Taking the Pulse of French Intelligence
Francois Heisbourg, a well-known French strategic thinker, is currently Chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. He worked ...
The Russian 10 … 11: An Inconsequential Adventure?
While the use of illegals was thought to be a relic of the Cold War, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki—SVR) has continued to use them throughout the post–Cold War period. Two were caught in Finland and returned to Russia as early as 1992. In 1996, Canada unmasked two illegals, and ten years later unmasked another. These publicly known cases served as stark reminders to Western countries that espionage in the pursuit of a state’s national interests is as important in the post–Cold War era as it had ever been. Yet, the world was surprised by the exposure of a new network of SVR-trained illegals in the United States last year.
Toward a Theory of CI What are We Talking About When We Talk about Counterintelligence ?
Stud A consistent theme in public discussions of the performance of US intelligence is how poorly Americans conduct counterintelligence (CI). Whether it is the former chief of the CIA’s Counterintelligence Center (CIC), Paul Redmond, famously observing that Americans are “too nice” to carry out CI properly or former National Counterintelligence Executive Michelle Van Cleave lamenting that the US government is failing at strategic CI or the legions of books and articles by scholars and journalists criticizing intelligence agencies for failing to catch spies and protect secrets, the conclusion is almost always the same. “Our national CI program has failed to carry out its mission,” wrote George Kalaris and Leonard McCoy in Studies in Intelligence in 1988. In 2005, the WMD Commission echoed their conclusion when it reported that “US counterintelligence efforts have remained fractured, myopic, and only marginally effective.” While these criticisms often are unfair or exaggerated—the United States has had many CI successes—they do contain elements of truth. US counterintelligence efforts often are poorly organized, conceptualized, and executed, and CI remains a relatively neglected area of study in the Intelligence Community.1