in this setting, is primarily a means to punish rather than an attempt to elicit information.66 The squad who has just captured an insurgent placing an improvised explosive device along their route of march is understandably concerned about other such devices which may be ahead of them or other insurgents who are laying in wait to ambush them. The refusal of the captured insurgent to divulge any useful information is frustrating and this sense of frustration, compounded by the very real fear of imminent death which might be avoided if the information is forthcoming, feeds into the natural desire to punish a foe. When issues of ethnicity, social status, religion or tribe are present, the desire to punish for membership in the hated “other” is a considerable inducement toward brutality. The improvised torture which may follow is thus less about extracting information than about punishing the subject for refusing to cooperate.67 There is some intent in some cases to have the subject change his ways as a result of the punishment inflicted. That is to say, field expedient torture is generally justified by the assumption that the subject can simply tell the interrogator what he or she wishes to know and so end the torture. Of course, this ignores the fact that what is told may be deliberately untrue, may be a fantasy constructed simply to stop the pain, or that the subject may genuinely not possess the information desired. In cases where criminals and insurgents resort to torture, the desire again is less to gain information of intelligence value than to punish the member of the police or security service and to create terror and distress among his or her fellows.68 Torture, it would seem, is a

product of fear and frustration, something to be considered when one examines the history of both KUBARK and the reinstatement of harsh interrogation methods. In both cases, development and reinstatement, fear of the unknown and a sense of immediacy, greatly influenced and, in some minds, justified the use of these techniques. Whether one agrees with the contention that they rise to the level of actual torture or feels that this is stretching a point beyond tolerance, the centrality of fear and urgency to the decision making process and subsequent justification is undeniable.69 Torture, of the outright unequivocal kind, has no part in police intelligence interrogation. Its results are unsound and its deleterious effects upon the placement and access of the police among the population are sufficient to exclude it upon the grounds of utility alone. Moral reasons also exist to be sure but as pragmatism is frequently invoked to justify action in a counterinsurgency, one may safely refer to this same pragmatism and reiterate that the use of torture is extremely counterproductive to police intelligence and should be prevented whenever possible. Approach Based Interrogation The obvious need for a means of extracting detailed and accurate information for purposes in addition to prosecution while avoiding the use of torture or other coercive interrogations techniques lead to the development by the US military of an approach based methodology. This style of interrogation was developed primarily for military intelligence and relied upon a proper assessment of the subject during screening in order to determine which of the many approaches should be used in order to elicit useful information.70 A subject who displayed extremes of loyalty to his fellows, for example, might be susceptible to the approach designated Love of Comrades. Here he would be carefully led through dialogue to conclude that the best way to protect his friends was to provide information that would permit their apprehension without harm. One who displayed a fatalistic naivety might be induced to provide information through the use of “Futility” in which the interrogator displays a godlike omniscience. The process is largely psychological and controlled and the use of direct physical threats or violence is strictly forbidden although intimidation, in the form of “Fear Up” which plays upon a subject’s natural anxiety, is a permitted option. The basic pattern involves the establishment of physical control over the subject’s conditions of life, simple detention being often sufficient for this purpose. Once a subject is detained, a background biography is prepared through screening interviews and reference to other sources of information. This process, as was mentioned earlier, is strikingly similar to the interview and investigation process pre-interrogation which is used in ordinary criminal interrogation by police. Once this material is assembled and digested by an interrogator assigned to the subject, one of several approaches is selected.

These approaches are designed to appeal to a particular aspect of the subject’s personality and physiological profile and in this way greatly resemble the development and presentation of alternative questions in the Reid interrogation strategy. The use of a subject specific approach is designed to ease both elicitation and compliance. It is based upon palatability and the use of psychological nuance in order to motivate the subject to cooperate. It was largely this type of interrogation which formed the basis of training for American military interrogators and which they subsequently provided as training to host national police and security elements. This style of interrogation had several advantages over older coercive methods. It did not approach the realm of torture despite the semantic efforts of many whose opposition was primarily political rather than practical. It permitted the extraction of more than a mere confession as it frequently presumed guilty knowledge and actions and as such, guilt was not usually the issue at hand. For example, a Prisoner Of War (POW) is already known to be a member of a hostile force, guilt is not a factor. The elicitation of useful battlefield intelligence is. The purpose of an interrogation in such a case is not to provide a confession to aid some legal action but rather to elicit details of value to the prosecution of a military action. As such, it would appear to be much better suited to the uncovering of networks in a counterinsurgency setting and it was applied as such in both Iraq and Afghanistan.71 Deception Absent from the discussion until this point has been any real consideration of the issue of deception. Deception, in the world of police intelligence, may be characterized as belonging to one of two groups. These are positive and negative deception. The latter is the type most frequently encountered in general police interrogation. It consists of a denial of identity, involvement or knowledge. It does not positively assert anything other than innocence and as such may be dealt with through the means already developed for this purpose. These means, as detailed in part by the example of the Reid Method, are well able to permit the skilled police interrogator to separate the innocent from the guilty as well as deal with continued negative denial. Positive deception is of much greater concern and far more difficult to resolve. Positive deception involves the assertion of something which is not true or is a sufficient admixture of truth and untruth as to make it dangerous for the hearer to rely upon. A penetration agent sent by a hostile intelligence service who poses as a defector but whose true purpose is to provide information which confuses, discombobulates and ultimately paralyzes the receiving service is an example of positive deception. The cases of Soviet defectors Golitsyn and Nosenko whose competing claims created confusion within the Central Intelligence Agency and greatly degraded its performance are a classic example of this type of intelligence activity. Anatoliy Golitsyn, a Major in the KGB

(the initials from the Russian for Committee for State Security), defected from his posting in Finland to the US in 1961. He provided a considerable amount of information on the workings of the KGB as well as some more controversial allegations. Among these were the accusations that prominent UK politician Harold Wilson was a Soviet agent and that the CIA had been penetrated multiple times by the KGB. James Jesus Angleton, then head of Counterintelligence for the CIA believed these statements and began a process of searching for the alleged traitors which threw the CIA into considerable disarray. This disarray was due not merely to the effects of an internal investigation in which all of one’s colleagues were now suspect but to the additional effect of a second defection, that of Yuri Nosenko. This defection, which occurred in 1964, provided the startling allegation that Golitsyn was himself a plant, an attempt by Soviet intelligence to confuse and misdirect the CIA. Various factions evolved which placed trust in one or the other competing stories. Even attempts to elicit the truth by Polygraph and other interrogation means gave somewhat conflicting results. What is undisputed is the deleterious effect this effort and the subsequent lingering suspicion it generated had on the CIA and its relations with allied services. To this day, the truth continues to be debated.72 The issue for police intelligence is that while reliable methods exist by which the innocent may be separated from the guilty and the guilty induced to confess, this same reliability is not available when these methods are applied to a subject whose deception is likely to be positive rather than negative. Given that police focus gravitates naturally toward the use of interrogation to obtain a confession rather than to the unraveling of complex skeins of deception, it would seem reasonable to conclude that police intelligence, if relying upon primarily criminal investigative methods, would be vulnerable to positive deception by a trained adversary. The best of both worlds The approach based methods of military counterinsurgency interrogation, informed by police interview techniques available for detecting deception and separating those with guilty knowledge from those innocent of such, would appear to offer the optimal combination of best practice for police interrogations in counterinsurgency. The approach based interrogation requires considerable time, effort and skill but can yield excellent results. Perhaps the most outstanding example publicly known in recent times is the effort that permitted the killing of Abu Musab Al Zaqawi in Iraq. Here, the use of painstaking interrogation techniques combined with direct action intelligence support eventually lead to the operation that ended Zarqawi’s life.73 Implementation of approach based interrogation methods would require normal police interrogators to focus on the establishment of identity and guilt initially before switching to the use of deception detection methods ordinarily used in the interview/screening process

combined with a military intelligence based approach suggested by the interview/screening process itself. Rigid adherence to a criminally useful interrogation approach will have little success in counterinsurgency; rigid adherence to a military approach to interrogation will provide little assistance to policing. A judicious blending of the two similar but still different processes may offer the most effective means of utilizing police interrogation in a counterinsurgency. Lessons Learned As will be evident at this stage, the topic of police interrogation is one involving considerable complexity and controversy made more so by the injection of the activity into the realm of counterinsurgency. While ordinary police interrogations are designed principally as a means to separate the guilty from the innocent while providing additional support to investigation and prosecution of a specific criminal act. Interrogations which involve the submission of questions which do not concern guilt per se but are rather oriented toward the unraveling of network connections and activities are by nature forced to resort to methods which are different from those used in ordinary police interrogations. These run the gamut from the use of a previously obtained admission of guilt as leverage to elicit additional detail to the use of structured approaches to establish rapport and a rationale for divulging the information desired. Regardless of the methods used, all share the same goal, the revelation of useful information by a subject initially unwilling to provide it. Human nature and interactions being what they are, no single method has yet been devised whereby success is assured but the interplay of various established techniques seems to present the greatest likelihood of producing accurate results. The key factor for police intelligence must be the fostering of a positive relationship and reputation among the population, something which cannot be achieved when the police are known or believed to use interrogation methods which are not supported by the people as reasonable, moral and justified. Interrogation is a useful tool but presents great danger as its misuse, which is most often permitted in times of crisis and emergency,74 can lead to a loss of placement and access which is critical if police intelligence is to function efficiently. It is extremely important to weigh the potential gain of information, often obtainable by other means, against the possible harm which would be caused by the permission of too great a degree of latitude in interrogation techniques. The debate in this area is of more than academic significance in the present state of world affairs as the rapid morphing of both international terrorist networks such as Al Qaida into a more independent “franchise” or “lone wolf” approach has greatly increased the importance for security forces of being able to accurately conduct interrogations which separate guilty from innocent while still remaining within the reasonable constraints expected of those in service to a liberal democracy. This debate is acrimonious, event driven and of considerable import to the evolution of liberal

democracy.75 Police intelligence interrogation is only one of several means of uncovering the hidden network and its use should be carefully regulated and standards enforced if the ability of the police to access the population for support is to be enabled. Like the larger Human Intelligence collection activity from which it is derived, interrogation is also a two edged sword with the potential to cripple a police intelligence effort if it is misused.

____________________ 1 The interrogation described above occurred in early 2001. The author was present and conducted the interrogation as a part

of the United Nations Mission In Kosovo to which he was seconded. 2 Field Manual 2-0. Intelligence. Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 2004 p 6-2. 3 As an example see Martinez, Kevin and Azul, Rafael. Specter of a police state: Mexican torture videos reveal ties with US military contractors. World Socialist Web Site. [Online] July 11, 2008. [Cited: January 12, 2011.] http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul2008/mex-j11.shtml 4 Field Manual, 34-52. Intelligence Interrogation. Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1987 p 1-0. 5 See Deforest, Orrin. Slow Burn: The Rise and Bitter Fall of American Intelligence in Vietnam. Simon & Schuster: New York, NY, 1990 for a detailed historical example of interrogation based intelligence collection in a counterinsurgency. 6 Skerker, Michael. An Ethic of Interrogation. Chigago, IL: University of Chigaco Press, 2010 p 185. 7 Field Manual, 34-52. Intelligence Interrogation. Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1987 p 1-0 and Bowen, Mark. The Dark Art of Interrogation. The Atlantic. [Online] October 2003. [Cited: December 16, 2010.] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/10/the-dark-art-of-interrogation/2791/ 8 Gordon, Nathan and Fleisher, William. Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques. Burlington, MA: Elsevier/Academic Press, 2011 pp 27-29 and Fred Inbau et al. Essentials of the Reid Technique: Criminal Interrogation and Confessions. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2005 pp 4-6. 9 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 2006 pp 69-73, 95-99 and Keller, Dennis E. US Military Forces and Police Assistance in Stability Operations. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2010 pp 5-7. 10 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture pp 14-15. 11 Vessell, David. Conducting Successful Interrogations. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. October, 1998, Vol. 65, 10 p 1 and Fred Inbau et al. Essentials of the Reid Technique: Criminal Interrogation and Confessions. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2005 pp 5-6. 12 McFeely, Richard A. Enterprise Theory of Investigation. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. May, 2001, Vol. 70, 5 pp 19, 2425. 13 See Field Manual, 34-52. Intelligence Interrogation pp 9-5 to 9-10 for an adaptation of traditional military interrogation to a counterinsurgency. 14 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights published by the UN General Assembly in New York, 1948, articulates these rights or the basis from which all these rights are extrapolated. Most, if not all, liberal democracies are signatories. 15 Gordon, Nathan and Fleisher, William. Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques pp 34-35. 16 Gordon, Nathan and Fleisher, William. Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques pp 27-34 and Fred Inbau et al. Essentials of the Reid Technique: Criminal Interrogation and Confessions pp 3-6. 17 Ibid. 18 Gordon, Nathan and Fleisher, William. Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques pp 37-89. 19 Vincent Sandoval, Susan Adams. Subtle Skills for Building Rapport. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. 2001, Vol. 70, 8. 20 Gordon, Nathan and Fleisher, William. Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques pp 105-139. 21 Vessell, David. Conducting Successful Interrogations. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. October, 1998, Vol. 65, 10 pp 2-5. 22 In this way the Reid Method somewhat resembles several of the standard approaches used in military interrogation. Field Manual, 34-52. Intelligence Interrogation explains these approaches in detail. 23. Gordon, Nathan and Fleisher, William Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques pp 255-262 and Fred Inbau et al. Essentials of the Reid Technique: Criminal Interrogation and Confessions pp 119-122. 24 Ibid. 25 Fred Inbau et al. Essentials of the Reid Technique: Criminal Interrogation and Confessions pp 137-138. 26 Ibid pp 166-173. 27 Fred Inbau et al Essentials of the Reid Technique: Criminal Interrogation and Confessions pp 203-209 and Gordon,

Nathan and Fleisher, William. Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques pp 261-262. 28 Fred Inbau et al. Essentials of the Reid Technique: Criminal Interrogation and Confessions pp 214-217. 29 Perry, David L. Partly Cloudy: Ethics in War, Espionage, Covert Action and Interrogation. Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press, 2009 pp 210-213. For those interested in an examination of the morality and societal implications of interrogation, please see Skerker, Michael. An Ethic of Interrogation. Chigago, IL: University of Chigago Press, 2010 for an extremely thought provoking and detailed examination of the entire topic. 30 Gordon, Nathan and Fleisher, William. Effective Interviewing and Interrogation Techniques pp 209-218. 31 Central Intelligence Agency. KUBARK Counter Intelligence Interrogation. Washington, DC: Catoctin Creek Publishing, 2008 p 10. 32 Keller, Dennis E. US Military Forces and Police Assistance in Stability Operations. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2010 pp 3-5. 33 For the development of actionable intelligence by analysts based upon all source intelligence, please see Chapter 5. 34 Amnesty International USA Publications. Unmatched Power, Unmet Principles: The Human Rights Dimensions of US Training of Foreign Military and Police Forces. London, UK: Amnesty International, 2002. pp 2-5. 35 Central Intelligence Agency. KUBARK Counter Intelligence Interrogation. Washington, DC: Catoctin Creek Publishing, 2008 p 126; McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror pp 24-26 and Miller, Chris and Mackey, Greg. The Interrogators. New York, NY: Back Bay Books, 2004. p 52. 36 George Washington University. Prisoner Abuse: Patterns From The Past. National Security Archives Electronic Briefing Book No. 122. [Online] May 12, 2004. [Cited: Januaryˋ 9, 2010.] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/index.htm 37 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror pp 30-33. 38 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture: p 30 and Skerker, Michael. An Ethic of Interrogation p 186. 39 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture pp 40-43. 40 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture pp 37. Additionally, the KUBARK Manual itself is replete with references to specific scienties and studies conducting in the research which led to its creation. 41 Ibid pp 57, 95. 42 Central Intelligence Agency. KUBARK Counter Intelligence Interrogation pp 110-111. 43 Ibid pp 5-7. 44 Without detouring the reader into an examination of Hobbes, Rousseau et al, one feels that the enshrinement of the rights of the individual versus the state as well as the concern for governmental systems which balance one another and are answerable to the collective “individual” under rule of law are, to borrow a phrase, “self-evident”. 45 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture pp 102-104. 46 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture p 141 and Skerker, Michael. An Ethic of Interrogation p 187-188. 47 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture pp 18-19. 48 Committee on Armed Services United States Senate. THE TREATMENT OF DETAINEES IN U.S. CUSTODY. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2008. 49 The author is among those who have experienced counter interrogation training which falls within this realm. A primary memory from initially hearing the details of the Abu Ghraib scandal was the feeling that one had experienced worse in training. This is a response often encountered among those who have undergone this type of training and, while it does not address the very real differences between the two experiences (i.e. harsh training and harsh interrogation), it does form a very common mindset among those most likely to be present during field expedient interrogations. The Armed Services Committee report referenced earlier on the treatment of detainees goes into some detail about the differences between the two events and is recommended for those interested in this sidebar controversy. 50 Central Intelligence Agency. KUBARK Counter Intelligence Interrogation p 125 and McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture p 52. 51 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture p 96. 52 Skerker, Michael. An Ethic of Interrogation pp 201-202 and McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture pp 67-96. 53 Field Manual, 34-52. Intelligence Interrogation pp 9-7.

