Insider Intelligence

When one talks about intelligence work in today’s day and age, it is hard to know exactly where to begin. From the humble beginnings of US intelligence in the WWII OSS, the modern intelligence apparatus has ballooned into over a dozen different agencies operating in different fields of concern. However, when asked to identify one the average person will most likely immediately think of the CIA, the big daddy of all intelligence agencies. While each agency has its own area of expertise, and while the CIA has many different forms of intelligence gathering at its disposal, the work it is known for is clandestine operations, which often requires a very specific method of collection; human intelligence. HUMINT as it is called has been the core of
One of the key difficulties in human intelligence comes when utilizing inside sources, either by turning an active member to feed information to an agency, or by planting a mole or agent within an organization. While other sources of information may not provide as much inside detail as HUMINT resources, the time it takes to acquire and analyze that information will most likely be significantly faster. Insider intelligence collectors often cannot provide crucial information right when it is discovered. There is usually a significant gap between the discovery and the passing of it to an agency because of the risk involved. An operative must wait until the opportunity arises to pass information along, so as to not alert an enemy to one’s deception. This is one reason why many agencies can become more dependent upon SIGINT methods of monitoring communication devices used by enemy operatives, which is essentially instantaneous although less
I do not personally find waterboarding or sleep deprivation to be “torture” per se, but for the sake of argument will consider them so. Personally, I believe I would have to take a Christian-principle based approach to the issue according with my faith. I believe that if I were to rank the morality of each situation, torture and the potential loss or saving of life based on the information I could acquire, I would place the lives of the innocent above the moral quandary of torturing another. I do not believe it would conflict with my faith to torture the terrorist if it were to save the lives of innocent children of