JSOU Report 09-1 Guerrilla Counterintelligence Graham H. Turbiville, Jr.
Joint Special Operations University

and the Strategic Studies Department

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Joint Special Operations University

Brian A. Maher, Ed.D., SES, President

Lieutenant Colonel Michael C. McMahon, U.S. Air Force, Strategic Studies Department Director

William W. Mendel, Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.; Jeffrey W. Nelson, Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.; 

and William S. Wildrick, Captain, U.S. Navy, Ret—Resident Senior Fellows

Editorial Advisory Board

John B. Alexander

Ph.D., Education, The Apollinaire Group 

and JSOU Senior Fellow

Joseph D. Celeski

Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.

JSOU Senior Fellow

Chuck Cunningham

Lieutenant General, U.S. Air Force, Ret. 

Professor of Strategy, Joint Advanced 

Warfighting School and JSOU Associate Fellow

Gilbert E. Doan

Major, U.S. Army, Ret., JSOU 

Institutional Integration Division Chief

Brian H. Greenshields 

Colonel, U.S. Air Force 

SOF Chair, Naval Postgraduate School

Thomas H. Henriksen

Ph.D., History, Hoover Institution 

Stanford University and JSOU Senior Fellow

Russell D. Howard

Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Ret.

Faculty Associate, Defense Critical Language/

Culture Program, Mansfield Center, University 

of Montana and JSOU Senior Fellow

John D. Jogerst

Colonel, U.S. Air Force, Ret. 

18th USAF Special Operations School 

Commandant

Alvaro de Souza Pinheiro

Major General, Brazilian Army, Ret.

JSOU Associate Fellow 

James F. Powers, Jr.

Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.

Director of Homeland Security, 

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and 

JSOU Associate Fellow

Richard H. Shultz, Jr.

Ph.D., Political Science

Director, International Security 

Studies Program, The Fletcher School, Tufts 

University and JSOU Senior Fellow

Stephen Sloan

Ph.D., Comparative Politics

University of Central Florida

Robert G. Spulak, Jr.

Ph.D., Physics/Nuclear Engineering

Sandia National Laboratories 

and JSOU Associate Fellow

Joseph S. Stringham

Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Ret.

Alutiiq, LLC and JSOU Associate Fellow

Graham H. Turbiville, Jr.

Ph.D., History, Courage Services, Inc. 

and JSOU Senior Fellow

Jessica Glicken Turnley

Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology/

Southeast Asian Studies

Galisteo Consulting Group 

and JSOU Senior Fellow 

Rich Yarger

Ph.D., History, Professor of National 

Security Policy, U.S. Army War College 

and JSOU Associate Fellow
On the cover. Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas 

in Cartegena del Chaira, a small town in the jungle of southeast Colombia, 

in June 1997. AFP photo/Meredith Davenport, used by permission of 

Newscom. 

JSOU Report 09-1

The JSOU Press

Hurlburt Field, Florida

2009

Guerrilla 

Counterinsurgency

Insurgent Approaches to 

Neutralizing Adversary 

Intelligence Operations

Graham H. Turbiville, Jr.
Comments about this publication are invited and should be forwarded to Director, 

Strategic Studies Department, Joint Special Operations University, 357 Tully Street, 

Alison Building, Hurlburt Field, Florida 32544. Copies of this publication may be 

obtained by calling JSOU at 850-884-1569; FAX 850-884-3917. 

*******

The JSOU Strategic Studies Department is currently accepting written works relevant 

to special operations for potential publication. For more information please contact 

Mr. Jim Anderson, JSOU Director of Research, at 850-884-1569, DSN 579-1569, 

james.d.anderson@hurlburt.af.mil. Thank you for your interest in the JSOU Press. 

*******

This work was cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

ISBN 1-933749-29-6
The views expressed in this publication are entirely those of 

the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy or 

position of the United States Government, Department of 

Defense, United States Special Operations Command, or the 

Joint Special Operations University. 
Recent Publications of the JSOU Press

Civil-Military Operations and Professional Military Education, 

May 2006, James F. Powers, Jr. 

Blogs and Military Information Strategy, June 2006, James Kinniburgh and 

Dorothy Denning

2006 JSOU/NDIA SO/LIC Chapter Essays, June 2006

One Valley at a Time, August 2006, Adrian T. Bogart III 

Special Operations Aviation in NATO, September 2006, Richard D. Newton

Beyond Draining the Swamp: Urban Development and 

Counterterrorism in Morocco, October 2006, Stephen R. Dalzell

Filling Special Operations Gaps with Civilian Expertise, December 2006, 

James F. Powers, Jr. 

Educating for Strategic Thinking in the SOF Community, January 2007, 

Harry R. Yarger

The Israeli Approach to Irregular Warfare and Implications for the U.S.,

February 2007, Thomas H. Henriksen

Psychological Operations: Learning Is Not a Defense Science Project,

March 2007, Curtis D. Boyd

2007 JSOU and NDIA SO/LIC Division Essays, April 2007

Hunting Leadership Targets in Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorist

Operations, June 2007, Graham H. Turbiville, Jr. 

Executive Report, JSOU Second Annual Symposium (30 April–3 May 2007)

A Theory of Special Operations, October 2007, Robert G. Spulak, Jr.

Block by Block: Civic Action in the Battle of Baghdad, November 2007, 

Adrian T. Bogart III

Private Security Infrastructure Abroad, November 2007, 

Graham H. Turbiville, Jr. 

Intelligence in Denied Areas, December 2007, Russell D. Howard

Is Leaving the Middle East a Viable Option, January 2008,

Thomas H. Henriksen

Retaining a Precarious Value as Special Operations Go Mainstream, 

February 2008, Jessica Glicken Turnley

Disrupting Threat Finances, April 2008, Wesley J.L. Anderson

USSOCOM Research Topics 2009

India’s Northeast: The Frontier in Ferment, September 2008, Prakash Singh

What Really Happened in Nortern Ireland’s Counterinsurgency, 

October 2008, Thomas H. Henriksen
vii

Foreword

Dr. Graham Turbiville’s monograph on insurgent counterintelligence 

approaches one facet of an insurgency and continues his research 

writings on the functions of insurgent organizations he started 

with in his 2005 JSOU Press monograph on insurgent logistics. A key issue 

underpinning this current volume is the complex relationship between state 

and nonstate actors. The nonstate actors are organizations with structures 

and personnel; albeit that these structures vary considerably in complexity 

from group to group. Insurgent groups have goals that require a strategy and 

operational planning to achieve. Consequently, the groups need to secure 

their operations to ensure effectiveness; they also need to provide security 

because the operations entail securing the organization and its personnel 

from government counterinsurgency operations. Ultimately, this leads groups 

to develop some form of counterintelligence rules and structure to provide 

security. In small groups this may be limited to security-focused rules of 

conduct and operational security, but as groups grow in size and complexity, 

the need for a more formal type of organizational structure increases and a 

more robust security organization will be needed. 

Dr. Turbiville does an excellent job of highlighting the critical element 

of security and how insurgent groups ignore it at their peril. Another effective analysis is his discussion of trends and similarities that can be observed 

across geographical, historical, and cultural boundaries. In other words, all 

insurgent groups must provide for some form of security and understanding; 

this provides a useful prism with which to analyze various groups. Piercing a 

group’s intelligence capabilities can be critical in undermining its operations. 

As a word of caution, insurgents can do the same thing to governments. Dr. 

Turbiville persuasively argues Michael Collins’ targeting of British intelligence organizations seriously undermined British security force’s resolve 

in Irish counterinsurgency operations in the early 20th century. 

This tit-for-tat threat and counterthreat also applies to the concept of 

infiltration, the greatest threat to an insurgent group. Shielding itself from 

government infiltration or penetration is a critical element in ensuring 

an insurgent group’s freedom of operation. Ultimately, this requires the 

population to either actively support or passively tolerate the insurgents. 
viii

Consequently, the population’s loyalty, a fundamental tenet of irregular 

warfare, is the objective of both sides fighting in an insurgency. 

Violence will be part of any insurgency or irregular-warfare campaign. 

The fundamental question is whether the use of violence or, more importantly, 

how violence is used will affect winning or losing the population’s loyalty. 

This factor applies to both sides in the conflict. Excessive force can drive a 

wedge between the population and the operational forces, be they government or insurgent. However, retribution by security forces to an insurgent 

attack or operation can often play into the hands of the insurgents. This is 

particularly true when the security forces are viewed by the population as 

an “external” force. Once again, the local population decides who or what 

is an external force. In the case of Ireland, the British believed they were the 

local government, but the locals came to view them as occupiers. 

This monograph has significant implications for U.S. Special Operations 

Forces as we continue to operate in both combat and noncombat zones 

against groups desiring to overthrow existing governments. We must take 

into account the insurgent organization’s plans and operations, but to do 

so will require us and our local hosts to overcome the insurgent or terrorist group’s internal security processes while protecting our operations and 

organizations from insurgent infiltration. 

Michael C. McMahon, Lt Col, USAF

Director, JSOU Strategic Studies Department
ix

About the Author 

Dr. Graham Turbiville is a senior fellow with the JSOU Strategic 

Studies Department. At JSOU, his current research is centered on a 

range of regional and transnational threats to include insurgency, 

terrorism, the development of foreign Special Operations Forces (SOF), and 

foreign perspectives of United States and allied capabilities and vulnerabilities. Dr. Turbiville also serves as a senior consultant and researcher for 

a Department of Defense/Intelligence Community program dealing with 

geographic and cultural intelligence in several areas of the world and which 

produces history-based assessments of tribal/clan societies in contemporary 

war and conflict. 

He received his B.A. in Foreign Languages from Southern Illinois University, M.A. in Russian Studies from George Washington University, and 

Ph.D. in History from the University of Montana. Dr. Turbiville served 30 

years in intelligence community analytical and leadership positions at the 

Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of the Army. These positions included director/chief of long-range and current intelligence offices 

and directorates, director of a Joint Reserve Intelligence Center, and other 

assignments dealing with foreign combined arms, security, and SOF.

Dr. Turbiville has authored many monographs and studies for military, 

law enforcement, and intelligence venues. JSOU has published four of his 

monographs: 

a. Private Security Infrastructure Abroad (November 2007) 

b. Hunting Leadership Targets in Counterinsurgency (COIN) and Counterterrorist Operations (June 2007) 

c. Logistic Support and Insurgency, Guerrilla Sustainment and Applied 

Lessons of Soviet Insurgent Warfare: Why It Should Still Be Studied

(October 2005) 

d. Russian Special Forces: Issues of Loyalty, Corruption and the Fight 

Against Terror (August 2005). 

