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Open Source Center: What Went Wrong?

Article · January 2007

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 Open Source Center: What Went Wrong?

Mohamed Motawei

For the traditional intelligence community, open source intelligence (OSINT)

was always a component of an all-source intelligence capacity that includes

classified sources.1 Intelligence has been regarded as the business of

discovering secrets using a closed system of collection and analysis. 2 Key

sources included human intelligence (HUMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT),

and imagery intelligence (IMINT).3 Although open sources were frequently

used in the intelligence process, their value was seen as secondary, 4 despite

the fact that it is estimated that OSINT provides between 80 and 95 percent

1 Lock K. Johnson (ed.), Strategic Intelligence: Understanding the Hidden Side of

Government, (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007), p. xi.

2 Philip Davies, “Ideas of Intelligence: Divergent National Concepts and

Institutions,” in Christopher Andrew, Richard J. Alderich, and Wesley K. Wark (ed.),
Secret Intelligence: A Reader, (Oxon: Routledge, 2009), pp. 12-25, p. 22.

3 Margaret E. Beare (ed.), Encyclopedia of Transnational Crime and Justice, (Los

Angeles, CA: Sage, 2012), p. 199.

4 Chris Pallaris, “Open Source Intelligence: A Strategic Enabler of National Security,”

CSS Analysis in Security Policy, vol. 3, no. 32, April 2008, pp. 1-3, p. 1. Garicano and
Posner find that secrecy leads to a “herding problem;” that is, intelligence analysts
tend to focus on the same limited information when drawing conclusions, noting
that the large investment made in covert intelligence prevent information outside
that system (i.e. overt intelligence) from entering the analytical process. (Luis
Garicano and Richard A. Posner, “Intelligence Reform since 9/11: An Organizational
Economics Perspective,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 19, No. 4, Fall 2005,
pp. 151–170.)

1
of the information used by the intelligence community. 5 Several terms could

be catalogued to characterize OSINT including the following: open

information, overt intelligence, public information, unclassified information,

and white intelligence.

OSINT Definition

What does constitute OSINT and how is it distinguished from other types of

intelligence and information? Open source intelligence (OSINT) is defined as

a “discipline that intelligence agents use to systematically collect, process,

and analyze publicly available, relevant information.” 6 According to the 2006

Defense Authorization Act, the OSINT is “intelligence that is produced from

publicly available information collected, exploited, and disseminated in a

timely manner to an appropriate audience for the purpose of addressing a

specific intelligence requirement.”7 According the Congress’s definition,

5 Libor Benes, “OSINT, New Technologies, Education: Expanding Opportunities and

Threats—A New Paradigm,” Journal of Strategic Security, vol. 6, no. 3, Fall 2013, pp.
22-37, p. 24. According to Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA’s Osama ben
Laden unit, OSINT contains “90 percent of what you need to know” (Susan B.
Glasser, “Probing Galaxies of Data for Nuggets,” Washington Post, November 25,
2005). William Nolte, who served on the DNI’s staff, puts that figure at 95 percent
(William Nolte, “The Intelligence Community in the DNI Era: A One-year
Assessment,” paper presented as part of the panel “Intelligence Community
Reform, One Year After” at the annual meeting of the International Studies
Association, San Diego, CA, March 2006, http://www.isanet.org/sandiego/).

6 Department of the Army Headquarters, “Open Source Intelligence,” December

2006, p. 10, https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fmi2-22-9.pdf.

7 United States Congress, House of Representatives, National Defense,

Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, 109th Cong., 1st sess., H.R.1815, p. 1.

2
OSINT achieves the status of an intelligence discipline. However, the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defines OSINT as a “foundation” for other

disciplines, not an intelligence discipline in its own right. 8 OSINT is the object

(i.e. the raw intelligence-value data) and the process through which the

collected data is turned into useful information for decision-makers.9

OSINT Significance

Benavides notes that the NATO OSINT handbook says that OSINT is vital to

the all-source intelligence process because it gathers information “from

public and overt sources in order to produce actionable intelligence.” 10

Sources that are commonly used include newspapers, books, broadcasts,

military trade journals, and the Internet.

