Editing Counterintelligence (section)

=== Counterintelligence protection of intelligence services ===
Defensive counterintelligence specifically for intelligence services involves risk assessment of their culture, sources, methods and resources. Risk management must constantly reflect those assessments, since effective intelligence operations are often risk-taking. Even while taking calculated risks, the services need to mitigate risk with appropriate countermeasures.

FIS are especially able to explore open societies and, in that environment, have been able to subvert insiders in the intelligence community. Offensive counterespionage is the most powerful tool for finding penetrators and neutralizing them, but it is not the only tool. Understanding what leads individuals to turn on their own side is the focus of Project Slammer. Without undue violations of personal privacy, systems can be developed to spot anomalous behavior, especially in the use of information systems.

Decision makers require intelligence free from hostile control or manipulation. Since every intelligence discipline is subject to manipulation by our adversaries, validating the reliability of intelligence from all collection platforms is essential. Accordingly, each counterintelligence organization will validate the reliability of sources and methods that relate to the counterintelligence mission in accordance with common standards. For other mission areas, the USIC will examine collection, analysis, dissemination practices, and other intelligence activities and will recommend improvements, best practices, and common standards.<ref name=NCIX>{{Cite web
 | url = https://fas.org/irp/ops/ci/cistrategy2007.pdf
 | title = National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX)
 | year = 2007
 }}</ref>

Intelligence is vulnerable not only to external but also to internal threats. Subversion, treason, and leaks expose vulnerabilities, governmental and commercial secrets, and intelligence sources and methods. The insider threat has been a source of extraordinary damage to US national security, as with [[Counterintelligence failures#Aldrich Ames|Aldrich Ames]], [[Counterintelligence failures#Robert Hanssen|Robert Hanssen]], and [[Counterintelligence failures#Edward Lee Howard|Edward Lee Howard]], all of whom had access to major clandestine activities. Had an electronic system to detect anomalies in browsing through counterintelligence files been in place, [[Counterintelligence failures#Robert Hanssen|Robert Hanssen]]'s searches for suspicion of activities of his Soviet (and later Russian) paymasters might have surfaced early. Anomalies might simply show that an especially-creative analyst has a [[Intelligence analysis#Trained intuition|trained intuition]] possible connections and is trying to research them.

Adding the new tools and techniques to [national arsenals], the counterintelligence community will seek to manipulate foreign spies, conduct aggressive investigations, make arrests and,
where foreign officials are involved, expel them for engaging in practices inconsistent
with their diplomatic status or exploit them as an unwitting channel for deception, or turn them into witting double agents.<ref name=NCIX /> "Witting" is a term of intelligence art that indicates that one is not only aware of a fact or piece of information but also aware of its connection to intelligence activities.

[[Victor Suvorov]], the pseudonym of a former Soviet military intelligence ([[Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye|GRU]]) officer, makes the point that a defecting HUMINT officer is a special threat to walk-in or other volunteer assets of the country that he is leaving. Volunteers who are "warmly welcomed" do not take into consideration the fact that they are despised by hostile intelligence agents.
{{blockquote|The Soviet operational officer, having seen a great deal of the ugly face of communism, very frequently feels the utmost repulsion to those who sell themselves to it willingly. And when a GRU or KGB officer decides to break with his criminal organization, something which fortunately happens quite often, the first thing he will do is try to expose the hated volunteer.<ref name=Suvorov-IM-04>{{Cite book
 | first = Victor | last = Suvorov
 | title = Inside Soviet Military Intelligence
 | url = http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov8/16.html
 | publisher = MacMillan Publishing Company
 | year = 1984
 | chapter = Chapter 4, Agent Recruiting
 }}</ref>}}