The Role of Counterintelligence in Counterterrorism

Hello, Dominique. I’ve enjoyed reading your post. Like you said prevent of inside threat is one of ways to conduct strategic counter intelligence. As we know, cyber security is crucial to protecting US computers, networks, programs and data unauthorized access. There are many cases that our government data has been stolen by the hackers from foreign entities including 4 million federal employee records. However, we can’t rule out the inside threats. There are so many spying cases from the insider whom worked either for foreign governments or businesses. These inside threats were not unnoticed for months and sometimes years and it caused great damage to US interests. Therefore, pursue of the real creation of a discipline in strategic counterintelligence

While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is one, centralized agency, securing the homeland involves the cooperation and collaboration of many, different agencies and organizations ranging from local law enforcement to national agencies such as the NSA, CIA, and FBI. Each of these agencies contributes to the development of homeland security intelligence. By carefully analyzing and commenting on the objectives, tasks, strengths, weaknesses, and roles of each agency, a larger picture emerges regarding the capabilities and limitation of intelligence in supporting homeland security efforts.

Homeland Security is characterized by crime control being the primary police function. It is best achieved through a collective effort by all law enforcement agencies. One of the strategies being used is Intelligence Led Policing. This strategy is not new, it can be traced back to the British is the 1990’s (Bailey, 2011). Intelligence Led Policing is an approach to crime that deals with all crimes and threats including terrorism. This approach is unique because it is threat driven instead of incident driven. It also is a long term approach and focuses on causes and conditions that add to crime through a collection of data.

Counterintelligence is one of the most vital areas of the United States intelligence system, and is heavily intertwined with our history, laws and ethics. According to the National Security Act of 1947, counterintelligence (CI) is defined as “information gathered and activities conducted to protect against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted by or on behalf of foreign governments or elements thereof, foreign organizations or foreign persons, or international terrorist activities.” It consists of five activities and functions: operations, investigations, collection, analysis and production, and functional services. In this aspect, CI is unique in that it is both an activity and its product. U.S. intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) collect and analyze both CI information and foreign intelligence. There are many counterintelligence activities that the United States is involved in, as both CI and foreign intelligence play an important role in countering threats to our country’s national security. Among these most controversial and misunderstood activities are counterespionage and disinformation.

The 1776 united States of America Declaration of Independence contain the words that succinctly describe our national objective, strategy, and message, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” In today’s United States of America, the world acknowledges American’s as the preeminent owner of individual freedoms, holding and promoting these three basic principles for some 240 years. During these years, the U.S. has employed the use of intelligence to shape its objectives and strategies, and then in times of war used the same intelligence to shape strategic messages against foreign powers. However, as hostilities decline and give way to the restoration of relative peace, the use of intelligence for strategic messages against foreign powers ceases. Under these circumstances, the void created by secession of U.S. messages, provides a communication opportunity to foreign powers for transmission of anti-U.S. messages. Attempts have been made to reinstate the offices that during war countered these anti-U.S. messages to a comprehensive reorganization of the U.S Government intelligence community. This paper does not support creation of a new agency or department to utilize existing strategic intelligence.

Crimes are the result of individuals that do not follow established laws of the land. Criminals can either be individuals or they can be organized groups. The best way for law enforcement to handle the challenges of criminal element is to understand their strategies and then counter them. The purpose of this paper is to review domestic terrorism-related intelligence and how it is related to criminal intelligence. Using criminal intelligence is the first step in dealing with criminal elements. The data is compiled, analyzed, and then sent out in an

As we have seen throughout the entire history of warfare, ancient world terrorism, political intrigue and elitist terrorism of the middle ages, and into modern terrorism, intelligence is of vital importance on both sides. Armed forces have always used intelligence of some form be it sneaking up a hill and scouting what is on the other side to the use of modern platforms such as

The 9/11 attacks opened the avenue for a scrutiny of the performance and ability of the intelligence community to detect any threats to the safety of the United States. The media, politicians, reformists and other interested parties would not comprehend how such an attack would happen without the knowledge of the intelligence community. However, it is important to consider the fact that the attack was one of its kind and could not be approached with the resources and expertise used in other initiative such as the cold war. Therefore, the need to restructure the intelligence community arose from the view that it was still operating in the mindset and spirit of the cold war even in the modern era that had seen a revolutionary change of warfare