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States prompted the

Congress to pass the Patriot Act. The vital part of the Patriot Act with regards

to US intelligence comes from the second provision in which it allows the

8 NATO, NATO Open Source Intelligence Handbook, November 2001, p. v,

http://www.oss.net/dynamaster/file_archive/030201/ca5fb66734f540fbb4f8f6ef759b
258c/NATO%20OSINT%20Handbook%20v1.2%20-%20Jan%202002.pdf.

9 Loch K. Johnson, Handbook of Intelligence Studies, (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), p.

130, 213.

10 E. B. Benavides, “Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) Link Directory: Targeting

Tomorrow’s Terrorist Today (T4) through OSINT,” Creative Commons, June 2011, p. 9,
https://search.wikileaks.org/gifiles/attach/10/10459_Open%20Source%20In.pdf.

3
interception of communications if they are related to terrorist activities and

allows law enforcement agencies to share information related to terrorist

activities with federal authorities.11 Noteworthy, the quality and use of

Internet-based OSINT depends primarily on its intelligence-value and

analysis, since there is a lot of misinformation that needs to be sorted

through before the crucial pieces of information are uncovered.12

Theoretical Debate

This research problematizes the organizational aspects of the Open Source

Center, which was created in line with the recommendations of the

Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding

Weapons of Mass Destruction (the WMD Commission) in 2005. Despite the

fact that the literature pertaining to OSINT is limited, 13 some scholars have

offered critical assessments to promote the field, including Hulnick, who

highlights the unreliability and misinformation of OSINT as well as the

availability of information to adversaries in a way that limits its utility; 14

11 Ed Grabanowski, “How the Patriot Act Works,” HowStuffWorks.com, July 6, 2014,

http://people.howstuffworks.com/patriot-act.htm.

12 R. M. Martin, “Disaster Relief Intelligence Support,” Marine Corps Gazette, vol.

98, no. 1, 2014, p. 39-42, p. 40, http://search.proquest.com/docview/1477207200?
accountid=145-85.

13 Alessandro Politi, “The Citizen as ‘Intelligence Minuteman,’” International Journal

of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 34–38.

14 Arthur S. Hulnick, “The Downside of Open Source Intelligence,” International

Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, Vol. 15, No. 4, Winter 2002–2003, p.
565.

4
Lowenthal who notes that analysts prefer classified sources; 15 Pringle who

says that the inherent ambiguity of overt intelligence diminishes its

usefulness;16 and Mercado, who recognizes that challenge, and suggests a

better integration of OSINT into the intelligence community. 17 Other efforts

were exerted by scholars with the objective of examining OSINT within the

context of federal policy initiatives, including the War on Drugs. 18 For her

part, Sands calls for devoting more human and technical resources for

OSINT, since it is deemed as a knowledge management problem. 19 However,

this research concludes that such a viewpoint turned the CIA-affiliated Open

Source Center into an inefficient, bloating bureaucracy.

OSINT Drivers

Information is categorized as open source (as opposed to covert source) if it

15 Mark Lowenthal, “Open Source Intelligence: New Myths, New Realities,”

Intelligencer, Vol. 10, No. 1, February 1999, pp. 7–9.

16 Robert W. Pringle, “The Limits of OSINT: Diagnosing the Soviet Media, 1985–
1989,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, Vol. 16, No. 4,
Summer 2003, pp. 280–289.

17 Stephen C. Mercado, “A Venerable Source in a New Era: Sailing the Sea of OSINT
in the Information Age,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 48, No. 3, 2004, pp. 45–55.

18 Hamilton Bean, No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of
US Intelligence, (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC CLIO, 2011), p. 13; J. F. Holden-Rhodes,
Sharing the Secrets: Open Source Intelligence and the War on Drugs, (Westport, CT:
Praeger Security International, 1997), pp. 45-47.

19 Amy Sands, “Integrating Open Sources into Transnational Threat Assessments,”

in Jennifer E. Sims and Burton Gerber (eds.), Transforming US Intelligence,
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), pp. 63–78.

