always been used, it remains undervalued by significant segments of the intelligence community. This attitude derives from the fact that the intelligence community was created to discover secrets. If OSINT could largely meet the United States’ national security needs, the intelligence community would look very different. Some intelligence professionals have mistakenly equated the degree of difficulty involved in obtaining information with its ultimate value to analysts and policy makers. Contributing to this pervasive bias is that OSINT has always been handled differently by the intelligence community. All of the other INTs have dedicated collectors, processors, and exploiters. With the exception of the DNI’s Open Source Center (formerly the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, FBIS), which monitors foreign media broadcasts, OSINT does not have dedicated collectors, processors, and exploiters. Instead, analysts are largely expected to act as their own OSINT collectors, a concept that other INTs would consider ludicrous. This is unfortunate, because OSINT is the perfect place to start any intelligence collection. By first determining what material is available from open sources, intelligence managers could focus their clandestine collectors on those issues for which such means were needed. Properly used, OSINT could be a good intelligence collection resource manager. The 2004 intelligence law mandates that the DNI must decide how he or she wishes to deal with OSINT, either by creating a dedicated OSINT center or by some other means. The WMD Commission (the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction) recommended that the CIA create an Open Source Directorate. President George W. Bush endorsed this recommendation and left its implementation to the DNI. DNI Negroponte designated FBIS as the Open Source Center and made the CIA his executive agent (i.e., operating office) to run it. Some felt that little had changed other than renaming FBIS, which had been a CIA office. Its designation as a DNI office did not result in added leverage. The situation was further confused by the creation of an assistant deputy DNI (ADDNI) for open source under the deputy DNI for collection. This ADDNI is responsible for open-source policy but does not control any open-source assets or agencies, including the Open Source Center. The ADDNI/Open Source seeks to create a National Open Source Enterprise that will, among other things, emphasize professional training and certification in the skills required to conduct open-source intelligence, which would be a major step forward.
The 1999 Kosovo air war produced a new OSINT stream. Individuals in Serbia who said they were opposed to the Slobodan Milosevic government sent e-mails to intelligence firms in the United States, giving reports on the relative success of NATO air strikes, the mood in Belgrade, and related matters. Dealing with such reports is problematic as no assured means exists of authenticating them. The most reliable reports would come from known and trusted sources, probably based on past reporting. Establishing an independent capability to accomplish this may not be possible during hostilities. Some sources may prove to be reliable over time. But one has to be on guard for the possibility, if not the likelihood, of at least some level of disinformation from the targeted regime. In the case of Kosovo, at least some of the sources proved to be reliable, thus establishing a new OSINT stream.
CONCLUSION
Each collection discipline is made up of several distinct types of sources (see Figure 5-1) and each offers unique advantages that are well suited to some types of intelligence requirements but brings with it certain disadvantages as well (see Table 5-1). By deploying a broad and varied array of collection techniques, the United States derives two advantages. First, it is able to exploit the advantages of each type of INT, which, ideally, will compensate for the shortcomings of the others. Second, it is able to apply more