The Clandestine HUMINT page adheres to the functions within the discipline, including espionage and active counterintelligence.
The page deals with Clandestine HUMINT operational techniques, also known as "tradecraft". It applies to clandestine operations for espionage, and a clandestine phase before direct action (DA) or unconventional warfare (UW). Clandestine HUMINT sources at certain times act as local guides for special reconnaissance (SR).
Many of the techniques are important in counterintelligence. Defensive counterintelligence personnel needs to recognize espionage, sabotage, and so on, in process. Offensive counterintelligence specialists may use them against foreign intelligence services (FIS). While DA and UW can be conducted by national military or paramilitary organizations, al-Qaeda and similar non-state militant groups that appear to use considerably different clandestine cell system structure, for command, control and operations, from those used by national forces. Cell systems are evolving to more decentralized models, sometimes because they are enabled by new forms of electronic communications.
This page deals primarily with one's assets. See double agent for additional information adversary sources that a country has turned to its side.
Staff and skills in a clandestine HUMINT operations station This description is based around the foreign intelligence service, of country B, operating in and against country A. It may also include operations against non-state organizations operating in country B, with or without country B support. It may also involve offensive counterintelligence against country D assets operating in country B.
The basic structure here can be pertinent to a domestic service operating against a non-national group within its borders. Depending on the legal structure of the country, there may be significant, or very few, restrictions on domestic HUMINT. The most basic question will be whether criminal prosecution, or stopping operations, is the goal. Typically, criminal prosecution will be the primary goal against drug and slavery groups, with breaking up their operations the secondary goal. These priorities, however, are apt to reverse in dealing with terrorist groups.
If there are separate organizations with diplomatic and non-official cover, there may be two chiefs. Sufficiently large stations may have several independent, compartmented groups.
Description Soviet terminology US terminologyOfficers with diplomatic immunityDiplomatic cover, emphasizing that GRU assumed that the host nation assumed all military attaches were intelligence officers but that some diplomats might actually be diplomatsDiplomatic coverPublic association with the service's country, but no diplomatic immunityCivilian cover (e.g., Tass news agency, trade or scientific delegation)Not often used. Personnel with Peace Corps and certain other backgrounds are barred from intelligence. Some, decreasing, cover as journalists now rarely usedNo affiliation with host nation governmentIllegal (usually with an assumed identity)Non-official cover (NOC). May use real name or not, but often some invented background
Station under diplomatic cover Nations vary as to how well hidden they choose to have all, part or none of their intelligence personnel under the guise of diplomatic immunity. Frequently, at least one individual is known to the host country, so there can be a deniable channel of communications. If the nations are allies, many of the intelligence personnel may be known and actively cooperating.
Certain diplomatic titles were often assumed to be cover jobs. With the United Kingdom, "passport control officer" was, much of the time, an intelligence position. Today, it may be confusing that some passport control officers actually control passports. With other countries, "cultural attaché" was often a cover job, although, again, it might be legitimate. An intelligence officer covered as a cultural attaché might still do some cultural things. Chief of station or rezident. There may also be multiple chiefs if "country B" has both military and civilian human intelligence. Fairly recently, the US consolidated military and civilian into the National Clandestine Service. Russia still probably separates GRU military and SVR civilian, and the KGB, the USSR-era predecessor of the SVR, ran both illegal and legal residencies. Operations officer, also called case officer: interacts with local assets or leaders of local agent subnetwork. Israel's Mossad refers to these as katsas. Collection management officer (aka reports officer, intelligence officer): does preliminary report categorization and organization. May be the administrative chief. Communications and encryption personnel Drivers and guards Operational targeting officer: not always used. May be more focused on access agents and recruiting, handing off recruited agents to case officers. Might make the decision to use non-HUMINT collection, such as SIGINT based in the embassy. Technical collection specialists (e.g., the US Special Collection Service, a joint NSA-CIA operation)
Stations under official but nondiplomatic cover An intermediate approach has the officers clearly working for their country but without diplomatic immunity and with a cover role that does not immediately suggest intelligence affiliation. For example, the Soviet GRU covered some intelligence officers under the TASS news agency, or as part of a trade or technical mission, or even as diplomats. The last might seem surprising but this was under a GRU assumption that military attaches would always be assumed to be intelligence officers, but that members of the civilian part of an embassy might actually be diplomats rather than intelligence officers.
It was easier, of course, for the socialist USSR to assign people to state agencies. Western sensitivities tend to be much greater about using, for example, journalistic cover. The US has been emphatic in prohibiting any relationship between intelligence and the Peace Corps.