His articles have appeared in several publications, including Special 

Warfare, Military Review, Marine Corps Gazette, Infantry, Army, International Defense Review, The Military Engineer, ALOG: Army Logistician, Low 

Intensity Conflict and Law Enforcement, Transnational Organized Crime, 

Crime and Justice International, Strategic Review, RUSI: Journal of the Royal 
x

United Service Institute, Global Crime, Journal of Soviet Military Studies, and 

National Guard. Edited works include Global Dimensions of High Intensity 

Crime and Low Intensity Conflict and the three-volume National Defense 

University Press series, The Voroshilov Lectures, a collection of authoritative, 

classified Soviet General Staff Academy writings on strategy, operational art 

and tactics, acquired clandestinely in the then USSR by a foreign officer. 

The views expressed in this publication are entirely those of 

the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy or 

position of the United States Government, Department of 

Defense, United States Special Operations Command, or the 

Joint Special Operations University. 
1

Guerrilla Counterintelligence

Insurgent Approaches to Neutralizing 

Adversary Intelligence Operations

Successful insurgent leaders have identified effective counterintelligence planning, tradecraft, and implementation as essential for 

the continued survival of insurgent groups and for their eventual 

development and advancement. Typically threatened at every turn by more 

numerous and robust government means, resourceful guerrilla counterintelligence cells in every area of the world have sought to devise approaches and 

actions that neutralized the intelligence organizations and activities arrayed 

against them.1 It has been a prerequisite for carrying out the organization, 

concealment, recruiting, arming, financing, planning, and execution of 

operations by dissident armed groups. 

All insurgent groups—incorporating variations in concept and nuance—

recognize the need to protect their forces from the hostile action of enemy 

intelligence initiatives and to degrade the intelligence and security components facing them.2

 As a consequence, insurgent counterintelligence—like 

its government counterparts—has both defensive and offensive components 

that range from the most passive security measures and admonitions for 

exercising discretion, to aggressive direct actions targeted against enemy 

intelligence personnel and resources.3 While addressed to some extent in 

the literature of intelligence and counterinsurgency, attention to insurgent 

counterintelligence thought and practices has been less focused than for 

other associated issues. 

This monograph addresses dimensions of insurgent counterintelligence 

(CI) with the aim of illuminating the CI perspectives, operational approaches, 

and innovations that have characterized diverse guerrilla or other armed 

groups operating in hostile environments around the world. Focusing 
2

JSOU Report 09-1

primarily on the human intelligence aspects, it will examine historical and 

current approaches by guerrilla and terrorist groups in order to: 

a. Understand how government/coalition adversaries operate and seek 

information about insurgent activity 

b. Counter government intelligence collection initiatives with defensive 

measures 

c. Carry out direct actions to disrupt government intelligence and operational initiatives 

d. Identify common and unique approaches, tradecraft, and techniques 

employed

e. Address the important ways in which guerrilla CI forms a part of 

insurgent planning and operations.

This focus includes, as backdrop, a brief look first at the innovation and 

universality of “counterintelligence” as practiced in irregular organizations 

as different as ancient tribal structures and modern dissident or criminal groupings. The awareness, studied reactions, aggressive responses, and 

effectiveness of “counterintelligence” by these groupings have been more 

widespread than generally supposed and roughly analogous to contemporary insurgent CI requirements. Collectively, they underscore that effective security countermeasures are not just the provenance of modern state 

militaries and security organizations, and may often be underestimated. 

The monograph then focuses on some examples of insurgent CI “theory” or 

precepts as articulated by guerrilla leaders, intelligence chiefs, and practitioners; discusses the ways in which insurgencies have applied CI measures 

in defensive and offensive ways; and provides some conclusions about the 

practices, successes, and failures of guerrilla CI overall. Initially, the opening section addresses some old and new illustrations evocative of the folk 

wisdom that concludes “it is a double pleasure to deceive the deceivers,” a 

thought that has many antecedents and heirs.4

Some Precursors and Analogs 

If intelligence, in the tired old joke, is considered to be the “world’s second 

oldest profession,” then CI likely appeared first among its several components. This prospect applies to ancient tribal confederations and loosely 

organized or irregular groups of all types where some threat influences their 
3

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

interests. Organized efforts to deny adversaries knowledge of one’s activities and goals, while also damaging or distorting the means and ability of 

competitors, date to at least 3,000 years in the distant past and appear to be 

a fundamental part of human interaction. Concepts and practices developed 

to achieve such goals have not been confined to military and political endeavors alone. They also apply to many other forms of organized human activity including economic 

and criminal. Literature 

and history are replete 

with examples suggesting that even the most 

primitive political and 

social organizations 

had developed approaches to protect their plans, assets, and activities, while 

also degrading the information-gathering and assessments of enemies.5 As 

a consequence, it is fair to say that “counterintelligence,” as understood and 

executed today, has been preceded by many centuries of similar practice 

and has often anticipated—and in some case informed—the most modern 

concepts, application, and fieldcraft. Neither differentials in modernization 

and technology nor standardized and carefully ordered political structures 

have necessarily been determinants of successful efforts to counter “intelligence” threats. 

Practitioners whose CI efforts have been characterized by structure, 

training, and an array of “tactics, techniques, and procedures” encompass 

a number of ancient, pre-state, and tribal entities. They have included (and 

include) radical, extremist, and issue-oriented groups willing to use violence. Among these are anarchists of various stripes with global agendas 

(e.g., free trade), fringe environmental groups, and public/social policy protesters whose passions have crossed into criminal or terrorist activities. 

International criminal gangs and various ethnic “mafias” are prominent 

practitioners, while law enforcement has been increasingly confronted with 

prison and domestic street gangs that are race- or nationality-based and 

determined to counter the focused police targeting on which they soon 

become expert. With few exceptions, these kinds of irregular groups and 

organizations have paid the closest attention to CI-type measures to protect 

their existence, advance their operational freedom, and damage central 

and local government bodies attempting to dismantle or control them. A 

...even the most primitive political and social 

organizations had developed approaches to 

protect their plans, assets, and activities, while 

also degrading the information-gathering and 

assessments of enemies.
4

JSOU Report 09-1

brief look at a few illustrative precedents provides some backdrop for contemporary practices. But most importantly, it also underscores the old and 

continuing dangers of underestimating the level of careful consideration, 

innovation, and effectiveness that even the most ancient and unsophisticated 

organizations have possessed.

Biblical passages are replete with accounts of military and political 

deception and stratagems. Classical strategists like the 6th century BC’s 

Sun Tzu offered numerous ideas on espionage and counterintelligence-like 

precepts for the wise leader to follow.6 Scholars of the ancient world have 

found considerable detail available, as well, from early tracts that illustrate 

how concerns about enemy spying were transformed into organizational 

systems designed to deny information and eliminate enemy informers and 

spies.7

 Intelligence-gathering agents, reliance of a supportive population to 

tell of anything suspicious, detention, interrogation, and confirmation of 

information were all well established. 

For example, in what is now Iraq, cuneiform tablets from the 8th century 

BC describe a neo-Assyrian CI effort to catch and interrogate a spy sent 

Iraqi women walk past a wall panel from the palace of Assyrian ruler Sargon II,

who 2,700 years ago relied upon an elaborate intelligence/counterintelligence network in what is now Iraq. The panel is located in the Iraqi National 

Museum. AFP photo, used by permission of Newscom.
5

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

by the leader of a tribal kingdom, near the mouth of the Euphrates River, 

which had conquered Babylon and dominated Babylonia. After arriving 

at the city he was to spy on, the agent’s accent revealed to local tribesmen 

that he was not who he claimed to be. The information was transmitted to 

a node on the distributed neo-Assyrian intelligence network, the spy was 

captured and interrogated, and in time revealed important information on 

the identities and locations of those who had sent him. Suspicions being at 

least as great then as now, the Assyrians sent their own agents to confirm 

what they had been told.8 An instructive and intricate diagram of a neoAssyrian HUMINT (human intelligence) network running from remote 

territories to King Sargon II has been derived from cuneiform tablets, a 

system that would gratify far more recent practitioners.9

In sharp contrast to ancient Assyrians, but nevertheless illustrative of 

organized CI efforts, are the security concerns of modern radical groups 

of all types—for example, militant anarchist groups, radical animal rights 

organizations, militant environmentalists, and confrontational anti-globalists. These groups continue efforts to mobilize themselves for protecting 

their activities from police and other security services, as they have from the 

1960s when they began to proliferate. Many of them believe that this protection is increasingly important in a security-centric post-9/11 environment 

where law enforcement watchfulness is greater and tolerance for unusual 

activity less. This effort has been accompanied by the production of many 

internal security tracts and other disseminated advice. A good example is 

Security Culture: A Handbook for Activists, which has appeared in many 

print and digital forums in several editions. It was assembled primarily by 

the Earth Liberation Front, but is clearly the work of multiple contributors 

and drawn from other publications.10 It was billed for users “associated with 

groups advocating or using economic disruption or sabotage, theft, arson, 

self defence from police or more militant tactics.” 11

Numerous other works, old and new, are found on various activist sites 

and address similar topics for the same audiences.12 Among other things, 

the material: 

a. Calls for overall, disciplined operations security (OPSEC), to include 

limited access to planning by members who have no need to know, 

strictures against careless speech, and the need for vigilance.
6

JSOU Report 09-1

b. Cites the need for background checks and vetting among new 

activists.

c. Offers insights on the various types of informers and infiltrators that 

might appear, how to identify them, and how to deal with them.

d. Presents primers or overviews on local and national law enforcement 

and how they conduct themselves.

e. Cites historic and more recent examples of ways in which law enforcement and intelligence agencies successfully target or disorganize 

activist groups through coercion, arrest, and disinformation.

f. Puts forward imperatives to counter presumed federal, state, and local 

government “COIN” models of “repression.”

g. Describes the best way to conduct oneself if arrested and questioned 

as well as what to do during searches of a residence.

h. Suggests ways to identify and avoid surveillance cameras in areas of 

planned activity.

i. Cautions about the use and dangers of communications means to 

avoid police/intelligence compromise.

j. Sets out a variety of tradecraft tips, including instructions on how to 

avoid leaving clues and identifying evidence during direct actions.

