Final Exam Flashcards
Information that meets the stated or understood needs of policy makers and has been collected, processed and narrowed to meet those needs.
Intelligence
When intel officers present biased findings to support a desired policy outcome
Politicized intelligence
Assuming others will act the same way as you
Mirror imaging
Redefined after 9/11 into three categories: (1) Foreign intelligence (2) Domestic intelligence (3) Homeland security
National Intelligence
Different orientations focusing on the same issue provide more views and greater understanding. This is a guard against irrational decisions because of emotions.
Competitive analysis
When the value of consensus outweighs the value of critical thinking.
Groupthink
A variety of satellites and other technical collectors used to verify adherence to treaties.
National technical means
to ensure that agreements are honored, the ability to ascertain whether terms of the treaty are met
Verification
Keeping track of another nation’s activities, the means for verification.
Monitoring
Deliver for interrogation
Render
Key pieces of information that led to the Iraq war and search for WMDs
Key Judgments
Broad evaluation in the intelligence community to relate means (resources) to outcomes (objectives).
National Intelligence Priorities Framework
Works with the NSC to support and advise the President.
Director of National Intelligence
Senior policy coordinating body of the NSC. Comprised of the Secretaries of State and Defense, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, DNI, assistant to the President for national security and other cabinet members that attend as necessary.
Principals Committee
Deputies of the PC. Together, the PC and DC support policy decisions based on intelligence and give insight to intelligence officials about the course of policy.
Deputies Committee
Efforts to coordinate and make decisions about programs between the DoD and DNI to reduce spending in the MIP and NIP.
Crosswalks
Appropriations above the amount approved by Congress in the original budget. Function as a means to take care of agreed-on needs without long-term budget commitments. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were funded in this manner.
Supplementals
Seven phases of the intelligence process
(1) ID Requirements (2) Collection (3) Processing and Exploitation (4) Analysis and Production (5) Dissemination (6) Consumption (7) Feedback
Collection analysts that deal with information from a single source
Single-source analysts
Collection analysts that deal with information on a macro level
All-source analysts
Priority of issues moving up and down a priority system like the NIPF.
Priority creep
Issues that pop up out of nowhere and intel officers exert pressure to give them high priorities.
Ad hocs
When ad hocs take over the focus of the intelligence community.
Tyranny of the ad hocs.
The steps of P&E that follow collection in the intelligence process.
Downstream activities
Multiple intelligence organizations will stress a different point of view in order to make their product unique.
Footnote wars
The means for collection (INTs)
Collection disciplines
Intelligence (general term for collection), surveillance (sit around and watch) and reconnaissance (a mission to acquire information)
ISR
When one means of collection provides cues to guide collection via other means
Collection synergy
Intel based on many collection sources to compensate for shortcomings of each and profit from combined strength.
All-source/fusion intel
Brings together different types of technical collection. It is more than a single INT, but not all-source/fusion intel.
Multi-INT
How to extract desired intel from a huge load of information. Noise vs. signals, wheat vs. chaff.
Vacuum cleaner analogies
Prioritization of collection requirements occurs because of a limited number of collection platforms (spies).
Competing collection priorities
Tendency of all collectors to collect on an important issue to enhance their standing regarding budget allocations.
Collection swarm ball
The details of collection capabilities and the existence of some capabilities.
Sources and methods
U.S., Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand
Five Eyes
200-1,000 miles above the earth; typically imagery satellites that are used for a detailed earth view
Low Earth Orbit (LEO)
Between LEO and GEO
Medium Earth Orbit (MEO)
22,000 miles above the earth, stays above the same spot on earth at all times.
Geosynchronous orbit (GEO)
Moving in harmony with earth’s rotation so that it is always functioning in daylight.
Sun-synchronous orbit
Sits over the northern hemisphere longer than the southern hemisphere.
Highly elliptical orbit (HEO)
HUMINT, the use of spies
Espionage
When a targeted nation uses knowledge of collection capabilities to avoid collection.
Denial
When a targeted nation uses knowledge of collection capabilities to transmit information to that opponent.
Deception
Ability to distinguish between two points in an image, related to satellites
Resolution
Targets to which one does not have ready access. Collapse of the Soviet Union decreased the number of denied targets of OSINT
Denied targets
Delete satellite capability
Anti-satellite weapons (ASAT)
Orbiting pieces of debris in space that can destroy satellites
Debris field
Regarding how many targets make themselves known via imagery.
Self-reveal
Looking at past imagery ti determine when an activity commenced
Negation search
Using computers to do a negation search.
Automatic change extraction
When the U.S. limits commercial satellite functioning for national security reasons.
Shutter control
Long duration/close-in video and capabilities that can be used to derive as much information as possible form the videos.
Full motion video (FMV)
Also called “pattern of life,” based on observed behaviors that are more likely to indicate that an activity of interest is taking place in a given location.`
Activity-based intelligence
Interception of signals between two or more entities. This is a broad category of intelligence.
