The SIGINT–HUMINT balance
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Asked how the CIA should divide its investment between signals intelligence and human intelligence, John Kiriakou called the question "not just an important question, but I think it''s the most important question for any incoming new CIA director."

What signals collection buys

His concession to the technology is complete and then bounded. "SIGINT is not going to save the day. Yes, SIGINT is great, you can grab every phone call, every text message, every email out of the air and put it in your giant Cray computers in the Utah desert, and have it sit there for 500 years until you need it. That''s great." The limit is categorical: "But SIGINT isn''t going to be inside the room when Saddam Hussein makes a decision to invade Kuwait, or when the Chinese decide to go to war with India over their border, or Vladimir Putin makes the decision to invade Ukraine. You have to get that information from a human source."

The cycle he describes

Kiriakou says the correction is announced on arrival and then abandoned. "Every new incoming CIA director says, ''it''s time to get back to basics. We''re going to rely on human intelligence. Our job is to recruit spies to steal secrets.'' Everybody says that, and then they get distracted by these shiny objects called signals intelligence, and they walk away from human intelligence."

The cost he assigns to it

Asked what is lost, he answers with a list of surprises: "we don''t know that the Berlin Wall is coming down, that Israel is on the verge of attacking Iran and they''ve made the decision to do so, that Saddam is going to invade Kuwait. Any of these momentous global events were missed by the CIA, for the most part." He then draws the distinction his whole argument rests on, that analysis is not collection. "Analytically, yeah, we made the judgment that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait. Yes, we made the analytic judgment that Putin was going to invade Ukraine. But you''ve got to have somebody in the room who can report back to you, so you know exactly what the thought process is." The purpose of the difference is presidential: it "helps the president to create his own policy to counter whatever the decision was."

See also

- Iraqi invasion of Kuwait
- NSA
- CIA intelligence failures
- Asset acquisition cycle
- Bluffdale NSA Data Center