The phenomenon of international criminal street gangs has been around 

for a while, but has become far more visible and developed in the last two 

decades. These gangs have taken many forms, with outlaw motorcycle and 

prison gangs among the most prominent of those having origins in the United 

Counting arson 

among its illegal 

activities, and 

tracked by law 

enforcement, the 

Earth Liberation 

Front has given 

substantial attention 

to “counterintelligence” techniques 

and considerations. 

Zuma photo, used 

by permission of 

Newscom.
7

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

States. Often racially or ethnically based, the growing activities and sophistication of criminal enterprises—for example, the Bandidos, Hell’s Angels, 

Outlaws, Bario Azteca, Aryan Brotherhood, Mexican Mafia, Latin Lords, and 

MS-13 (and various Mara Salvatrucha variants)—have generated a far larger 

and focused “gang intelligence” effort among law enforcement nationwide. 

A common trend among these gangs, however, is a greater CI effort as they 

have tracked the threats to their existence posed by compromise, arrest, and 

dismantlement. These gang-initiated measures have included greater internal 

security among their often unpredictable members and rules of conduct that 

incorporate security awareness. Not satisfied with protective measures, more 

aggressive countermeasures have been instituted as well.

A case in point is the 50-year-old Bandido Motorcycle Gang, centered in 

Texas but with dozens of U.S. chapters and some overseas as well. A violent 

organization given to blood feuds with rivals, they are involved with numerous kinds of criminality including drug trafficking, fraud, contract murder, 

prostitution, and other activities. To control their criminal enterprise and 

to protect their interests, the Bandidos have developed codes of conduct 

and a defined structure present from their national “headquarters” to local 

chapters. Rules of conduct—embedded in formal bylaws and policies—are 

intended to reduce security dangers. 

Along with strictures—for example, against lying, stealing, engaging in 

some of the more pernicious forms of illegal drug use (“if it doesn’t grow, 

don’t blow”), paying dues, and keeping bikes in good working order—a 

phased system of carefully vetting new members governs the extremely sensitive process of slowly integrating someone into the group who might just 

betray them. Full Bandido members or full chapters recommend a pledge, 

and typically an aspiring member will go through periods from “hangaround” status, to formal probationary prospect, to full member requiring acquiescence by 100 percent of the chapter membership. Prospects and 

hang-arounds undergo background checks and are closely scrutinized for 

police associations.13

Along with elected officers (including a president, vice president, and 

secretary-treasurer), the Bandidos established appointed national and 

chapter sergeants-at-arms—called sergentos de armas—with a nod to the 

organizational name and a constituency that includes Anglo and Hispanic 

members. The sergentos de armas are responsible for intelligence (including 

CI), enforcement, and special expertise. Overall, these sergentos de armas, 
8

JSOU Report 09-1

one to three per chapter, conduct a range of CI activities to frustrate law 

enforcement efforts through coercion, false reporting, recruiting, bribery, 

and surveillance/countersurveillance. 

While most chapters are associated with specific locations, a so-called 

“Nomad Chapter” is made up of long-term, trusted members who are 

responsible for security, CI, and organizational issues. Among other tasks, 

the chapter compiles information and files on law enforcement as well as 

on rival gangs—a circumstance that is paralleled by some insurgencies too, 

where other hostile movements may constitute threats as serious as the 

police and security forces.14 Law enforcement has identified the following 

specific activities of Bandido intelligence/CI:

a. Corruption of public officials through bribery and coercion to further 

criminal endeavors

b. Coercion of law enforcement with direct violence and threats

c. Exploitation of law enforcement as intelligence sources

d. Focused countersurveillance of police to include videotaping

e. Mobilization of police Internal Affairs against officers (using selected 

measures—e.g., video/audio clips and proliferating false reports)

f. Induction of members (sometimes acquired from the many Bandido 

“support group” clubs) whose lack of criminal history allows the 

presentation of a “clean” face in pursuing their interests. 

The Bandidos made it an imperative a few years ago for chapters to use 

technology, as incongruous as it may seem. Some chapter personnel have 

joined the culture of computers, Internet homepages, “social networking” 

sites, cell phones, and fax machines; it is also a rule that every Bandido 

chapter have an e-mail address. (The Heart of Texas Bandido Motorcycle 

Club Chapter homepage, for example, may be seen at www.bandidosmc.

com/). The extent to which computer encryption and other such innovations 

are used has not become publicly known, but the embrace of communications technology, cameras, and the seizure of computers and hard drives 

in raids as cyber-forensic evidence suggests that it is a law-enforcement 

expectation.

Overall, a wide range of ancient societies and even the most loosely 

organized irregular in modern times groups have made efforts to systematize and apply associated techniques that might fall under the rubric of 
9

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

counterintelligence. If lacking the levels of sophistication, nuance, and 

technology of some modern insurgencies and modern state security establishments, they are not so different that they are unrecognizable. In many 

cases, such approaches have been successful and advanced the interests 

of the groups that developed and applied them. This reminder of a long, 

universal history provides a good backdrop for addressing the deeper and 

more focused counterintelligence thinking of insurgent groups whose formulations sometimes approach what could be called “theory.” 

Insurgent Counterintelligence “Theory” 

Just as there are classic military authors from ancient and more modern 

times who have captured and synthesized enduring strategic, operational, 

and tactical insights for warfare generally, there is a far more limited but 

sometimes quite perceptive group of CI practitioners and theorists. Over 

decades they have attempted to set out some basic precepts for what they 

understood to be the critically important subject of insurgent counterintelligence and security. 

To perhaps a greater extent than conventional military operations, the 

world that guerrillas consider is filled with innumerable real, imminent 

threats, as well as an imperative to continuously imagine others. Their experience universally indicated that enemies are found at every quarter, surprise 

is frequent and should be expected, and even the smallest mistake and 

inattention could prove fatal to individuals or disastrous to the movement 

itself. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Carlos Revillo Arango, in 

an instructive article entitled “Insurgent Counterintelligence,” categorized 

the range of threats faced by the guerrilla to include:

a. Government security forces and targeted actions of all types

b. Competing armed or dissident groups who might enjoy advantage 

from the defeat or compromise of a rival

c. Third-country parties whose unilateral actions might damage or 

restrict insurgent operations

d. Betrayal—deserters, collaborators, and informers from within the 

group who may act out of jealousies, perceived slights, coercion, or 

profit—and because of their special knowledge can generate devastating damage
10

JSOU Report 09-1

e. Chance occurrences to include carelessness, unrelated changes in 

government routine (e.g., curfews, identifications, and checks), and 

even natural disasters.15

Insurgents who were successful—or at least survived to record their 

views—often lived in a world where threats like these proliferated, and they 

were hunted constantly. Betrayal was a daily potential, and developing a sense 

of near paranoia often constituted wisdom. Despite advances in technology 

that put insurgents at greater risk from the pre-World War II period to date, 

the greatest danger has remained the “turned” insider. George Orwell’s 

novel, 1984, which painted a picture of the complete “counterintelligence 

state,” captured in a bit of doggerel the milieu of both the novel’s imagined 

dissident citizen and real-life guerrillas with 

“under the spreading Chestnut tree, I sold you 

and you sold me.” 16 The concern is reflected in 

most insurgent counterespionage writings that 

follow. The observations of the men below—

whose backgrounds, cultures, and ideologies 

were quite different—have a decided practical bent and some commonalities. 

The formulations may not always reflect the level of scholarship associated 

with “theory” in the grander sense, and certainly not in an abstract sense, 

but they do meet the criteria of being generalized and based on observation, trial and error, and reasoned consideration. Certainly, one example 

of theory that has some resonance for the topic at hand is “they killed him 

on the theory that dead men tell no tales,” a proposition in which guerrilla 

CI practitioners appear to have universal belief.17

Alberto Bayo: Cuba and Counterintelligence Lessons from Three Decades 

To begin a look at some notable, illustrative proponents for the importance 

of guerrilla CI, Alberto Bayo stands as an instructive figure. Bayo was a storied and colorful figure in the Cuban Revolution that brought Fidel Castro 

to power. CIA officer Arango noted Bayo’s view that “a counterintelligence 

agent was of greater value than 50 machine guns: he could work among the 

security forces and keep one advised of all their intelligence and plans,” and 

Bayo developed this view through several decades of experience. 

Betrayal was a daily 

potential, and developing 

a sense of near paranoia 

often constituted wisdom. 
11

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

A Spaniard—born in 1892 in Cuba as the son of a Spanish colonel stationed there—Bayo became an officer in the Spanish Army. He had a variety of assignments, serving as a combat pilot in missions against Moorish 

rebels in North Africa under Riff leader Abd-El-Krim. He was later transferred to the Spanish Foreign Legion as a company commander where he 

fought the Riffs in Morocco, learning the basics of guerrilla warfare as 

practiced by these Berber fighters and becoming an enthusiast for irregular 

operations.18

Bayo sided with the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War—a 

catalyst for many special operations and irregular warfare developments 

in World War II and the Cold War period.19 His most notable Civil War 

achievement was the temporary seizing of the Spanish island of Majorca, 

which his command held briefly before withdrawing. He was a tireless proponent for guerrilla warfare as a greater Republican tool, wrote on the topic, 

and before the end of the conflict did establish a guerrilla warfare school at 

Barcelona. But the Republicans lost soon after, and Bayo began an expatriate 

life, first in Cuba and then Mexico. He taught at a Mexican military aviation school, wrote, and involved himself in Latin American revolutionary 

activity. His title of “General”—retained with the acquiescence of colleagues 

for the rest of his life—was apparently given to him in the late 1940s by a 

“General” Alberto Bayo, the 

Spanish Civil War veteran 

and unconventional warfare 

specialist whose experience 

fighting the Riffs helped formulate his ideas of guerrilla 

warfare, emphasized counterintelligence issues when he 

trained Fidel Castro’s aspiring 

guerrillas in Mexico prior to 

their infiltration into Cuba. 

Used by permission of 

Paladin Press.
12

JSOU Report 09-1

group of Costa Rican-based Nicaraguan exiles he trained for an unrealized 

assault on the Somoza regime. 

It was in Mexico that Fidel Castro and his small group of aspiring guerillas, including Ernesto Che Guevara, sought out Bayo and proposed that he 

train their group for a future attack on the Batista regime in Cuba. Castro 

had been familiar with some of Bayo’s guerrilla warfare writings and thought 

he would be a good choice to turn untrained enthusiasts into real insurgent fighters. The 64-year-old Bayo agreed and undertook an increasingly 

intense training program for the group, first in tactics and techniques and 

then renting a Mexican ranch not far from Mexico City for serious physical 

conditioning, real field work, and practical training. The group’s performance satisfied Bayo—particularly that of his “favorite” student Che—but 

near its end the training was punctuated by an excellent CI lesson in the 

consequences of the unexpected—that is, Mexican police pursuing thieves 

stopped Castro and two others. 

