Counterintelligence and Narcotics

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE AND NARCOTICS
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Counterintelligence and Narcotics
Introduction
Drug trafficking organizations are an enduring and developing domestic criminal threat to America and continue to be a significant concern to local, state, and federal law enforcement officials. The Colombian drug trafficking organization is one of the biggest distributors of illicit drugs, especially cocaine and heroin, in the United States. In addition, Colombia is among the largest coca bush-producing nations globally. Several innovative programs by the Colombian government and the international community have tried to stem the illicit drug trade. Various agencies have spent close to $39 billion between the fiscal years 2010 through 2015 in the fight against drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere. These intelligence initiatives at combating the Colombian drug trafficking organization have helped disrupt the production and flow of illicit drugs, dismantling the various drug organizations in the country that control them.[U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Counter-narcotics: Overview of U.S. Efforts in the Western Hemisphere,” , October 25, 2017, /products/gao-18-10.]
Even though these inter-agency efforts have not completely stopped drug trafficking activities in Central America, an inter-agency approach to counter-narcotics involving various intelligence collection disciplines effectively learns and degrades the capabilities of drug trafficking organizations. This report will evaluate the effectiveness of various intelligence collection disciplines applicable to the U.S. counter-narcotics mission by developing a counter-narcotics strategy against Colombia's Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTO). The counter-narcotics plan against Colombia's DTO will employ four intelligence collection disciplines: Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT), Human Intelligence (HUMINT), Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), and Imagery Intelligence (MINT). Moreover, the plan will involve an inter-agency team including the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).
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Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT)
Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) refers to the process of collecting and analyzing data contained in publicly accessible sources and using it in an intelligence context. The rise of instant communications and rapid information transfer has allowed various counter-narcotics intelligence agencies to obtain actionable and predictive intelligence from open public sources. These include the media (radio, print newspapers, and television), Internet (citizen media, social media websites, and discussion groups), public government data (press conferences, websites, hearings, and speeches), professional as well as academic publications (conferences, journals, and symposia), and grey literature (unpublished works, preprints, newsletters, and working papers). The U.S. National Intelligence office director will steer mining of publicly available information to collect valuable and actionable intelligence about the Colombian drug trafficking organization.[Heather J. Williams and Ilana Blum, “Defining Second Generation Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) for the Defense Enterprise,” , May 17, 2018, /pubs/research_reports/RR1964.html.]
Two critical open-source information resources will be social media websites and the dark web. Social media intelligence (SOCMINT) is a derivative of OSINT. It refers to the data collected from social networks, including the original content posted by users and the metadata linked with the original content, such as geolocation information, date and time of post, and multimedia files metadata. The Director of the U.S. National Intelligence office will direct the application of various tools and online services, and techniques to collect intelligence on drug trafficking activities, thereby meeting counter-narcotics intelligence needs. It will also help navigate all legal bottlenecks associated with social media analysis, such as acquiring court permission to gather information about target Colombian drug operatives. A social media monitoring and mining strategy will be essential to understanding how drug organizations in Colombia market and distribute illicit drugs or exploit jurisdictional loopholes between buyers and sellers.
Another valuable open-source information resource is the dark web which makes up a considerable proportion of the Internet (over 99 percent cannot be discovered using primary search engines). The dark web is a bulk of databases, websites, and files that typical search engines cannot index, although most contents are readily available to the public. The dark web has emerged as a hub of drug trafficking and a fully active marketplace where hidden entities buy and sell huge volumes of drugs in recent years. The Director of the U.S. National Intelligence office will be particularly effective at investigating dark web crimes perpetrated by Colombian drug organizations and disrupting the anonymity of their illicit activities. By analyzing the communications and activities of the drug organizations, the task force will raise the visibility of the dark web and glean valuable and actionable information against the actors. In addition, it is hoped that by combining OSINT with social media and dark web analysis, the quality and productivity of collected information will be significantly improved.[Mihnea Mirea, Victoria Wang, and Jeyong Jung, “The Not so Dark Side of the Darknet: A Qualitative Study,” Security Journal 32, no. 2 (August 7, 2018): 102–18, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41284-018-0150-5.]
Human Intelligence (HUMINT)
Human Intelligence (HUMINT) refers to analyzing information collected from human sources to provide actionable intelligence. This information is essential to counter-narcotics agencies working on the front lines against drug trafficking. The task force will rely on local communities, covert agents, and informants as prime sources of information about Colombian drug trafficking organizations, especially their logistics, strategies, and operations. Field operatives from both the DEA and the CIA will assist in developing an intelligence framework built on interpersonal contacts with informative individuals on the drug trafficking organizations. The DEA will conduct HUMINT collection within the United States borders, while the CIA will carry out all covert intelligence-gathering activities outside U.S. borders.
The DEA will collect information from human sources by interrogating informative individuals, wiretapping, recruiting informants, etc. This information will be distributed among all task force members, especially the CIA, who will cooperate closely in the war against drug trafficking. In addition, the DEA often engages in collecting intelligence, leading to immediate enforcement action such as interdictions, seizures, and arrests. It will therefore provide strategic information (intelligence which can help other agencies of the task force understand the current status of Colombian drug trafficking organizations from cultivation to distribution, thereby helping management decision making, policy planning, together with resource deployment), and investigative intelligence (intelligence which can provide analytical support to the investigation and prosecution of crucial drug cartel members, over and above, lead to the dismantling of Colombian drug trafficking organizations).[DEA, “Intelligence,” , 2021, /law-enforcement/intelligence.]
For nearly 70 years, the responsibility of collecting human intelligence has fallen in the hands of the CIA, including recruiting drug cartel members to conduct espionage, using drug operatives to gather intelligence, along with debriefing defectors of drug cartels or other persons with access to valuable information. Each HUMINT activity will have the strategic objective of collecting as much information about the drug trafficking organizations as possible. The CIA will also liaise with key inform...