54 Ken Tovo, From the Ashes of the Phoenix: Lessons for Contemporary Counterinsurgency Operations, Carlisle, PA: US

Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, March 2005 p1, Metz, Steven. New Challenges and Old Concepts: Understanding 21st Century Insurgency. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, 2007 pp 2-4. 55 Jamison, Edward P. Intelligence Strategy for Fourth Generation Warfare. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2006. pp 4-5 and Skerker, Michael. An Ethic of Interrogation pp 179-180. 56 Dershowitz, Alan M. Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002 pp 136-139. 57 Bowen, Mark. The Dark Art of Interrogation. The Atlantic. [Online] October 2003. [Cited: December 16, 2010.] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/10/the-dark-art-of-interrogation/2791/ 58 Bimmerle, George. Truth Drugs in Interrogation. CIA Historical Review Program. [Online] September 22, 1994. [Cited: January 9, 2010.] https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kentcsi/vol5no2/html/v05i2a09p_0001.htm and Deshere, Edward F. Hypnosis in Interrogation. CIA Historical Review Program. [Online] September 22, 1994. [Cited: January 9, 2010.] https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-ofintelligence/kent-csi/vol4no1/html/v04i1a05p_0001.htm 59 Skerker, Michael. An Ethic of Interrogation p 192. 60 Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence: From secrets to policy. Wahington DC: CQ Press, 2009 p 184. 61 Even the oft malaigned “torture” manual KUBARK Counter Intelligence Interrogation (pp 124-128) acknolwedges the ineffectivness of the wanton infliction of pain. See also Field Manual, 34-52. Intelligence Interrogation p 1-1 for the rationale behind the prohibition of torture in current US military doctrine. 62 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture p 29, 197. 63 Field Manual, 34-52. Intelligence Interrogation pp 9-4, 9-5. 64 Ibid. 65 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture p 145. 66 Skerker, Michael. An Ethic of Interrogation p 194. 67 In this way torture is similar to rape as the more easily perceived motivation (extraction of information and sexual gratification respectively) is not the only motivating factor. Rape is held to be primarily a violent crime of dominance with a sexual expression and in a similar way torture would appear to be a violent crime of anger with the extraction of information merely the context of expression. 68 The case of DEA Agent Enrique Camarena who was kidnapped, tortured and killed by Mexican drug traffickers in 1985 is a case in point. It remains one of the best known examples of criminal torture of police for both information, intimidation and revenge 69 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture pp 204-205. 70 See Miller, Chris and Mackey, Greg. The Interrogators pp 431-437 and Field Manual, 34-52. Intelligence Interrogation for a listing and detailed explanation of these approches. 71 See Alexander, Matthew. How To Break A terrorist. New York, NY: Free Press, 2008 for an excellent example of this approach during the hunt for Abu Mus’ab Zarqawi. 72 See Wise, David. Molehunt: the secret search for traitors that shattered the CIA. New York, NY: Random House, 1992 for an excellent presentation of this complex case. 73 See Alexander, Matthew. Kill or Capture. New York, NY, St. Martin’s Press, 2011 for another example of this approach in Iraq. 74 McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture pp 206-207. 75 The killing, in 2011, of Osama Bin Laden by US military forces has served to rekindle one aspect of this debate as those in support of harsh interrogations claim that success was due in part to information gained through waterboarding and other such methods. Opponents refute these claims and declare that traditional interrogation means such as those we have examined are more efficacious in the long term. Readers interested in further examination of this topic are encouraged to examine Skerker, Michael. An Ethic of Interrogation. Chigago, IL: University of Chigago Press, 2010 and Perry, David L. Partly Cloudy: Ethics in War, Espionage, Covert Action and Interrogation. Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press, 2009 for more detailed examinations of the ethical underpinnings of the debate.

Surveillance An example from the field THE house, with its neatly maintained exterior, low wall, wrought iron fence and gate did not stand out in this section of Pristina, Kosovo. It would take a sharp eye and careful observation to note that the fence was monitored by close circuit cameras under the eaves. Additionally, the gate was locked and only opened remotely from inside the house after visitors rang a bell and addressed a small microphone/camera set into the wall beside the gate. This was because the house, part time residence of a major organized crime figure in the city, was also a brothel in which women from other Eastern European countries were held in conditions amounting to slavery. The organization of which the house’s owner was a leader, dealt in narcotics, weapons and women. They had ties to extremist groups on both the Serbian and Albanian ethnic divide and were considered largely untouchable by local police. The house sat at the end of a street within the neighborhood of Bregu E Diellit, known in English as Sunny Hill. There was another street at the far end, usually used only by pedestrians due to its width and very little vehicular traffic. A member of the criminal organization was usually posted in a vehicle across from the house in order to provide a warning of any police activity. Unbeknownst to the lookout and the occupants of the house, a surveillance post had been established in the third floor of a building under construction across the street and four houses down. Here videos were taken of the house and activities in the neighborhood. A log was kept of the entry and departure of its occupants and visitors and intelligence was gathered about the number of people living within and how they interacted. Members of the organized criminal group were then physically surveilled after departing from the house which activity led to the uncovering of other locations in which the group operated. This information was supplemented by the use of an informant, himself a frequent visitor to the brothel, whose recruitment was facilitated by the surveillance. Eventually the intelligence collected in this effort and that of the human source yielded a clear picture of the criminal activity which occurred within. This intelligence picture enabled a raid which freed seven women who had been held there as well as leading to the arrest of four members of the organization and the seizure of their weapons.1 Seeing (and hearing) is believing Surveillance is generally understood to be the act of observing, recording or otherwise documenting the actions and conversations of another while denying knowledge of this observation, recording etc. from the subject themselves. The surreptitious nature of the

activity, the desire to obtain information which the target of the activity does not know one possesses, is at the heart of surveillance.2 It is secret observation in aid of uncovering secrets. As such, it is one of the more valuable tools in the police intelligence tool chest albeit also one of the simplest in terms of comprehension and application. Its proper execution, however, is a much more difficult proposition as anyone who has attempted it in a hostile environment will attest. This examination of the use of surveillance as a part of police intelligence operations in a counterinsurgency will, of necessity, eschew a detailed examination of the issues of individual privacy rights and the mechanisms by which agents of the state may be authorized to encroach upon those rights and expectations. While this aspect of surveillance is an important one for any police intelligence entity and most especially for those of a liberal democracy, or those which are meant to be patterned after such forces, the debate surrounding these issues is intense and extensive.3 It will suffice to acknowledge that such concerns exist and will require attention from the civil powers in any given counterinsurgency. The wide variation in societal expectations encountered in previous insurgencies makes articulation of a common set of values such as are encountered in the nations of Europe, for example, as compared to those of South West Asia, difficult if not impossible. There is simply too much variety among cultural subsets, something which may be adequately addressed by good scholarship but which would require far more space and attention than this present effort will permit. Instead, I will examine how police surveillance is generally conducted while noting where specific areas have raised concerns for civil liberties and then seek to determine how the typical police intelligence effort might best utilize surveillance tradecraft in a counterinsurgency environment. Primary categories of surveillance activity Surveillance, when conducted by police or other investigative entities, is commonly divided into two categories. These are physical surveillance and technical surveillance. When one takes into account the additional capacities of a national military or intelligence agency, the categories also include remote aerial surveillance although some, primarily national security intelligence entities, may regard this as a sub-set of technical surveillance.4 This examination of surveillance will include reference to this additional capacity although it is generally beyond the ability of most police intelligence agencies to deploy such assets in a counterinsurgency. This holds true for some of the more sophisticated methods of Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) and certain other national level technical collection efforts as well. However, the use of these means by military and national security intelligence in conjunction with less enabled police intelligence elements makes inclusion necessary for a complete exploration of the uses of surveillance by police intelligence in a

counterinsurgency. Physical surveillance, whether static or mobile, whether augmented by binoculars, spotting scopes and other visual aids, and regardless of the practicing entity, is primarily visual. That is to say, its main goal is to observe the locations, patterns of movements, associations and actions of a surveillance target.5 As such, physical surveillance frequently requires close proximity to the target and subsequent exposure to potential counter surveillance. It is important to note that the use of aerial platforms by police for surveillance is a method of physical surveillance designed to offset this vulnerability. Such use of aerial vehicles by police for the purpose of providing a more distant and harder to detect platform for visual observation is still a means of physical surveillance rather than the far more technically involved category of remote aerial surveillance. Remote aerial surveillance involves the use of technology beyond that of the human eye or the provision of portable enhancement to same. Thus the inclusion of the qualifier remote which indicates the lack of an actual physical presence at the site of the surveillance activity itself and the addition of highly specialized technology designed to permit the collection and transmission of images and audio from the surveillance vehicle to the location from where it is controlled. Technical surveillance, on the other hand, is primarily oriented toward audio and video recordings of a surveillance target’s conversations and actions.6 During a long term narcotics investigation in the United States, the investigating agency rented a home in the target neighborhood. This home was then wired by police technicians with audio and video equipment set to record, from several angles, the activities in the entryway, living room, front bedroom and kitchen. The rear bedroom and bath were uncovered as they were used daily by the undercover officer who took up residence on the premises. For over a year, this officer, assisted by other police colleagues, lived and acted as a mid-level drug distributor. Dozens of narcotics dealers visited his home, soon known as a safe place to conduct business. Evidence was gathered that, in conjunction with other investigative efforts, permitted the arrest and conviction of approximately twenty importers and distributers of narcotics. All had, at one point or another, been recorded during illegal transactions at the “safe house”. This example, while extensive enough to be a bit unusual in scope, is by no means so unusual in type. Most undercover activities are surveilled in some way, in this case both for the protection of the officers involved and the collection of evidence. Technical surveillance provides a level of certainty about what occurred that is difficult to achieve through simple physical surveillance. Of course, technical surveillance is vulnerable to counter surveillance efforts, but this vulnerability is different in manner and type from that of most physical surveillance efforts. The use of technical surveillance products as evidence in court has a long history in criminal justice systems around the world and its utility in providing insight into the thought process of a target is of great importance. While other forms of intelligence collection can provide

concrete detail regarding a target’s capacity, only HUMINT and technical surveillance provide a means whereby intent may be determined.7 For this reason alone, technical surveillance is indispensable to police intelligence in its efforts to identify and root out the hidden network which enables an insurgency. Our final category, remote aerial surveillance, tends to combine the two previous categories as camera equipped platforms such as drones or satellites are generally designed to increase the ability to observe a target but are frequently equipped in such a manner as to provide interception of audio material or the collection of other signals data.8 As was mentioned earlier, this level of sophistication in terms of equipment and skill set is not usual among police intelligence entities in strife torn countries. In most cases, these assets would generally be obtained, if indeed it is available at all, through cooperative efforts between a national level intelligence or military entity and police intelligence. As such, this type of surveillance is mostly encountered on a case by case basis where the target or operational goal is of such import as to require the combination of several security elements into a joint task force approach with police intelligence being merely one among many. It is difficult to conceive of MI5 or the FBI operating satellites or spy planes rather than obtaining, through liaison efforts, the products of specific surveillance platforms which are more properly within the purview of national intelligence or military commands. This is not to say that the use by police intelligence of drones or other small remotely piloted vehicles for the purpose of surveillance is impossible. The intention is to point out that such an event is uncommon, particularly in a counterinsurgency as opposed to more ordinary policing, as the resources required to provide remote aerial platforms, operate and maintain them and train the personnel required to support the activity is generally beyond the budget and scope of police intelligence. Nonetheless, this type of surveillance does occasionally inform the counterinsurgency surveillance efforts of police and for this reason it will be included in the discussion. Having established a basic differentiation between types of surveillance activities, a brief examination of the specifics of each as they relate to and are practiced by police intelligence will be in order. This examination will permit a better understanding of the application of surveillance to police intelligence in a counterinsurgency environment. Physical surveillance While physical surveillance is primarily concerned with direct observation of a target in order to acquire information, the activity itself is divided into several distinct sections. These include static and mobile surveillance, with each having several minor permutations, as well as combined physical surveillance which includes both static and mobile as, indeed, the term implies.9 It will be useful to examine these activities in order to better understand their application, however I will attempt to be brief as a manual of surveillance tradecraft, like an

extended discussion of privacy rights, is beyond the scope of this effort. In describing various surveillance activities I will avoid the use of tradecraft terminology (i.e. protected activity, denied space, principle, box phase etc.) as these vary among practitioners. Instead, I will use simple descriptive terms for various actions which choice is intended to inform rather than mystify. Static surveillance is the establishment, of whatever duration, of an observation post from which the target may be directly observed.10 This may be something as simple as sitting on a park bench with a good view of the target’s residence while reading a newspaper or it may be as elaborate as a room or vehicle specifically modified to accommodate night vision cameras, long distance scopes and video equipment.11 Static surveillance is often a prelude to mobile surveillance as the first part of the above example implies. A mobile surveillance will often begin with a static surveillance while the surveillants wait for the target to emerge from a residence or office or other location where he or she is expected to be located. Static surveillance is most useful in cases where the target itself is a static location as in the observation of a building or business where the police have reason to suspect criminal or insurgent activity may be taking place.12 Static surveillance, over time, can provide confirmation of such suspicions through the observation of the presence of known criminals or insurgents or patterns of behavior indicative of illegal activity as well as other indicators. Conversely, such extended observation may indicate no grounds for such suspicion. The applications of this aspect of static surveillance in the confirmation of HUMINT and the subsequent grading of a source’s reliability are, one trusts, rather obvious.13 What may be less obvious is the use of static surveillance to uncover the travel patterns and timings of a mobile target. Static surveillance may be deployed along a route used by a target with a surveillant placed at a decision point along the route where the target may elect to go one of several ways. On succeeding days, a surveillant is placed at decision points along the route selected by the target at the last decision point. This process is continued until the route is fully observed and confirmed and alternates are discovered. Obviously this involves a good deal of time and patience as well as a target with a reasonably well patterned routine. For this reason this type of static surveillance is encountered more in pre-operational planning by insurgent and terrorist groups although they are by no means the only ones to employ this technique.14 Whether directed at a mobile or static target or used as the initiation of a mobile surveillance, static surveillance is a powerful tool for determining patterns of action, travel and association. The ability to document activities over a lengthy period of time also aids in the analysis of the data thus collected as greater reliability comes with a larger, retrievable data set. A house observed for a week may reveal little, the same location observed for eight weeks will reveal a great deal about its inhabitants and more importantly will permit the immediate recognition of significant anomalous behaviors which may indicate illegal activity.

Mobile surveillance, as the term indicates, involves the following of a mobile target. Following is perhaps a somewhat inaccurate term as mobile surveillants are often deployed in front of and parallel with a target. This changes as the surrounding conditions change and is subject to adjustment based upon the actions of the target. Mobile surveillance is extremely difficult for a single surveillance unit which is why such efforts usually involve several teams deployed in unison and linked by good communications.15 Mobile surveillance frequently morphs into static surveillance as a target reaches a destination which does not of itself fulfill the requirements of the surveillance effort. In other words, if the point of the surveillance was to determine where a target went every Friday evening, following him to his local pub would not of itself answer the question of his whereabouts. A mobile effort would transition into a static one as the target could well exit the pub and travel to other locations. If, on the other hand, the purpose of the surveillance was merely to establish whether or not the target ever visited a given location then simply observing the target’s arrival and entry at that location might satisfy the surveillance mission. Various factors such as the degree of counter surveillance anticipated or experienced, the nature of the area where the target travels to or through and the availability of other options will determine the feasibility of mobile surveillance transiting into static surveillance for any extended period of time. Mobile foot surveillance generally involves the use of light disguise such as reversible coats, wearing or discarding hats and other accoutrements, and the frequent exchange of position directly observing the target (commonly known as “eyes on” or the “eyeball”) by members of the surveillance team. Given the need for closer proximity in most mobile foot surveillance efforts, it becomes important for the target or those providing counter surveillance on the target’s behalf, to not notice a given surveillant, or support vehicle, with any frequency. The use of light disguise is thus intended to reduce the chances of this recognition occurring.16 It is obviously much more difficult to alter the appearance of vehicles than of people although the native dress of some countries also limits the alternatives available. Properly trained surveillants are quite adept at swift alteration of their most distinguishing features, something also used by those wishing to evade surveillance. Mobile surveillance, whether on foot, in vehicles or both, tends to be very taxing as maintaining a series of changes in the direct observation role while also coordinating the placement and travel of all surveillants in order to adapt to changes of course or potential counter surveillance moves by the target is a very complex endeavor. It requires good communications, proper training and a sense of adaptability and awareness which are not common in the desired combinations.17 This makes counter surveillance by police intelligence operators a more easily accomplished task as the persons assigned to surveillance, especially by insurgent groups, are usually lower ranking members who lack the training and experience needed to maintain surveillance coverage while simultaneously blending into the surrounding environment.18 This need to fit seamlessly into the environment leads to perhaps the most important

requirements for any type of surveillance, status for cover and status for action. Status for cover or action is simply a way of describing the need for the surveillant to have an easily apparent and legitimate reason for being wherever and doing whatever he or she might be when observed by the target or others.19 Standing late at night under a streetlight whilst reading a newspaper might be a staple of film noir surveillance but its use there is to more easily illustrate the lack of status for cover than to personify it. A surveillant must appear to be a natural part of the background activity around them. This means that the use of light disguise must be carefully considered and planned as a surveillant who dresses in a manner inconsistent with the area where they are conducting surveillance will be more easily spotted.20 Likewise, the actions taken must blend into the ambient background. Professional surveillants thus tend to avoid any use of bulky props or items which might draw attention to the owner and elect instead to act in ways consistent with an innocent purpose which coincidently brings them into direct view of the target.21 Of course, as stated earlier, care must be taken to appear to be a generic individual in the background so as to reduce the risk of being noticed when in direct view on subsequent occasions. Static surveillance has some advantages in this regard as the establishment of an observation post in a home, apartment or office overlooking the target provides a ready cover for status and action. Care must be taken to be consistent in appearance and timings of arrivals and departures, consistency in this case being related to the image portrayed. Thus a business used as a base for static surveillance has an acceptable status for cover until the presence and arrival/departure of surveillance personnel is inconsistent with the operation of the business. This is merely one example but hopefully serves to illustrate the need for consistency in projected appearance that is the heart of status for cover and action. The use of vehicles for static surveillance, while often forced upon surveillants due to the combination of static and mobile surveillance required in order to observe a target throughout a series of movements to different locations, creates frequent issues in this regard, particularly when the surveillance vehicle must appear unoccupied or otherwise blend into the environment. Most potential targets for surveillance are at least marginally aware of their surroundings, if only because their illegal activities necessitate a greater situational awareness than is the norm.22 The use of vehicles for static surveillance is thus more likely to draw attention to the surveillance as it is difficult to disguise people sitting in an ordinary vehicle for any length of time and frequent rotations of vehicles tends to expose them all to counter surveillance efforts. The use of a van or similar vehicle is also limited to short timeframes as, absent some unusual circumstances, most typical counterinsurgency environments do not include the extended presence of a plumber, repairman or other similar service vehicle. Of course, many imaginative examples of status for cover and action may occur to the creative mind. The use of a vendor cart or disguise as a beggar may permit extended observation for example. Similarly, the placing of the surveillance vehicle in a reasonable manner while one or both

