translated from Spanish: Fatigue of human material in matters of intelligence?

It is claimed that there is no intelligence in Chile. We know, however, that there are agencies, regulations, missions, organization charts, activity, communication, increasing expenditures, international links, training, people and officials.
All that certainly exists. But more and more voices are telling us that there is no intelligence, that there are no results, that the events that have occurred are not cleared, that crime is growing, terrorism grows, that there is no anticipation.
Then? It could be worse.
We see that the police in the absence of investigative results invents results. We’re not going to tell the stories of the Bombs, Hurricane, etc. case again. We see that the money for intelligence is spent on the personal affairs of commanders-in-chief, we see increasingly the discovering links of narcos with policemen, or policemen doing taken away on their own, or soldiers stealing and selling rifles. Also truculent acquisitions that you have to investigate to know what happened.
All of them discharged immediately, obviously. Others prosecuted. Presented the usual complaints to know more and how it happened and time passes and announcements of reforms, drastic changes, new looks are still made: now yes yes.
If a document containing Chile’s National Intelligence Plan, prepared by the National Intelligence Agency, is evaluated in the Government as a sucker and should have been corrected and reduced by the analysts of the Defense Intelligence Directorate and a newspaper dares to publish that without being denied until now, if officials of that Agency and staff of OS-9 of Carabineros become entangled in the taking of evidence in a Post Office of Chile to investigate a terrorist attack and the Minister of the Interior in person has to undo the entrating by phone and reports it a diary as well, if a modification is sent to Law 19.974 consisting of adding the use of undercover agents to investigate terrorism because all other intrusive means are already defined and should be active such as photos, listening, tracking, informants, videos, electronic interference. Or recommend that when some body fails to deliver information to another it may be charged to the President of the Republic, convinced that this will improve relations between community bodies and not the opposite.
Then?
Either the heads do not read the laws and powers they have or do not have, or officials do not know their missions or fail to fulfill them because they believe that they can, or interagency coordinations do not work, or the money is moving in any direction and the staff with power are appropriate to him.
Anyway, what’s wrong with people.
In those conditions I don’t see how the state of state of our intelligence can be improved. Whatever the redesign, new attributions or controls and demands will be useless, time lost, if those who have to give functionality to all of it fail, become corrupted, lie, do not collaborate, act with autarky, lack proper professionalism and relevant competencies.
What to do then?
We’ve seen how some of these institutions recruit their staff. They say one thing and they do another. It is said that there is an intelligence school, that candidates are subjected to a training period. It’s not like that. Completely inexperienced people, who have never heard of intelligence, people who have performed in other fields, who move reckless practices to the intelligence cycle, arrive because they have no work and are friends of or relatives of. People who give the impression that they could perform well and time will tell. Officials who lack the most basic culture regarding technical issues, analysis processes, conspiracy management, national widereachassessments.
I’m talking about the National Intelligence Agency.
But it could be even worse. This happens when the strategic driver does not make use of his powers fearing the effect they will have on his political environment or close relationships, or when that driver summons others and they do not respond as they should and the ability to do national estimates and other lower-ranking and more urgent appreciations.
What is gained from adding undercover agents to an institution that has fired officials with experience in conspiracy management and should act by people who cannot differentiate between penetration and infiltration? People who are unaware of the complexities of selecting, recruiting, instructing and leading an official who becomes an undercover agent, creating the necessary profiles to operational circumstances, delimiting areas of operation, preparing conditions for emergency extraction if necessary, ensure the suitability of the selection, its resistance to tensions, in the face of life change, ensure the conspiratorial support of its environment, psychological difficulties over time, to carry out a serious effort of attention and direction?
In addition, all effort can fall into a vacuum when those who should receive this high-level advice believe they do not need it. This absence of specialized and meticulous strategic support should have avoided the Cucutas, lost the path of the government program, sinking into improvisation, not knowing that there are prospective studies that tell us how the future is coming.
I rescue the excellent document published by the newspaper La Tercera that contains a proposal for improvements to the National Intelligence System, prepared by Juan Pablo Toro who knows very well what he is talking about. His proposal is vigorous, coherent and effective, as long as the people in charge are others. As long as the strategic drivers are others, the conspiratorial operators are others, when real undercover agents are available, I mean, when the human factor is relevant in the implementation of these designs.
But we are within a model that generates this human type, exploitarising, unscrupulous, politicking, false, indolent, ineffective, which thinks it is successful in behaving thus useless for the seriousness of what needs to be done. Let’s change people, choose carefully, seriously, and then we’ll have intelligence in Chile.

The content poured into this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.

Original source in Spanish

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