Intelligence in this day in age is a vital component of a countries security. The newest proposal increases intelligence spending between 2 and 3 billion dollars, a total adding to nearly $35 billion. In addition to military enhancement, the FBI and other law enforcement/intelligence agencies will also be included in this proposal. A new system has been proposed by President Bush that all information be shared among all agencies. DoD, FBI, and the Department of Counterterrorist Center have drawn closer together to create a Terrorist Threat Integration Center to evaluate information blended from all sources associated with terrorism and to act upon those findings accordingly.

Homeland Security is the intersection of evolving threats and hazards with traditional government and its responsibilities for civil defense emergency response law enforcement, customs border control and immigration. Moreover, the term “enterprise” is a national effort that refers to the collective efforts and shared responsibilities of federal, state local, tribal, territorial, nongovernmental and private-sector partners as well as individuals ( U.S. Department of Homland Security, 2010). Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the concept of National Intelligence was arranged by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. As that was formulated, the IC community was known to be more coordinated and effective. The Act also made it possible for the integration of domestic and foreign dimensions of us intelligence to eliminate gaps and understanding national security threats. Also, this brought about the mission of the Department of Homeland Security and future capabilities of the department (Noftsinger, 2007).

Counterintelligence: exposing, preventing, and investigating intelligence activities on U.S. soil; foreign espionage strikes at the heart of national security, impacting political, military, and economic strengths.

Counterintelligence (CI) involves actions aimed at protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage from penetration and disruption by hostile nations or their intelligence services (Lowenthal, 2014). Three main components of Counterintelligence include collection, defensive and offensive. Collection is ability to gather intelligence information about rivalry capabilities against own nation; defensive part of CI involve measures to prevent and thwarting other nations attempts to penetration into own nations intelligence system; while offensive deal with running double agents to penetrate, manipulate, exploit, and control targeted adversaries. CI is said to be the most essential aspect of the intelligence disciplines, in the sense that collecting vast quantities of secret information and produce excellent analysis of the intelligence, but ineffective counterintelligence measures may diminish confidence the final results (Van Cleave, 2013). According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (2011) “Significant advances have been made in clarifying and rectifying intelligence gaps and requirements through the formation of liaison and working relationships with other U.S. intelligence community agencies, foreign partners, the private sector, and academia”. For instance, since 2001, FBI CI program has resulted to total arrests of 249, of which 46 of them were linked to espionage. Counterintelligence (CI)

As a direct consequence of September 11, a number of substantial challenges lie ahead in the area of counter-terrorism..   The most prominent of these is the changing nature of the terrorism phenomenon.  In past years, when terrorism was largely the product of direct state sponsorship, policymakers were able to diminish prospects for the United States becoming a target using a combination of diplomatic and military instruments to deter potential state sponsors.  Today, however, many terrorist organizations and individuals act independently from former and present state sponsors, shifting to other sources of support, including the development of transnational networks.

Counterintelligence (CI) involves actions aimed at protecting the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage from penetration and disruption by hostile nations or their intelligence services (Lowenthal, 2014). Three main components of Counterintelligence include collection, defensive and offensive. The collection is the ability to gather intelligence information about rivalry capabilities against own nation; defensive part of CI involves measures to prevent and thwart other nations ' attempts to penetrate into own nation 's intelligence system; while an offensive aspect deal with running double agents to penetrate, manipulate, exploit, and control targeted adversaries. CI is said to be the most essential aspect of the intelligence disciplines, in the sense that it helps in collecting vast quantities of secret information and produce an excellent analysis of intelligence, although, ineffective counterintelligence measures may diminish confidence in the final results (Van Cleave, 2013).

Over the years there have been significant changes in how terrorism is carried out. With the changes in how terrorism is carried out there have also been dramatic changes in how countries counter terrorist attacks. The modifications in the way a country counters these terrorist attacks affects international relations of these countries. These issues bring about the question of how have counter terrorism methods affected international relations. To answer this question several things must be addressed which are, methodology, history of terrorism, and a literature review of multiple authors that have discussed this subject.