surveillants exit the vehicle and interact with the environment in ways consistent with their current appearance is a limited but good alternative to simply sitting for no apparent reason in a parked vehicle.23 In all cases, regardless of the society involved, the actions of surveillants must blend into the background activity in a way which avoids notice and prevents recognition when the surveillant is subsequently exposed to view again during the course of the surveillance effort. Technical surveillance Technical surveillance is usually defined as the use of various devices (audio, visual or both) to record the actions of the target(s) of a surveillance operation in order to establish a record of their involvement in a given set of circumstances or their presence at a particular location.24 As such, it is meant to be done in secret and relies upon its target being unaware of the recording in order to permit candid and unguarded conversation and actions. Where physical surveillance may elect to be overt in order to achieve some tactical goal, technical surveillance is predicated upon the maintenance of secrecy for its success. If this secrecy is obtained, then technical surveillance may permit the uncovering of intention on the part of the target, something which physical surveillance can only infer. It is this aspect of technical surveillance which is of greatest importance to police intelligence in a counterinsurgency as the candid discussions of capacity, operational planning and personality involvement, if recorded and presented to operational and analytical staff, will be of tremendous assistance in both exposing the hidden network and pre-empting future actions. Obtaining this information while maintaining secrecy is a difficult proposition for several reasons. In order to understand these reasons and the possible uses of technical surveillance for police intelligence in a counterinsurgency, one should first look at the various means by which technical surveillance is accomplished and discuss the application of these means to the counterinsurgency theme. The most frequently encountered examples of technical surveillance in popular media and thus the mind of the general public is the planting of a “bug” in a room a la Watergate or the use by a private detective of a video camera hidden in a motel room to get the “goods” on a cheating spouse. Of course, the tapping of a telephone by police is also a common theme and has even formed the basic frame work for an extended dramatic examination of how such a police intelligence unit works. An excellent example is “The Wire”, a HBO series which illustrated the uses of police surveillance techniques, among other things, in Baltimore MA. It is highly recommended for those wishing as accurate an example, as is currently available in popular media, of the interactions of police, gangs and citizens in an American inner city. Finally, the wearing of a “wire”, a device for recording the conversation of the wearer and those around him is a staple of police investigations and media based upon these types of

investigations. All of these are indeed examples of technical surveillance and while there is considerable variance in sophistication and capacity, most police intelligence which utilizes technical surveillance will use these methods. It is also helpful to note that in a counterinsurgency, the types of technical equipment and its level of sophistication available to police intelligence is generally significantly lower than that available to a country at peace. The equipment normally used by police technical surveillance in domestic situations is often considered classified by military intelligence in foreign counterinsurgency applications. This makes not only the use of such equipment by host national police unlikely, it also tends to prevent or at least severely limit the transfer of knowledge regarding the nature and use of such technology by foreign counterinsurgent support providers with a concomitant lessening of this capability among host national police intelligence entities. As an example, while attempting to increase the capacity of investigative and intelligence police units in Afghanistan, American police advisors were surprised to learn from their military partners, that technology for locating, tracking and intercepting cellular telephones was highly classified by the military. This same technology was one the American police were used to using, with to be sure, a variety of required justifications and authorization, all under a much higher level of security than other police activity. Still, it was strange for them to find that equipment and techniques which they used in unclassified police activity domestically, using off the shelf equipment, was considered so secret as to prevent some military interlocutors from discussing it as they, the military members, did not possess the required clearances. Needless to say, this type of capacity was subsequently not provided to the local police.25 For reasons such as these, technical surveillance in counterinsurgency tends to be fairly simple in nature and fall into one of the popularly understood categories above. The use of cameras and video surveillance equipment is perhaps the closest to physical surveillance in that it too requires the surveillant to be in reasonable proximity to the target and to maintain status for cover and action. This is particularly true when a given surveillance operation involves a combination of physical surveillance (both mobile and static) and technical surveillance such as documenting with photographic equipment the presence and activities of the target at a specific location. This is not an unusual event in an extended surveillance operation by police intelligence however in some cases a decision must be made to limit surveillance to one type as maintaining status for cover and action of more than one type may be impossible or carry unacceptable levels of risk of exposure. In such a case and where there is little hope of a suitable mobile technical surveillance platform such as a van being employed successfully, police surveillance would normally use physical surveillance to establish repeatedly visited locations of interest for technical surveillance and attempt to set up a static location from which to base the technical surveillance. A nearby apartment which overlooks the area now known due to the physical

surveillance, the positioning of a single use vehicle or the creation of a concealed photographic array within a local fixture are all options which might be employed. (For example, video recording equipment might be hidden among the transformers on a utility pole or concealed within the framework of a strategically located push cart) It will be apparent by now that the deployment of surveillance of any type is always a complicated process and one which varies considerably from case to case. The need for flexibility and creativity among surveillants is of considerable importance as it is not something which can be done to a template but which must be adjusted as required, often on the fly, for each event.26 The placement of a listening or video device in a room prior to a target’s arrival or the interception of telephone or radio signals, is another standard technical surveillance technique. This activity creates a number of legal and civil issues as regards privacy expectations which simple observation, however unwanted, does not. One may merely withdraw into ones home to avoid being observed closely but if one’s home is itself equipped by another to surreptitiously record ones conversations and activities then one has lost the privacy which one should, at least by liberal democratic standards, reasonably expect.27 The same issue applies to the use of a telephone to speak to a confidant. Using a mobile phone in a crowded area implies a lack of concern for what the passerby might overhear. Using a telephone in a setting where other conversation would ordinarily be private implies a different expectation entirely. This standard is not universal as was alluded to earlier however it is sufficiently the norm that in all but the most totalitarian of societies, the use of technical surveillance equipment in an area where one might reasonably expect privacy is conducted through some sort of review by superiors and often with a legal provision of permission as well.28 While discussions of the highly variable requirements for this type of surveillance intrusion are beyond the scope of this work, it is important to note that any police intelligence technical surveillance which seeks to intrude into an area accepted as private in that specific society must needs be prepared to show either previous authorization by competent authority or else an over riding compelling need which would, in the minds of the majority of the population, suffice to excuse the intrusion. Doing otherwise serves to strain the acceptance of the police by the population and create distrust which lessens the potential effectiveness of the police in countering the insurgents. It is this aspect of technical surveillance which must be most carefully monitored for abuse or carelessness and which can, in a single noteworthy case, compromise relationships between the people and the police to the detriment of all. The 2008 case of electronic eavesdropping on the conversations between Sadiq Khan, an MP and a constituent who was at that time incarcerated in Woodhill prison is, perhaps, a small case in point. Here, despite clear rulings to the contrary, security services emplaced and employed concealed recording devices which monitored the otherwise privileged conversation. The resulting scandal, while not one which altered the course of counterterrorism in the UK, is nonetheless illustrative of the reaction of the public when their

expectations of police conduct are violated. In addition to the legal and societal challenges of the use of concealed recording devices, there is the very real difficulty in gaining access to the location and the need for the device to be serviced periodically (i.e. new batteries provided and new film or tape supplied and recordings taken away). The alternative is to provide the device with a means of transmitting the recording to a remote storage device which is itself more easily accessed by surveillants.29 For example, a common recording device used for this purpose does not record at the scene but rather transmits the recorded sound to a nearby receiver. This permits the primary device (the “bug”) to be quite small and the recording device to be placed in a nearby location such as a room or apartment which is accessible to the police surveillance team. These options both present issues as counter surveillance will be looking for signs of either occurrence such as frequency scanning to detect transmission, power use monitoring to detect devices which utilize the power of the location itself and the physical inspection of the location for signs of repeated intrusion.30 There are, of course, many other counter surveillance measures which may be taken but these are among the more commonly encountered when emplacing a hidden recording device. A variation on this theme is the wearing of a recording device, either audio or video or both, by a party to a given event. This is often the means by which a technical surveillance device is introduced into a location when the exact location is unknown or the introduction of a device surreptitiously has been ruled out. The use of a source, a police HUMINT asset, to carry the device in and either emplace it or wear it and return with it to police control, is a common occurrence although it too suffers from vulnerability to vigorous counter surveillance measures.31 In these cases, the life of the source is endangered, particularly in a counterinsurgency setting, and the use of this technique must be based upon a careful prior assessment of the likelihood of sufficient counter measures being deployed. Failure to do so will result in not only a lost asset and a more alert foe but also in a loss of confidence among other sources and a reluctance to cooperate with police intelligence.32 This method is often viable but is most usually effective with lower level criminal and insurgent personnel who lack the training, discipline and resources to make the risk unacceptable. An example of this danger occurred in Afghanistan with an intelligence gathering effort by a national police element. The unit had recruited a source from the target area, an insurgent stronghold on the eastern border with Pakistan. The source was tasked to visit the area and obtain the locations and other details of specific insurgent safe houses. To aid in this effort he was provided with a commercial GPS unit. Despite considerable instruction in the surreptitious use of this equipment, the source attempted to openly record the coordinates of the home of a notorious insurgent commander. The source was quickly apprehended, tortured and beheaded. While most use of technical surveillance equipment by informants tasked by this unit were successful, this incident stood out as a stark warning that at least served to illustrate the danger for subsequent informant training.33

A final means of technical surveillance which is available to police intelligence in a counterinsurgency is the tracking of mobile telephones in order to determine the whereabouts of the phone and, presumably, the user. Along a similar line is the placement of tracking equipment on a vehicle or equipment which the target is expected to use. Both serve the purpose of permitting a surveillance effort to follow the movements and location of a target without necessarily being exposed to direct observation by the target. Both also suffer from the difficulty of relying upon the tracking device and the target remaining in close proximity. Combining the use of such devices with physical surveillance and/or the use of HUMINT provides a more reliable coverage with greater flexibility for the physical surveillance element to avoid typical counter surveillance efforts to detect them.34 The use of technical surveillance, in whatever form, is a difficult one requiring stealth, considerable planning and adaptability and an accurate assessment of risk and reward. Where a physical surveillance may manage to avoid confirming its nature and intent when scanned by a target or counter surveillance, the detection of technical surveillance equipment is always unambiguous. There is no room for doubt as to what a hidden recording device is nor is there any lack of clarity as to its purpose. The only questions it raises are who emplaced it, how and when it was emplaced and what might have been learned during its period of operation.35 This aspect of technical surveillance, the immediate alerting of the target to both vulnerability and interest, makes it a higher risk endeavor when compared to physical surveillance which can be discounted as paranoia or discontinued without likely ill effect. The ability of technical surveillance to provide insight into planning and intent however, as well as its ability to establish beyond doubt a record of events, makes the risk frequently worthwhile. The use of any single type of surveillance, as the foregoing examples have hopefully illustrated, is suboptimal. Surveillance is best accomplished through the creative use of combinations of all types as need arises. It is also occasionally well served by the use of aerial assets. It is to this aspect of surveillance that the discussion will now turn. The path less travelled While the ordinary methods of surveillance such as physical “follows”, the establishment of covert observation posts and the use of technology to enable the acquisition of a recording of a target’s otherwise hidden conversations and actions are well within the abilities of most police agencies (indeed they are within the abilities of most private investigations/intelligence entities as well) there remain a few alternative means of surveillance which are beyond the normal methods employed by most police surveillance efforts. These methods are encountered less frequently due to a variety of reasons but most are excluded from normal counterinsurgency capacity due to budget or sustainment issues.

The primary example, to which I alluded earlier, would be the use of aircraft for surveillance.36 The cost involved in obtaining suitable aircraft, operating and maintaining them and training/retaining qualified pilots and observers is considerable. As such it is beyond the budgets of all but the most well-funded agencies.37 Unless donations and sustainment funding is available, this remains beyond the budget of most host national police intelligence entities. While some national level assets may exist, the ability to task and control them is limited at a local level, something that is an issue with military aerial surveillance assets as well.38 When aircraft are available for surveillance duty however, they are a considerable enhancement to the overall surveillance effort. Given that the most effective surveillance strategy involves the blending of all types of surveillance together, the use of aircraft, when combined with technical surveillance such as trackers and physical surveillance to provide direct observation of a destination or clarity on an environment, permits a mixture of techniques which make surveillance detection much more difficult. Physical surveillants may hold back out of view of a target making their detection much less likely while the tracking component and aircraft provide the technical and visual confirmation of location and activity. Should the tracking component be detected, disabled or neutralized, for example by leaving a vehicle parked and walking on foot to a destination, the aircraft can still confirm location and activity and direct physical surveillants into position to continue or deepen the coverage. This level of flexibility is particularly useful in areas where aircraft are a common sight such as is the case in many insurgencies. Aircraft may fly or establish a holding pattern high enough to make ground detection almost impossible although this does limit the use of some telephoto surveillance equipment.39 The increased flexibility and security from counter surveillance afforded by the use of aircraft in a surveillance effort makes them one of the most useful support options. Similarly, drones, other remotely controlled aircraft or even satellites may be utilized, alone or in conjunction with other surveillance activities, to provide more effective and less detectable coverage of a target. Several Western police agencies are developing this capability40 however it appears that such capacity has not been passed on to host national police entities supported by Western powers. The norm is for the product from sophisticated systems to be made available in an intelligence sharing scheme. A good example is the Joint Land-Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS), an aerostat system deployed over Kabul which provides video and other sensor deployment to monitor selected sections of the city. The system is owned and operated by the US but its product is shared with allied forces including Afghan intelligence and police. The use of satellite and other such systems remains within the scope of national security intelligence and military agencies and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Despite this

lack of possession of the required hardware and personnel, police intelligence in a counterinsurgency may make good use of these technologies through the proper use of liaison agents. Liaison is an often overlooked means of obtaining information from friendly third parties,41 less so in national security intelligence than in the police variety perhaps but nonetheless one which permits the police to access intelligence from platforms they do not possess and to blend this intelligence with their own surveillance efforts to their considerable benefit. While access will often be limited due to interagency requirements, security and other bureaucratic concerns, when such assets are present in a counterinsurgency, police intelligence liaison should be tasked with creating as permissible an access environment as possible. A final option is the periodic acquisition of the services of commercial satellite imagery, something at least one counterinsurgency expert feels is being done by insurgents themselves.42 Lessons Learned The application of surveillance to police intelligence collection focused on insurgent network identification and dismantling is, as the foregoing has hopefully illustrated, a complex task with few easy templates by which individual actions may be guided. Instead it requires a willingness to mix and match various methods within the discipline in an ad hoc fashion based upon rapidly evolving circumstances and the altering degree of accessibility to the target and his or her immediate vicinity. Factors such as the need to blend seamlessly into the background surroundings while maintaining focus on a target increase the difficulty involved in surveillance and afford opportunities for counter surveillance to detect and thwart an operation. While specific tactical gains may be achieved through the deliberate exposure of a surveillance operation, it is more normal for secrecy to be a primary prerequisite for success. Information gained which the enemy does not know one to possess is the most valuable type of intelligence and surveillance presents one method of acquiring intelligence of this nature. The use of support mechanisms such as aircraft or other remotely controlled assets is of considerable value to the surveillance effort but is often beyond the means and capabilities of a given police intelligence entity. This lack of some sophisticated technology is offset by the Placement and Access of police intelligence personnel among the population. Their degree of familiarity with local mores, variances of dress, modes of travel and activity provide them with an unusually detailed knowledge of the opportunities to disguise a surveillance effort among the “noise” of ordinary activity. This ability is absent among foreign counterinsurgent forces who are generally those with the more sophisticated technological means. Even host national military forces lack this capacity as they have few if any deep roots in a community from which to draw specific operational context with which to disguise surveillance action. It should be noted that with

proper inventive leadership and creativity, military units may however, also perform a covert surveillance function with outstanding results.43 Overall, the police, and specifically the intelligence section of the police, are best placed to conduct surveillance activities. These require little in the way of technological enhancement but may, through diligent application of basic tradecraft, uncover the nodes, personalities and critical linkages which comprise the hidden insurgent network.

____________________ 1 The surveillance described occurred in the spring and summer of 2002. The author was present as a part of the United

Nations Mission In Kosovo to which he was seconded. The criminal organization targeted in this effort remained active despite this setback. 2 ACM IV Security Services. Surveillance Countermeasures. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 2005 P 11 and Fredrickson, Darin and Siljande, Raymond. Fundamentals of Physical Surveillance. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 2002 p 3. 3 Lyon, David. Surveillance Studies: An Overview. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007 pp 46 – 68. See also Harris, Shane. The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State. Westminster, UK Penguin Press, 2010 and Newburn, Tim. Policing, Surveillance and Social Control: cctv and Police Monitoring of Suspects. Cullompton, UK: Willan Publishing, 2001 for in depth examinations of the presence and effects of these issues in the US and UK respectively. 4 Shulsky, Abram N. Silent Warfare: Understanding the world of intelligence. New York: Brassey’s, 1993 pp 22, 28-35. 5 ACM IV Security Services. Surveillance Countermeasures p 11. 6 ACM IV Security Services. Surveillance Countermeasures p 25. See Jenkins, Peter. Surveillance Tradecraft. Harrogate, UK: Intel Publishing, 2010 pp 255-293 for examples and use of technical surveillance equipment. 7 Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence: From secrets to policy. Wahington DC: CQ Press, 2009 p 100. Please note that we use the term tehnical surveillance in the sense just articulated and not in the more global sense used by Lowenthal. See also Hewitt, Steve. Snitch: A History of the Modern Intelligence Informer p 12, 64-65, 122-123 for the issue of comparitve precision. 8 Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence: From secrets to policy pp 88-90. 9 ACM IV Security Services. Secrets of Surveillance. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1993 pp 8-9. 10 ACM IV Security Services. Surveillance Countermeasures p 13 and Jenkins, Peter. Surveillance Tradecraft p 185. 11 See Jenkins, Peter. Surveillance Tradecraft pp 188-194 for a discussion of vehicle surveillance posts. 12 Fredrickson, Darin and Siljande, Raymond. Fundamentals of Physical Surveillance p 80-81. 13 Fitzgerald, Dennis G. Informants and Undercover Investigations p 172-173. 14 Schultz, Donald and Norton, Loran. Police Operational Intelligence. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas p 141 and ACM IV Security Services. Secrets of Surveillance pp 195-202. 15 Jenkins, Peter. Surveillance Tradecraft p 117 and ACM IV Security Services. Surveillance Countermeasures p 21-22. 16 See Fredrickson, Darin and Siljande, Raymond. Fundamentals of Physical Surveillance p 22 and ACM IV Security Services. Surveillance Countermeasures p 42 for examples. 17 See Ritch, Van. Rural Surveillance. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 2003 pp 14 -18, Fredrickson, Darin and Siljande, Raymond. Fundamentals of Physical Surveillance pp 9-11 and Jenkins, Peter. Surveillance Tradecraft pp 7-9 for examples of ideal surveillant characteristics. 18 Stratfor Today. Vulnerabilities in the Terrorist Attack Cycle. [Online] September 2005. [Cited: November 21, 2009.] http://www.stratfor.com/ 19 ACM IV Security Services. Surveillance Countermeasures pp 12-13 and ACM IV Security Services, Secrets of Surveillance, p 11. 20 Schultz, Donald and Norton, Loran. Police Operational Intelligence pp 114-115. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid p 114. 23 Ibid p 116. 24 Fredrickson, Darin and Siljande, Raymond. Fundamentals of Physical Surveillance p 266 and Jenkins, Peter. Surveillance Tradecraft p 6. 25 The author was among those advisors mentioned in the text who discovered that certain legally available civilian technologies, when in military service, were highly classified and could often not be discussed with host national counterparts. This extended to the transfer to local forces of ten digit grid coordinates as they were considered classified. When it was pointed out that most commercially available GPS devices provided the same information in the same format,