When the Mexican police discovered that the thieves’ car was loaded 

with weapons, they quickly moved to the ranch and arrested Castro and 

23 men for three weeks. They also confiscated all weapons. Upon release, 

however, Castro was able to regroup, rearm, and set sail on the Granma for 

Cuba and history. Bayo went to Cuba following Castro’s success and set to 

training Cuban marines and special units, some of whom reportedly took 

part in Cuba’s export of revolution elsewhere in Latin America.20 In 1963, 

U.S. congressional testimony indicated that Bayo was director of the Boca 

Chica School, in Tarará, Havana Province, a school established for the training of subversives sent to promote revolution abroad.21

Bayo appears to have published his most influential work, 150 Questions 

for a Guerrilla, in Havana in 1959, from where it was disseminated to Latin 

American armed groups in other countries including Brazil, Guatemala, 

and Venezuela.22 The instructive booklet was intended mainly as a primer 

for recruited rural guerrillas who were little steeped in guerrilla skills. As 

noted above, Bayo chose to heavily emphasize CI lessons learned among the 

Riffs in the Moroccan civil war. That 1920s conflict was noted for its twists, 

turns, and deceptions, which in Bayo’s judgment reflected the complexities 

of conspiratorial revolutionary politics he found in the 1940s and 1950s. In 

focusing on CI, he contributed to the body of “insurgent counterintelligence” 

thinking in which readers will note a number of themes echoed by others 
13

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

in their own context and circumstances. The following topics are among 

the pertinent CI issues he addressed:

a. A guerrilla “Information Section,” headed by the second-in-command 

of the group, must be established to handle intelligence and counterintelligence functions and activities. It should be composed of 

small cells to mitigate damage and larger compromise. In addition 

to gathering “positive” intelligence of all types [there clearly being 

at least as much overlap with CI for guerrillas as there is for governments], it will carefully monitor the conduct of group members, 

record all large and small wartime activities, maintain lists of outside 

sympathizers and blacklists of known or potential informers, and 

maintain a coding/decoding center. These activities, along with the 

investigation of traitors, were noted by Bayo as suitable for both male 

and female guerrillas.

b. Intelligence and counterintelligence work must be accomplished 

by all guerrillas. But the counterintelligence agent, per se, has pride 

of place among guerrillas in wartime, giving “better results than 

the intelligence agent.” The CI agent—for which task women are 

“unbeatable”—penetrates enemy organizations and areas masquerading as a friend and sympathizer, often acting as a seller of provisions 

and other merchandise at a low cost. Relying on observation alone 

and not asking questions, he or she reports troop levels, strength, 

movement, equipment, and morale. Training of such agents must 

be well done. Reports are generated in code by a third party or by 

messenger where there is urgency. In the event of a guerrilla attack, 

guerrilla CI agents should pretend to fight in behalf of the enemy, but 

avoid causing any damage to guerrilla forces.

c. The potential for having a guerrilla CI operative who is an officer in 

the enemy forces is prized. Such an operative can be more valuable to 

the guerrillas than “ten of our own officers fighting face to face with 

the enemy.” Not only will he be able to provide quality information but 

he should seek combat assignments that allow him to create vulnerabilities that guerrillas can exploit (e.g., leading government forces into 

ambush and arranging for undermanned garrisons). The formation 

of “private” armed groups—that is, militias—seemingly friendly to 
14

JSOU Report 09-1

the state but actually in collaboration with the guerrillas is another 

possibility (actually practiced against the Cuban Batista regime).

d. Regarding intelligence and counterintelligence and underscoring 

their importance to the guerrillas, the view was asserted that “more 

wars are won through cunning and shrewdness than by pulling the 

trigger...” 

e. Recruits for the movement must be fully vetted to include filling out 

applications that provided information on their families, personal 

political history, and references within the revolutionary movement 

itself. If determined to be a potential informer, “he will be judged by 

a summary court martial as a traitor to the revolution.” Recruiting 

and the acceptance of volunteers were considered a critical potential 

vulnerability. 

f. If the movement is infiltrated by a “chivator” (informer)—who despite 

all the efforts made to screen recruits successfully penetrates it—he 

will be judged by a Council of War and sentenced to death. Political 

enemies outside the movement might be pardoned for their mistaken 

beliefs, but a chivator will be executed.

g. The group must be alert to enemy forces masquerading as supporters 

(e.g., government pseudo-operations). One example of such a group 

was a column that shouted “Viva Fidel” upon encountering the insurgents and then surprised them by pulling out weapons, coercing their 

surrender, and then executing all of the captured guerrillas except a 

seven-man advance guard that managed to escape.

h. Before attacking a town or population center, a list of traitors and 

“persecutors” and their addresses should be compiled by the guerrilla 

Information Section (Intelligence and Counterintelligence) including 

their addresses, and this should be provided to the guerrilla Operations 

Section.

i. The maximum size of guerrilla cells should be three people to avoid 

the compromise of larger numbers if a member is turned or compromised. Any cell of 8–10 guerrillas whose members also head other 

groups of the same size should be dissolved.

j. Careful attention should be directed towards how executions for 

“counterrevolutionary acts” or crimes are carried out. As large a crowd 

as possible should witness the event, and a guerrilla leader should 

address them with an explanation of what the prisoner had done to 
15

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

deserve a death sentence and emphasize how the moral qualities of the 

guerrillas are superior. The execution should be a “public spectacle” 

accompanied by the promise to carry out swift justice against any 

malefactor in the future.

k. Arms and equipment caches should receive close oversight for their 

physical security and danger of compromise by individuals. Caches 

should be buried deep, to a depth sufficient to avoid detection by 

enemy forces, even if they dig in the area. Rural guerrillas should 

locate caches at a distance of some 30–60 yards from a farmhouse or 

dwelling. Close uniformity in approach, however, should be avoided 

so that government personnel cannot establish patterns.

l. Despite the unflinching punishment of traitors and informers, moderation should be used with the “lackeys” of the oppressor “that the 

people want to kill.” Rather, such individuals should be allowed a 

defense, with consideration given also to the possibility that a suspect 

may be a “counterspy” working in behalf of the revolution and only 

appearing to work with the state. 

Michael Collins: Coercion and Assassination 

as Counterintelligence Tools 

One of the most successful practitioners of counterintelligence in behalf of 

an insurgency was Irishman Michael Collins. While he died young (age 31) 

in a 1922 roadside ambush in County Cork, he had developed an approach 

to dealing with hostile intelligence services that remains an extraordinary 

example of how CI can immeasurably advance an armed dissident movement. It established a pattern for much later British-Republican struggles 

of the 1970s, troubles, and continued conflict in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly the intelligence-counterintelligence dimensions. His approaches 

and ideas have been studied by many other subsequent armed groups and 

leaders engaged in a struggle against state power, and his extraordinary success in targeting adversary intelligence officers still serves as a cautionary 

potential among some intelligence services today.23 His activities and those 

of the British—featuring such entities as “Brain Center,” the “Inner Circle,” 

“the Squad,” “the Twelve Apostles,” and the “Cairo Gang”—entered Irish 

revolutionary mythology. They were all quite real, however, their intent 

serious, and their roles in the push for Irish independence substantial. 
16

JSOU Report 09-1

When Collins was born in 1890, Ireland was entirely under British rule. 

Irish nationalists had long had aspirations to change this, some by creating 

a fully independent Irish Republic and others willing to accept their own 

Irish Parliament and some form of Home Rule, even if British oversight and 

linkages remained. Collins immediately identified with the cause of Irish 

independence and joined the secret Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) 

while still a teenager. He participated in the failed 1916 Easter Rebellion, 

served time in a British internment camp, and upon release enthusiastically joined the Sinn Fein political party and the armed “Volunteers” (later 

the Irish Republican Army—IRA). Membership in these organizations was 

fed not just by long-standing independence aspirations but also anger over 

British reprisals after Easter 1916, particularly executions of Irish uprising 

leaders. Collins rose to leadership positions in all three organizations and—

most pertinent to this discussion—became the director of Organization and 

director of Intelligence for the Volunteers in March 1918. 

Collins’ intelligence contributions had many dimensions during his leadership. The most central components, however, were counterintelligenceoriented and included:

a. Unremitting efforts to create extensive intelligence networks 

penetrating British military, police, and political structures and 

subsequently

b. An offensive CI approach that targeted opposing intelligence establishments as well as specific members of the British and allied Irish 

military, police, and intelligence services. 

Michael Collins’ offensive 

counterintelligence program 

in behalf of the Irish republican cause compiled detailed 

information on British security 

approaches, analyzed government intelligence efforts, and 

targeted British intelligence 

personnel for execution by a 

dedicated team of operatives. 

Public domain image from 

Wikipedia. 
17

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

At first, the networks Collins established provided him with high quality 

intelligence, including tip-offs of impending operations and policies that 

affected Irish independence movement activities. By early 1919, however, the 

start of the “War of Irish Independence” brought the second component 

into full play as well and came to define how an “intelligence war” could 

confound a far more powerful state adversary.24 As tensions mounted—and 

with the Volunteers rechristened as the IRA—Collins’ initial formulations 

took further shape. His principal intelligence adversaries were known and 

tracked as they developed and were reinforced. Essential tasks like arms 

smuggling techniques were perfected. Collins’ intelligence targets came to 

include the British-directed police force (the Royal Irish Constabulary [RIC] 

and its intelligence components), the RIC Reserve Force and RIC Auxiliary 

Division paramilitaries, and British regular military forces and intelligence 

components.25

Additionally, the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) and particularly its 

“G Division” (staffed by plain clothes detectives and charged with political 

intelligence among other tasks) was a major force to be understood and 

neutralized. The Irish makeup of the major police establishments offered 

Collins and his compatriots numerous opportunities to penetrate these 

bodies, which they exploited to great success. 

A seminal event took place in early April 1919 according to Collins and his 

contemporaries. One of Collins’ most important inside operatives—a DMP

“confidential typist” Ned Broy—allowed the Volunteer/IRA Intelligence chief 

and one of his intelligence staff to enter the headquarters of the G Division at 

midnight and spend hours reading confidential reporting and classified files 

by candlelight.26 What he saw of the systematized approach used by the DMP

to track suspected IRA and Sinn Fein members—including a careful reading 

IRA targets included several categories of Ulster 

“Special” Constabulary 

such as these, who were 

recruited by the British to 

reinforce the Royal Irish 

Constabulary and placed 

initially under their control. 

