F A Brief Primer on Intelligence
Intelligence gathering takes place for both tactical and strategic purposes. Tactical intelligence is primarily the domain of agencies within the military services. Tactical intelligence provides advantages on the battlefield against hostile military forces (or in support of counter
F A Brief Primer on Intelligence
Intelligence gathering takes place for both tactical and strategic purposes. Tactical intelligence is primarily the domain of agencies within the military services. Tactical intelligence provides advantages on the battlefield against hostile military forces (or in support of counterterrorist operations) through direct support to operational commanders in areas such as reconnaissance, mapping, and early warning of enemy force movements. Intelligence for strategic purposes (national intelligence) serves foreign policy, national security, and national economic objectives. National intelligence focuses on foreign political and economic events and trends; strategic military concerns such as plans, doctrine, scientific and technical resources; weapons system capabilities; and nuclear program development.1
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is one key source of intelligence, important to both tactical and national intelligence. Strictly speaking, SIGINT encompasses two different forms of intelligencecommunications intel-
NOTE: Some material in this appendix, including the organizational makeup of the intelligence community and the stages of the intelligence cycle, is adapted from the Central Intelligence Agency, "Factbook on Intelligence," September 1995, available on-line at http: //www.odci.gov/cia/publications.
1 As a result of operational successes in the Persian Gulf War, however, increased demand by field commanders for real-time access to national intelligence resources, such as satellite reconnaissance, is blurring the boundary between these areas. See, for example, Desmond Ball, Signals Intelligence in the Post-Cold War Era: Developments in the Asia-Pacific Region, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1993.
ligence (COMINT) and electronic intelligence (ELINT). ELINT refers to the capture and analysis of electromagnetic signals from emitters such as radars; in general, these signals do not carry information in the communications sense of the term. In this report, and because it conforms to conventions that have been established by the public debate to date, SIGINT is used to refer to communications intelligencethe capture and analysis of signals (from whatever source) that carry communications information.
It is difficult or impossible to identify a single source that is more critical or important than all others because the essence of intelligence is the synthesis of information from all available sources ("all-source" synthesis). No single source is necessarily critical, although any one might be in any given instance, and it is a matter of judgment as to whether a certain source should be accorded a higher priority than another. Many important sources are open and public, but others are secret or clandestine. Clandestine information gathering, directed toward foreign and domestic military, political, economic, criminal, and other sources to which open, public access is denied, is a core element of national intelligence activities.
The community responsible for all-source synthesis is the intelligence community, which cons