The Human Factor: The Phenomenon of Espionage

By W. Patrick Lang

This succinct no-nonsense primer on the business of espionage looks at the history of human intelligence gathering, known as HUMINT, from the Revolutionary War to the present. Extremely well-written, it is equally valuable for training case officers and intelligence analysts and for fans of espionage novels and movies who want to know what it’s really like. Case studies profile some of the most important figures in espionage history who have impacted world events, including Arnold Deutsch, the famous spy who recruited the Cambridge network of spies for Soviet intelligence. Topics covered include methods of collecting intelligence, recruiting, “tradecraft” or operational methods, the future of spying, and personality traits and education needed for a successful case officer. A “must” read” for anyone considering a career in intelligence and an invaluable textbook for courses on national security.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781663235893

W. Patrick Lang

Col. W. Patrick Lang spent 26 years in the infantry, Special Forces, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. He served in Vietnam, as Military Attache in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and in special assignments in the Middle East. Lang was Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, ran DIA Global Humint, and was the first Professor of Arab Language at West Point. He graduated from Virginia Military Institute (VMI). He is the author of six books, including an historical fiction trilogy on US Civil War espionage, a memoir, a primer on human intelligence, and this anthology of essays and short fiction.

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Copyright © 2022 W. Patrick Lang.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-3588-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3542-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-3589-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022902877

iUniverse rev. date: 05/18/2022

CONTENTS

The Human Factor: New Introduction

Chapter 1Intelligence and Its Heroes

Chapter 2Collection in All Its Varieties

Chapter 3Arnold Deutsch: A Master of the Dark Art

Chapter 4The Recruiter

Chapter 5The Operational Cycle: Targeting, Development, and Recruitment

Chapter 6The Operational Cycle: Mission and Tradecraft

Chapter 7The Future of HUMINT

Chapter 8Entering the Field

Further Readings

A Revised and Updated Version of

Intelligence: The Human Factor

Originally published in 2004 as part of a series "Securing

the Nation: Issues In American National Security since

9/11," Chelsea House Publishers, Philadelphia.

THE HUMAN FACTOR:

NEW INTRODUCTION

The text that follows is a primer on the fine art of human intelligence. Yes, it is an art form as much as music, sculpture, drama, painting, film, and poetry. It is all about the human condition, about gauging the minds of others, comprehending their motives and desires. The art of recruiting spies requires insight, patience, engagement, an ability to known when and how to ask another human being to make a life-altering leap. It is the kind of special insight found in a Shakespeare play.

The intelligence game is vast. The U.S. annual intelligence budget is $9 billion. The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is made up of 18 separate organizations, not just the CIA.

Leaving aside organizations like the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office, which collect unspeakably vast amounts of technical data, the human intelligence (HUMINT) activities of the USIC involve a wide spectrum of organizations and distinct missions.

The U.S. government has a diplomatic and military presence in every country with a very small number of exceptions. American diplomats, military attaches, legates, and even administrative staff interact with host country counterparts. They interact with counterparts from allied and adversary countries all around the globe. They attend diplomatic receptions, hold formal and informal bilateral talks, socialize, develop friendships. All that interaction can generate valuable intelligence. State Department cable traffic between all the global outposts and Foggy Bottom generates a treasure trove of potentially unique and critical information about attitudes, plans of adversary and friendly states. The State Department’s official branch of the USIC is the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR).

The Treasury Department has an Office of Intelligence and Analysis (OIA) which has been a formal part of the USIC since 2004.

The Treasury Department’s official website describes the OIA:

OIA is responsible for the receipt, analysis, collation, and dissemination of foreign intelligence and foreign counterintelligence information related to the operation and responsibilities of the Department of the Treasury. OIA is a component of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI). TFI marshals the Department’s intelligence and enforcement functions with the twin aims of safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats.

It is the intelligence gathering and analysis of the Treasury Department’s OIA that determines which nations, entities, and individuals are subject to U.S. sanctions. In recent decades, the use of sanctions has become an essential instrument of U.S. power. Decisions on who to sanction are based on vast amounts of data collection and analysis. Sanctions are generated by acts of Congress and by Executive action, but in all instances, it is the Treasury Department’s intelligence personnel who are responsible for identifying the appropriate targets.

These are but a few of the examples of human intelligence collection and analysis that are part of the vast intelligence complex of the U.S. government which are not generally thought of when the public thinks about the world of intelligence.

THE HUMAN FLAWS IN THE SYSTEM

In the perfect world, the 18 agencies of the USIC would work in perfect harmony as if parts of a finely crafted machine or living organism.

Reality is, of course, messy. Agencies compete, often in ways that undermine their purported common mission.

One of the most glaring examples of this human factor in our lifetime was the failure to prevent the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon, and other targets of September 11, 2001.

Both the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 911 and the later 911 Commission detailed the blood sport that took place between the FBI and the CIA, which resulted in critical intelligence being withheld. Both the CIA and FBI protected critical details which, if cross-checked, might have prevented the attack.

• The CIA knew that two Al Qaeda terrorists had entered the United States in early 2000. They were followed from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Los Angeles by CIA personnel. In Malaysia they had attended an Al Qaeda planning meeting. They traveled to the United States under their own real names. For the next 18 months, CIA withheld the identities and whereabouts of Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar from the FBI.

• FBI field offices in Arizona and Minnesota gathered critical intelligence on movements of the terrorists, including their attendance at flight training schools. At one point, the two original Al Qaeda arrivals were renting rooms in the home of an FBI informant in San Diego.

If the consequences of the intelligence failures had not been so grave (3,000 deaths and many more thousands injured, billions of dollars in property destroyed, long-term health problems for the first responders, etc.) they would have had all the ingredients of a tragic-comic made-for-television farce.

The catastrophic consequences of the worst domestic intelligence failure in memory were over-simplified and bowdlerized into terms like stove-piping and failure to connect the dots. Hardly!

On a deeper level of HUMINT failure, top U.S. government policymakers failed to imagine that America’s staunch ally Saudi Arabia could be harboring jihadist sympathizers and outright terrorists throughout the government.

Even before the ink