this became a non-issue. The rational for classification of this type of equipment and capacity is understandable but the situation serves to illustrate some of the issues created by a policy of military provision of training and support to a police entity. 26 Fredrickson, Darin and Siljande, Raymond. Fundamentals of Physical Surveillance p 3 and Ritch, Van. Rural Surveillance p 13. 27 See Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. Police Surveillance. [Online] 2006. [Cited: January 18, 2010.] http://le.alcoda.org/publications/files/SURVEILLANCE.pdf. for an in depth review of US standards in this regard. While these are specifically American, they are also reflective of the issues and standards addressed in other liberal democracies. 28 Schultz, Donald and Norton, Loran. Police Operational Intelligence p 143. 29 See Jenkins, Peter. Surveillance Tradecraft pp 266 – 283 for examples and discussions of the emplacement, use and servicing of technical monitoring devices. 30 ACM IV Security Services. Surveillance Countermeasures pp 149-151. 31 See Fitzgerald, Dennis G. Informants and Undercover Investigations p 203-204, Anti-Politics. Security and Countersurveillance. Anti-Politics. [Online] 2006. [Cited: October 15, 2009.] http://antipolitics.net/distro/2009/warriorsecurity-read.pdf and Schultz, Donald and Norton, Loran. Police Operational Intelligence p 143. 32 Ibid. 33 The incident referred to took place in 2010. The author was serving as an advisor to the host national unit in question. The insurgents responsible, so far as the author is aware, were never brought to justice. 34 ACM IV Security Services. Surveillance Countermeasures p 30 and Fredrickson, Darin and Siljande, Raymond. Fundamentals of Physical Surveillance p 56-64. 35 It also raises the question of how might this discovery, if unknown to the surveillants, be exploited to feed false information to them. The use of deception operations in such a case, while interesting in and of itself, is beyond the scope of our discussion. 36 Fredrickson, Darin and Siljande, Raymond. Fundamentals of Physical Surveillance p 150-152 and Schultz, Donald and Norton, Loran. Police Operational Intelligence p 133-139. 37 See Bryan, Emory. Tulsa Police’s Air Support Unit Grounded By Cutbacks. News On 6. [Online] October 30, 2009. [Cited: March 5, 2010.] http://www.newson6.com/global/story.asp?s=11411374 for one example of a typical large suburban police agency which discontinued air support due to budgetary concerns. 38 Downs, Lt Col Michael L. Air & Space Power Journal. Rethinking the Combined Force Air Component Commander’s Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Approach to Counterinsurgency. [Online] September 1, 2008. [Cited: March 15, 2010.] http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj08/fal08/downs.html. 39 Fredrickson, Darin and Siljande, Raymond. Fundamentals of Physical Surveillance p 151. 40 See Bowcott, Owen and Lewis, Paul. The Guardian. Unmanned drones may be used in police surveillance. [Online] September 24, 2010. [Cited: March 20, 2011.] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/24/police-unmanned-surveillancedrones and Copeland, Larry. USA Today. Police turn to drones for domestic surveillance. [Online] January 14, 2011. [Cited: March 15, 2011.] http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/surveillance/2011-01-13-drones_N.htm for examples from the UK and US. 41 Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence: From secrets to policy p 99. 42 Hammes, Thomas. The Sling and the Stone pp 196-197. His point is well taken as a simple search of the internet quickly reveals a large number of firms which will provide imagery of sufficient detail for a price. 43 See Dillon, Martin. The Dirty War pp 26-39 for an example of well planned and covered surveillance activity by military rather than police intelligence. Ultimately the operation was exposed due to good counterintelligence work by the insurgents rather than a lack of local cover or knowledge.

Analysis Making sense of it all IN previous sections the focus has been on the use of human intelligence, interrogation and surveillance as methodologies employed by police intelligence in combating an insurgency. A growing number of authorities have stated that police human intelligence operations are perhaps the most effective means of penetrating and defeating a networked enemy.1 This is however, only part of the picture of the ways and means by which police intelligence organizations are able to render visible the invisible linkages and personalities of an insurgent network. It is important to realize that both human source operations and surveillance are “collection” efforts. That is to say, both are ultimately about gathering information with some rudimentary processing occasionally occurring on a tactical level. The mere gathering of information does not create intelligence. It is generally understood that processing, which includes collation and analysis, is required before data collected by whatever means is formed into intelligence.2 In short, while there is an emphasis in police intelligence on tactical and operational support to action elements3, there is a larger requirement to understand the nature, structure and personalities of any given intelligence target. This requirement is only achieved by the careful analysis of material gathered from as many sources as are possible. The focus of this book lies with the benefits of these analytical techniques as they relate to police intelligence. However time will not be wasted with a more general examination of intelligence analysis. In doing so I will look not at the tradecraft of analysis per se as that is largely identical whether the consumer of intelligence be a military unit, a national security element, a law enforcement group or a commercial entity.4 Rather the examination will be concentrated upon the role of analysis and how it relates to police intelligence in a counterinsurgency. Analysis is at the heart of intelligence work.5 The purpose of the analysis is to provide to policy makers an accurate, informed product which may aid them in decision making. This is much less the case in military and especially police intelligence efforts. Indeed, in the latter arena one finds a significant emphasis on tactical and operational intelligence as opposed to the more strategic version and, frequently, a sense from analysts themselves that their role is to provide direct case specific support to operations.6 Indeed, there is reluctance in most police forces in liberal democracies to engage in the collection, retention and analysis of information which is not directly related to specific cases or operations.7 This is due largely to the effects of past practices where civil liberties were arguably trampled in the name of national security.8 The resulting controversy engendered a sense that police intelligence should confine itself to operational support instead of serving as a means whereby the various police organizations might be informed about the activities and actions

of any given segment of the population which had drawn their attention.9 Such caution and the desire to preserve civil liberties are laudable indeed although they lead naturally into a series of questions involving the correct role and oversight of police intelligence in providing proactive security that counters terrorism or other serious threats to life and property while still remaining responsive to oversight and the principles of individual freedom. This topic, while deserving of considerable additional research and debate, is not germane to the discussion which centers upon the role of police intelligence in a society at war where many of the normal patterns of civic life have been of necessity overtaken by the harsh realities of civil conflict. Therefore, somewhat reluctantly, this book will be confined to an examination of the analytical function of police intelligence in a counterinsurgency as opposed to a counterterrorism effort in a society otherwise at peace. Having established the focus on the police intelligence analytical function in an insurgency, let us turn our attention to the standard approaches to analysis before examining their applicability to counterinsurgency. Three levels of analysis One of the more important realizations about analysis as it relates to intelligence is that not all analysis is equal. That is to say that while the basic purpose of analysis is to make sense of the data collected by various means and to provide the customer with a means of understanding, acting or reacting based upon the analytical inputs provided, there are significant differences in scale which affect this process. The nature of the overall effort involved in determining the structure and linkages of the Haqqanni Network in South West Asia is quite different from that required to ferret out and interdict specific local cells in a given area of operations. The two activities are related and one will certainly inform the other however there are differences of focus and scale which impact the way in which analysis is done. Traditionally, analysis is divided into three categories, strategic, operational and tactical. Strategic intelligence products are generally long term research efforts which focus on broad understandings of complex issues in order to provide advice and insight to those who will formulate policy and strategic goals. The collections efforts may include input from many of those generally associated with intelligence such as HUMINT or SIGINT but will frequently also include many more open source inputs from areas not often associated with intelligence collection efforts.10 This type of analysis is represented by such products as the National Intelligence Estimates created by the US intelligence community. It is long range, focused on the interaction of numerous factors over time and requires a more sophisticated analytical skill set.11 Operational and tactical intelligence products on the other hand, are focused on

providing direct support to action arms whose role is to conduct operations within a short time frame based upon these products.12 This is generally referred to as actionable intelligence and is the type most useful in counterinsurgency.13 That is not to say that strategic intelligence is irrelevant to counterinsurgency. The truth is quite the contrary as I hope to demonstrate. The simple fact is that most police intelligence analysis is focused on the operational/tactical level both for the reasons mentioned earlier of organizational comfort zones as well as the predominance of interest created by the nature of policing in acting based upon information which identifies specific individuals and links them to specific violations of law. The police mindset tends naturally toward apprehension of violators of criminal statutes and the prevention through proactive intelligence work of serious violations which are still in the preparatory stage. As was discussed earlier, this is a basic element of police work and this focus on results has had the effect of creating a greater focus on operational and tactical analysis in intelligence led policing efforts.14 This difference in scale and focus leads naturally to differences in analytical tradecraft. Strategic analysis requires considerably more time and diverse inputs than does tactical analysis while operational analysis, rather than taking a middle ground position somewhere between strategic and tactical, is often indistinguishable from the tactical variety. Indeed, in some circles the terms tactical and operational are interchangeable while in others they are reversed.15 In all cases however, it is clear that most police intelligence analysis is either in direct support of operational activities, regardless of whether one denotes the level of engagement as tactical or operational, or it is in support of organizational objectives and information gaps on a policy/strategic level.16 Based upon this delineation between analytical support on a policy/strategy level and analytical support by the provision of actionable intelligence it would seem reasonable to divide police counterinsurgency focused analysis into two rather than three levels of effort. That level of effort which assists in the setting of overarching goals and long range planning is indeed strategic while that which assists in execution of operational activity on whatever level is actionable. That the action being taken is at an operational rather than a tactical command level is, for our purposes, irrelevant as the basic division we wish to consider is between analysis which contributes to strategy and that which contributes to direct action. While it has been said that operational analysis has the requirement to be predictive whereas tactical intelligence does not17, this minor difference cannot overshadow the more cogent fact that the primary purpose of both types of analysis is the provision of support to action elements.18 As I examine the application of police intelligence analyses to counterinsurgency I will follow this basic divide between strategic and actionable analysis. The strategic element Strategic intelligence, when part of a police intelligence led counterinsurgency effort, will

naturally focus on those elements of the insurgency which are vital to both the continuation of the conflict as well as those which are necessary for its resolution.19 The commander of a tactical unit which conducts raids upon insurgent safe houses has little use for an evaluation of the root causes of the conflict or for a report on the likely effects of trade sanctions on the continued external support for the insurgents and almost no use in knowing the fluctuations in the geopolitical conditions which create such external support for his foes. His most pressing concern is for information which allows him to formulate plans which have the greatest likelihood of success, something which is usually measured by how many casualties his forces sustain and how many insurgents are killed or captured. This lack of concern for the larger picture is understandable as there is little which he can do with that knowledge while there is much he can do with information which is focused upon his immediate concerns. While a basic understanding of some of these issues might assist him in that he may direct a different method of conducting searches in certain neighborhoods or in some other way adjust tactical activity due to larger concerns, this understanding will usually be formed as the result of direction from higher command levels rather than from conclusions drawn from a strategically oriented intelligence product. This raises the question of how higher authority would know that tactical efforts which were modified in certain ways might garner greater support for governmental forces. This type of insight is most frequently the result of strategic analysis which assists policy makers and higher level commanders in determining where to allocate their resources and what results are derived from their operational commanders’ use of these resources. Additionally, strategic level analysis permits the evaluation of current and alternative strategies for engagement with both the insurgents and the population. Finally, strategic analysis may be used to outline the insurgent networks and the ties of kinship, patronage and other loyalties which bind them together.20 This information is of obvious value beyond the operational/tactical level. An example of this type of strategic intelligence effort to articulate ties of kinship and patronage is the Haqqanni Network mentioned above. This network is actually the series of familial, tribal and business relationships developed by Jalaluddin Haggani and his son Sarijuddin. Jalauddin, belongs to the Zadran tribe of the Pashtun ethnic group. Within the Zadran tribe he is a member of the Mezi clan. He is also a long time power broker in the region with ties to Arab states going back to the war with the Soviets. His network was, originally, the complex ties and linkages of business, kinship and friendship which are common to all powerful men in the region. As his politics continued to support radical Islamic movements, this network grew to include political and military allies as well. Thus the depiction and unraveling of these skeins of relationship, the interpretation of relative values within them and the ability to predict with some degree of accuracy, shifts of policy based upon changes within the network, is obviously a task of both strategic import

and considerable complexity. This effort is nothing less than the mapping of the human terrain which dictates aspects of conflict as much as does the more easily grasped physical terrain. Earlier reference was made to the fact that strategic intelligence analysis had an important role to play in police intelligence in a counterinsurgency. This is due to the fact that it is only on the strategic level that one may begin to bring together information from all levels of intelligence in order to better model and comprehend an insurgent network. Individual field commands will establish a local picture which will vary in its accuracy based primarily upon the skill and dedication of the intelligence officers assigned to that command. However, insurgent networks will rarely confine their activities to the geographical limits of any one command. Indeed, working, moving and sometime residing in the demarcations between military units is a favored guerrilla tactic.21 This was apparent in Kosovo in the late nineties and early part of the new century. As the various national elements of the international Kosovo Force (KFOR) assumed control of specific areas, they established patrol patterns and checkpoints within their own areas of responsibility. Not wanting to infringe on each other’s AOR, patrol routes were frequently designed to avoid the possibility of wandering off course into the neighboring area. Organized crime and insurgent groups took advantage of this fact by designing their own routes of travel to take place when possible in the corridors and gaps so formed. They also cleared routes through areas they knew were designated mined or as containing unexploded ordinance (UXO). These in particular were useful as KFOR policy discouraged any patrolling that might stray into such areas.22 Additionally, the history of intelligence is rife with examples of failure to share information between different organizations or even within an organization.23 Given these factors it would seem reasonable to believe that specific focus would be required in order to develop a strategic level assessment of any specific insurgent network.24 Without a strategic framework within which to place these individual network models, one is left with a number of unrelated data sets which are of use only on a local tactical level. If one of the main utilities for police intelligence in counterinsurgency is indeed rendering visible the invisible network, the strategic aspect of analysis would seem a reasonable location for this to occur. While the purpose on a local level in rendering the network visible will almost always be in order to operate successfully against it, the purpose on a strategic level is more oriented toward understanding its nature in terms of structure and its patterns of behavior in terms of personalities. Having a police intelligence strategic analysis cell focused upon the collection and analysis of network related information from as many sources as possible is one way to gain an accurate understanding of the insurgent network.25 Without this basic understanding of the foe, one cannot begin to formulate a response to their representations to the people of their legitimacy nor can one determine the best counter arguments or those actions most likely to bolster these arguments and create support among the people. Equally, one cannot determine who among the many faces of insurgent leadership

might be amenable to overtures from the government, who might be willing to reconcile and at what price and which are the most likely results should these events occur. All of these are questions and issues for strategic analysis and such level inquiry is by no means limited to the examples given. It is also important to note that the Placement and Access of the police among the people which is of such vital use in collections is of equal importance to this level of analysis. Knowing, with the degree of certainty created by institutional association and familiarity, the personalities and natures of important insurgents as well as having recourse to a large number of well positioned collectors of what is now termed atmospherics (a phrase which relates to the general attitude assumed by a given population toward an event or entity) means that police intelligence analysts focused on strategic questions will have a greater chance of providing an accurate and well informed product than are those whose resources and innate understanding is more limited. This level of analysis is far broader than that practiced in operational support analytical cells and requires a very different approach.26 However, police operations absent of this type of thinking are likely to be divorced from the realities which created the insurgency in the first place leading to a “can’t see the forest for the trees” syndrome in which operational engagement trumps understanding of the larger concerns through which conflict resolution is possible. Even worse, such a limited intelligence focus may lead to situations where improper, albeit effective, tactics are used which result in greater support for the insurgents. The initial actions of the British Army, assisted by intelligence supplied by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, in rounding up Republican suspects at the start of the Troubles is an excellent example of good operations which were based upon faulty intelligence. Most of the 520 identified suspects were apprehended. However, the use of out of date lists of suspects (most had no real connection to terrorist groups) combined with an faulty belief that internment in the 1970s would produce the same results among the vastly changed popular culture as it had in the 1950s, all exacerbated by the failure to secure cooperation from the Republic of Ireland, resulted in a disaster on both the political and operational fronts.27 A proper strategic analysis of the origins of the growing conflict as well as the possible ways to de-escalate the tensions might have avoided many years of strife and bloodshed. Of course, such an analysis would have required a police force which was itself not sectarian in nature and which was able to present a neutral evaluation informed by daily interaction with the population on both sides of the political and sectarian divides. Sadly such was not the case, which in turn highlights a major issue for police intelligence analysis, particularly on a strategic level, in a counterinsurgency. That issue is that the police are naturally closely aligned with the incumbent régime and its policies and practices prior to the birth of the insurgency. Additionally their fate is largely that of the current government. If it falls, they too, at least those of any significant rank, fall as well. Thus there is an understandable but unfortunate temptation to produce strategic analysis which undercuts rivals, downplays régime failures and actions which either created or sustain the insurgency

and to hedge bets when assessing options for resolution of the conflict.28 Given that the host national police in any given insurgency are far from neutral players, it is perhaps too much to expect that their strategic analysis on issues involving régime equities be other than partisan. Any strategic analysis which addresses issues which might embarrass or run counter to a stated policy of the host national government must be carefully developed and interpreted.29 A reasonable approach might be to draw upon host national police intelligence analysts of good professional and personal reputation to work in conjunction with analysts from external supporters in order to curb the temptations outlined above. Another possibility is to focus host national police strategic intelligence on issues such as the structure and interactions of insurgent networks where their greater knowledge of the human terrain will be helpful but where there is less room for politically biased judgments by analysts. Absent these and other such measures as the creative mind may devise, strategic analysis by host national police intelligence may be an aspiration too far. One may reasonably conclude that host national police intelligence, when combined with external actors as suggested above, can develop into a valuable strategic resource which selfcorrects from the unfortunate tendencies noted earlier. Indeed, as a great deal of analytical tradecraft deals with the detection and avoidance of both conscious and unconscious biases, it would seem likely that a well-trained police intelligence agency, of whatever national origin, would be able to avoid such pitfalls whereas one which does not would fail regardless of the national origin or structure of the parent agency.30 A final factor in considering the viability of strategic analysis for counterinsurgency is that it is a lengthy process. Unless analysts are freed from other tasks and are able to concentrate upon the strategic product, there is little likelihood of it being completed in a fashion that remains relevant and useful.31 While some contend that the concept of strategic analysis may be applied to all levels of endeavor32 the requirement for sufficient resources and time to conduct such analysis means that for all practical purposes, strategic intelligence for the police is largely limited to a national or perhaps regional level process.33 While there are numerous difficulties to be overcome due to organizational preference and a lack of the required degree of objectivity, the potential for police strategic analysis to develop insight useful at a policy level is considerable. Actionable analysis When considering operational/tactical analysis one is struck by the immediacy of all such efforts. Where strategic analysis is an extensive process drawing upon a wide variety of resources and requiring a considerable commitment of time to complete, analysis which is intended to support military or police action is frequently provided in short updates based upon the last data received. Often these data inputs are not themselves fully processed or