5
is publically available and not classified at its origin. 20 In other words, open

source information is gathered from publicly available sources for the

purpose of meeting specific intelligence requirements based on- or offline,

including media outlets, government agencies, think-tanks, and

universities.21 Since the end of the Cold War, threats have multiplied and

became more diverse in terms of their agents and nature, 22 including, inter

alia, terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, failing states,

organized crime, illegal immigration, and energy security. 23 Technology is

another driver for OSINT, since the evolution of the Internet has alerted

security actors to the potential of new tools and technologies for collecting,

analyzing, and distributing knowledge on global affairs. 24 For example,

Google Earth, crowdsourcing, distributed computing, and hand-held mobile

devices provide more geospatial intelligence than was available to many

20 Matteo E. Bonfanti and Andrew P. Rebera, “Internet-Based Intelligence: Prediction
or Foreknowledge?” in Emilio Mordini and Manfred Green (ed.), Internet-Based
Intelligence in Public Health Emergencies: Early Detection and Response in Disease
Outbreak Crises, (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2013), pp. 11-24, p. 14.

21 Pallaris, p. 1.

22 Shannon Kempe, “Managing Data for a 21st Century Hegemony,” Dataversity,

January 4, 2012, http://www.dataversity.net/managing-data-for-a-21st-century-
hegemony/.

23 Asle Toje, America, the EU, and Strategic Culture: Renegotiating the Transatlantic
Bargain, (Oxon: Routledge, 2008), p. 128; Liana Sun Wyler, “Weak and Failing
States: Evolving Security Threats and US Policy,” CRS Report for Congress, August
28, 2008, pp. 5-8.

24 Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2008), 203-205; Julian Richards, A Guide to National Security:
Threats, Responses, and Strategies, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 41-
42.

6
governments two decades ago.25 Noteworthy, the information pertaining to

the 9/11 terrorist attacks were derived mainly from foreign sources.

Moshirnia says that it is imperative for US intelligence agencies to take

precaution when dealing with the foreign press, since it bears signs of

terrorist threats. Moshirnia concludes that “US security often derives from

foreign production of terror-related intelligence; therefore, cutting off the flow

of this information will undermine American safety.”26

Benefits

OSINT advocates are keen to highlight its benefits. First, OSINT depends on

open source information, not satellite-taken imagery or eavesdropped

telephone calls. OSINT offers advantages for its users, since it is cost-

effective.27 Second, OSINT can be widely disseminated. Draeger says, “The

fact that OSINT can be shared makes it a high value commodity. Other media

sources such as the radio, television, and newspaper are widely accessible

and easily shareable.”28 Third, the perception that Internet-based open

25 Committee on the Future US Workforce for Geospatial Intelligence, “Future US
Workforce for Geospatial Intelligence,” (Washington, DC: National Academies Press,
2013), p. 9; Tim Shorrock, Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence
Outsourcing, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), p. 248.

26 Andrew Moshirnia, “Valuing Speech and OSINT in the Face of Judicial Deference,”
Harvard National Security Journal, vol. 4, no. 2, 2013, pp. 385-454, pp. 386-387.

27 Richard A. Best and Alfred Cumming, “Open Source Intelligence (OSINT): Issues
for Congress,” CRS Report for Congress, December 5, 2007, p. 2,
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/intel/RL34270.pdf.

28 Walter R. Draeger, “Take advantage of OSINT,” Military Intelligence Professional

Bulletin, July-September 2009, vol. 35, no. 3, pp. 39-44, p. 42.

7
source information is less credible has been discredited by recent literature

outlining various strategies to overcome that obstacle. According to Morrow,

six of the most common misconceptions of Internet-based OSINT include the

following: it is less credible, intelligence requests require classified

information; every kind of analyst can gather information; Internet- based

OSINT equals Google; it is free; and it is easy.29 Finally, OSINT enables the

intelligence community to understand the regional contexts and global

security agenda.30

Weaknesses and Limitations

OSINT poses several disadvantages to the intelligence community. First,

OSINT does not provide the complete solution for the intelligence

community’s information needs, since OSINT lacks in the tactical and

strategic levels of actionable intelligence.31 Second, there is a growing

perception that Internet-based OSINT is not a priority in the US intelligence

29 Craig D. Morrow, “OSINT: Truths and Misconceptions,” Military Intelligence

Professional Bulletin, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 31-34, https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-
3181745241.html.

