Benchmarking of Information Collectio Techniques Used in Humint: From the Nazist Interactive Techniques to the Nato "Gold Tandard"

Abstract

Academic studies in the sphere of intelligence and counterintelligence focused predominantly on aspects of the intelligence cycle area, intelligence typology, collecting information from technical sources, axiological aspects (especially those related to the ethics connected to the process of collecting information, recruiting sources), or the feedback received from the decision-makers / beneficiaries of the finite intelligence product, but they have put less emphasis on collecting information from human sources, process and technique that have occupied and continue to occupy a central and determinant role within the domains of reference. Although the intelligence field has developed and applied scientific methods, the HUMINT approach as a discipline is found in the context of other socio-human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology, anthropology, or communication sciences. The concerns in this regard are largely circumscribed to the applied psychology and US intelligence agencies', practices succeeding the Second World War in an attempt to support operational intelligence by delimiting sets of techniques explicitly addressing intelligence from human sources.[1]