Public domain image from 

Wikipedia. 
18

JSOU Report 09-1

of his own file—sharpened and hardened his views. It convinced him that 

British efforts to defeat Irish independence aims could be seriously or fatally 

damaged by attacking the Intelligence personnel and networks upon which 

British efforts depended.27 Central assumptions, tenets, and other dimensions of his approaches used in the 1919–1921 intelligence wars included the 

following (with some specific operations addressed later in the paper):

a. Informers and spies operating in behalf of the state—including those 

recruited from rival groups—pose the greatest threat against an armed 

resistance movement.

b. Friendly (republican militant) intelligence structures must be better 

prepared and organized than those of opponents and protected 

by organizing into cells, each with limited knowledge of the other 

participants.

c. Friendly spies and informers with good access must be placed or 

recruited among all communications, transportation, and other organizational (trade union) and infrastructure administrative elements.

d. Enemy intelligence itself must be studied and understood in every 

dimension, the better to protect one’s own resources and to exploit 

adversary vulnerabilities.

e. As a central guiding precept, it was stressed that while casualties among 

enemy soldiers could be replaced with relative ease, intelligence operatives and spies supporting British efforts were exceptionally high value 

resources whose loss would be difficult or impossible to offset.

f. The identification of key enemy intelligence personnel individually 

and groupings whose loss would be particularly harmful should be 

a priority task for IRA intelligence.

g. Once identified, enemy intelligence operatives should be threatened 

and coerced into stopping or compromising their activities.

h. If the threatened police operatives do not comply, they should be 

killed.

i. Police and paramilitaries who commit crimes against IRA personnel or advocate oppressive policies should be eliminated, even long 

after the fact.

j. A highly secretive assassination section was necessary to carefully 

study layouts, plans, timing, and personal attributes of the targets 
19

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

before assassinations, with provisions made for the disposal of the 

weapons used.

k. Individual members should foster visual or other identification with 

British or non-republican perspective to ease movement and allay 

suspicion.

The consequences of Michael Collins’ intelligence efforts were much 

as he had postulated. Anti-republican Intelligence networks—manned by 

Irish RIC, DPD, and the British alike—were severely damaged when key officers and operatives were physically eliminated (including the 1920 “Bloody 

Sunday” mass assassination addressed later). His efforts—by creating an 

atmosphere of coercion and fear—brought about numerous resignations 

and retirements, recruiting shortfalls, defections, the frequent “turning of 

a blind eye” on critical occasions, and overall organizational dysfunction. 

In addition, IRA penetrations of British intelligence, security, communications, and even political bodies often allowed it to stay a jump ahead 

of counterinsurgency initiatives that constantly threatened them, even as 

republican forces suffered serious attrition. Finally, his attacks so provoked 

and frustrated the British that they were tempted into over-reaction and 

excesses, thereby mobilizing additional support for the republican cause 

and creating additional pressure on the government for some resolution to 

the Irish problem.28

Because of the audacity and innovation of Collins’ often dramatic successes, there may be a danger of overstating their impact. Certainly other 

factors also led to a July 1921 truce between the British and Republicans. 

Nevertheless, the intelligence war clearly played an important role in bringing about the truce and the subsequent December 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty 

that established the Irish Free State and a separate six-county Northern 

Ireland that was allowed to opt out of the agreement and remain part of 

the United Kingdom. Collins’ role in supporting the agreement, however, 

was judged by his more uncompromising colleagues as a sell-out since it did 

not achieve full republican goals. His assassination by fellow republicans 

10 months later cut short whatever directions his leadership, political, and 

underground warfare skills may have taken him.29
20

JSOU Report 09-1

Carlos Marighella: Guerrilla Counterintelligence 

in an Urban Environment

Brazilian insurgent practitioner and theorist Carlos Marighella, an admirer 

of Fidel Castro, was one of a significant handful of Latin American guerrillas who committed his ideas on the successful conduct of an insurgency 

to paper. Unlike General Bayo whose thoughts ran mainly to rural-based 

guerrilla warfare, he believed that revolution could be promoted most successfully in urban areas. After a long history of vocal dissent and political protest, Marighella helped form the Marxist armed group “Action for 

National Liberation” (ALN—Acao Libertadora Nacional) in the late 1960s. 

He was an active participant in a number of armed money-raising efforts—

robberies and kidnappings—in Brazil until killed in a carefully prepared 

São Paulo police ambush in 1969. While his book For the Liberation of Brazil

gained attention, his main contribution to the practice of guerrilla warfare 

was Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla.

30 Marighella’s ideas inspired and 

guided the Communist Tupamaros insurgency in Uruguay, in the early 

1970s, and was used by other groups around the world. During the 1970s at 

least, the tract was banned in parts of Latin America. Minimanual, familiar 

to most students of insurgency, was not a long or exhaustive work by any 

means, but it did distill some key lessons and truths that informed aspiring 

Latin American and other insurgents and made its way into government 

security forces training curricula. Among the topics he chose to cover was 

counterintelligence, the importance of which he stressed and the criticality 

of which had been demonstrated to him. 

Marighella took cognizance of the resources that government security 

organizations would bring to bear on armed dissident groups in an urban 

environment. The environment he accurately perceived was one in which 

“the urban guerrilla lives in constant danger of the possibility of being 

discovered or denounced.” The continuing danger of infiltration by police 

or intelligence spies was judged to be the greatest single threat, the need 

to remain alert, “well hidden and well-guarded” was essential. Marighella 

outlined concerns associated with the most important threats he envisioned 

and recommended measures to mitigate them:

a. Ensure that recruiting is conducted in utmost secrecy.
21

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

b. Prohibit individual guerrillas from learning the identities of more than 

a few compatriots and limit knowledge of planning and structure—“a 

fundamental A-B-C of urban guerrilla security.”

c. Avoid carelessness, indiscipline, and lack of vigilance.

d. Guard against the possession of documents, addresses, marginal notes 

on any papers, telephone books, biographical information, maps, and 

planning materials or maps of any type.

e. Commit all needed information to memory.

f. Correct comrades who violate rules once and shun them if they 

commit such actions again.

g. Move constantly and carefully to avoid police identification of 

location.

h. Receive information on police and security movement, concentration, 

and activity daily.

i. Maintain security and silence following arrest, particularly in regard 

to insurgent identities or locations.

j. Overall, “the most important lesson for guerrilla security” in view of 

the threat—never allow stipulated security procedures to be violated 

or to be implemented sloppily. 

Brazilian insurgent Carlos 

Marighella addressed urban 

guerrilla counterintelligence 

practices in his Minimanual

that was used by many insurgent groups. He was killed 

in a police ambush when 

betrayed by two informants. 

Photo from www.terrorfileonline.org/es/index.php/

Imagen:Carlos_Marighella.

jpeg#file, used by permission 

of http://creativecommons.org/

licenses/by/2.5/. 
22

JSOU Report 09-1

As a consequence, he emphasized the early need for any guerrilla group 

to build a competent, structured intelligence service. While intelligence 

would be tasked on the one hand with acquiring “positive” intelligence (e.g., 

state planning, strength, location, support/financial systems, communications, and covert actions), guerrilla resources had to be devoted at the same 

time to prevent government forces from ferreting out information on their 

plans, fostering betrayal by group members and outside supporters, and 

infiltrating spies and informers into the insurgent structure. This focus, 

he insisted, should be in the form of a “counterespionage or counterintelligence service” that targeted specific enemy plans and activities. It also would 

incorporate all kinds of nontargeted information gathered in the course of 

daily activities to include what was observed of human interaction, attitudes, 

the content of overheard conversations, and the particulars of infrastructure sites that were observed. The careful reading and exploitation of public 

information—newspapers, magazines, and media broadcasts—were judged 

as contributive to an “urban guerrilla’s decisive advantage,” especially when 

reporting on police activities.

This effort would constitute, to paraphrase a much later U.S. intelligence 

formulation, not only an approach in which “every guerrilla was a sensor” 

but every sympathizer and supporter that could be tapped as well. In other 

words, Marighella proposed to harness the entire force of guerrillas and 

associates to providing a picture of enemy threats. He believed that in this 

way hostile security force actions in concentrated urban areas could be 

reduced as guerrilla popular support grew. He judged that a large, motivated 

population would provide more and more information on the activities of 

police agencies and contribute to misleading them. He expanded on this 

point by offering his view that government police and security forces—

which would be closely studied by a reporting population sympathetic to the 

insurgency—could not know who among the people was actually passing 

information to the insurgents. Information gathering by all concerned would 

involve “observation, investigation, reconnaissance, and exploration of the 

terrain.” Further, “revolutionary precaution”—careful observation and wariness to include “eyes and ears open, senses alert, and his memory engraved 

with everything necessary”—was to overlay information gathering. 

Marighella recommended a CI tactic against treachery that called for 

insurgent spokesmen “to denounce publicly the traitors, spies, informers, 

and provocateurs.” But his heart and confidence lay in guerrilla actions 
23

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

that were far from such “soft” responses and countermeasures and more in 

keeping with his repeated call for revolutionary violence. Identified informers, spies, and traitors had to be “properly punished.” By this he meant 

physically eliminated—executed by a single or very few guerrillas “operating in absolute secrecy and in cold blood.” He judged it would substantially 

minimize enemy infiltration and spying. As he also put this explicitly, in 

the several times he addressed it, “the spy trapped within the organization 

will be punished with death. The same goes for those who desert and inform 

to the police.” 31

Islamic Insurgent and Terrorist Groups: 

Pervasive Counterintelligence Guidance

The variety of diverse armed groups and militant movements identified as 

“Islamic” terrorist organizations and/or insurgencies have incorporated a 

spectrum of defensive and offensive CI practices in their daily activities and 

operations. Those groups operating under the Al Qaeda umbrella, Afghan 

and Chechen groups, Filipino Abu Sayyaf and Moro Islamic Liberation 

Front (MILF) organizations, Indonesian groups like Jemaah Islamiah (JI), 

and others groups around the world have become CI practitioners to one 

extent or another. In some cases, this attention to CI issues is manifested in 

formal organizational ways—for example, organized intelligence and counterintelligence sections, chiefs, and staffs; training or instructional programs 

designed to create at least security awareness among the general membership and sometimes more carefully honed CI skills; and active practice. 