SIGINT
Reading analyzing messages
Content analysis
Can be achieved through content analysis of intercepted messages.
Indication and warning
Monitoring changes in communications
Traffic analysis
Subunit of SIGINT, the interception of signals between two people through phone calls and email.
COMINT
Coding of communications
Encrypt
Code breakers
Cryptographers
The message is hidden.
Steganography
Collected data are fed into computers that look for specific words or phrases as indicators of the likely value of an intercept.
Key-word search
The need to consider the value of intel to be collected (the take) against the risk of discovery–either in political terms or in the collection technology that may be revealed to another country.
Risk versus take
Sensors disguised to blend with the environment that can be linked to a network.
Unattended grounds sensors
Using humans as sources of information, largely involves sending covert service officers to foreign countries to recruit spies (people with access to information that may be of benefit to U.S. policy makers).
HUMINT
Agent Acquisition Cycle
(1) Targeting (2) Assessing (3) Recruiting (4) Handling (5) Termination
Used to assess a potential source
Asset Validation System
Offering a relationship to a potential source
Pitch
Becomes this after accepting a pitch
Source
A potential source that is repeatedly contacted to asses value and consideration for a pitch.
Developmental
The sources that the primary source uses
Sub-sources
When the HUMINT officer holds another governmental position to hide his/her HUMINT position.
Official cover
When a HUMINT officer holds another non-governmental job to hide his/her HUMINT position.
Non-official cover
HUMINT officers that become active after integrating into the society.
Sleepers
HUMINT sources that volunteer
Walk-ins
Walk-ins that volunteer as a means of entrapment by providing false information.
Dangles
Resources of foreign or allied friendly services. HUMINT to HUMINT connections.
Foreign liaison relationships
Targets to which one does not have ready access
Denied areas
Single media story being picked up and reported by multiple media sources until the story takes on a much larger life of its own, appearing more important than it really is.
Echo/Circular reporting
Sharing of information via social networks online. This is a subset of OSINT.
Social Media
Intel that extends over a long time.
Long-term intelligence
Deals with events just a few weeks into the future. Increases during a war, shorter intelligence reports.
Current intelligence
Ease of replacing analysts. Also referred to as analyst agility.
Analyst fungibility
The acknowledged requirement to be able to cover any and all aspects of intelligence (no bait and switch). This can be misleading because it does not include any notion of the depth of knowledge of the subjects.
Global coverage
Assuming that others will behave just as the analyst and have the same goals.
Mirror imaging
A flaw that occurs when analysts become so immersed in their subjects that they are unable to view the issues with the needed criticality.
Clientism
Error that occurs when judgments or assumptions of one analysis are used as the factual basis for another analysis without carrying over the uncertainties or judgments of the first analysis.
Layering
Intelligence products that are written on a recurring basis; they establish benchmarks.
Estimates
Australian and British term for estimates.
Assessments
Groupthink
When the value of consensus overrides the value of critical thinking.
Ensure a balanced focus on priority intelligence missions by overseeing both collection and analysis on a givern issue.
National Intelligence Managers (NIMs)
When analysts serve separate clients and do not interact. The analysts get familiar with a certain client and get familiar with that client
Analytical stovepipes
Different orientations on the same issue provide greater views and better understanding. Guard against irrational decisions because of emotions.
Competitive analysis.
Compensates for insufficient sources by applying intense analytic rigor to the available sources.
Analytic penetration
The degree of confidence the analyst has in his or her judgments.
Confidence levels
Gives policy makers an advance notice of significant, usually military events. Can be achieved from content analysis of intercepted messages.
Indications and Warnings (I&W)
Intel analysis that helps the policy maker advance an agenda and be the actor (instead of reactor).
Opportunity analysis
When analysts embrace one perspective on an issue and are not open to other hypotheses.
Premature closure
When intel officers present biased findings to support a desired policy outcome.
Politicized intelligence
Efforts taken to prevent one’s own intel operations from penetration and disruption by hostile nations
Counterintelligence
Countering penetration of one’s service.
Counterespionage
Monitors pulse and breathing rate and notes changes in such physical responses as possible indications of falsehood or deception.
Polygraph
Category of polygraph that focuses on personal behavior
Lifestyle poly
Focuses on foreign contacts and handling of classified information
Counterintelligence poly
The U.S. intel system is segmented and access is on a need to know basis.
Compartmented
Intel agencies are evaluated by the degree to which they actively seek to share intel
Responsibility to provide
Agents sent to another nation to assume normal lives and later become active agents
Sleeper agents
Agents for one country that are turned against that country and provide intel on that country.
Double agents
Deeply hidden spy
Mole
Reasons why a spy went after certain information
Big CI
How a spy was able to get access to information and other issues of tradecraft.
Little CI
Determines what intel has been compromised after a spy is discovered.
Damage assessment
Occurs when accused spies threaten to reveal classified information in open court to avoid prosecution. The U.S. solved this issue through judicial review.
Graymail
Lists of people with access to certain categories of intelligence, which can be used to locate leaks.
