Local Operatives and Information-Gathering

As a nation, we grieve (and rightly so) for the loss of CIA personnel who died last week in Afghanistan, doing the work they were called to do. Indeed, they and those who work for intelligence agencies are our first line of defense; the information they provide is vital in mapping out good security and defense strategies against the enemy. This particular group, according to this article, is a big blow to US efforts in the area because it was composed of experienced field officers with “unique capabilities and attributes.” It is without doubt that they risked -- and ultimately sacrificed their lives -- for their country, for which we owe them sincere thanks.

As part of their regional mission, the group’s main objective, according to intelligence experts, was to recruit local operatives who could provide information from the field and identify targets. As Bruce Hoffman, professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service said, “The best intelligence is going to come from the field, and that means working closely with the Afghans.”

But what makes a good local operative? How can the intelligence community judge if a local is fit for the job? And when is it time to know if that person has the right character worthy of trust? Certainly, his language skills and familiarity with the local conditions are important. But those are not enough! More important are his cultural insight, his loyalty (both political and religious), his worldview. Against what standards the intelligence community should judge all these factors are the blanks that must be urgently filled in.

For more often than not, the culture of which a local operative is part does not possess the proper ingredients with which to produce a liberal character. His loyalty is to his community and religion, informed by a powerful sentiment called nationalism that emphasizes the ethnic and the particular at the expense of the universal. Hence, his worldview is often myopic and parochial.

But he, like everyone else, does possess reason that enables him to discern certain truths about the human condition.

Socrates teaches us in our meditation of the human condition that we should always begin with reality, wherever it takes us. But reality takes on different forms in different cultures, faiths, social living, etc. Yet, the human condition since the beginning of time has remained the same, constantly beset by the struggle between good and evil, the just and the unjust, the free and the unfree. Poverty and injustice faced by the ancients are the very same problems that we grapple with these days.

But we have also learned that there are principles of politics that transcend centuries and continents that inform the human condition, such as the principles of natural justice and natural rights. In modern democratic times, these principles are embodied in the Declaration of Independence: that all men, endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are created equal; that it is the duty of the government to secure and maintain these rights; and if that government becomes abusive of its powers, it becomes a right of a people to overthrow that government. Power is not what is efficient and effective, but what is reasonable and just.

If a local operative is cognizant of the universal truth that is the human condition and the first principles that should inform it, he earns our trust.

If the intelligence community could hire foreign operatives bestowed with this understanding, men and women who possess an insight into the human soul and the environment it lives in, have knowledge of first principles outlined above, can appreciate the importance of the universal at the expense of the particular, the war on terror is half-won.