The rapid growth of information and computer age has added new dimensions to spy warfare and now media is part and parcel of such operations. Open source intelligence and outsourcing are the buzz words of today’s covert war. In this environment the two top world class intelligence agencies were provided an opportunity to work very closely in last four decades. The American Crime News Report in 2011 rated ISI, CIA and MI6 as first, second and third in the world.
The decades of 1980s saw CIA and ISI unite to defeat of Soviet Russia and the post 9/11 decade is again witnessing the close interaction. Whereas the 1980s success of this partnership is an example for the historians the post 9/11 CIA and ISI relationship is full of distrust and suspicions for each other.
The American intelligence agency is the pioneer for collecting, producing, and promoting open source intelligence through Department of National Intelligence’s Open Source Centre (OSC) established in November 2005 in response to recommendations by the Robb-Silberman Commission.
Private contractors were involved with interrogating prisoners and sometimes subjecting them to torture is an example of outsourcing. Even now 25 percent of the US’ intelligence work force is made up of private contractors along with 70 percent of the CIA budget (81 billion as of 2010) feeding the outer sources.
The starting point for outsourcing was that the US military had long been unhappy about the quality of CIA intelligence in Afghanistan. The frustration surfaced publicly in January 2010 in a report by the top military intelligence officer in Kabul, Maj Gen Michael T Flynn, who said that: “Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the US intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy.”
HAMID WAHEED
Islamabad