30 Anyone who follows up on the newscast summaries produced by the OSC

bureaus in Doha, Amman, and London knows that many reports were neglected in
order to save the linguist’s efforts and implicitly tell the reader that he or she can
read about these reports elsewhere. Noteworthy, many linguists have no job other
than producing FYIs to report about attacks in Pakistan (with changing the place and
number of victims only) or, even, a radio station in northern Iraq which failed to
broadcast due to technical issues.

31 Chris Pallaris, “Open Source Intelligence: A Strategic Enabler of National

Security,” CSS Analysis in Security Policy, vol. 3, no. 32, April 2008, pp. 1-3, p. 2.

8
community.32 Third, Oliver-Jonson says that, apart from the failure to invest in

processing (i.e. tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination), the

United States has created three consistent errors since the evolution of

OSINT; namely, no standards, no geospatial attributes, and no integration.” 33

Fourth, many scholars lack in the empirical evidence and discursive

dimensions that support their claims. For example, Zegart admits that the

routines and cultures of the government bureaucracies are “under-

examined.”34 Hereby, an organizational perspective should step in with the

objective of informing and contributing to the theory. Bean notes that the

professional literature typically points to the benefits and limitations of OSINT

in meeting intelligence requirements, but “larger investigations of how the

concept of OSINT functions as an organizational symbol and site of

contestation in the intelligence reform debate are absent.” 35 Fifth, the

limitations of OSINT include privacy restrictions of the provider, large

numbers of results to process, lack of documentation of open source tools,

32 Andrew M. Borene, “Unclassified Information,” Journal of Counterterrorism and

Homeland Security International, vol. 17, no. 4, Winter 2011, pp. 10-12.

33 Lisa N. Oliver-Johnson, “What are the Weaknesses of Open Source Intelligence

(OSINT)?” Strategic Intelligence, Spring 2013,
http://www.slideshare.net/RDSWEB/osint-oliverjohnsonresearch-intl501/.

34 Amy B. Zegart, “September 11 and the Adaptation Failure of US Intelligence

Agencies,” International Security, Vol. 29, No. 4, 2005, pp. 78–111.

35 Hamilton Bean, “The DNI’s Open Source Center: An Organizational

Communication Perspective,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-
Intelligence, Volume 20, Issue 2 June 2007 , pages 240-257,
http://newsdetails.blogspot.ca/2007/05/dnis-open-source-center-organizational.html.

9
and a limited number of trained professionals. Sixth, Zegart, on the contrary

to Draeger, cites the fragmented structure of the US federal government as

posing serious obstacles to the intelligence community adaptation to the

post–Cold War world.36 Finally, OSINT poses challenges for privacy protection

and intellectual property enforcement. In some cases, the use of gathered

content without permission is illegal, interference from open information may

unintentionally reveal personal information about an individual, and

publishing information about a group or organization may lead to political

and economic damages.

Analysis of OSC

Following the recommendations of WMD Commission, an Open Source Center

(OSC) was established in November 2005. 37 It seems that the current debate

on OSINT is not merely rhetoric, since the OSC symbolizes stakeholders’

competing positions concerning the definition and role of OSINT, the role of

the private sector, and the need to reposition OSINT as an intelligence

resource, knowing that OSINT is available to government personnel and

contractors through a secure website.38

36 Amy B. Zegart, “September 11 and the Adaptation Failure of US Intelligence

Agencies,” International Security, Vol. 29, No. 4, 2005, pp. 78–111, p. 94.

37 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11
Commission Report, (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2011), p. 413;
Jan Goldman (ed.), The Central Intelligence Agency: An Encyclopedia of Covert Ops,
Intelligence Gathering, and Spies, (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO), vol. ii, p. 280.

38 https://www.opensource.gov/public/content/login/login.fcc.

10
The OSC builds on the work of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service

(FBIS), which was established in 1941 to monitor and translate foreign

media. Before its metamorphosis into the OSC, FBIS provided translation,

monitoring, and analysis of foreign Internet, print, radio, television, and other

sources.39

General Michael V. Hayden, the then–deputy director of National Intelligence,

at a July 2005 congressional hearing, said,

We do not picture open source as being another collection

discipline, certainly not in any way beyond what is already being

done by FBIS. . . . So, in essence, the only production line we

have is what we have already, which is actually very good.

