Counter-Intelligence is the ‘spy vs spy’ discipline dedicated to the identification and restriction of Intelligence operations against you and your organisation.
Counter-Intelligence involves activities conducted to protect against espionage, sabotage, recruitment or assassinations conducted by foreign governments.
It’s aimed at protecting an agency’s intelligence program against an opposition’s Intelligence service.
Counter-Intelligence Roles:
There are three roles within Counter-Intelligence:
Collective counter-Intelligence – Gaining information about an opponent’s intelligence collection capabilities.
Defensive counter-Intelligence – Thwarting efforts by hostile intelligence services to penetrate the agency or service.
Offensive counter-Intelligence – After identifying an opponent’s efforts, offensive Counter-Intelligence involves trying to manipulate these attacks by either “turning” the opponent’s agents into double agents or feeding them false information to report.
Counter-Intelligence operations will involve deception or misinformation.
The goal is to confuse or mislead, and can involve the recruitment of Intelligence informants in other organisations to identify those who are spying against us.
Operation North Pole
Operation North Pole (Operation Englandspiel) was a counter-Intelligence operation of the German military intelligence during World War II.
German forces captured Allied resistance agents operating in the Netherlands and used the agents’ codes to dupe the Allies into continuing to provide the agents with information and supplies.
50 Allied agents were identified, captured and executed.
Counter-Intelligence Activity
Using open-source research, find an example of a counterintelligence operation and provide a quick explanation (and include a link) in the comments below – Help build knowledge and resources.