evaluated against a larger framework before a hasty assessment is made and the applicability of the latest information to the situation on hand is passed on to the consumer.34 It is in this arena as much as anywhere that the deep flaws in the traditional model of the intelligence cycle are revealed. The intelligence cycle, as it is normally presented in training courses at various levels, involves a circular progress from tasking, to collections, to analysis and is completed with a final report or product being generated in response to the original tasking. There are a variety of versions of the intelligence cycle taught, each with its own nomenclature and segment divisions but the concept of the intelligence cycle per se is an almost talismanic touchstone within the intelligence community.35 The fact is that this cycle does a very poor job of representing the actual process of intelligence. While each individual segment, regardless of the particular model being examined, is an integral part of the process, the cyclic nature of the process is rarely if ever encountered in real world application.36 In actual practice there are continual feedback loops, requirement updates and inputs as well as interactions between what the generalized intelligence cycle model would represent as compartmentalized efforts. Analysis occurs in tandem with many collections efforts some of which may provide raw information directly to the consumer, occasionally without ever reaching an analyst. Additionally, tasking focus shifts as events proceed and the production of reports or complete intelligence products is often a series of rapid responses to these changes which are usually short fused and will not wait for the completion of a tidy cyclic process.37 This is particularly true of intelligence efforts in support of operational/tactical elements. The fast pace of operational/tactical analysis exposes the traditional view of the intelligence cycle as a less than accurate model of the process of intelligence production although it does retain some value as a way to link together each separate segment for discussion.38 While processes such as the Operational Intelligence Assessment of the National Intelligence Model used in the UK attempt to address these issues they generally, and the OIA specifically, do so largely from a managerial point of view concerned with remaining focused on the given operation rather than one oriented toward more effective actionable analysis.39 This leaves one wondering how the production of actionable intelligence is conducted if the traditional cyclic model is inaccurate. A brief example may help to demonstrate the process. I will attempt to illustrate the use of actionable intelligence analysis through the following scenario which will be presented in a bullet point format for ease of narration. The scenario begins with police intelligence learning, through human source operations, that a particular High Value Target (HVT), an insurgent commander of considerable reputation and effectiveness, will be briefly visiting a small hamlet to attend a relative’s wedding. The sequence of events is as follows; This particular source has performed well in the past and is rated as generally reliable by the analyst supporting the operational police headquarters. Based upon the initial information, surveillance is mounted on the main route into the

hamlet. This surveillance is both technical in the form of a video feed concealed at a traffic checkpoint on the main route into the village and physical in the form of several undercover officers deployed in the vicinity of the house where the wedding will occur. Additionally, other undercover officers will deploy at strategic points along the route by which it is anticipated that the HVT will travel. • This collection effort is directed by the operational police headquarters and reports its results directly to that command center with the analyst functioning as support to that command. • Additionally, the analyst is notified that police HUMINT handlers have a second source who will be invited to the celebration. This provides the opportunity for the handler to task the source to confirm the presence and identity of the HVT. The handler will report information from this source through his chain to the analyst. • The operational command group alerts a special raid team which, along with a larger support unit of regular police, will be on standby at a nearby police station on the day of the wedding. • Prior to the day, the primary HUMINT source reports that the HVT will be travelling along the main route and will be in a dark Toyota Surf. The source also adds that there will be no other vehicles accompanying the HVT. • This information is disseminated simultaneously to both the command group through the HUMINT handler’s chain of command and to the analyst. • The analyst compares this information with pattern of life information on the HVT and finds that the HVT is reported to never travel without bodyguards, generally in a separate but similar vehicle. While it is possible that the Toyota will contain both the HVT and the bodyguards, this is a slight deviation from the established pattern. The analyst reports this fact along with an assessment that this deviation should increase the threshold of certainty required before a raid would be launched. (Raiding the house is likely to create collateral casualties and the command group wishes to avoid such a raid if at all possible) • Based upon this assessment, the operational command group elects to hold off on any raid until there has been positive confirmation of the HVT’s presence at the wedding. The possible removal of the HVT would be worth the risk of civilian casualties however, the desired tactic will be to identify the HVT and interdict him while travelling to or from the wedding. • On the day of the wedding, surveillance is deployed to attempt to obtain this positive confirmation. The second HUMINT source is tasked with attending the wedding and also attempting to positively identify the HVT and confirm his presence in real time. The second HUMINT source will report via cell phone to his handler. • The video feed does record several dark Toyota Surfs travelling through the checkpoint. There is insufficient clarity to establish the identity of the occupants of any of these vehicles. The most that can be said is that the HVT is not a front seat passenger in any vehicle which passes the checkpoint. • Physical surveillance reports that all guests have arrived and that the wedding has commenced. Their report includes the fact that several dark Toyota SUVs were driven to the location by guests. One of these arrived in company with a white Toyota Land Cruiser. They are unable to confirm the presence of the HVT but have obtained the registration plates for three of the Toyota Surfs. • The analyst runs checks on these registrations and learns that one vehicle belongs to the son of a close associate of the HVT. Further checking reveals that this individual is believed to have served as a bodyguard for the HVT on several occasions. • Based upon this information the analyst advises the police command group that it is possible that the HVT is present. However, the analyst does not believe the raid team should proceed, given the uncertainty created by the original HUMINT reports deviation from established target patterns of life, and he passes this recommendation on to the command group. Command agrees and elects to wait for further information from the field. • No further information comes to the command center until the wedding guests begin to leave. Physical surveillance

reports that one of the Toyotas has departed with four men aboard. Shortly thereafter the HUMINT officer handling the second source advises that he has received a verbal report in which the source confirms that the HVT was present. The source has also transmitted a blurry photograph taken with his cell phone of three men, one of whom he states categorically is the HVT. • This information is provided through the HUMINT chain to the command group who pass it on to the analyst along with the information that the dark Toyota containing the potential target is entering the main portion of the hamlet. The decision which needs to be made quickly is whether to interdict this vehicle with the raid team or wait for possible information from surveillance regarding the other Toyota SUV occupants. • The analyst compares the photo to one of the HVT. There are similarities in height and hair color but he is not convinced that the person in the photo is indeed the HVT. The analyst requests that the physical surveillance team advise if the dark Toyota is travelling with the white Land Cruiser and if it is the one registered to the sometime bodyguard. • The physical surveillance team reports that the dark Toyota is travelling alone but they are unable to confirm the registration plate. Based upon the information available to him at that time, the analyst advises the command group that he cannot confirmation the presence of the HVT. He adds that he would recommend that the Toyota in question be stopped and searched as it is probable that the HVT is traveling in it. He also recommends that attempts be made to interdict all the other Toyotas. • Operational command directs the raid element to stop and search the Toyota reported to be carrying the HVT. Physical surveillance officers are present to provide identification. The HVT is not among the Toyota’s passengers. • Several of the other Toyotas take more difficult alternate routes away from the hamlet. These routes avoid the checkpoint and none of these vehicles are searched. • Among the passengers of the vehicle which is searched is an individual who is known by the handler to be a business rival of the second HUMINT source. When the source is later brought in for interrogation regarding the matter, he admits that his information was fabricated in an attempt to see his rival arrested or killed in a police action.

Several aspects of our fictional example40 will be apparent to those familiar with the function of actionable intelligence analysis. The first of these is that such analytical support, like the operations it enhances, is an inherently messy and untidy business. Information flows from different sources to various parts of an organization or command and it is only through good procedures and coordination that it reaches all the concerned parties. While our example allowed the analyst to receive all the incoming information in a timely fashion, this is not always the case in the real world. Information flow is often compartmentalized and does not reach the analyst in sufficient detail or timeliness to permit its inclusion in the nuanced and rapid judgments which are required. A second point is the necessity for the analyst to provide advice which directly affects operational activity while having neither all or even a majority of the information needed to render a judgment in which a reasonable degree of certainty may be placed nor the time to consider the available information in light of other resources. Indeed, the resources for collecting additional information are often sparse indeed and when available may not be able to provide information as quickly as the analyst requires.41 Finally, an analyst focused on operational/tactical support will often deal with information only one or two steps removed from its origin and which must be evaluated on the spot and fitted into the overall picture without recourse to more sustained evaluation of the information. For example, basic background information such as a human source’s

placement and access and past performance will figure heavily in the analyst’s mind. The additional and highly pertinent data of relationships to other actors may not be available until after an event has concluded. For human sources, as was discussed in a previous chapter, there are a wide variety of concerns which might affect how an analyst weighs the information from a source. The additional information available to analysts as opposed to source handlers and the ability to relate this information to other data which provides a greater understanding of the source is one of analysis’ contributions to source handling. Unfortunately, in traditional operational support roles, such knowledge must either have been previously developed or else be determined “on the fly”. When a major portion of the incoming information is human source based, as is common in police intelligence, this makes the job of the analyst more difficult as our example has hopefully illustrated. Overall, the effort of providing analytical support to operations in the form of actionable intelligence is one that is fast moving, requires the ability to make rapid accurate assessments with limited information or certainty and which has a direct impact upon the conduct of the operation. Analytical support at this level is a difficult business, not least of all because the degree of detachment available in more traditional analysis is missing while the requirement for judgment calls is often immediate although the impact is sometimes less obvious. This degree of immediacy and personal involvement in conducting actionable analysis makes it both enticing and ominous. Synthesis of police intelligence analysis functions Before moving on to examine the type of analysis that may be best suited for police intelligence in a counterinsurgency, it will be helpful to take a moment to review the discussion of police intelligence analysis to this point. Strategic analysis appears to be most useful as a way in which the institutional knowledge, placement and access of the police may be exploited, to use the non-pejorative term of art, in forming a broad understanding of the origins, nature and structure of an insurgency as well as a method of examining various potential options for resolving the underlying issues. Operational and tactical analysis, with its unifying emphasis on provision of timely and directly relevant actionable intelligence, is more within the comfort zone of most police intelligence organizations and of most police analysts themselves. This type of analysis is difficult and fraught with pitfalls not normally encountered in such frequency and variety in analysis such as is practiced in a national security role but its support is essential to the success of operational police elements which require context and interpretation in order to be maximally effective. In short, knowledge products (strategic analysis) may produce understanding but intelligence products, at least in a policing context, are meant to produce action.42 This

emphasis on action, on doing something as a direct result of analysis, is perhaps the primary ethos of police intelligence worldwide. It requires analytical support which is itself sufficiently embedded in the organization in such ways as to serve as the link between the various components. In this way police intelligence analysis serves as a catalyst for effective police action. The action element of the police should not operate in a vacuum nor as a group of unrelated parts which lack coordination of effort. This is particularly true of police intelligence in counterinsurgency. Here the organizational comfort zone of actionable intelligence must be balanced by the need to understand basic truths regarding the insurgency. Unless both areas are adequately addressed, police intelligence analysts and their interlocutors run the very real risk of winning the battles and losing the war. Correct focus for police intelligence requires more than simple information on where the bad guys might be hiding. If this work’s primary contention is correct, that police intelligence is uniquely suited to discover, penetrate and dismantle the covert networks of insurgency, then it would seem logical that police intelligence analysis would likewise take a network centric approach. David Kilcullen, a noted scholar of counterinsurgency, has pointed out that an insurgency is a system.43 That is to say, it has a form, follows processes and creates an outcome. And a system is in an essential way, a network. This fact, the networked structure of insurgent organization, lends itself to the advantageous use of network centric analysis.44 This type of analysis differs from more traditional analysis not in the techniques used but in the level of involvement and input of various concerned parties. While there is an increasing awareness of the fact that, at least on the operational/tactical level, analysis does not adhere to the traditional model of the intelligence cycle, the effort is nonetheless often one of cause and effect. Information is gathered, collated, analyzed and reported to a consumer who uses that intelligence to direct operations or otherwise design an approach to fulfilling their role in the counterinsurgency effort. Ordinarily, analysis is a relatively compartmentalized effort, conducted by a trained professional who uses the input and feedback provided by collections assets to create a mental picture of the problem as well as to ultimately devise a way of communicating to the consumer what the analyst believes the consumer wants/needs to know about the problem.45 Network centric analysis approaches the complex target set as a collaborative effort to pool all available knowledge regarding the target while increasing interaction and dialogue among the involved parties. In short, it creates a network to attack the network. This approach provides an opportunity to combine the interests of various network targeting entities and achieve an effect greater than that available to them as separate efforts. The idea is to increase the interaction of analysts, collectors, actors and consumers in order to permit better questions to be asked, more informed answers to be given and the knowledge bases of all involved parties to be utilized to better inform the process of understanding the target and operating in accordance with that understanding.46

This synthesis of a wide group of interested parties appears well suited for police intelligence analysis in support of counterinsurgency efforts as many of the contributors to this process, the analytical network so to speak, are all elements of the same organization. Of course, this does not guarantee that information will be pooled or shared cooperatively. It is common, in this arena, to encounter resistance to information sharing.47 Knowledge in this setting is indeed power and can be used for a variety of purposes beside the ostensible one of providing information to a consumer. Of particular value is knowledge that is secret and which, by its nature, has a limited number of owners. Analysts tend to overvalue secret information although this tendency to weigh more heavily those items of information which are classified is by no means limited to analysts.48 There are also issues of organizational culture which often trump mutual interest.49 Additionally, in some cases, sections do not share information for fear of losing ground in the competition for funding and other support. Finally, there is a well-founded fear that too much openness may result in the exposure of collections assets and capabilities which the organization wishes to remain concealed.50 A police intelligence entity may reasonably adopt a policy of greater openness to its consumers as they are, after all, part of the same organization. Indeed, given the greater emphasis placed upon actionable intelligence support in policing, a sense of unity through shared effort is to be expected. Proper management will allow the more ordinary concerns for protection of sources and methods to be alleviated and may also adequately address the hoarding of information. As all this is done “in house”, there is a more direct management chain to create compliance as well as to work out any issues which occur. The sense of common purpose which is normal in policing would also assist in overcoming reluctance to work in a more open and non-traditional way with other elements which are part of the same organization. In short, a police intelligence section would seem best suited to enact a network centric approach to analysis in a counterinsurgency as, at least initially, much of the effort can remain within the organizational structure. In considering how such an effort might be useful one may refer back to the earlier example of actionable intelligence analysis. In this case, had the collectors, commanders and analyst been working collaboratively rather than in a coordinated but compartmentalized fashion, the rather important information regarding the second source’s connections might have been revealed prior to his tasking. This would have been likely to have affected the outcome of the operation as the shift in focus from several potential targets to a single vehicle was based largely upon his information and the decision forced by the immediacy of the situation. Knowing from the handler’s presence and input that the source might have personal reasons for directing focus onto that specific vehicle would have allowed all involved to better weigh the feasibility of a raid which netted everyone at the wedding as there was no reliable method of obtaining better target focus. This is a small example in a fictional case but one which hopefully illustrates the efficiency achieved by this type of collaborative

analysis even in the fast paced setting of operational analysis. While the network centric approach to analysis is currently being used in intelligence support efforts by other entities,51 it has not yet made an appearance in police intelligence efforts in a counterinsurgency. It is to be hoped that this lack of visibility is due to operational security concerns although this does not seem to be the case. The network centric approach is thus presented here as an example of an analytical approach which seems well suited to police intelligence in this type of endeavor. It remains to be seen if this potential will be realized in the field. Lessons learned The use by police intelligence of standard analytic tradecraft and technique is well documented as is the general preference for such analysis as support for operations. While there is a growing acceptance in some police circles of the use of strategic intelligence analysis and this acceptance can lead to a greater role for this effort in counterinsurgency, there are a number of concerns vis a vis the integrity and impartiality of police intelligence analysis when considering some aspects of an insurgency. On the more commonly encountered level of tactical and operational analysis, one finds that while some valid differences may exist between what some might term tactical as opposed to operational analysis, both are focused on providing immediate support to police operational elements conducting actions at least partially informed by this support. Indeed it is important to realize that at all levels, aside from collections, analysis is meant to inform actions taken by others rather than to direct them. It is in this regard that the approach of network centric analysis shows the greatest potential improvement for police analytical efforts as the inclusion of all concerned parties makes the proper use of the intelligence generated much more likely. The analytic efforts of police intelligence, while perhaps not as centrally cited as in other intelligence processes, still remains a vital part of the overall effort to identify the members of an insurgency, track their linkages and connections and create opportunities for other elements to remove them from play. Without proper analytical support, the police would not know what they know and would fail to act effectively. Accurate, timely analysis is thus essential to good police counterinsurgency operations.