Depending on the group, observations and lessons are recorded, adjusted, 

studied, and in basic and more sophisticated ways incorporated in the planning and operations. Many of these groups and movements use historical, including quite ancient, examples. This practice is undertaken for the 

authority and legitimacy it lends to the lessons leaders are trying to instill 

and perhaps for real operational input as well. As with other groups around 

the world, a major concern has been treachery in the form of betrayal by 

members of the group, by the infiltration of police or intelligence agents, 

or by outside observers. 

Ancient lessons and stratagems form a basis for admonitions to group 

members to act decisively when spies and informers are caught, as with the 

following 8th century instruction:
24

JSOU Report 09-1

As far as people who have been convicted of spying, if they are foreigners from a hostile country, Jews, Christians, or Persians who are 

Arab subjects, they must be decapitated. If they are bad Muslims, 

one has to inflict painful punishment on them and put them into 

prison for a long term.32

At the same time, the most modern CI considerations are discussed and 

evaluated, sometimes using extensive foreign materials. A notable recent 

example is Muhammad Khalil Al-Hakaymah’s look at the U.S. Intelligence 

Community in The Myth of Delusion.

33

The author, possibly killed in Waziristan by an airstrike in late 2008, 

was a long-time Egyptian Islamic radical and more recently an apparent 

Al Qaeda affiliate. In the monograph, Muhammad Khalil Al-Hakaymah 

undertook to survey and comment upon most components of the U.S. intelligence establishment. While not entirely accurate in fact and understanding 

and more descriptive than originally analytical, it was a serious effort based 

on competent, if not comprehensive, open sources. It probably serves as a 

useful primer for jihadists, and especially those concerned with threats to 

security and who require an overview of U.S. intelligence potential. Abu 

Bakr Naji’s Management of Savagery offers some more specific concerns 

couched in more original thinking.34

Abu Bakr Naji pointed to general operating principles as well as to 

some more defined current and future planning tenets. He provided some 

Cover of the jihadist study 

of the U.S. Intelligence 

Community entitled The 

Myth of Delusion, which 

is intended to provide 

Islamic militants with an 

understanding of the U.S.

intelligence threat. The 

publication appeared originally on the now defunct 

www.almaqreze.com site. 
25

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

defensive and offensive considerations including how Al Qaeda may consider 

approaches for neutralizing enemy spies and informers and defeating U.S.

and allied efforts to infiltrate spies as well as to leverage or coerce informers.35

The work notes how the “horrors” of the jihadist struggles gradually reveal 

collaborators within the movement. These revelations become particularly 

more evident as jihadist ranks expand and as circumstances bring group 

members into close contact with the various peoples and societies where 

the movement operates. Developing close relations with the population 

has to be a priority because is essential for protecting the movement from 

infiltration. As the author put it, they can provide “good eyes and armor for 

us and protect us from spies” in ways that would be difficult or impossible 

to replicate with internal resources.36

Principles for discovering spies are set out in published mujahid “security reports.” When a spy or informer is identified and confirmed, he must 

be punished with the “utmost coarseness and ugliness” in order to deter 

“weak souls” and others tempted to follow a similar path of betrayal. Even if 

this means tracking a confirmed spy for years, should he happen to escape 

and flee initially, he still should be found and punished. An opportunity 

for confession and forgiveness should be available for unidentified informers who want to admit “mistakes” in dealing with the enemy. The use of 

rumors suggesting that spies have been caught and “turned” are employed 

to create uncertainty among adversaries. In language that replicates that of 

Michael Collins’ often articulated concept in some respects, the importance 

of neutralizing the informant or spy eyes and ears of the police and security forces is stressed. This point applies not just to those collaborators that 

have contrived to occupy higher positions among the mujahid but even the 

lowest level informers who are really those who enable police and security 

forces to conduct investigations and target mujahid facilities and individuals in their day-to-day operations. Media attention to such retribution is to 

be welcomed.37

The dangers to the movement in the event a mujahid is captured by the 

enemy are manifest and obvious. Management of Strategy considers some 

options for various kinds of behavior during interrogation. Each has its 

own uncertainties and shortcomings whatever the intent of the captured 

mujahid. The author reaches a conclusion for what he thinks is the best 

solution: “Rather [than try to outwit the interrogator], a mujahid should 

not submit to capture in the first place. He should fight until death and not 
26

JSOU Report 09-1

be captured; he should turn that battle into a slaughterhouse for the forces 

who are conducting searches.” 37

Among the offensive CI approaches addressed is a jihadi imperative to 

infiltrate institutions, over the course of a long struggle, and the theoretical 

framework for actions that not only Al Qaeda but also various terrorist (and 

criminal) groups have undertaken. Specifically, Abu Bakr Naji indicates: 

Our battle is long and still in its beginning.... Its length provides an 

opportunity for infiltrating the adversaries and their fellow travelers 

and establishing a strong security apparatus that is more supportive 

of the security of the movement now, and later the state. [We] should 

infiltrate the police forces, the armies, the different political parties, 

the newspapers, the Islamic groups, the petroleum companies (as an 

employee or as an engineer), private security companies, sensitive 

civil institutions, etc. That actually began several decades ago, but 

we need to increase it in light of recent developments.38

The application of this kind of instruction has been evident in the police, 

military, and security forces of many Islamic states as well as in those developing indigenous security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The potential 

represented by the CIA’s, FBI’s and U.S. Marine Corps’ employment of individuals with possible Hezbollah affiliations recently (addressed below) as 

well as among private security firms in the West suggests that the potential 

is not limited to countries with predominantly Islamic populations. Recent 

assessments of Al Qaeda and other jihadist recruitment efforts among 

Muslims who are resident in Western countries or converted westerners—

as well as reports from at least 2004 of the recruitment and deployment of 

European or European-appearing jihadists—suggests a close association 

with the “infiltration” advice above.38

Al Qaeda and other jihadist documents are sprinkled or suffused with 

advice and instructions for security and vigilance to protect friendly 

resources and planning, as well as conducting offensive CI initiatives. In 

addition to Management of Savagery and the Myth of Delusion addressed 

above, the now well-known lessons-learned tract, Military Studies in the 

Jihad Against the Tyrants prepared about a decade earlier, other writings, 

jihadist Internet postings, and captured documents address a number of 

precepts associated with CI concerns. 
27

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

A variety of CI considerations, as well as more specific treatments of 

topics that fall directly into the CI venue, are woven through instructions 

and basic tradecraft. A few of these, principally from Military Studies but 

typical of issues addressed in other materials, are highlighted below. They 

are intended to convey a sense of the scope of CI functions considered. 

Interested readers can find more detailed discussions and numerous illustrative historical examples in this basic document, together with other closely 

related materials in the writings and speeches of prominent jihadists:

39

a. Keeping Secrets and Concealing Information. With references to 

Quranic quotes (“Seek Allah’s help in doing your affairs in Secrecy”), 

note is made of the importance and difficulties of protecting information and use of codes and ciphers among other topics. This practice 

limiting the individuals who know operational details, even one’s 

closest colleagues and one’s wife (as Mohammed did with his wife 

A’isha in his undertakings). 

b. Surveillance. Both friendly and enemy, including the various types 

and means used, are addressed. Also considered are a host of tradecraft 

topics associated with surveillance in different circumstances—for 

example, familiarization with the area and target, traffic flows, and 

location of police stations and security centers. 

c. Recruiting, Evaluating, Training. A process with many CI sensitivities, this dimension receives the same emphasis that it does among so 

many other insurgent groups. The kinds of attributes that the jihadist

recruit should possess include, among others, intelligence and insight; 

caution and prudence; ability to observe and analyze: an ability to act, 

change positions, and conceal oneself; and maturity and an ability 

to keep secrets. Also addressed are ways to “test” recruits for loyalty 

and competence and the specialized process of recruiting agents who 

will work in behalf of the movement. 

d. Financial Security Precautions. Includes issues of handling and 

managing operational funds including the need for secrecy in location 

and avoiding the maintenance of all money in one location. 

e. Protecting Documents, Forged and Real. Deals with the security 

of documents and the thorough familiarity with them in the event 

of questioning about particulars, as well as tradecraft-like strictures 
28

JSOU Report 09-1

on traveling to a country that purportedly issued the false passport 

one is using. 

f. Care with Aliases. Avoidance of having more than one identity in 

the general area of operation and the need to ensure compatibility 

with the names of other members of the group. 

g. Arrest and Interrogations. Discusses the various kinds of questioning and physical and psychological coercion a mujahid might be subjected to and ways that he should conduct himself to include making 

the charge that torture was used and demanding it be included in a 

formal record of his imprisonment and questioning.

h. Security for Facilities from Infidel Surveillance and Actions.

Addressing the careful selection of safe houses and other facilities, 

primarily in urban environments, to include appropriateness, entry, 

and egress routes as well as emergency escape routes, concealed areas 

within for the secretion of documents, or other sensitive items.

i. Communications Security. Addressing detailed attention to the 

approaches and dangers of telephonic contacts, personal meetings, 

information delivered by messenger, letters, facsimile machine, wireless communications, radio, and TV. Myth of Delusion also discusses 

the topic in some detail in relation to intelligence capabilities.

The early–mid 1990s and later considerations referred to above continue 

to be supplemented by the new and sometimes innovative technological 

developments and updated warnings of enemy capabilities, dangers, and 

countermeasures.40 New techniques of computer encryption (including the 

software “Secrets of the Mujahideen”) and other developments are set out 

in instructional materials like the online Technical Mujahid that appeared 

for the first time in late 2006. The latter featured pieces on clandestine communications (including steganography and steganalysis), Web site design, 

and weapons technology among other topics. At least one subsequent issue 

has been published.41

A general concern with unwanted associations and a need for overall 

watchfulness in everyday contact is emphasized for members. For example, 

in late 2006, a number of news organizations and specialized Internet information sites released the text of a Taliban “Layeha,” a term usually rendered 

in English as “Rulebook” or “Book of Rules.”
29

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

In its Pashtu original, it was 15 pages in length and comprised a list of 

30 “obligations” approved by the “Supreme Leader of the Islamic Emirate 

of Afghanistan” for those that had embraced jihad.

42 The document was 

distributed to some 33 attendees at a Shura Council meeting during the 

Ramadan Muslim religious observance (which in 2006 was 5 September 

to 24 October). 

