Role Of Counter Intelligence In The Fight Against Foreign Intelligence Services

Role of Counter Intelligence in the Fight against Foreign Intelligence Services.

Need of studying Counter intelligence

Counter intelligence can be defined as a study that has an intelligence discipline, which also has a mission of national security. Some of the tasks that are performed by a counter intelligence system are locating spies and putting them in the jail. It provides a set of guidelines that are helpful for the successful implementation of intelligence strategies. Most importantly, it provides valuable information about threats from foreign intelligence for the United States and the national policies that can be used to counter attack them. Counter intelligence involves a number of processes and tasks such as determination of the authenticity of assets, utility, suitability as well as the reliability of the case officers.

The following report will highlight the different aspects of counter intelligence and how it is under to fight the threats from foreign intelligence services within the United States. The following paragraphs will highlight a details study of the case study of foreign intelligence services and explain the different roles of counter intelligence in their working operations. By the end of this report the reader will have an in depth knowledge of the entire working of the Foreign intelligence services and functionalities of Counter intelligence.

It is extremely important to first understand the roles and responsibilities of a counter intelligence system in order to understand how it fights against the threats posed by the foreign intelligence services. Counterintelligence has been extensively used in the history of United States, which consists of the laws as well as the ethics. It has been found that severe cases for the past has affected the society of America and saboteurs of German communists and their communist movements have been executed. Counter intelligence has been used to put them into the jail. The kind of counter intelligence that used to be practiced earlier in the security states such as Soviet Union is different form the type used in the committees in the United States. Therefore, it is extremely important to study and understand its functioning in order to understand its fight against the Foreign Intelligence Services (de Silva, 2015). Counter intelligence also has the power to challenge the intellectuality of the people of the highest ranks who are in power and the decision makers. Therefore, it is important to understand the way they think in order to understand if the decision they take are right or wrong. That again is a major reason for studying counter intelligence. The learning outcomes that the reader will be able to gain from this report are the main reasons of understanding counter intelligence (Bruneau & Dombroski, 2014). They are summarized below in the following points:

• Concept of counterintelligence will be clear. It place in the field of intelligence studies will also be understood.
• Differentiating between tactical as well as strategic CI and the difference in the security provided by them (Carlisle, 2015).
• Understanding the history of counter intelligence in the history of the United States.
• The different ethical principles, laws as well as oversighting government intelligence within the United States will also be understood.
• Identifying the sub-disciplines of offensive as well as defensive CI will be identified. Deception operations will also be defined.

Threats of Foreign Intelligence:

Therefore, it is extremely important to understand the concepts of counter intelligence due to the above-explained reasons.

Espionage:

In many cases, the adversaries from foreign places use their advanced capabilities of intelligence in order to penetrate, gather, as well as compromise national secrets of U.S. security. They are capable of planning as well as implementing the plans to cause risk and threats to the friends and families of the common person in order to defy the US security standards. They also penetrate sensitive business servers and steal confidential data from the proprietary systems. Intelligence is collected from human resources as well as technically gathered information (Evans et al., 2014).

The scenario of the reality is manipulated by the adversaries and based in the distorted reality the policymaker’s plan as well as implement the security standards on a national level. R&D and other programs, and economic policies as well as other research and development programs are developed based on a false scenario presented to the policy makers, which again causes manipulation of the result (Farrell & Finnemore, 2013). Foreign intelligence often participate in corrupting the intelligence data collected and they often refuse to accept the provided truth or facts (Blight & Welch, 2013). 

Adversaries can often disrupt as well as counter attack the actions of the counter intelligence systems. For instance they can convert the actions, carry out special operations such as corrupting sensitive military or defense data. (e.g., covert action, special operations, and other sensitive military and diplomatic activities). They can even collaborate with terrorist organizations to cause mass destructions around the world and they often have political objectives as well, which again is harmful for the welfare of the United States (Breakspear, 2013).

The main function of the counter intelligence strategies are to understand the threats posed by the foreign intelligence strategies and take according actions in order to neutralize or reduce the threats for United States. The main tasks that has to be performed by the United States Counter intelligence can be briefly stated as to identify and then to assess the threat. The threat should be accessed using suitable means and neutralized. Finally, the activities of the foreign intelligence directed toward the counter intelligence strategies should be exploited. The following paragraphs will explain these steps in ore details (Bruneau & Dombroski, 2014).

The main role of the counter intelligence system is to first identify the foreign intelligence strategies that are directed towards the interests of United Nations and deciding the appropriate counter attack strategies against the foreign security. For this, the counter intelligence experts need to understand: Who those people are and which government, entity or the service they work for? What exactly are they planning to do? (Are they stealing important information from the country or trying to establish their own front companies?). Where/against which of the targets are they trying to operate? (e.g., Businessmen of American origin who are travelling abroad, security laboratories in the national level, military communications systems, CIA stations in the third world countries?). The research and the answers to these questions can help counter intelligence to come up with security measures of handling information and computers as well as the physical security of the organizations and the data centers all across the United Nations (Turner, 2014). 

Functions of Counter intelligence:

The activities of the adversaries have to be analyzed using the most suitable intelligence techniques. The competitors from their partners have to be studied suitable and it provides and insight into their purposes as well as their plans in order to defeat them effectively. The interests, plans as well as the different options in order to effectively defeat them are studied in the concepts of counter intelligence operations. A sophisticated analysis of the threats by the foreign intelligence is included in the strategies of counter intelligence. Threat assessment using counter intelligence answer certain questions for the experts to understand in details. They are:

• How to effectively access them?
• What is the adversary service capabilities for the American Targets? (Counter intelligence experts are there in the American defense in order to effectively deal with such situations)
• What is the service deployment doctrine?
• What are the budget, training as well as personal development plans of counter intelligence? (Sigholm & Bang, 2013).
• What are the liaison relationships of counter intelligence? What are the different targets as well as the resources of counter intelligence?
• What are the foreign collection critical nodes imposed against us?
• What are the signatures of the intelligence precursors to an attack?
• What is their leadership structure?
• How and by whom are they tasked? (Gearon, 2015).