____________________ 1 Rosenau, William. Low Cost Trigger Pullers. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2008 pp 3-8 and Clark, Robert M. Intelligence

Analysis: A Target Centric Approach. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2010 p 94. 2 McDowell, Don. Strategic Intelligence: A Handbook for Practitioners, Managers and Users. Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press, 2009 pp 11-12, Valk, Gilliam de. Dutch Intelligence: Toward A Qualitative Framework For Analysis. Rotterdam: BJu Legal Publishers, 2005 p 8 and US Department of Justice. Intelligence Led Policing. The New Intelligence Architecture. Washington DC: Bureau of Justice Assistance, 2005 p 3, 7. 3 Richards, Julian. The Art and Science of Intelligence Analysis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010 p 24 and Ratcliffe, Jerry Integrated Intelligence and Crime Analysis. Washington DC: Police Foundation, 2007 p 10. 4 Clark, Robert M. Intelligence Analysis pp 5-6, 8-9. 5 Shulsky, Abram N. Silent Warfare: Understanding the world of intelligence. New York: Brassey’s, 1993 p 180. 6 Richards, Julian. The Art and Science of Intelligence Analysis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010 p 23 and Ratcliffe, Jerry. Intelligence Led Policing. Portland, OR: Willan Publishing, 2008 p 100, 143. 7 See US Department of Justice. Intelligence Led Policing pp 19-20 for official reccomendations on handling these issues. 8 Ibid p 3. 9 Richards, Julian. The Art and Science of Intelligence Analysis pp 78-81. 10 McDowell, Don. Strategic Intelligence pp 171-173, 179 and Ratcliffe, Jerry. Intelligence - Led Policing p 137. 11 Clark, Robert M. Intelligence Analysis p51 and Richards, Julian. The Art and Science of Intelligence Analysis p 23. 12 Richards, Julian. The Art and Science of Intelligence Analysis p 157. 13 Clark, David. The Vital Role of Intelligence in Counterinsurgency. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2006 p 2 and Organizing Intelligence for Counterinsurgency. Teamey, Kyle and Sweet, Jonathan. s.l: Military Review, 2006 p 24. 14 US Department of Justice. Intelligence Led Policing P9 and Ratcliffe, Jerry. Intelligence - Led Policing pp 182-183. 15 McDowell, Don. Strategic Intelligence pp 13-15. 16 Ratcliffe, Jerry. Integrated Intelligence and Crime Analysis pp 10-13. 17 Clark, Robert M. Intelligence Analysis p 51. 18 McDowell, Don. Strategic Intelligence p 17. 19 See Comber, Leon. Malaya’s Secret Police 1945-60. Victoria, AU: Monash University Press, 2008 pp 186-187 for examples of strategic intelligence efforts by Special Branch during the Emergency. 20 See Heidenrich, John G. The State of Strategic Intelligence. Center for the Study of Intelligence. [Online] June 8, 2007 and in particular the section headed “Who Says Nobody Wants It” for an example of this type of intelligence. [Cited: October 28, 2010.] https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csistudies/studies/vol51no2/the-state-of-strategic-intelligence.html. 21 The demarcation lines between military units are often avoided by security force patrols who are motivated to remain within their unit’s area of responsibility and not stray. If this occurs for an extended period of time, local insurgents may use the “corridors” thus created by lack of patrolling as areas in which to camp, store supplies and through which to move. This same tactic is used by criminal organizations in regards to law enforcement jurisdictions in terms of spreading their activities across jurisdictional boundaries in order to conceal the scope and nature of a large, complex enterprise. 22 The author directly observed this phenomenon during his tours in Kosovo, 2000 to 2002. 23 Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence: From secrets to policy. Wahington DC: CQ Press, 2009 pp 77-78. 24 See Larson, Eric V. (et al.). Understanding Commanders’ Information Needs for Influence Operations. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2009 for an examination of strategic intelligence production. 25 Comber, Leon. Malaya’s Secret Police 1945-60 p 80. 26 Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence: From secrets to policy. Wahington DC: CQ Press, 2009 pp 61-62, Ratcliffe, Jerry. Intelligence Led Policing p 227 and McDowell, Don. Strategic Intelligence pp 6-7. 27 Geraghty, Tony. The Irish War. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998 pp 43-52 and Dillon, Martin.

The Dirty War. New York, NY: Routledge, 1990 pp 23-25. 28 Byman, Daniel. Going to war with the allies you have. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2005 pp 17-22. 29 Ibid pp 23, 27-28 for host national security force motivations for duplicity. 30 See Heuer, Richards J. Psychology of Intelligence Analysis. Washington DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 1999 for an in depth look at the types of errors to which analysts fall prey. Also Richards, Julian. The Art and Science of Intelligence Analysis pp 148-167 for discussion and examples of practical analytical training. 31 McDowell, Don. Strategic Intelligence pp 45-47. 32 Ibid pp 7, 11. 33 Richards, Julian. The Art and Science of Intelligence Analysis pp 163-164. 34 Ibid pp 157. 35 Clark, Robert M. Intelligence Analysis p 11 and What’s wrong with the Intelligence Cycle. Hulnick, Arthur S. 6, London, UK: Intelligence and National Security, 2006, Vol. 21 p 959. 36 What’s wrong with the Intelligence Cycle. Hulnick, Arthur S pp 959-961. 37 Richards, Julian. The Art and Science of Intelligence Analysis p 157. 38 Clark, Robert M. Intelligence Analysis p 12-13, Richards, Julian. The Art and Science of Intelligence Analysis p 15-16 and What’s wrong with the Intelligence Cycle. Hulnick, Arthur S pp 960-962. 39 Richards, Julian. The Art and Science of Intelligence Analysis p 158. 40 It should be understood that while many, if not all, of the events of this scenario have occurred in the author’s direct experience, the sequence and specifics are entirely fictional and not based upon any actual operation. 41 William G. Boykin, Scott Swanson. US Army. Mil. ‘Operationalizing Intelligence. [Online] May 8, 2008. [Cited: October 15, 2010.] http://www.army.mil/-news/2008/05/08/9045-operationalizing-intelligence/. 42 Ratcliffe, Jerry. Intelligence - led Policing p 98. 43 Kilcullen, David. Counterinsurgency. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010 pp 198 -202. 44 Clark, Robert M. Intelligence Analysis p 19-21. 45 Shulsky, Abram N. Silent Warfare: Understanding the world of intelligence p 8. 46 Clark, Robert M. Intelligence Analysis p 13-16. 47 Ibid pp 2-3. 48 Ibid p 134. 49 Ratcliffe, Jerry. Integrated Intelligence and Crime Analysis pp 28-29. 50 Lowenthal, Mark M. Intelligence: From secrets to policy pp 75-76. 51 See United States Department of Defense. Joint and National Intelligence Support to Military Operations. Washington DC: Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2004 for an example of the endorsement of networked intelligence processing by the US DOD.

Pseudo Operations Define your terms VOLTAIRE’S admonition to first define one’s terms prior to engaging in a discussion is particularly well taken if that conversation involves the topic of “pseudo operations” or pseudo ops. Once famously termed counter gangs the use of former insurgents combined with current security forces as direct action and intelligence agents inside insurgent operational and safe areas has had many names. Indeed, as will be seen shortly, the strategy is used by conventional law enforcement, often without a nomenclature differentiation from other network penetration activities. What has remained constant has been the concept itself.1 This concept is easily comprehended but difficult to execute. Essentially, the “pseudo ops” mission involves recruiting captured or surrendered insurgents to work for the security forces.2 Rather than being used merely as a source of debriefing/interrogation intelligence or as human intelligence sources within a network, pseudo ops goes a dramatic step beyond such traditional intelligence activities and employs the recruited former insurgents as a force which infiltrates insurgent safe havens and operational areas by looking, acting and being indistinguishable from the insurgents. This is obviously a much easier task to accomplish when the majority of the members of a pseudo ops element are, in fact, former insurgents. The familiarity with standard procedures, personalities, local customs and organizational quirks cannot be assimilated by an outsider. It takes a member of a group, one with ingrained shared understandings, outlooks and expectations, to be quickly recognized as a fellow member by others in the same group. This dynamic applies no matter what social situation is involved. The consequences, however, of failing to properly imitate the habits and mores of one’s local social set are considerably less than those involved in failure to do so with a group of armed and violent extremists. This makes the penetration of insurgent networks by groups of persons, as opposed to individuals, capable of direct action almost impossible unless a large portion of the unit is comprised of former insurgents. This then is the pseudo ops contribution. It can be said to be a strategy which evolved from a tactic, that of following a recently captured insurgent to his base area, usually in disguise, in order to interdict his comrades unawares. Besides the obvious intelligence benefits to be gained from debriefs and perhaps re-insertion of a single former insurgent as a human source, the use of entire small units of former insurgents led by security forces commanders, for intelligence gathering, direct action and psychological operations, is the distinguishing feature of “pseudo operations”. Theory and Practice

While it has been argued that pseudo ops have existed in various forms for most of warfare, the modern emphasis on the use of converted former insurgents as the main element in small units which then penetrate hostile operational areas through deliberate presentation of themselves as active insurgents loyal to the cause, is a unique twist. Historically the adoption of disguise in order to survey the enemy’s dispositions, examine his secure areas and otherwise ferret out useful information, was a task undertaken by individuals or very small groups which had no other purpose or tie in to larger strategic efforts. It was thus more a matter of HUMINT collection rather than pseudo ops specifically and fell, broadly, under the Geneva Conventions definition of ruses of war.3 It is both the inclusion and reliance upon former foes for authenticity and the inclusion of the effort in a larger strategic framework which distinguishes pseudo ops from other ad hoc exploitations of captured combatants.4 The history of pseudo ops includes a number of striking successes. These include the efforts against the Mau Mau in Kenya, one of the seminal pseudo ops initiatives in modern times, the long campaign in Malaysia and, prior to both, the campaign in the Philippines against the Huk. Other campaigns exist where the employment of pseudo ops units was highly successful in the field but where the counterinsurgency forces were ultimately defeated. The best example of this kind is that of the Selous Scouts in the Rhodesia before it was renamed Zimbabwe. The Selous Scouts, named after Frederick Selous, a British explorer of the region that later formed Rhodesia, were formed as an action arm for the British South African Police. Despite the name, the BSAP were the primary law enforcement entity involved in counterinsurgency for the government of Rhodesia. To this day, the Selous Scouts are generally regarded as a military scout/tracking unit because of the success of the cover designed for the unit upon its inception. The truth is, however, that they were conceived, designed and initially formed under the authority of Special Branch, a fact that later led to friction with military commanders. The Selous Scouts were formed from captured and “turned” terrorists, augmented by loyal Rhodesian police or military personnel. They operated in small units, mimicking the look and actions of the “terrs”. This, despite the presence of white personnel, permitted the Scouts to infiltrate insurgent strongholds, travel through their safe areas and gather intelligence based upon direct observation and interaction. They also performed direct action missions such as ambushes and other operations designed to kill/capture insurgent leaders. As the war progressed, they frequently provided advanced reconnaissance for the benefit of more conventionally organized counterinsurgency forces. The white team members were alternatively disguised as prisoners or left as security outside villages and meetings, lightly disguised with camouflaging cream. Despite the obvious dangers of trusting former insurgents, now armed and back in familiar territory, there were few incidents of turned insurgents reverting to former loyalties. Instead, they displayed a fierce loyalty to their new comrades, forming the backbone of one of the most successful

counterinsurgency pseudo operations, a standard by which other similar efforts are frequently judged.5 It is interesting to note that while almost every example of the employment of pseudo ops was met with success, and, even in cases where the ultimate campaign failed, the units themselves still were highly regarded and feared by the insurgents, there has been very little use of this tactic by American forces aside from the earliest example in the Philippines. There, during the Huk rebellion of the 1940’s and 1950’s, the Philippine government, under the sponsorship and direct involvement of US advisors, formed Force X, a group of police designed to look, act and pass for guerrillas. Captured Huk members provided training and later participation in this effort. The unit performed deep penetration missions in Huk dominated areas, conducting intelligence gathering and direct action missions. They were frequently successful to the extent that the concept was later expanded. When America became involved in Vietnam, despite considerable involvement with police forces on a local level, no such pseudo operations unit was ever formed. The American forces did make use of “Kit Carson” scouts, former Viet Cong who had surrendered and were used by various units to assist in hunting down their former comrades. These were individuals or small groups assigned to a larger unit however and did not operate in a pseudo ops fashion but rather as knowledgeable advisors and scouts. One cannot help but wonder if an ingrained organizational culture which sees all armed conflict as soluble by the suitable application of sufficient kinetic activity is responsible for the failure to explore or employ a tactic with a history of success in counterinsurgency which exceeds any other. Be that as it may, the fact remains that pseudo operations have shown themselves to be an extremely effective means of countering an insurgent effort.6 This record has been achieved through means that, like guerrilla warfare itself, are deceptively simple. Captured insurgents are subjected to various methods of treatment designed to not only extract immediately actionable intelligence but also to make them susceptible to recruitment.7 These vary from the use of brutality by the French (and to a lesser extent the British in some cases), to the careful building of a relationship of mutual trust based upon human decency and respect. Ironically this last approach, which proved most successful of all, was originated and applied in campaigns which fought to uphold a system of apartheid.8 Nonetheless, the methods used are instructive and reminiscent of those which had proven successful in human source recruiting in other campaigns.9 Once recruited, by whatever system in place, “turned” insurgents were placed into units composed of primarily former insurgents commanded by local security forces. These commanders in the field might be military or police but almost all pseudo operations campaigns were initiated and run by police intelligence or national security intelligence agencies.10 The emphasis in pseudo ops was almost always on the collection of intelligence, its dissemination to an action element as swiftly as possible and the subsequent conduct of a direct action missions, aided or observed and assisted by the pseudo ops team which provided the initial intelligence.

Direct action missions such as the assassination or capture of what in modern parlance are high value targets, i.e. key insurgent leaders or supporters, were less frequent as they increased the risk of exposure of the effort as well as the branding of the pseudo ops effort as “death squads”. The priority was thus most often intelligence collection and the capture of insurgents rather than the increase in a body count.11 The guiding ethos of law enforcement, with its own intrinsic emphasis on the capture of suspects whenever possible, as well as that of any intelligence entity where live persons are potential source of information, may also be responsible for the stress on collection and apprehension rather than direct action type missions. Indeed, as the Selous Scouts evolved from a purely pseudo ops role into a more traditional kinetic military one, they conducted, in coordination with other Rhodesian security forces, a highly successful raid which in turn, created a firestorm of controversy and set back the overall campaign effort considerably.12 That specific action would have been impossible, and likely inconceivable, for the original unit. Pseudo ops units, deployed into the areas where they had formerly operated, made contact with current insurgent forces and presented themselves as loyal guerrillas, being accepted due to their retention of the passwords, operating procedures and personalities of the insurgents in ways impossible for non-insurgents to imitate. Moving among the insurgents, the pseudo ops teams would gather intelligence, learn of future intentions, cache locations, troop and supply movements and the activities of insurgent commanders. They would occasionally participate in psychological operations designed to work on the internal division which frequently exist within a large guerrilla movement, seeking to act in ways which discredited the insurgents of one faction or another while remaining within the bounds of permissible activity.13 This last concern is one shared by law enforcement intelligence activities in more normal criminal investigation as will be discussed momentarily. The ability of the pseudo ops units to move freely among the insurgents, or at least with minimal suspicion, led to the collection of timely, accurate, and above all, actionable intelligence. This, in turn, precipitated action by police or military elements who now knew, with the degree of precision required, who was an insurgent and where they might be found and engaged. This is the essence of counterinsurgency intelligence, making the insurgents time and place predictable and identifiable. The pseudo operations strategy, with the intimate placement and access of its constituent elements, was spectacularly successful in doing exactly this in a wide variety of theaters and cultural conditions. Issues in Execution Despite the litany of operational success, pseudo operations offer some difficulties and opportunities for failure. Of most obvious concern is the fact that one is re-arming a

previously hostile person, one who as little as twenty four hours ago had been willing to kill the forces for whom he now allegedly works. This concern is naturally felt in the greatest degree by those whose duty entails accompanying the unit and directing its actions. The NCOs and officers in command of pseudo ops teams, drawn as they are from various military or police counterinsurgency formations, are always mindful of the dangers of a former insurgent returning to his first loyalty. The record, however, shows that this is a rare occurrence, something more easily explained by psychology than any other discipline. Experience suggests that a combination of personality, the need to belong to an organization and the internalization of a requirement of justify one’s current position by a complete reversal and opposition to that formerly held, are the main factors preventing recidivism.14 The truism that there is no stronger believer than a recent convert seems to be particularly apt in the case of pseudo ops. An equally vexing tactical concern is that pseudo ops units are, purposefully, indistinguishable from insurgent forces. The obvious issue is that such pseudo ops units will be engaged by other security forces unaware of their actual loyalty and unable to determine this through observation. The extremely high risk of engagement by friendly forces also operational in the area means that any pseudo operations strategy must incorporate means of command and control which alleviate this concern. This has been achieved historically through several means. The first is through the use of pseudo ops units only in denied areas where friendly forces do not or cannot operate. This tactic, while useful in the early period of modern insurgencies, is less and less apt as the heavy use of aircraft in counterinsurgency means that a unit may be exposed to friendly fire even in an insurgent held area.15 The second, and more feasible option, is to limit regular operations in a designated area within which the pseudo ops unit will be deployed. Regular security and police elements are restricted to presence patrols along main routes, activities within a designated distance from bases and other specific actions which permit them to remain active and be seen as active without running the risk of a chance encounter with the pseudo ops unit. This tactic works fairly well but, as with all combat oriented activities, it does not work at all times. 16 Despite the occasional mishap however, this option, the cessation of other than specific limited activity by regular forces in the operational area, has had the most success in preventing blue on blue incidents. The final option (no doubt there are more which time and creativity in command will reveal) is the use of specialized communications equipment and constant contact with an operational control to “deconflict” the area of operations. In theory this means the pseudo ops unit, like a special forces team, would establish and maintain contact with a joint command operations center where its locations, status and actions were tracked. The operations center would also be controlling the actions of all other friendly elements in the area thus ensuring that other elements which are likely to spot or which do spot the pseudo ops unit are warned

off engagement. In practice, this method, while suitable for special forces units, is somewhat unwieldy for pseudo ops. There is simply too much room for a ground or air element to discover and engage the pseudo ops unit understanding rules of engagement where immediate response is permitted without reference to higher authority in cases where the loss of a target of opportunity is high. Additionally, the risk of a friendly element straying, for whatever reason, into the operational area and engaging the pseudo ops unit is one that cannot be factored into deployment decisions. Any possibility beyond zero is one a commander would be required to weigh against unknown potentials making it a difficult problem to resolve. Finally, the pseudo ops unit will, by the nature of its mission, frequently encounter and be collocated with genuine insurgent units. During those times it is possible for the insurgent unit to act in such a manner as to bring a response from friendly forces, a response which impacts not only the insurgent element but also the pseudo ops unit with them. The risk here of putting converted insurgents in a position where they are now forced to either engage with security forces and perhaps elect to return to the fold of the insurgency or else act in a way which raises suspicion about their true loyalty or commitment is high. Avoiding such a situation altogether is a better strategy but one which is likely to be hard to execute if friendly forces continue to operate as normal in the same area as the pseudo ops unit. The issues of recidivism and friendly fire are not the only or, beyond the tactical level, the most important concern in the use of pseudo operations. Of far greater concern is the possibility for the actions of a team, actions required for reasons of survival or as part of the disguise, to be discovered by parties without complete knowledge and presented, deliberately or in all innocence, as actions inconsistent with the stated aims and values of the counterinsurgents. A good example, if perhaps benign, is the need for any pseudo ops unit to practice active propaganda as they travel through an operational area. Real insurgents would do so and in order to be accepted as real, the pseudo ops unit must act as would a real insurgent unit. Yet, the provision by anyone, let alone pro-governmental forces, of anti-governmental propaganda is generally a criminal act and certainly one which would be proscribed for other security force members. Likewise, the tacit support offered to other insurgent formations by pseudo ops units would be illegal for citizens or security forces. The most serious concern in the area of mischaracterization of pseudo ops activities is for direct actions by pseudo ops units to be displayed as unlawful and extrajudicial killings. A skilled insurgent command, knowing of the use of pseudo ops against them, will begin immediately to portray all such efforts as death squads, an approach which resonates well within the capitols and populations of those nations most likely to be supporting or considering support for the counterinsurgency. In short, the very nature of pseudo operations requires its members to frequently behave in ways that are prima facie illegal and that may easily be portrayed as other than what they are.17 This concern is one very familiar to law enforcement. Individual officers working