Beyond that, what you get out of the [OSC] is this enabling

function that allows the community— frankly, we are not talking

about creating anything. We are talking about taking advantage

of that which is already out there, if we are only to go out and

grab it.40

General Hayden, who became director of the CIA which runs the OSC, took

the “non-discipline” side of OSINT. Therefore, he maintained its symbolic

39 Joseph E. Roop, “Foreign Broadcast Information Service,” Central Intelligence

Agency, August 11, 2009, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-
intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/foreign-broadcast-information-
service/.

40 “Hearing before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,

Subcommittee on Oversight,” July 28, 2005.

11
status within the intelligence community; that is, continuing the FBIS process

without any modifications or building new capabilities. Worse, the creation of

OSC bureaus worldwide meant an inefficient, mechanical, bloating

bureaucracy, since General Hayden was “not talking about creating

anything.” In other words, the structural change from FBIS to OSC was not

followed by addressing the more enduring communication issues, including

policies, procedures, and services, as well as the symbolic ways OSINT

circulates within the intelligence community. As a result, instead of obviating

much of the need for secret intelligence, the OSC failed to substitute for the

need to collect and analyze secret information. 41 Furthermore, it “failed to

address inadequate and outdated regulatory standards,” 42 and cases were

quickly filed by ex-employees and contractors against the backdrop of

“heavy handed disrespect, waste, fraud, abuse, harassment, and

41 For those who rely heavily on covert intelligence at the expense of overt
intelligence, Mercado says, “Those who swear that secrets are the only true
intelligence, in contrast to mere ‘information’ found through open means, would do
well to consider the indistinct character of the categories of overt and covert in
intelligence. . . . Overt and covert streams of intelligence are by no means
completely parallel and distinct; they often mingle and meander over one another’s
territory” (Stephen C. Mercado, “Reexamining the Distinction between Open
Information and Secret,” Central Intelligence Agency, April 15, 2007,
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-
studies/studies/Vol49no2/reexamining_the_distinction_3.htm). The fact is that where
the demarcation line between “information” and “intelligence” is drawn has much to
do with stakeholders’ persuasive appeals, and less to do with any intrinsic quality of
the information itself.

42 Jordan Maxwell, “Embedded Commission Guys,” Wealth Professional, March 12,

2015, http://www.wealthprofessional.ca/news/embedded-commission-guys-dont-
rush-trailer-fee-review-189163.aspx.

12
retribution,”43 not to mention the uncovered cases of sexual harassment and

complaints against unequal payments for the same positions on the basis of

nationality, as it happened at the OSC-Doha bureau.44 Therefore, the OSC

turned to be an added burden, an annual budget for a lucrative private

business, and a miniscule contribution to the intelligence community, which

slipped away to its old ways despite the much publicized WMD Commission

recommendations.

Case Study: OSC-Doha Bureau

The Defense Authorization Act says, “With the Information Revolution, the

amount, significance, and accessibility of open-source information has

exploded, but the Intelligence Community has not expanded its exploitation

efforts and systems to produce open-source intelligence.” 45 In order to meet

this challenge, the US government created the OSC in 2005, but it seems

that the OSC has failed its mandate.

43 Unattributed report, “DSS Whistleblower Hearing Finally Scheduled,”
Whistleblower Support Blog, January 19, 2015,
https://gflorencescott.wordpress.com/.

44 As late as 2007, linguists of the OSC-affiliated Combined Media Processing

Center (CMPC) complained against imparity due to their nationalities, since
Jordanians and Lebanese linguists were paid more than their Egyptian peers for the
same positions. Due to their imaginary or real grievances, the OSC linguists
launched a strike against the US contractor in 2008 with the objective of increasing
their salaries. Afraid of losing the contract with the US government, the contractor
returned them back to work, then dismissed them one by one, and replaced the
majority with new recruits. However, the contractor lost the contract for a new
company at the end of the fiscal year.

45 United States Congress, House of Representatives, National Defense,

Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006, 109th Cong., 1st sess., H.R.1815, p. 1.

