The current mission, organization, size, structure, and doctrines of the American Counterintelligence and protective security communities are once again at issue. The events of 9/11, the several wars in the Middle East and central Asia, and the coming of the “information age” have raised fundamental questions about the purpose and mission of U.S. counterintelligence and security policies and capabilities, and even about the place of security and secrecy as elements of national security policy in American life. Attention is also focused once again on longstanding questions of the performance and effectiveness of these capabilities and the communities that support them.
The seminar will build on an understanding of the complicated theoretical, functional and practical relationships between intelligence and policy and the roles of intelligence, protective security and counterintelligence in our democracy developed in other courses. Intelligence is, in essence, the gathering and analysis of secret information about other nations.Its opposite twin, security, is the protection of one’s own secrets. Counterintelligence seeks to protect both of the elements from foreign intelligence activities.
In the practical world of statecraft, these elements have several “great purposes” including: (1) the gathering (and protection) of secrets, (2) the discernment and validation of the information and information and images which other nations present to us, and (3) the counterintelligence activities which we take to disrupt and deny foreign intelligence activities which target us. In this seminar, we will examine these functions and how they might be successful in the face of 21st Century challenges.