US military intelligence doctrine forbids a HUMINT specialist to pose as: A doctor, medic, or any other type of medical personnel. Any member of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) or its affiliates. Such a ruse is a violation of treaty obligations. A chaplain or clergyman. A journalist. A member of the civilian government, such as a Member of Parliament.
An example of civilian cover for an American officer involved a German refugee, with the pseudonym "Stephan Haller", who had widely ranging interests and special skills in mathematics and physics, as well as native language skill. His overt role, in 1949, was directing a program that paid subsidies to German scientists, part of a larger program of denying German talent to the Soviets. Initially, he was based in Pforzheim, (West) Germany.
During two years in Pforzheim, with a well-established cover, he collected political and scientific intelligence from the scientists and also Germans that he knew in political circles before emigrating. In 1951, he moved to Berlin, directing overall "operations against scientific targets in the East Zone of Germany", while still managing the subsidy program. His new work included encouraging defection of key craftsmen working for the Soviets. He was considered a master craftsman,He did not grow careless or conceited with success. Here remained a meticulous craftsman. Before he debriefed a source, he mastered the subject to be discussed. His agents were made comfortable not only by his cigars and beer but also by the easy flow of communication. And he did not end until he had every last scrap of useful information. He never failed, moreover, to remain alert for operational leads--potential agents, counterintelligence indicators, propaganda possibilities. When Haller was finished, there were no more questions to be asked. And though he groaned over the chore of putting it on paper, his reporting became thorough-and more than thorough, illuminating-for he rarely failed to make interpretive comments. [quotation?] [citation?]
Stations under non-official cover According to Victor Suvorov, the Soviet reaction to losing networks operated from diplomatic missions after the countries in which those embassies were located were overrun in the Second World War was to emphasize "illegal" (i.e., what the US calls non-official cover) stations (i.e., residencies) for HUMINT networks. The illegal residencies were preferred to be in safe locations, perhaps of allies such as the United States, Great Britain and Canada.
Soviet operations were tightly compartmentalized, with strict need-to-know an absolute rule. A lesson learned from the loss of espionage networks was to keep them small, subdividing them, with independent reporting to Center, when more agents were recruited.
Moving new agents into illegal residencies Suvorov explained that new agents were separated from official Soviet institutions only after the agent has compromised himself by giving Soviet Intelligence a significant quantity of secret material; making it impossible for the agent to go to the police. The separated agent then occupies one of three guises: the separated acting agent, the agent group and the agent residency.
Separated acting agent Greatest resources are devoted to these agents; which provide the most important material. Once the central headquarters assesses the materials as sufficiently valuable, the doctrine is to temporarily stop obtaining new material from the agent and improve their security as well as their knowledge of espionage tradecraft. This training is preferably done in a third country, from which the agent might or might not be moved to the Soviet Union. Typical cover for an agent absence would be taking a vacation or holiday.
Agent group Less valuable than a separated acting agent but still of importance, was the agent group, which migrated from diplomatic or civilian contact, to the in-country illegal rezidentura (resident and infrastructure), to direct communications with the center. The leader of such a group is called, in Soviet terminology, a gropovod, and is conceptually the only member of the group that communicates with Moscow. In reality, clandestine communications personnel may be aware of the direct contact, but newer electronics allow the leader to manage his or her only communications.
Suvorov makes the important point that "A group automatically organises itself. The GRU obviously considers family groups containing the head of the family and his wife and children to be more secure and stable. The members of such a group may work in completely different fields of espionage." The pattern of having groups that are self-organizing and have preexisting ties, making them virtually impossible to infiltrate, has survived the GRU and is common in terrorist networks.
Agent residency When the GRU attaches one or more illegals (i.e., Soviet officer under an assumed identity), the residency changes from "an agent residency into an illegal residency. This process of increasing the numbers and the gradual self-generation of independent organisations continues endlessly." Suvorov uses a medical metaphor of quarantine designed to contain infection to describe separating agents for improved security.
The GRU kept certain officers immediately ready to go into illegal status, should the host nation intensify security.
Again, Suvorov emphasizes that the process of forming new illegal residencies was the Soviet doctrine for imposing compartmentation. Western countries, especially those in danger of invasion, have a related approach, the stay-behind network. The US military definition, used by most NATO countries, is Agent or agent organization established in a given country to be activated in the event of hostile overrun or other circumstances under which normal access would be denied.