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Recent remarks made by Central Intelligence Agency Inspector General Fredrick Hitz were reported in the latest edition of Sources eJournal and Briefings. Hitz spoke at the Princeton Club and World Affairs Council.

According to Sources eJournal, Hitz indicated he feels threatened by the presence of those in private industry and in the government who are pursuing intelligence in new ways. He also said that he dismisses open source intelligence, inside and outside of the government agencies, as merely "a collection of newspaper stories" on various issues.

The Inspector General added that while the CIA has a variety of long- standing operations to collect such (OSINT) stories themselves, he feels that open source intelligence is very limited and a huge mistake.

In Sources eJournal, Hitz went on to say that "The CIA is the President's advisor and we still need the value added from the uniqueness of our sources and analysis. Covert operations on the ground are needed, as well as all the technological resources you can afford. What would we give to have a person at the right hand of Saddam Hussein right now, telling us what he is thinking?"

Hitz also mentioned the CIA wish of creating an "intelligence czar." He said the main obstacle to this coordinated agency wish was the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff and that they would have to be disbanded to make a cohesive intelligence service a reality.

In his enlightening remarks, Hitz said "the CIA has good control of developments abroad and of national intelligence. The CIA has the ability to comment on the appointments to the directorship of other intelligence agencies and has budget review and control." However, the military is a "power unto itself" and the CIA has no influence or control within the walls of the Pentagon. He implied that the military intelligence structure should be put to the use of the CIA since "there is no evident threat of war on the horizon."

As could be expected, these remarks sent a shockwave through the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and military intelligence communities in the United States.

For those who are unfamiliar or who do not follow intelligence matters on a daily basis, there are fundamentally two types of intelligence (actually the subject can be placed into several different types of sub-categories.) There is "classified" intelligence -- where the information obtained and the source of the information must be kept secret and there is "Open Source Intelligence."

What you are reading right now is an "open source intelligence" document. The information collected and analyzed and then disseminated to you comes from a variety of non-secret sources. Anybody can obtain it as long as they know where to look.

OSINT is very important. Probably more than 80 percent of the information collected, analyzed and disseminated by the CIA comes from open sources.

There is a private industry that deals in OSINT of which ERRI is a part of. This type of information is used by people such as you the reader, multinational companies and even governmental intelligence agencies.

As was stated before, Mr. Hitz's remarks created a virtual firestorm among the OSINT community that does maintain communications with one another, much like governmental intelligence agencies keep in touch.

One of the important ways the OSINT community stays in touch is through the Get The Word Out-Intelligence (G2i) listserv. This is primarily a closed list that serves the military intelligence community and has been successfully operating for the past 16 months under the moderation of Eric Nelson.

Several insightful comments were made in response to Mr. Hitz remarks. ERRI senior analyst and chief executive officer Clark Staten immediately responded by saying: "To my knowledge, this is the first time these subjects have been approached this directly by a senior CIA official in public. While we certainly agree with Mr. Hitz's assessment that more HUMINT is warranted and necessary, we might take exception with some of his other comments about OSINT and the capabilities of those in private industry. It is believed that at least some OSINT providers have had a fairly consistent track record of success in analysis, anticipating, and providing timely warnings of asymmetrical and other more overt threats."

Staten added, "I think the bottom line is clearly stated in the sentence, "Fredrick Hitz, the CIA Inspector General, indicated he feels threatened by the presence of those in private industry and in the government who are pursuing intelligence in new ways." This statement speaks volumes about what is currently going on in the intelligence community...and what resistance can be expected from some quarters in the future."

Hugh Blanchard, a retired major in the U.S. Army, who was in Army Intelligence, said, "This guy's parochial, narrow-minded, elitist thinking ("Leave it to the patrician professionals, you fumbling amateurs") perfectly embodies what is, and has for a long time, been wrong with the CIA. I suspect that one reason for this gentleman's self-admitted fear is that the CIA doesn't really have that many truly clandestine sources, and he's afraid that people will learn just how much OSINT is a much better value for dollars expended."

