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The German invasion a difficult case as the policy maker (Stalin) had decided what he wanted to see ("no German invasion") and he would discount, or worse, any information that contradicted his preconceptions. This is a problem with the analysis of intelligence being subject to the political whims of the reigning government (see also: Bush's invasion of Iraq). One might make the argument that Sorge's intelligence convincing Stalin was random chance, but one would be arguing against a lot of evidence that says otherwise. There a plenty of other examples from history, although few are as world altering as Sorge. Penkovsky, for example, provided the CIA with the manuals for the Soviet nuclear missiles that were deployed to Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis. These manuals provided the JFK government with knowledge about the _capabilities_ of the Soviet missiles. In particular, they told the Americans how long it would take to prepare and launch a missile (several hours). This gave the Americans some confidence during negotiations, knowing that they would have hours of warning (from their IMINT and SIGINT assets) before the first missiles were ready to launch. If the argument is "spying doesn't work because the odds of a leader acting on that information are the same as random chance"... that is an argument against the quality of the leadership, not the quality of the intelligence agencies. HUMINT is not predictable because humans are not reliable. However, when you score big with HUMINT, you score very very big. HUMINT is absolutely the most devastating spying technique available. Any discussion about "misinformation" falls under counterintelligence which involves, as they used to call it, D&D -- denial and deception. It is incredibly difficult to create a plausible deception, requiring a huge investment of resources to make it believable. There are a large number of channels that the opposition will use to evaluate information, OSINT, IMINT, HUMINT, SIGINT, etc. etc. If there are discrepancies from these sources, then the deception will fall under further scrutiny. Not really what you want to have happen when you're already unable to provide a consistent "story" across multiple sources. Point is: HUMINT is seriously powerful stuff. |