undercover and attempting to portray themselves as criminals in order to penetrate a given criminal network, are often placed in situations where minor criminal activity is required in order to maintain authenticity and acceptance of the cover. The lines as to what is acceptable and what is not are frequently blurred and while individual officer discretion is to be encouraged, the command element of any such operation is well advised to have presented clear guidelines and maintain checks for compliance in order to not have the entire operation blow up in their faces. In counterinsurgency work, the explosion may, of course, be both literal and figurative. It is perhaps no surprise to learn that the intelligence branch of the police were most often the founding element and one of the primary controlling elements in most pseudo operations.18 The need to balance acceptable actions taken to maintain a cover while not crossing a line which jeopardizes the goal, is one with which investigators and intelligence operators are intimately familiar. This is much less so for military intelligence which has a focus on less murky waters. Any pseudo operations plan must, of necessity, give careful consideration to what privilege will be extended to members when acting under color of authority. This must be clearly articulated in training and practice and be available to counter the inevitable charges from the discomfited insurgents. The issue of deconfliction, of avoiding a blue on blue situation, is also something with which the process of law enforcement undercover work is familiar. Sadly, it is still one of the major threats to an undercover officer’s safety and while standard police procedures may inform a pseudo ops effort to avoid such cases, they will require adaptation to the exigencies of the modern battlefield in order to be effective. The last concern, that the actions of pseudo ops units may be portrayed or indeed may actually be, other than in line with the expressed goals and ideals of the security forces, is most easily alleviated by an emphasis on intelligence collection rather than direct action. Units which engage in tacit support for the insurgency by, for example, attending or participating in a propaganda session, are less likely to raise the eyebrows of an observer of the campaign than are those who target and then act against the insurgents directly. In cases where a particular target is too valuable to risk losing, direct action should be permitted but it should be a rare alternative to providing the intelligence to a uniformed direct action element which then conducts a mission against the target. The scope of potential perceptions of inappropriate activity is greatly lessened when the pseudo operations strategy is one of intelligence collection and psychological operations over direct action.19 Police Pseudo Operations All of the discussion regarding pseudo operations thus far has centered upon the largely military or intelligence role in a counterinsurgency. While it may be easy to dismiss the historical presence of police intelligence in the formation and command of most of these

efforts as simply situational, the truth is that such activities, as was alluded to earlier, are a natural outgrowth of common law enforcement practice. The infiltration of a criminal network by a single individual is more properly regarded as HUMINT activity whether the target organization is criminal, insurgent or some combination of the two. Police intelligence, however, also infiltrates criminal organizations in groups, usually including “turned” or former criminals or associates of the group. A premier example would be the long running effort by the US Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms to penetrate the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club. The effort required the services of several former criminals for veracity as well as the presence with them, directing the infiltration, of actual ATF agents. Eventually, through an exemplary combination of personal courage and tradecraft, the ATF had the first agent ever in history to be a fully “patched” member of this notoriously hard to penetrate organization. This success had never been achieved prior to the ATF operation. In its use of turned criminals combined with law enforcement agents, its use of ruse and posturing to simulate a criminal career and its ultimate penetration of the target in order to permit other more conventional elements to dismantle it, the ATF effort was a classic pseudo op in all but name.20 The point to be noted is that the required skill set of forethought, planning, use of turned but questionable actors and the degree to which activity may be permitted in pursuit of veracity are all elements with which law enforcement intelligence is well acquainted. I do not feel that the high incident of Special Branch or other police involvement in the formation of so many successful pseudo operations was an accidental result of organizational weakness in military intelligence nor of specific local circumstances. Rather, the use of pseudo ops units is a natural one for a given police investigator wishing to penetrate and dismantle certain types of continuing criminal enterprise. Insurgent networks, as previously discussed, are formed and staffed in a manner remarkably similar to these criminal organizations. The use of a police intelligence driven pseudo operations effort against insurgent networks is, historically, likely to result in considerable success with minimal risks of unintended consequence.21 While the concept of pseudo operations is rarely one that is considered when discussing the role of police and police intelligence in counterinsurgency, this is a natural extension of the police intelligence skill set and one which has been shown to achieve great results when under police control.

____________________ 1 Wheeler, Seth. Pseudo-Operations to Neutralize Extremist Networks, Insurgents, and Terrorists. Small Wars Journal.

[Online] April 18, 2010. [Cited: June 11, 2011 http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/pseudo-operations-to-neutralizeextremist-networks-insurgents-and-terrorists. 2 Gatchel, Theodore L. Pseudo Operations—A Double-Edged Sword of Counterinsurgency. [book auth.] Jeffery H. Norwitz. Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency. Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2008 p 62. 3 Wheeler, Seth. Pseudo-Operations to Neutralize Extremist Networks, Insurgents, and Terrorists. Small Wars Journal and Gatchel, Theodore L. Pseudo Operations—A Double-Edged Sword of Counterinsurgency. [book auth.] Jeffery H. Norwitz. Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency p 62. 4 Cline, Lawrence E. Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Lessons from Other Countries. Carlisle, PA: US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, 2005. 1584871997 p 1. 5 Readers wishing more detail on the Selous Scouts are encouraged to read Ron Reid-Daly’s Pamwe Chete. Weltevreden Park, SA: Covos-Day Books, 2001. Reid-Daly formed and commanded the Selous Scouts. 6 Cline, Lawrence E. Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Lessons From Other Countries and Wheeler, Seth. Pseudo-Operations to Neutralize Extremist Networks, Insurgents, and Terrorists. 7 See Kitson, Frank. Gangs and Counter Gangs. London, UK: Barrie and Rockliff, 1960. B003Y5IZ3Q and Reid-Daly, Ron. Pamwe Chete. Weltevreden Park, SA: Covos-Day Books, 2001. 191987433X, for two examples of recruitment, organization and use, by the originators in their respective campaigns, of pseudo operations units. 8 Gatchel, Theodore L. Pseudo Operations - A Double-Edged Sword of Counterinsurgency. [book auth.] Jeffery H. Norwitz. Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency pp 64-65. 9 Previous mention has been made of Orrin DeForest’s Slow Burn: The Rise and Bitter Fall of American Intelligence in Viet Nam Simon and Shuster New York, NY, as an excellent example of building rapport and “turning” captured insurgents. It is highly recommended for those seeking insight into this dynamic. 10 Cline, Lawrence E. Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Lessons From Other Countries p 17. 11 Gatchel, Theodore L. Pseudo Operations—A Double-Edged Sword of Counterinsurgency. [book auth.] Jeffery H. Norwitz. Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency pp 66-68. See also Holt, Ron. The Use of Pseudo-Operations in the AFPAK Theater. Small Wars Journal. [Online] September 15, 2010. [Cited: June 16, 2011.] http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-use-of-pseudo-operations-in-the-afpak-theater. 12 For detailed personal accounts of these campaigns see Baxter, Peter. Selous Scouts: Rhodesian Counter-Insurgency Specialists. Solihul, UK: Helion and Company, 2011. 1907677380 and Croukamp, Dennis. The Bush War In Rhodesia: The Extrodinary Combat Memoir of a Rhodesian Reconnaissance Specialist. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 2007. 1581606141. For a brief description of the specific event see Cline, Lawrence E. Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Lessons From Other Countries p 12. 13 Cline, Lawrence E. Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Lessons From Other Countries p 20. 14 Cline, Lawrence E. Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Lessons From Other Countries pp 2-3. 15 The author has personal experience of being assessed as possible insurgent forces by friendly aircraft while operating with Afghan forces. While not a pseudo op, the operation in question was conducted in “plain clothes”, i.e. local dress to include the author. In the particular case, the coalition aircraft responded to visual signals as well as confirmation from a tactical operations center, an event the author and his team greeted with considerable relief. 16 Gatchel, Theodore L. Pseudo Operations—A Double-Edged Sword of Counterinsurgency. Norwitz, Jeffery H. Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency p 66. 17 Gatchel, Theodore L. Pseudo Operations - A Double-Edged Sword of Counterinsurgency. Norwitz, Jeffery H. Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency pp 69-70. 18 Cline, Lawrence E. Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Lessons From Other Countries p 17. 19 Ibid p 15. 20 See Dobyns, Jay. No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels. New York, NY:

Broadway, 2010. for a very personal account of the operation by one of the undercover officers. 21 Gatchel, Theodore L. Pseudo Operations—A Double-Edged Sword of Counterinsurgency. Norwitz, Jeffery H. Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency p 70.

The Counterterror Conundrum Current affairs THE examination of police intelligence thus far has focused upon the uses and capabilities of such intelligence in counterinsurgency. This is partially due to the desire to examine and articulate the unique combinations of capacity, access and effectiveness which exists in potential in host national police intelligence entities and to tie this particular skill set in with its subsequent enabling of police intelligence to identify, penetrate and dismantle the network or infrastructure which is the central nervous system of any given insurgency. This focus has then, of necessity, considered only what we have been pleased to call counterinsurgency. It will be starkly evident to any student of current affairs however, that the nature and style of insurgency has evolved in the past decade and assumed a degree and aspect not seen heretofore. In consequence, I would be remiss if I did not address the issue of the changing nature of current insurgencies and how they fit into domestic counterterrorism concerns. In this section I will examine the prevailing understanding of counterinsurgency versus counterterrorism, how the evolution of insurgency, and in particular religiously inspired insurgency, has altered the common understanding and finally, attempt through the example of the present UK efforts in regards counterterrorism to illustrate the uses of police intelligence in an effort which I believe to be modern counterinsurgency in all but name. What’s in a name? There has been a considerable amount of study, thought and presentation in the West on the nature and best practices in counterinsurgency. Insurgency is generally understood to be a military/political event wherein one faction, hidden among the population, seeks to overthrow the government of the day through violence, subversion and political means.1 As such, the majority of liberal democratic police intelligence experience in counterinsurgency in the last fifty years has been limited to the provision of assistance to foreign governments beset by an insurgency. While exceptions might be made for the case of the UK in Northern Ireland, the former government of Rhodesia and the various Palestinian uprisings in both Israel and the Occupied Territories, the majority of counterinsurgency campaigns have featured western assistance to the struggling government of a developing nation seeking to quell an insurgency which threatens its existence. The classic cases of Vietnam, Malaysia, Algeria, Peru and Columbia are examples of what is generally understood to be the realm of counterinsurgency as practiced and experienced by first world powers. Indeed, in the three exceptions mentioned above, one common feature of those campaigns is the charge, from both opponents of the governing régime as well as outside observers, of a sort of “colonial” mindset in the approach of the security services to dealing

with insurgent activities.2 A further common feature is the lack of full scale military involvement including naval and aerial bombardment, the sustained engagement of significant numbers of troops on both sides and the elevation of the conflict from a series of small scale terrorist incidents into more militarily oriented confrontations. This last is particularly telling as will be seen shortly. Kilcullen, among others, has stated that it is important to recognize that terrorism is a tactic which is almost ubiquitously encountered during an insurgency but that it is, for all that, still a tactic and not the sine qua non of the conflict itself.3 Given that recognition, it will instructive to more closely examine the present threat vectors of insurgency to determine if there is a mesh between the “merely” counterterror use of police intelligence and that of counterinsurgency. Traditionally, in western liberal democracies, terrorism has been seen as a criminal offense regardless of its perpetrators often rather grandiose vision of themselves and their organization. Indeed, when any of the traditional terror organizations such as Red Army Faction, Irish Republican Army or Weather Underground have conducted operations in the service of a “war” or revolution, the perpetrators themselves have been, when apprehended, treated as criminals and subjected to the rigors of the criminal justice system. On those occasions where military forces have treated such terrorists as if they were in fact an opposing military and have subsequently fired from ambush without warning and with full intent to kill, as the SAS are alleged to have done on several occasions in Northern Ireland4, the result has been an outcry of protest at the failure to utilize the rule of law and criminal justice procedures and methods. The obvious disingenuous nature of such protest on the part of the apologists for these organizations in espousing a “war” on one hand and then decrying the treatment of their “soldiers” as opposing forces is not germane to the discussion except to emphasize the point that in liberal democracies, a mindset has developed whereby mass casualty events or other acts of war which occur domestically are regarded as terrorism which should be dealt with through the legal system whilst the same events and levels of violence abroad are insurgency and require military force for their suppression. To be sure, there are usually greater levels of violence and military hardware involved in what are traditionally considered counterinsurgencies and the threat to the existence of the state is considerable. In fact, it is this final point rather than a consideration of tactics or levels of force which seems most likely to provide a realistic demarcation between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism. That is to say, only when the level of threat presented by armed opponents of the state reaches levels sufficient enough to threaten the fabric of or continued existence of that state does one graduate from terrorism to insurgency.5 Thus the intifada, the Troubles and similar “liberation” efforts which have occurred within liberal democracies, having been largely terror campaigns rather than insurgencies as such, and have never truly threatened the existence of the state containing them. One may reasonably conclude then, that counterterrorism is an internal effort to thwart armed

opposition to state policy or existence before it can become powerful enough to present a viable threat.6 Counterinsurgency occurs when such an effort has failed and the state is itself imperiled. The key point of this understanding is that in both cases, one is addressing the same issues, the primary difference is one of scale. Modern terrorism: insular, inspired and invisible If this assertion is correct, that the primary difference in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency in the present situation is primarily one of scale rather than type, then it should follow that an examination of the largest terror threat vectors should be identical to or at least closely resemble those of an insurgent organization. Setting aside for the moment the more marginal efforts of deranged individuals such as the Unabomber in the US or the recent atrocity committed in Norway, an examination of the major terror incidents of the past decade reveals that the worst were generally the result of religiously motivated organizations or individuals.7 In the case of the tragic events in Oslo and Utoya in 2011, the perpetrator, Anders Breivik, did express some religious motivations as he was, at least to some extent, motivated to act by an irrational hatred of Islam and a desire to keep Europe “Christian”. This desire led him to deploy a vehicle borne IED in Oslo and to subsequently conduct a small arms attack on a group of children on the island of Utoya. The casualties from this attack (sixty-nine dead, over one hundred wounded) were the largest suffered in Norway since the Second World War. While Breivik’s quasi-religious motivation is unquestioned, his mental illness appears to have been a greater proximate cause of his actions. He may therefore be safely classified as a deranged individual committing a terrorist like atrocity but his lack of greater affiliation removes him from consideration as a potential insurgent/terrorist. The religious orientation mentioned earlier is particularly significant as it leads, as part of adherence to the expressed organizational belief system, to self-segregation.8 In addition to self-segregation, religiously motivated terrorists tend to draw upon members of a largely homogenous ethnic community. This is true of both the Christian Identity groups in the US, Irish Republican terror groups in Northern Ireland and the various Islamic groups within Europe. All draw members and support not only from co-religionists but also from those who share a similar ethnic and cultural background. As these culturally and religiously similar groups withdraw from larger society and turn inwards to discuss grievances both real and imagined, those who desire armed confrontation with the state and its eventual overthrow, move among them and recruit, secure in the knowledge that few of their acquaintances would inform on them due to the bonds of religion and culture.9 Combined with the knowledge that such people are genuinely dangerous and the feeling of marginalization common in such self-

segregated communities, there is little danger to the recruiters and organizers. In this way, both the current primary threat vector of terrorism offenses and those of insurgency are identical. This is not to say other threat vectors for terrorism do not exist, they certainly do. The largest and most imminent threat, however, presently comes from those who espouse a religiously based insurgent inspired use of terrorist activities as a means of furthering their perceived war. Each issue, terrorism and insurgency, deals with a hidden enemy, one invisibly entrenched within a community to which the security services find themselves with little access and which seems largely foreign and with whose values, goals and mores they are unfamiliar. This is as true of the London bobby observing a group of youths outside a mosque or Islamic community centre as it is of a member of the Special Forces deployed to Afghanistan and observing a similar group outside a mosque in Kandahar. An additional point of resemblance between the largest terror and insurgent threats is that both see themselves as being part of a larger war, that is to say, unlike the mostly rhetorical stance of the classic terrorists of the 1970s and 80s, religiously motivated terrorists are identical in many ways to what we would otherwise term insurgents if they were encountered in Peshawar instead of Hampstead. The political and religious orientation is identical, the tactics and command structures the same and the goal, both of individual martyrdom and the overthrow of the perceived enemies of Islam (or in the case of Christian Identity adherents, the enemies of Christendom) and the replacement of the current corrupt rule with one closer to their heart’s desire does not vary from that of organizations which are indisputably insurgent. In point of fact, many of those labeled “terrorist” are members of organizations currently conducting insurgent activities in other parts of the world but whose members and actions are considered terroristic when found in identical situations of intent and motivation in the West.10 The difference is in the lessened freedom to act, the far more capable security services with which they are faced in the West and the more limited numbers of the communities, within which they may hide, recruit and operate. Thus, there appears to be a significant resemblance between terrorism, in its modern religiously inspired guise, and insurgency which stems from the same ostensible source. The expressed goals of the groups, the actions, tactics and techniques and frequently the members are identical.11 The primary difference is one of scale caused by the more stable society, more efficient security services and a much more shallow pool within which to hide. It would seem reasonable to conclude that countering terrorism or insurgency is well within the scope of police intelligence. Indeed, the more nascent nature of terrorist/insurgent infrastructure in a liberal democracy means any successful action against it is greatly increased in value. While an insurgency is in the early, primarily terrorist stage of formation, there is little to target aside from the network. This is precisely the situation which confronts the UK at this time and a short examination of its counterterrorism policy and practice should aptly illustrate the

inclusion of police intelligence in western liberal democratic domestic counterinsurgency. Contest: Pursue, Prevent, Protect, Prepare The latest version of the UK counterterrorism policy is based, at least in its direct counterterrorism aspirations which will involve our area of interest, upon a division of operational concerns into four parts. These are: • Pursue, intended to pre-emptively engage terrorist threats; • Prevent, intended to combat insurgent recruitment efforts; • Protect, which considers means of protection against attack and • Prepare, which is concerned with disaster management in the aftermath of a successful attack.12