Robert Steele, the founder of Open Source Solutions, Inc., a staunch advocate of increased use of OSINT and a former CIA intelligence officer, said, "We are at a very important cross-roads in the history and maturity of the U.S. intelligence community. Founded originally, in the form of the Office of Strategic Services, to do strategic intelligence analysis using predominantly open sources, the U.S. intelligence community migrated over time toward very technical and secret intelligence collection, and also, over time, lost touch with the world of open sources--to the point that the Commission on Intelligence found that its access to open sources is "severely deficient" and should be a top priority for both attention from the Director of Central Intelligence, and for funding."

He added, "The U.S. intelligence community must dramatically improve its access to open sources and its use of finished open source intelligence created by the private sector, in order to make its secret collection and its all-source production most effective. Open sources are of proven value in tip-off, in guiding secret collection, in placing secret information in context, and in providing cover for secretly obtained information which must be shared with coalition partners to whom secret sources and methods cannot or should not be revealed."

Steele went on to explain: "What is open source? It is far more than a collection of newspaper clippings, as some have commented, with perhaps deliberate hyperbole. Newspaper clippings are but one of the many sources of raw *data* which feed into the stream of open source *information* which can be created to satisfy broad audiences. Open source *intelligence* is a process which applies the proven methods of the U.S. intelligence community

--notably requirements analysis, collection management, source validation and filtering, and integrated production which *answers a specific question*."

He concluded by saying, "While it may be natural for government bureaucrats to feel comfortable with think tank bureaucrats, it would be a serious mistake for any intelligence agency to abdicate its responsibility for assuring its consumers that its own all-source products benefit from access to the full range of open sources, software, and services; and its responsibility for helping the consumers help themselves."

Winn Schwartau of InfoWar, a highly respected expert in the field of information warfare, added his thoughts about Hitz's remarks, by saying, "I agree with many of the things that Hitz has said, and the inherent use of HUMINT as info-gathering is critical to any successful operation or agency. However, when it comes to OSINT, I think he is terribly off the mark."

Schwartau also said, "Info other than OSINT is so compartmentalized that very few people have the big picture and ability to put it together. Two examples of why OSINT is so powerful: When I wrote "Information Warfare," I had no idea it was classified material. Everything I got was from open sources. It was when I put it all together that it apparently became classified due to my analysis of the OSINT data I had collected. I was told over and over again by every agency and service, all the way to the JCS and in a bunch of other countries, "how did you get that stuff?" My biggest surprise was how shocked they were that a mere, solitary civilian put together a collage they hadn't."

ERRI's Clark Staten said one final thing in response to CIA Inspector General Hitz's remarks -- Staten said: "There literally hundreds of people and agencies that monitor and use G2i and any number of other reputable OSINT publications on a daily basis. The rhetorical question should be directed to them...do the Open Source materials and analysis (developed from OSINT) presented...substantially contribute to your situational awareness, planning efforts, training procedures, and even "real time" operational methods??

In my opinion, I believe that the answer is a resounding...YES. Otherwise, no one would be reading this interchange in the first place. Secondarily, I have at least a hundred letters on file telling us, at ERRI, that some "OSINT nugget" that we had provided, was of major operational use to somebody, somewhere, when it really mattered. These stories involve drugs, bombs, terrorism, infrastructure attacks, country-studies and other extremely serious topics. To discount or abandon this OSINT effort, as some in the intelligence establishment might suggest, would seem counter-productive and a tremendous loss to the overall security of the United States."

Staten brought the discussion to an end by adding: "Maybe a better answer is that Mr. Hitz and others must realize that there are "alternative ways" to obtain what it is that they seek, and many fine analysts in the private sector to help them better understand the implications thereof. If OSINT is producing viable results, it should be permitted entrance and more credibility in a larger sense in the intelligence community. The time has come for change."

The ERRI DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT is a subscription publication of the EmergencyNet NEWS Service, which is a part of the Chicago-based Emergency Response and Research Institute. This publication specializes in Corporate Security/ Terrorism/Intelligence/Military and National Security issues.

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