13
The OSC officials focused on collecting, not acquiring, information. Indeed,

the massive quantity of items on the OSC website shows that its officials

sought raw material, not processed information. 46 With the exception of the

urgent items (e.g. videos released by Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri),

the OSC collected items on a routine basis, knowing that it rarely received a

feedback. In other words, no one bothered to read the OSC items in Reston,

Virginia, where the main OSC headquarters is located. In addition, many

items that were transcribed and (fully or partially) translated by linguists

were never received by analysts in order to transform them into processed

intelligence items. Thereby, they turned to be a historical archive.

The fact that the OSC is dependent on linguists—not analysts— who are

based outside the US territories led to another issue; that is, dependence on

non-American elements to run a US intelligence enterprise. First, the very

existence of (non-American) Arabs violates the principle of not employing

linguists from the target region in order to avoid any biases or preferences.

Second, some Arab linguists proved to be a security liability due to their

misconduct,47 or due to the fact that were fired or left the OSC after their

46 See the attached file, knowing that the fully translated items were not produced
by the OSC-Doha bureau, which tended to focus on transcribed items despite the
fact that it was instructed to follow up on the 2011 uprising against President Hosni
Mubarak.

47 A Palestinian linguist, Sameh Arafat, was dismissed from the OSC due to his low
translation skills and the alleged organization of orgies and procurement of women
for Qatari citizens. In 2008, at least two OSC employees (i.e. Jordanian linguist
Majed al-Masri and OSC Site Manager Eliana Karam) were dismissed after they had
been caught watching porn videos at their stations.

14
complaints had not been properly addressed.48 Third, the Arab-majority work

environment resulted in a rampant corruption, including sexual

harassment,49 sexual services for higher payments,50 and harassment along

racial and religious lines.51 Fourth, the US intelligence community created

OSC bureaus overseas, but these bureaus lost any reason for existence,

since newscasts, interviews, speeches, and other materials are downloaded

by the Internet, using programs such as DAVE. Therefore, the need to have

Arab linguists at bureaus in the target region is pointless, since they could be

easily replaced by American linguists, who are computer literate and have

linguistic skills. As for the OSC bureaus overseas, it is an open secret that

many US contractors found it a lucrative business, since they used to take

commissions from the US government in order to procure linguists for the

48 The OSC-Doha bureau is located in Qatar, which is internationally notorious for
labor grievances. In case that a foreign worker complains against his or her (Qatari-
sponsored) company, including the US contractors with the OSC, he or she had to
leave the worksite, wait at home for nearly two months, then appear before a Qatari
judge who would fire the complaining worker, order his or her deportation, and close
the case.

49 Mundher al-Husseini, a Palestinian-Jordanian trainer (known as FOSO) at OSC-

Doha bureau, was asked to resign (and did so in 2011) following sexual harassment
complaints filed by female linguists including Palestinian dentist-turned-linguist
Taghrid Morshed, Lebanese linguist Heba Hasan, and others.

50 Sexual services included promotions to FOSO, particularly Lebanese linguists

Heba Hasan and Rita Khawajeh after an alleged relationship with Lebanese FOSO
Georges Richan. Khawajeh was said to have an affair with the former Deputy OSC-
Doha Bureau Manager, Mike Johnson. Due to her low translation skills, Khawajeh
found a linguist, Wassim Latheqi, who could edit her items before she would release
them in her capacity as a FOSO.

51 Due to the rampant corruption at the OSC-Doha bureau, particularly under

Iranian-American Site Manager Laila Amir, many linguists were demoted or
promoted due to issues that had nothing to do with their translation skills.

15
OSC bureaus abroad, including Doha, while they hired linguists for relatively

low salaries, according to the linguists’ nationalities (e.g. Americans, non-

Americans, and, even, on the basis of personal issues). 52 Finally, the OSC-

Doha is based on picking up Arab linguists from Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt.

In order to have a security clearance, the linguist should not have worked for

another government. Therefore, the OSC employs only are inexperienced in

intelligence-value information collection and analysis for fears of infiltration

by other intelligence agencies. However, a number of Jordanian linguists, for

example, turned to be affiliated with their national security services, while

Egyptian linguists turned to be sympathetic with Islamic terrorists.