Some of the items dealt with CI measures, comprising brief reminders to 

those that the need for security was continuing. While Mideast specialists 

may find the comparison ill-chosen, the resemblance of Taliban “rules” to 

those promulgated among Bandido motorcycle members (and the Sicilian 

Mafia as well) is evident.43 They are a reminder of the common, enduring 

considerations that influence security-aware organizations perceiving outside threats. Among several security-related examples from the “layeha” 

are the following:

a. Each mujahideen who is in contact with supporters of the current 

regime and who invites them to join the true Islam has to inform 

his commander. 

In Afghanistan, Taliban rules of 

conduct reflect a strong counterintelligence concern amidst 

other guidelines for members. 

Mohammed Naim Farouq, former 

Guantanamo detainee, earned 

a criminal reputation well out of 

accord with Taliban standards 

of conduct but is nevertheless 

now reckoned to be a Taliban 

leader.Travis Heying/Wichita 

Eagle/MCT photo, used by 

permission of Newscom. 
30

JSOU Report 09-1

b. Those who accept the invitation to join the true Islam but are not 

loyal and become traitors will lose their contract with us and not be 

protected by us. There is no way to give them another chance. 

c. If someone who is working with the infidels wants to cooperate with 

the mujahideen, nobody is allowed to kill him. If somebody kills him, 

he will face the Islamic sharia court. 

d. If a member of the opposition, or the government, wants to surrender 

to the Taliban, we can consider their conditions; however, the final 

decision has to be made by the military council.

e. Working for the current puppet regime is not permitted, either in a 

madrassa [religious school] or as a schoolteacher, because that provides strength to the infidel system. In order to strengthen the new 

Islamic regime, Muslims should hire a religious teacher and study in 

a mosque or another suitable place and the textbooks used should be 

from the mujahid [anti-Soviet war] time or the Taliban time.

f. Those who are working in the current puppet regime as a madrassa 

teacher or schoolteacher should be warned. If he does not stop, he 

should be beaten. But if a teacher is teaching against the true Islam, 

he should be killed by the district commander or a group leader.

g. The nongovernment organizations that came in the country under 

the infidel’s government are just like the government. They came here 

under the slogan of helping the people but in fact they are part of this 

regime. That is why their every activity will be banned, whether it is 

building a road, bridge, clinic, school or madrassa, or anything else. 

If a school matches these conditions, it should be burned. If it is told 

to close but does not, it should be burned. But before burning it, all 

religious books should be taken out.

h. Before someone is found guilty of being a spy, and can be punished, 

no commander or person of responsibility is allowed to interfere. Only 

the district general commander is allowed to do so. In court, evidence 

has to be brought forward that might prove the accused person to be 

a spy. The persons who bring forward the evidence should be mentally well and have a good religious reputation. They must not have 

committed a big crime. The accused should be punished only after 

the whole case is closed and he is found guilty.

i. Every mujahid group is committed to keep watchful guards on duty 

day and night.
31

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

Collectively, the issues addressed above convey a concern with counterintelligence measures that runs deep in jihadist thinking. The precepts and 

imperatives do not differ markedly from the approaches voiced by other 

insurgent groups, save for the religious context that underpins the do’s and 

don’ts of protection, personal conduct, and offensive action. 

Some External Influences

The variety of counterintelligence approaches associated with insurgent 

groups is certainly home-grown in some cases, a legacy of tribal, ethnonational, and a host of time-honored regional approaches shaped by trial 

and error. Tribal warfare, simmering and intermittently acute ethnic tensions and violence, and smuggling and other criminal endeavors have among 

other factors developed and honed practices and contributed to more applied 

CI approaches. Many insurgent groups have benefited also from having 

members who served in their national militaries. They brought both formal 

knowledge of basic CI methods and techniques, as well as an understanding 

of the government intelligence services and forces they were engaging. 

But there have been many external influences as well. Lessons and 

instructional materials from outside insurgent groups—some allied, others 

loosely supportive, and some having no discernible relationship beyond 

armed violence—have found their way into guerilla “libraries.” Even before 

the advent of the Internet, it had been a common occurrence to find such 

diverse materials in caches of guerrilla 

documents from all parts of the world. 

For many groups, the studied reading 

of foreign reporting and documents 

has proven a source for information, 

ideas, and instruction. The Myth of 

Delusion previously mentioned is a recent case in point.

It is clear that World War II contributed to the base of insurgent intelligence and counterintelligence skills and knowledge in at least some regions. 

Certainly, the experience in fighting the Japanese in southern, southeast, 

and north Asia was instrumental in providing the know-how that supported postwar guerrilla forces as they sometimes fought their way to 

national power or failed after long struggles. In Eastern Europe and Central 

Eurasia, partisan (guerrilla) groups engaged in some of the largest irregular 

...the studied reading of foreign 

reporting and documents has 

proven a source for information, 

ideas, and instruction.
32

JSOU Report 09-1

warfare operations in history, creating a base of intelligence and CI wisdom 

and practices that informed both the Axis combatants and the guerrillas 

themselves. The distinguished historian John Keegan, in his well-regarded 

work Intelligence in War, directly linked the experience of the U.S. Office of 

Strategic Services (OSS) and the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) 

to the tradecraft of postwar terrorist armed groups. He summed up this 

view, for which there is some evidence, as follows:

Like all post-1945 terrorist organizations, it [Al Qaeda terrorism] 

appears to have learnt a great deal from the operations of Western 

states’ special forces during the Second World War, such as SOE and 

OSS, which developed and diffused most of the modern techniques 

of secret warfare among the resistance groups of German-occupied 

Europe during 1940–1944; the copious literature of secret warfare 

against the Nazis provides the textbooks.44

While some would find it provocative, Keegan takes specific note of techniques taught to the OSS and SOE for behavior by captured agents during 

interrogation. He observed that these techniques often failed when used 

against the tortures typically employed by the Gestapo against real and 

suspected OSS or SOE operatives—male, female, and the most youthful 

resistance fighters alike. However, he believes that these same techniques 

pioneered six decades ago work very well today against Western intelligence 

interrogation efforts that are constrained by laws of war, other international and domestic legal strictures, and U.S. and allied policies. Captured 

Al Qaeda militants, for example, have proved far more resistant to interrogation than did many of the extraordinarily brave and resourceful SOE

and OSS operatives.45

The extent to which current insurgent and terrorist groups would agree 

is unclear. But the many examples of OSS and SOE guerrilla operations 

recounted in recent works using newly declassified material suggest that 

Keegan may have a point (though some agents resisted everything and never 

revealed the identity, locational, and operational details sought). But more 

broadly than this were the other elements of tradecraft that were “diffused” 

following the war. These included the traditional techniques of secrecy and 

deception on the human intelligence side. In addition, it encompassed the 

technical side also, as with the famous “radio game”—or German designated funkspeil—involving the coerced control or impersonation of captured 
33

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

agents paradropped and otherwise infiltrated into target areas; the countermeasures and double-crosses developed and employed; and the accompanying advances in radio direction finding, its neutralization, encryption, 

and other advances.46 While technology has changed, the principles and the 

culture of deception from the period, to whatever extent actually transmitted to armed groups, is evident in guerrilla CI discourses and activities. 

Perhaps the greatest outside influences on guerrilla CI approaches and 

activities are those dating from the Cold War. These are still pertinent since 

they became institutionally embedded in general guerrilla intelligence/CI

tradecraft and activity, even as events and local conditions have modified 

them. It is well known and documented that Soviet and East European communist intelligence services played key roles in training guerrilla cadres of 

all types, including those engaged in insurgent intelligence and CI work. 

These complex, multifaceted support efforts—carried out clandestinely in 

insurgent host countries and in the USSR, Eastern Europe, and third country camps and facilities as well—trained several generations of insurgents 

and terrorists in pertinent skills including those of intelligence and counterintelligence. This history is too extensive to be addressed here but needs 

to be considered as a backdrop in more focused assessments of current 

approaches. One example is worth noting, however, since it contributed so 

much to guerrilla approaches in a region of the world.

The example is the role of the East German Ministry for State Security 

(Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit—MfR), more commonly known as the 

Stasi. Stasi training and support efforts covered a number of areas of the 

world. Its influence, however, was particularly strong in Cuba, where the 

Cuban Ministry of the Interior (MINIT) was charged with a broad spectrum 

of internal and external security functions and became in many respects 

a close Stasi analog. The nature of the close relationship had been asserted 

and partially documented for years in Western assessments. The training of 

Cuban intelligence and counterintelligence officers in the techniques of the 

East German “counterintelligence state” was evident in many ways. 

The demise of the German Democratic Republic in 1991 and consequent access to Stasi files confirmed and expanded the understanding of 

the relationship. 

Regarding guerrilla CI, this relationship is important because Cuban 

trainers played substantial roles in passing on their knowledge to Latin 

American and other insurgent groups. Cuban researcher Jorge Luís Vázquez, 
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JSOU Report 09-1

who has spent years examining Stasi files dealing with Cuba, judges that 

“what we see is a copy of the Stasi system that spread across the developing 

world—from Angola, Ethiopia, and Mozambique to Nicaragua, Guatemala, 

and El Salvador.” 47 Cuban insurgent trainers and cadres trained by MINIT

deployed to near and distant African conflict areas to train indigenous guerrillas in such skills as “observation, espionage, and interrogation techniques” 

supplementing what the German Democratic Republic (GDR), USSR, and 

other East European communist states did more directly.48

In addition to state sponsorship provided during the Cold War by the 

USSR and East European allies, other communist states (e.g., the People’s 

Republic of China and North Korea) at times trained guerrillas and sent 

material support to them. So too have various authoritarian regimes to 

include, as is well known, Saddam-era Iraq, Libya, and others. In recent 

years, guerrilla groups have contracted for support from freelance or criminal organizations, though the CI dimension of such support has probably 

been minimal. 

Soviet and Warsaw Pact intelligence services greatly influenced Marxist and other insurgent groups around the world. 

The opening of Stasi files confirmed the close relationship 

between the East German counterintelligence organization and the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, which adopted 

many of its CI approaches for further dissemination to Latin 

American and African insurgencies. AFP photo, used with 

permission by Newscom. 
35

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

Cultural issues and their impact on intelligence are usually addressed in 

terms of unthinking government or foreign security force activities during 

insurgencies. However, they may in many cases fundamentally affect the 

security of insurgents as well. The competent treatment of tribal, religious, 

and ethnic groups—whose support and participation in an insurgency is a 

point of consideration—has sometimes been ignored by aspiring insurgents 

or terrorist armed groups. The much publicized disaffection and eventual 

intense hostility developing among some Iraqi insurgents and Al Qaeda in 

Iraq is only a recent manifestation of the problem faced by some insurgencies.49 While once making common cause against the U.S.-led multinational 

coalition, the later operational and intelligence difficulties encountered by 

foreign fighters have been manifest. This problem is recent but not unique 

to some insurgencies. 