Of primary concern to the examination of police intelligence in counterinsurgency is Pursue. As police intelligence is by nature a proactive effort rather than defensive and reactive, this area, which speaks to the heart of insurgent network development and operation, is also the area where police intelligence is most appropriate and where it may be reasonably expected to make the greatest contribution. An examination of this section of CONTEST, should be done with the understanding expressed above, that is, that modern religiously oriented terrorism is actually, in the minds and thus the operational activities of its perpetrators, the early stages of insurgency and may thus be addressed in much the same way and through the same methods which this work has been examining in more “conventional” insurgencies. In so doing, one will discover not only the utility of police intelligence to both countering terror and insurgency but also a brief illustration of this application in a liberal democracy where rule of law and the rights of citizens are of greater concern to the regime than is generally the case when an insurgency is encountered in the developing world. Pursue An examination of the record of Contest thus far and in particular the review and recommendations made by various parties13 show that for all the considerable care and concern regarding the countering of the insurgent inspired terror threat, there is an equal if not overwhelming concern for the preservation of civil liberties. Running a close second to those concerns is a desire to frame the overall activity within the rule of law which is generally expressed in terms of steering away from a more traditional intelligence/national security approach as was current during the Troubles for example, and replacing this outlook with one in which the products of intelligence gathering are designed to be an aid toward prosecution.14 This is an essential point as this is exactly the intent and ethos of police intelligence

analysis as was previously noted. In short, the latest version of Pursue is organized and intended to be a police intelligence based activity rather than a national security intelligence one. This difference is noted in the emphasis on prosecution, the need to obtain intelligence in forms which support eventual legal action and the establishment of a robust framework for dealing with the complex issues surrounding the collection of intelligence in general and the use of human intelligence specifically. It is instructive to note that the structure of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the recommended modifications of Lord Macdonald’s review are clearly designed to permit this type of police intelligence collection while preserving an overview process of judicial review and control and preservation of civil liberties as part of the adherence to rule of law.15 These are quintessential police intelligence concerns. In setting the standard as a law enforcement model, Pursue is thus enabled to not only seek action as a result of knowledge gained but to also do so within an existing framework where civil liberties are a major consideration. Thus while effective counterinsurgency/counterterror operations may be undertaken, they are done with the purpose of maintaining a stable, normal society rather than responding to the threat in a way which exacerbates and inflames the situation. This is very much in line with prevention of the growth of an insurgency in the early stages and the lack of overreaction as well as the thoughtful determination of placement for action within the realm of the rule of law is to be commended. Pursue may thus be seen as an example of the combination of the various aspects of police intelligence which have previously been discussed into a holistic body which, in combination with other elements of government, seeks to identify, locate and determine the threats emerging and to disrupt their spread through prosecution and the treatment of terrorist offenses inspired by insurgent philosophy and personnel as crimes against the state and its people. The status quo is maintained, the danger while not minimized is also not elevated to a status which does not realistically pertain and the level of threat is minimized. This last is an important point for once again, in a counterinsurgency model, we find that Contest is not concentrated entirely upon the nuts and bolts of direct confrontation with insurgent or terrorist elements but is a complete package designed to not only deal with the proponents of terror but to also drain the sea in which they swim through the use of community outreach, intervention for at risk parties and other social strategies which directly counter the recruitment and logistical support for extremists.16 Thus Contest has assumed a model response to insurgency in the form of responding to terror. The need for this holistic response and the greater emphasis on rule of law and community integration are classic counterinsurgency methods which have been proven to work in one of the first insurgencies of the modern era, Malaysia. This does not mean that Pursue and the other aspects of Contest have been free from controversy. The truth is that a great deal of quite animated discussion has taken place regarding various aspects of Pursue and in particular the use of surveillance technologies.17

While the right to object to and demand accountability for the actions of agents of the state is a key civil liberty, it is telling that this very action is one which has shaped the latest version of Pursue. The fact that terrorism, whatever its inspiration, is being fought successfully while at the same time a robust discussion regarding the ways and means of this activity is underway with the government of the day responding to public concerns is indicative of societal health. One rarely encounters full blown insurgency in a society where public concerns are adequately addressed by government and this is even more rare when the activities in question involve the use of armed force against the state. That such a dialogue may exist in tandem with and shape the execution of the state’s response to an insurgent terrorist threat is somewhat unique in our experience. While the examination of the minutiae of the arguments both for and against the use of surveillance technology are beyond this book’s limited remit, it is important to note that changes to Pursue are designed to utilize these surveillance technologies in ways conducive to prosecution rather than more traditional national security concerns.18 This too fits within the police intelligence model of counterinsurgency. Contest as police intelligence counterinsurgency While there are few who would maintain that the UK is currently in the throes of an insurgency, the evidence clearly supports the view that the majority of perpetrators of terrorist offenses and those who are most likely to harbor future offenders are closely tied to and often members of insurgent organizations whose world view is one of war with the established order in the UK. They, and their supporters, see themselves as soldiers in a war, developing opportunities to strike at the enemy from within and this outlook drives their approach to the use of terror as a tactic. The level of threat is considerable at any given point of occurrence but negligible in total, a rather common feature of insurgent/guerrilla warfare. The response of the UK government to this emerging threat has been to adopt an approach which, however inadvertently, greatly resembles the classic counterinsurgency strategy of community involvement, social responsiveness and the treatment of insurgency as merely criminal instead of the more lofty perch to which its adherents aspire. This response includes the use of a rule of law driven strategy which features the traditional strengths of police intelligence; i.e. its ability to penetrate the traditional opacity of insular and culturally dissimilar societies through the use of human sources, surveillance and informed analysis. By virtue of the orientation of police intelligence toward actionable intelligence designed to aid prosecution, there is also gained a minimization of the level of conflict rather than an escalation as is the norm when military forces and their more confrontational orientation are involved. While Contest is not without its areas of controversy nor is Pursue a panacea, it nonetheless represents a modern example of combating a nascent insurgency with a

significant portion of that effort derived from the unique abilities of police intelligence set within a complete counterinsurgency strategy.

____________________ 1

Moore, R. Scott. Small Wars Journal. The Basics of Counterinsurgency. [Online] [Cited: July 29, 2011.] http://smallwarsjournal.com/documents/moorecoinpaper.pdf p 3. 2 Agence Bretagne Press. 2007. Northern Ireland: ‘Colonial Mindset’ of British Army in Ireland Exposed. [Online] July 7, 2007. [Cited: July 29, 2011.] http://www.agencebretagnepresse.com/fetch.php?id=7547&key=tud&key1= 3 IKlcullen, David. Counterinsurgency. New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2010 pp 165, 184. 4 Urban, Mark. Big Boys Rules. Chatham, Kent: Mackay’s of Chatham, 1992 pp 161-165. 5 The classic Maoist theory of revolutionary warfare is based upon this gradual transformation of a guerrilla force from a small, locally active band into a large force capable of challenging and defeating the government in open battle. 6 Russell, Dr. Charles A. and Hildner, Major Robert E. ‘Intelligence and Information Processing in Counterinsurgency.’ Airpower. Air Chronicles. December 29, 2003. http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1973/julaug/russell.html (accessed May 28, 2010). 7 Home Office. CONTEST: The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering Terrorism. London, UK: UK Home Office, 2011 p 21. 8 By segregation is meant the deliberate withdrawal from and often rejection of the norms and values of the larger society. It does not refer to operational activities which must of necessity occur within the society in which the group is based. 9 Home Office. CONTEST: The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering Terrorism p 62. 10 See Nuss, Jeannie. Where is the battlefield? Stars and Stripes. 2011, Vol. 70, 102 for a summary of these issues raised by service members families. 11 Home Office. CONTEST: The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering Terrorism p 47. 12 Home Office. CONTEST: The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering Terrorism pp 10-15. 13 See for example Lord Macdonald of River Glaven QC. Review of Counterterrorism and Security Powers. London: Home Office, 2011. 14 Ibid pp 9-10. 15 Ibid. 16 Home Office. CONTEST: The United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering Terrorism pp 58-60. 17 See for example Akdeniz, Yaman, Taylor, Nick and Walker, Clive. BigBrother.gov.uk: State surveillance in the age of information and rights. Criminal Law Review. February, 2011. 18 Lord Macdonald of River Glaven QC. Review of Counterterrorism and Security Powers provides perhaps the most relevant discussion of the need to balance the requirements for security with the civil rights of individuals who may come under scrutiny by security services.

Police Intelligence in a Counterinsurgency Fitting it all together THE world of police intelligence is not one normally associated with counterinsurgency. While there is a recognized niche for police intelligence in countering terrorism, transnational organized crime and most visibly, narcotics trafficking, the issue of insurgency is generally seen as one requiring military and political expertise. The skills and mindset of the “copper” are rarely regarded as intrinsic or helpful to the prosecution of a successful counterinsurgency, at least in modern practice.1 Such was not always the case as many of the seminal theorists of counterinsurgency in the 20th Century emphasized the need for local host national police as an essential, often critical part of a successful campaign.2 While this role as counterinsurgents is an expansive one I have elected to examine here the more narrowly defined role of police intelligence and to attempt to determine some of the basic principles of best practice when the techniques and tactics of police intelligence are applied to a counterinsurgency. In doing so I have looked at the ways and means of police intelligence in combating ordinary criminal activity and then applied that demonstrated ability to counterinsurgency. The examination of each area, human intelligence, surveillance, analysis etc, has of necessity been brief and exclusive. I will now turn the reader’s attention to the sum of these parts, the whole of police intelligence if one will, as it may be applied to a campaign against an insurgent enemy. Applying police intelligence to a counterinsurgency The contention, both at the opening of and throughout this examination, has been that police intelligence is possessed of a skill set which, if properly enabled and supported, is uniquely situated to engage and defeat the one commonality of all insurgencies. This commonality is the network of commanders, propagandists, trainers and agents who organize, lead and control the insurgency from within the concealment of the surrounding population. This network or infrastructure, being the backbone of the insurgency must remain viable and intact if the insurgency is to flourish. Indeed, if infrastructure attack is sufficiently successful as to drive the network into seclusion from the people, it creates greater opportunities for standard military efforts to successfully engage while also permitting the discredit of the insurgent cause and the re-establishment of the government’s authority in the contested region.3 As was mentioned in the orientation to the subject, the network is not optional to the insurgency. Without it the armed groups are merely poorly supplied criminal gangs who force compliance from the population and who thus fail to garner the support and protective camouflage needed to survive. They also lose the ability to reach effectively into the wider

world for external supporters, strategists and information outlets through which to carry on the information campaign which is such an important part of modern insurgency.4 Destroy the network and the insurgency falls apart into small, squabbling groups easily identified and defeated in detail. Yet the most frequently encountered aspect of insurgency is the clandestine nature of its practitioners. One of the key commonalities of insurgency in the modern era is the disguise of the insurgents as ordinary citizens with the resulting difficulty for counterinsurgents in determining whom they should engage and how to divide the insurgent from popular support.5 This issue, the difficulty in determining who is an insurgent and who a citizen guilty of nothing other than a desire to be left to live their life in peace, is crucial to the successful prosecution of a counterinsurgency. As we have seen in the UK counterterror example, this issue is also critical in pre-emptively engaging insurgent groups who would export terrorism as a form of warfare into otherwise stable societies. The network members, to say nothing of ordinary insurgents, will take pains to disguise their allegiance and participation and will present an outward appearance of probity. To know who they are, to penetrate their network and uncover their ties, hiding places and identities, is the work of intelligence. Yet both military and national security intelligence are oriented in ways which make this effort, in a counterinsurgency, difficult under their existing orientation and structure.6 Police intelligence however, is already well suited to and capable of exactly the type of network penetration required. In the course of criminal activity, those committing or plotting to commit criminal acts are rarely if ever easily distinguished from the more common law abiding citizen and certainly not by the wearing of a uniform or other visually distinctive marking. Thus the criminal hides among the population and is, to the untutored and uninformed eye, indistinguishable in the same way as the insurgent. The techniques and methods of police intelligence when applied to ordinary crime are well suited and able to uncover the criminal and to distinguish him with an accuracy which permits action based upon reasonable inference and, often, direct knowledge. This same skill set, when applied to counterinsurgency, permits police intelligence to uncover the hidden network of insurgent organizations and enables operations aimed at those members most critical for the sustainment of the insurgency with small risk of unintentional mistaking of innocent citizens for insurgents. Although there are indeed incidents in which police intelligence entities are mistaken regarding the criminality of a given individual, by and large the procedures and ethics of police intelligence in liberal democracies has resulted in these cases being notable for their considerable deviation from the norm. If the same rate of success might be applied to insurgent violators then it would appear likely that police intelligence can render visible the invisible network not merely of criminal gangs but also of insurgent cells and infrastructure. When we consider the threat, created in otherwise stable societies throughout the world, of terrorism inspired by insurgent organizations and carried out by their members, then we

can see that in this aspect of combating insurgency, the primary line of defense is generally the police and its intelligence branch. In these cases, the proper use of police intelligence becomes critical to success in not only preventing a terrorist outrage but in also assembling sufficient information to permit the development of national policy to weaken the grip of insurgent supporters on a given community and permit more constructive engagement to address grievances, real or imagined. The emphasis placed in the UK CONTEST strategy on a holistic approach to counterterrorism is an excellent template for the inoculation of a body politic from the infection of insurgency. To do so the police must use all the tools available within the world of police intelligence. This means they will use the greater level of placement, access and local knowledge inherent in their role to target, develop and recruit human sources within insurgent organizations or support communities. They will also be well placed to understand the nuances of information derived from these sources and to conduct surveillance operations in order to verify human source or technical reporting and uncover additional information. Perhaps most tellingly, the emphasis in police intelligence on actionable intelligence will tend to prevent the “intelligence for intelligence sake” syndrome from which military and national security entities often suffer as they see themselves as collectors and interpreters of data with little responsibility for its use. Not so police intelligence which is, as was discussed in earlier sections, focused on action which results from knowledge and where knowing places an onus on the organization to respond. Proactivity is the key to proper police employment at any level but in the area of intelligence in a counterinsurgency this is doubly true. In short, police intelligence, if focused on penetration of insurgent networks, surveillance of same and analysis which seeks actionable intelligence married to a strategic culturally informed perspective, is uniquely suited to determine who, among a given population otherwise undifferentiated, is an insurgent and who is not. This determination, if pursued with the same rigor in regards to standards of proof as in more ordinary criminal matters, will be accepted both by the public and the international community and will permit greater success in uncovering an otherwise invisible enemy. As a final note, this same emphasis on actionable intelligence can assist in developing policy and programs designed to reduce insurgent access to at risk populations, provide insight for public engagement campaigns and generally inform the efforts of “soft” power to counter and prevent the spread of insurgent inspired terrorism. The proof of the pudding This book thus far has focused on illuminating the ways and means of police intelligence for those unacquainted with its scope and detail. Examples have been provided within specific areas in order to permit greater clarity on the workings of that particular topic. The purpose behind this approach is to provide, under one roof as it were, the main components of police

intelligence in order to permit an understanding of its capacity and applicability to counterinsurgency. In most historical campaigns, the emphasis was on guerilla warfare. This emphasis on warfare per se is rarely successful in counterinsurgency unless one also wishes to employ a level of brutality which is at odds with the morals of a liberal democracy.7 It would appear that successful counterinsurgencies were successful due at least partially to the decision to establish civilian control and emphasize the role of the police in providing security with military backing as needed. This emphasis on civilian control and police primacy is found in the classic successful counterinsurgency campaigns such as Malaysia, Northern Ireland, Kenya and the Philippines. It is glaringly absent in classic losses such as Vietnam.8 It should be noted that in other campaigns some remarkable efforts were made in the use of police intelligence units and tactics or the use of elements guided by police intelligence a la the Selous Scouts.9 These innovations proved highly effective but were unable to turn the tide alone. It seems reasonable then to conclude that proper use of police intelligence provides a key ingredient to successful counterinsurgency. It is also, I feel, reasonable to conclude that the use of police intelligence in a counterterror role in nations which are subject to insurgent inspired terrorist threat but which do not yet suffer from a full blown insurgency is vital to not only proactively preventing the perpetration of terrorist offenses but in also providing the insight and means for defusing misunderstanding and enabling constructive engagement with at risk communities. Conclusions Counterinsurgency is a complex affair which requires the involvement of a broad spectrum of entities of which the police are merely one portion. It is proposed that if this portion be properly understood, correctly focused and adequately supported, then the police, relying upon common law enforcement skills, are well able to render visible an otherwise invisible enemy whose role and function is essential to the continuation of the insurgency. If the various cells of guerrilla fighters are the body of an insurgency then the network is its nerve system, the brain which controls and directs its activities. If this brain can be disrupted, if the nerve system can be damaged beyond repair, the insurgency itself will be rendered incapable. Identifying the network, penetrating it to acquire actionable intelligence and then dismantling it so as to leave any remaining insurgents bereft of leadership and supplies is the role of police intelligence. It is a basic core competency created by the capability developed in combating more ordinary crimes and one which is especially suited for application in combating insurgent oriented activity. It is ultimately the role of police to provide security and safety on a local level. This is a universal expectation and their embedding within the communities they police grants, along with the investigatory and intelligence skills required

by their role, the opportunity to contribute in a significant way to a counterinsurgency campaign. To be sure, the use of human sources, proper detention procedures including interrogations, directed surveillance and informed analysis are merely the tools by which police intelligence may lift the veil of anonymity and expose the insurgent network to engagement by police or military forces. This alone will not win an insurgency but it will erode the capacity of the insurgents while providing time and a platform upon which reform, good governance and stability may be erected. This contention is not based upon theory alone but is grounded on the demonstrated ability of police intelligence to perform its role on both peace and war. It is hoped that in both current and future insurgencies, the role of police intelligence will not be that of an occasional bit player with significant success in a standalone effort but will be enabled to take center stage in discovering, penetrating, uncovering and eliminating the critical infrastructure of an insurgent foe.

____________________ 1 See Nuzum, Henry. Shades of CORDS in the Kush: The flase hope of ‘unity of effort’ in American counterinsurgency.

Carlisle, PA: US Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2010 pp 8-10 for the approach of the US Army in Afghanistan. 2 Bayley, David and Perito, Robert. The Police in War. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010 p 55. 3 Dale Andradé and James H. Willbanks, CORDS/Phoenix: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future, Military Review, March-April 2006, p 21. See also Moyar, Mark. Phoenix and The Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 2007 pp 394-395 for an example of the effectiveness of infrastructure interdiction operations in Vietnam. 4 Hammes, Thomas. The Sling and the Stone. Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press, 2006 pp 208-215. 5 See Thompson, Sir Robert. Defeating Communist Insurgency. Hailer Publishing: St. Petersburg, FL, 1966, pp 31-35 for an outline of the interweaving of insurgent and population to create this difficulty in response. 6 See Jamison, Edward P. Intellligence Strategy for Fourth Generation Warfare. Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute, 2006 for a discussion of the need for adaptation of current military/national security intelligence to counterinsurgency. 7 Record, Jeffery. Beating Goliath: Why Insurgencies Win. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2007 pp 15-19. 8 See Arnold, James R. Jungle of Snakes: A century of counterinsurgency warfare from the Philippines to Iraq. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press, 2009 for a more complete examination of the specifics of successful counterinsurgency strategy. 9 See the previous chapter on Pseudo Operations for a more detailed examination of this unique police intelligence activity.

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