Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

INTELLIGENCE • 273interests. Such covert activities can range from the benign, such asproviding moral support and covert financial aid to friendly groupsor national governments, to the sinister, such as engaging in sabotageor even targeted assassinations of key figures. Having good intelligenceabout terrorist organizations or state sponsors of terrorism isessential for effective counterterrorism. From the viewpoint of theterrorist group or state sponsor, having solid intelligence about theroutines and countermeasures of one’s targets and their vulnerabilitiesis essential for carrying out effective terrorist attacks.There are three main sources of intelligence. First, materialsconsisting of publicly available documents and mass media arereferred to as open source intelligence (OSINT). Surprisingly,95 to 99 percent of the content used in producing good classifiedintelligence analysis may come from open sources. Second, technicalintelligence usually consists of electronic interception anddecoding of encrypted radio or Internet communications, knownas signals intelligence (SIGINT), although there are also otherclassifications of technical intelligence depending on the type ofsignals being observed and the technical means used to measurethem. Thus, observations using satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs), or sensors capable of detecting telltale isotopes representother forms of technical intelligence in addition to SIGINT. Third,there is human intelligence (HUMINT) involving the recruiting offoreign nationals or informers from inside terrorist groups to betraytheir nation or groups by relaying secret information to those whorecruited them. This is often the most valuable information becauseit can reveal those motives and details of planning that cannot beinferred from open sources or technical intelligence alone. GoodHUMINT would try to get multiple independent sources to preventthe likelihood of deception or disinformation.Preventing terrorist attacks usually requires having good HU-MINT in addition to the other sources of information, but this is oftenthe most difficult information to obtain given the extremely closedand clandestine nature of most terrorist groups, as well as their useof compartmentalization and cellular organization to prevent theirmembers from having too much insider information that they mightbetray under interrogation or torture. Ironically, most terrorists benefitgreatly by relying on OSINT as it is provided by the mass media,public databases, maps, technical and architectural schematics, and