Nations’ intelligence engines are rarely at rest, but complex and high-stakes conflicts that have global impact, like the situation in Ukraine, force them to shift into overdrive. The U.S intelligence community is no different. This is especially true in the area of human intelligence (HUMINT), the shadow playground of spies and their handlers on which I long frolicked.
“But…what does that look like?,” you ask. Let’s take a peek at three areas.
Counterintelligence. A wartime footing typically includes enhanced defensive measures to protect our national assets and secrets from adversaries’ HUMINT gathering efforts and covert actions (classically including propaganda, sabotage and other “active measures,” as the Russians say, and today including cyber attacks). The American public was introduced to the public side of this effort when President Biden implored citizens and businesses to step up cybersecurity measures and mentally guard against disinformation, false flag operations included.
Counterespionage. Meanwhile, a more aggressive prosecution of foreign intelligence operatives and moles is to be expected. Examples that surfaced earlier this year include Germany indicting an army reservist for passing secrets to Moscow while the U.S., the U.K., and numerous EU countries expelled Russian “diplomats” for spying (the Kremlin responded in kind). (Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s stripping of two generals of their rank after branding them “traitors” could reflect a counterespionage action, but the men’s actual offenses remain unclear.)
Agent operations. Clandestine HUMINT collectors, known as case officers or operations officers in CIA parlance, embrace a lifestyle (not just a career) when they sign on for such work. The hours and sacrifices are hard to articulate in an article of this scope, but rest assured that wartime means a doubling down for many of these patriots. Be aware, too, that this subgroup of intelligence — as opposed to various forms of technical collection — can often provide something the others cannot: insight into human intentions, especially during war and at a strategic level.
Fundamental to agent operations is the establishment of a source’s motivation for betraying loyalties and compromising sensitive information. Money is the most common and well-recognized of the many drivers, but the most trustworthy and stable motivation is ideology — the stuff of heart, mind and soul. In wartime, conscientious objectors can defect, and when such a volunteer is convinced to stay in place, become a penetration of her government office or military unit, the handler has hit pay dirt.
Now, this may conjure images of Russian establishment types clutching state secrets and quietly slipping across the border into Ukraine under the cover of darkness to talk story with someone in one of Kyiv’s security services (a possible scenario).
Remember, however, that the cloak-and-dagger playing field has been global in nature since before the word “globalization” was a thing. Just as likely are a Russian military attaché posted to Buenos Aires tossing a note over the Ukrainian mission’s wall to set a discreet meeting, an officer of the SVR (previously the KGB) serving under diplomatic cover at the Russian embassy in Jakarta dropping an intel-loaded thumb drive into the pocket of a declared MI-6 liaison officer during a diplomatic community cocktail gathering, or a Russian NOC surreptitiously passing a burner phone to an FBI special agent as he grabs a quick lunch at the Ala Moana Center.
Ideologically motivated volunteers have been some of the most effective and damaging clandestine agents in the history of espionage, and controversial warfare can bring them out of the woodwork.
“So what, J.P.?” Well, hopefully, you now have a better appreciation for the wartime espionage world, which roils quietly along as we sleep, enjoy a poke bowl or a cherry wave, report to our cubicles, or harvest our crops and feed our livestock.
As you read open source reporting about the latest military, economic and diplomatic maneuvers in Ukraine, consider uttering a quiet “mahalo” for the shadow civil servants out there whose work only becomes known to us if something goes seriously wrong as they push out the boundaries of our national security interests, usually at a significant personal sacrifice, sometimes including physical risk.
J.P. Atwell is a former senior CIA operations officer. His two-decade career began as an intelligence analyst and took him to every continent, save Antarctica. He now calls Hawaii Island home. He welcomes your comments at island.intelligencer@gmail.com.