Mixed Results

Empirical evidence shows that the OSC bureaus were highly inefficient in the

Arab region. For example, Western journalists and reporters who visited the

Middle East predicted the Arab Spring, while the OSC Arab-speaking staff

(and, consequently, US analysts) failed to do so, despite the fact that the

OSC had a massive budget, technological tools, and an army of linguists in

52 One of the clearest examples was a Lebanese linguist who went by the name
Aline Assaf. This person was hired with an extra 4,000 Qatari riyals, and she did not
any extra work and, even, all she had to do was to transcribe three or four items
from English newspapers per day. This is to say that she did not translate any items
or make newscast summaries as any other linguist. The frustrated linguists who
complained against Assaf’s privileges were called to a meeting with Sean Myatt, a
US contractor, who told them bluntly that his company deals with linguists on a
case-by-case basis. After a few months, Aline Assaf was promoted to the position of
FOSO. It was said that this promotion was due to a sexual service done to Deputy
Manager Mike Johnson.

16
several bureaus (e.g. Amman, Doha, London, Tel Aviv) with the single

objective of keeping a close eye on the Arab countries. In addition, there are

large volumes of useless data that make extracting intelligence-value

information difficult and quite unreliable, so the majority of the OSC items

turned to be noise, not signals.53

Due to the low-skilled linguists and lack of competent analysts, the US

government failed to capitalize on open source information. The US Senate

Select Committee expressed this belief in a report titled “Review of the

Terrorist Attacks on US Facilities in Benghazi, Libya, September 11-12, 2012,”

saying, “the intelligence community failed to emphasize on collecting

intelligence and ignored open source information from social media and

blogs posts by Libyan nationals, that could have warned the potential

security threats to the US facilities.”54

In order to find tasks for the underemployed linguists, the OSC devised a

unique technique; that is, covering reactions to official events (e.g. a high-

level official visit, a government declaration) as if OSINT tends to cover

issues after, not before, their occurrence.

53 Andy Kroll, “Meet the Author Who Predicted the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall
Street,” Mother Jones, March 1, 2012,
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/jonathan-schell-interview-role-
nonviolent-action-occupy-arab-spring.

54 http://fas.org/irp/congress/2014_rpt/benghazi.pdf.

17
Recommendations

On the contrary to Sands’ argument that the intelligence community should

devote more human and technical resources to its exploitation, 55 this

research concludes that such a viewpoint turned the CIA-affiliated Open

Source Center into an inefficient, bloating bureaucracy. If anything, the OSC-

Doha bureau proved to be a waste of money and efforts, and the only ones

who made use of it were a handful of US and local contractors as well as low-

skilled linguists. This experience needs a re-evaluation of OSINT within the

intelligence community on a larger scale as well as the repositioning the OSC

in order to achieve maximum profits.

Making no analysis of the raw information is equal to, if not worse than, not

having it at all. In a stark contradiction to the failing OSC bureaus, the work

of freelancers in Cairo and Nicosia proved to be exceptional, since they

provided an in-depth analysis of the material under scrutiny, unlike the

inconsistent, low-skilled work of the Doha bureau linguists, despite the fact

that the basic salaries of the Doha-based linguists are higher. Cairo’s

linguists used to release full translation of columns and speeches as well as

analysis of critical items. Nicosia’s linguists used to edit the work of the

Doha-based OSC linguists, since the Doha bureau lacked US analysts and

high-skilled editors.

55 Amy Sands, “Integrating Open Sources into Transnational Threat Assessments,”

in Jennifer E. Sims and Burton Gerber (eds.), Transforming US Intelligence,
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), pp. 63–78.

18
Interpersonal relations, communication skills, and organizational culture

should be reviewed at the OSC bureaus. In addition, religious and gendered-

discrimination should be prohibited, since this practice led to picking weak

elements for leading positions—a thing that affected the quality of the OSC

products. Today, intelligence analysts have critical tasks, including the

protection of the nation from domestic and international threats, and

generation of information that will lead to successful execution of the

intelligence based activities. This fact should maximize the significance of

OSC, since it is not merely an extension of FBIS, but an intelligence unit that

should produce processed items in order to serve national security.

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