Neutralizing the threats from the foreign intelligence is an extremely important responsibility of the counter intelligence strategies in order to protect the important inform action as well as the secrets of United Nations. Tight security measures such as locks, guards as well as tightly monitored gates is extremely important in the data centers (Zegart, 2013). Access of the important rooms in the data centers is should be strictly based on the level of privilege of the employees. CCTV cameras should be setup in all parts of the buildings to ensure optimum security within the premises of the offices. Computers should be protected with enterprise antivirus protections such as enterprise Kaspersky internet security and firewalls in order to secure the networks within the organization. The background of the employees should be verified in all the organizations in order to ensure there is no issues of employee vandalism in the future within the organization. Polygraphs, computer, and network firewalls should be used in the organizations such as network address translation (NAT). However, there are still alternate options for the hackers as well as the adversaries who are still looking out for ways to steal the data and intrude into the privacy of the private as well as the government organizations within the United States. Counterintelligence strategies are always after the strategies of the adversaries and make sure they are always up to date with the plans and strategies of the adversaries, which in turn help them to pre plan their counter attack (Lowenthal, 2016). Counter intelligence teams are always in a process to prepare plans in order to properly counter attack and plan the war strategies against the foreign intelligence strategies. For example, in the Iraq War preparations, the counterintelligence of the United States code, which was named “Imminent Horizon”, had successfully mapped the Iraqi intelligence strategies and operations across the world in order to make them. National security makes extensive of the counter intelligence strategies in order to retain nation peace (Middlebrook & Hughes, 2013).

Identify:

By exploiting the in depths of the activities of foreign intelligence, counterintelligence turns things into the advantage of the United States. For instance, Morris Childs who was chief deputy head of the USA Communist Party and the trusted former instructors, Yuri Andropov (later KGB head as well as the Soviet Union), Mikhail Suslov (later the chief ideologist of Politburo). The FBI also had a highly successful operation called the “Operation solo” which ran for 23 years. There are strategies to understand if the counterintelligence strategies are being misled or if they are going in the right track in a particular operation and who are responsible for them to take the decisions they take. These questions help the counter intelligence teams to properly understand and analyze the different advantages as well as the disadvantages and the other aspects of the operations they conduct (Fidler, 2013). The main reasons for the counter intelligence to exploit the available information of the foreign intelligence are explained below in the following points:

• Their main aim is to penetrate into the secret operations of the opposition and understand their strategies as well as the future plans without their own knowledge.

The evaluation of the techniques of the opposition are carefully analyzed and studied by the counter intelligence teams and experts in order to protect the sensitive information of the government agencies of United states do that the important and crucial information of the country are not misused by the hacker’s and the intruders (Gaines & Kappeler, 2014). 

Conclusion:

Therefore it can be concluded from this study that even though there are advanced technologies as well as strategies for the foreign intelligence to intrude into the security of United states, there are always counter attack mechanisms as well as intelligence operations that the counter intelligence are equipped with at all points of times. These counter intelligence techniques find their usefulness during the wars with the other nations for instance during Iraq’s war with the United States where the US intelligence used advanced techniques to defend the crucial information of the nation. The security of the United States will be highly improved provided the counter intelligence strategies are efficiently implemented.

References:

Blight, J. G., & Welch, D. A. (2013). Intelligence and the Cuban missile crisis.

Breakspear, A. (2013). A new definition of intelligence. Intelligence and National Security, 28(5), 678-693.

Bruneau, T. C., & Dombroski, K. R. (2014). Reforming intelligence: The challenge of control in new democracies.

Bruneau, T. C., & Dombroski, K. R. (2014). Reforming intelligence: The challenge of control in new democracies.

Carlisle, R. (2015). Encyclopedia of intelligence and counterintelligence.

de Silva, E. (Ed.). (2015). National security and counterintelligence in the era of cyber espionage. IGI Global.

Evans, J. R., Houston, K. A., Meissner, C. A., Ross, A. B., LaBianca, J. R., Woestehoff, S. A., & Kleinman, S. M. (2014). An empirical evaluation of intelligence?gathering interrogation techniques from the United States Army field manual. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28(6), 867-875.

Farrell, H., & Finnemore, M. (2013). The end of hypocrisy: American foreign policy in the age of leaks. Foreign Aff., 92, 22.

Fidler, D. P. (2013). Economic Cyber Espionage and International Law: Controversies Involving Government Acquisition of Trade Secrets through Cyber Technologies. ASIL Insights, 17(10).

Gaines, L. K., & Kappeler, V. E. (2014). Policing in America.

Gearon, L. (2015). Education, security and intelligence studies.

Lowenthal, M. M. (2016). Intelligence: From secrets to policy. CQ press.

Middlebrook, S. T., & Hughes, S. J. (2013). Regulating cryptocurrencies in the United States: current issues and future directions. Wm. Mitchell L. Rev., 40, 813.

Sigholm, J., & Bang, M. (2013, August). Towards offensive cyber counterintelligence: Adopting a target-centric view on advanced persistent threats. In 2013 European Intelligence and Security Informatics Conference (EISIC) (pp. 166-171). IEEE.

Turner, M. A. (2014). Historical Dictionary of United States Intelligence. Rowman & Littlefield.

Zegart, A. B. (2013). Eyes on spies: Congress and the United States intelligence community. Hoover Press.