Bigot lists
Requires the recipient to turn over records pertaining to other individuals and the recipient can’t reveal the existence of it.
National Security Letters (NSLs)
An activity of the U.S. government to influence political, economic or military conditions abroad, but without its role being apparent or publicly acknowledged.
Covert action
A covert option that rests between doing nothing and military intervention
Third Option
Operational support structure.
Plumbing
A presidential order that approves a covert action as being necessary to support identifiable foreign policy objectives of the US and needed for national security.
Presidential Finding
Disseminating information that has been created with a specific political outcome in mind.
Propaganda
Seizure of individuals wanted by the U.S. and turned over to a third party.
Renditions
Being able to deny a covert action based on surrounding circumstances.
Plausible deniability
When a story is planted in a media outlet overseas so it will also be reported to the U.S.
Blowback
Military-style interventions that are difficult to execute as covert action because of their size.
Paramilitary operations.
Issues include; budget, quality of analysis, control of operations and propriety of activities.
Oversight
Does high level objective oversight by responding to problems or initiating activities to investigate issues; became the PIAB in 2004 with the reform of national intelligence. Advises the president.
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
Seeks to provide policy makers with intelligence that will give them an edge over their adversaries.
“Decision Advantage”
Broad presidential findings that deal with covert action involving transnational issues.
Global finding
Can be a source of an intelligence action
Executive Orders
Involves approving specific programs and activities
Authorization
Allocating specific dollar amounts to authorized programs
Appropriation
Authorized but not given enough, if any, funding.
Hollow budget authority
Appropriated but not authorized
Appropriated but not authorized
Legislative provisions directing funds to be spent on specific projects
Earmarks
Money that does not have to be spent by the end of the fiscal year.
No year appropriations
Make available funds over and above the amount originally planned.
Supplemental appropriations
Leaders of the Congressional intel committees
Gang of 4
Leaders of the Congressional intel committees and their ranking members
Gang of 8
Intelligence programs that the Government Accountability Office has access to review for performance evaluation.
Special Access Programs (SAPs)
The premise that if the USSR were contained within its borders, it would either change or collapse.
Containment
Russian tradition of obscuring the realities of the Russian state.
Maskirovka
Fake Russian villages built in the 1700s
Potemkin Villages
The current forces or those being planned.
Capabilities
The regularity and precision that govern each nation’s military make them susceptible to intel collection. Forces exercise in regular and predictable patterns.
Self-reveal
Intel products that merely tally up the number of forces, equipment and manpower in foreign militaries.
Bean counting
U.S. was well informed of the Soviet capabilities, but not their intentions.
Capabilities versus intentions
Seeking to gauge the worst level of threat that could be posed by an opponent.
Worst-Case Analysis
U.S. effort to aid anti-Soviet guerrillas
Reagan Doctrine
A state in which there has been a breakdown in the legitimacy of the government to maintain a minimal level of control over its own territory
Failed states
Conflict in cyberspace
Information Operations
Exploitation of access to a computer to determine capabilities, collect data and/or take control of a network.
Computer Network Exploitation (CNE)
Shutting a network down and/or disrupting command, control or vital services within the target nation.
Computer Network Attack (CNA)
Includes military operations that intrude into the cyber responsibilities of intelligence agencies in advance of military attacks.
Cyber Operational Preparation of the Environment (Cyber OPE)
Forensic function that determines the extent of damage that an attack caused. Determined by GEOINT or SIGNIT on a battlefield, but difficult to determine the results of a cyber attack.
Battle Damage Assessment (BDA)
Key issue in cyberspace. It is difficult to determine attribution for non-state actors and in the case of CNE. This becomes an intelligence task and a policy question: What level of confidence is needed to determine that an attack came from a specific source?
Attribution
Not precise intelligence, but patterns of intelligence; communications and movements of known or suspected terrorists.
Chatter
Establishing connections between people to get a sense of the broader social networks. Used to identify the relationships among terrorists. Can examine phone calls between people along with the content of those calls.
Link analysis
Series of fusion centers that aim to improve the communication between the federal and local levels of government in order to prevent terrorist attacks.
Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs)
One of several categories relating economics to intelligence
Foreign Economic Espionage
Economic espionage undertaken by businesses.
Industrial Espionage
Searches through SIGINT using a key words search.
ECHELON
Using a biological weapon as a tool for terrorism.
Bioterror
Integration of IMINT, SIGINT and HUMINT to give commanders real-time or near real-time, all-weather, comprehensive, continuous surveillance and information about the battlefield in which they operate. This will reduce the fog of war.
Dominant Battlefield Awareness (DBA)
Doctrinal evolution and debate about the future of warfare encompassing technology, strategy, tactics and the use of intelligence.
Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)
Responsible for intelligence integration, meaning collection and analysis, in their portfolios and are also responsible for crafting Unifying Intelligence Strategies (UIS) for their portfolios.
National Intelligence Managers (NIMs)
Responsibility of the NIMs
Unifying Intelligence Strategies (UIS)