One consequence for guerrilla groups who were not properly prepared to 

deal with cultural issues has been to undermine the creation of informant 

networks and to leave an indifferent or hostile population base that materially harms guerrilla efforts. This appears to have been the case for Che 

Guevara in Bolivia—perhaps the best known popular illustration—where 

he noted in his diary that his group had learned Quechua, but that the local 

tribal language in his area of operations was Tupí-Guaraní. The consequence 

of this, as he noted, was a lack of rapport between the guerrillas and the 

Indians, great difficulties in recruiting, and the existence of a population 

base that might be inclined to inform authorities about his activities.50 This 

situation had a substantial impact on Che’s activities and could plausibly 

be judged as a significant factor in his eventual failure. 

In Peru, during mid-1960s operations of the short-lived National 

Liberation Army insurgency (Ejército Liberación Nacional—ELN), language 

also presented a serious CI problem for the guerrillas. The ELN leader Héctor 

Béjar acknowledged in his “autocriticism,” written in a Peruvian prison, that 

a serious lack of rapport existed between his fighters and the Indian peasants. He identified the difficulties his guerrillas had in places like Ayacucho 

(the birthplace of Sendero Luminoso years later), where large numbers of 

Quechua speakers resided and where Spanish speakers like his men were 

regarded as outsiders and “bosses.” Further, he observed that it was far from 

sufficient to have just a few words of Quechua. Béjar’s look back at the failure of his insurgency made this point, which had deep CI implications. His 

judgment was that “for the guerillas to gain the trust of the peasantry they 
36

JSOU Report 09-1

must be able to speak Quechua, and not just any Quechua, but the dialect 

spoken in the zone where they are operating...” 51

Hand in hand with the language shortfalls was the lack of appreciation for Indian customs. Béjar emphasized that simple good works were 

not enough, even though they might be appreciated. Good works could be 

negated, and were, by the guerrillas’ failure to exercise discipline in their 

conduct around the Indian populace. They did not steep themselves in 

Indian habits and offended them with seeming arrogance and unknowing 

insults to their feelings and sensitivities. This, like language deficiencies, 

created CI dangers for the guerrilla force, even as the guerrillas thought they 

were winning their appreciation by forming various services. According to 

Béjar’s judgment:

In spite of the goodwill that they earned, the guerrillas lacked a deep 

understanding of local customs. This would have allowed them to 

distinguish the traitors from their friends with greater precision 

and to obtain better and more pertinent information concerning 

the enemy’s movements.52

In Guinea-Bissau, the 1960s and early 1970s insurgency conducted 

under the African Independence Party of Guinea and Cape Verde (Partido 

Africano da Independéncia da Guiné e Cabo Verde—PAIGC) encountered 

cultural complexities in waging their fight against the Portuguese. One of 

these was the refusal of some tribal groups to deploy guerrillas to areas 

beyond their home territory, a concept that seemed unreasonable to men 

who wanted to protect their own homes, families, and fellow tribesmen. In 

addition, the increasing bloodshed of the insurgency tended to be interpreted in terms of supernatural reasons and led some villagers, including 

guerrilla fighters, to seek supernatural protection. Faith in fetishes, instead 

of training, cost the lives of many guerrillas who believed they would be 

protected by these traditional objects, while sorcerers possessed the authority to determine whether they would fight on a given day or move to an area 

designated by guerrilla leaders. 

This problem was serious enough that it engaged the PAIGC leadership 

and the movement’s political mobilization cadres who tried to influence 

popular beliefs with alienating populations whose support was needed for 

intelligence, security, fighting strength, and sustainment. For example, rebel 

leader Amílcar Cabral sought, with some success, to imbue traditional spirits 
37

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

like the forest spirit irán with “nationalist sentiments” that would permit the 

establishment of guerrilla camps and movement routes under the safe cover 

of the forests.53 One specialist summarized the importance of this seemingly 

exotic problem, and an intelligent effort to achieve balance, this way:

The repeated attempts to overcome these cultural constraints are an 

indication of the influence of such factors upon the development of a 

people’s war. Much of his [PAIGC leader Cabral’s] effort was devoted 

to understanding cultural influences and reducing their sway over 

the party leaders and fighters.54

The surprising and relatively complete PAIGC success in a long, bloody 

fight for independence was an unusual accomplishment in an African colonialist struggle. Soviet and Communist “bloc” support of the guerrillas 

(from the USSR, Cuba, and China) undermined its legitimacy as a “nationalist” movement. Nevertheless, Cabral’s balanced efforts in managing cultural 

differences among guerrilla fighters and population segments were based 

on avoiding heavy-handed assaults on the often frustrating tribal cultures. 

At the same time, the PAIGC was able to nudge them into views and decisions that more closely supported the insurgents’ requirements. Cabral’s 

killing by a rival no doubt contributed to a troublesome post-independence 

period including retaliation against those who had fought on the side of 

the Portuguese.

The general precepts and principles described in the sections thus far 

have been translated into action by disparate insurgent groups with varying 

degrees of success. Illustrations of this success are what follows. 

Counterintelligence Approaches and Effectiveness

Most insurgent groups have applied variants of the kinds of guidelines, 

principles, and concepts previously addressed. Specific examples abound 

of how guerrilla groups have emphasized, modified, or ignored particular elements to their advantage or dismay and damage. Other groups have 

developed quite new approaches—at least in emphasis—that were stunningly successful at the time. Insurgent counterintelligence approaches 

have varied, of course, with the different levels of organization; resources; 

rural, urban and even international operational environments; and with 

the threats posed by state security forces or rival groups. Some past and 
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JSOU Report 09-1

present insurgent organizations have organized intelligence and counterintelligence efforts that approached in structure and differentiation those 

of the states they opposed. Others have operated with relatively simple and 

minimally utilitarian in structure and initiatives.55 For some groups—and 

most today—leveraging technology for CI tradecraft and applications has 

been an important adjunct to their efforts, while others relied on the simplest approaches that nevertheless were sometimes effective. In most cases, 

however, CI activities from the basic defensive security and protection of 

personnel and assets to some form of offensive CI counterespionage initiatives have been evident. Some defensive and offensive cases—drawn from 

a purposefully eclectic base of armed groups around the world to illustrate 

their application in a variety of circumstances—are considered next. 

Defensive CI Practice

A major effort of any insurgent forces requires a focus on denying enemy 

knowledge of its leadership, organization, location, support structure, and 

planning. Devastating failures are typically more notable than successes, 

and those guerrillas who survived or witnessed them have contributed to the 

accumulated guerrilla counterintelligence “wisdom” noted above. CIA officer 

Carlos Revilla Arango in his useful article “Insurgent Counterintelligence” 

identified several key defensive CI considerations. These included the recognized need for compartmentalization, careful security in recruiting, 

communications security, protecting identities, and exercising control over 

cadres as well as among the principal areas, and one may identify others 

as well.56

U.S./Filipino Guerrillas—North Luzon, Philippines. These issues of 

internal security surface immediately, even for those occasions when life 

as a guerrilla arrives unexpectedly. A fine example is the experience of U.S.

servicemen in the Philippines who escaped capture by the Japanese and 

dispersed to form resistance groups who fought the Japanese for some three 

years. U.S. Army Captain R. W. Volckmann (later colonel) had been an advisor to a Philippine division on Luzon, and after the surrender of U.S. forces at 

Bataan made his way north to join the guerrillas formed by U.S. and Filipino 

soldiers and recruits. In one of a number of memoirs and historical treatments of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Philippines, North Luzon (USAFIP, 
39

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

NL) that controlled guerrilla operations there, Colonel Volckmann described 

the intelligence and counterintelligence dimensions of the fight to survive 

and inflict damage on occupying Japanese forces. His observation—“the 

duel between our forces and the Japs in the field of espionage and counterespionage became intense, often quite complicated, but it always offered an 

interesting challenge”—was a clear understatement.57

The issues highlighted by Arango (and countless guerrillas who survived to write) were encountered, dealt with, and validated in the American 

guerrilla experience in the Philippines. They included the following central 

elements: 

a. Establishing agent networks, guarding information (particularly the 

identification of guerrillas and acquisition of rosters that the Japanese 

sought assiduously), protecting message and other communications 

means, and vetting recruits

b. Allowing for the consequence of some out-of-the-blue, unanticipated 

development that adversely affected operations

c. Identifying and dealing with spies and informers.58

But returning to foreign insurgent perceptions, several illustrative cases 

involving foreign guerrillas are included next.

Tupamaros—Uruguay. In Uruguay during the 1960s and 1970s, the 

Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Movement—MLN) 

guerrilla movement was confronted by the state police and military forces 

increasingly intense and brutal efforts to destroy it. The Marxist guerrillas, better known as the “Tupamaros” after the 16th century Incan warrior 

and leader Tupac Amaru, were followers of the doctrines promulgated by 

Brazilian Carlos Margehelli and were a relatively disciplined movement. In 

accord with good practices of compartmentalization, the Tupamaros were 

organized into cells of two to six members who did not know each other’s 

real identities (using aliases or “war names” instead). 

Cell leaders reported to a hierarchical leadership and had either combatant/commando or support responsibilities of various types. The arrest and 

successful interrogation of a single member or leader reduced the prospects 

of the entire cell or even several being rolled up. Intelligence was handled 

principally by cells of the latter “support” type but all components, regardless of orientation, developed their own sources and contacts. As Uruguayan 
40

JSOU Report 09-1

counterinsurgency crackdowns took a toll in attrition, and as imperatives 

for the guerrillas to increase their base also grew, recruiting became both 

more important and more dangerous. To avoid compromise by introducing 

informants into the structure, recruiters relied on personal sponsorship of 

recruits, detailed application information, and background checks with 

friends, neighbors, and others. 

This was accomplished through the pertinent cells, but also used supporters outside the regular structure who did not live clandestinely and who 

typically worked only part time for the guerrillas. The Tupamaro recruiters 

sought to identify what might be called the presence of a “guerrilla temperament” to a greater extent than many other groups, assessing psychological 

traits as well as competence in basic skills needed by insurgents. Recruits 

were provided with written instructions on how to conduct themselves and 

cautions on the need for discreteness. Tupamaros were successful for a while 

with increasingly violent attacks made in an effort to prevail. Despite more 

intense operations and sound CI efforts, 

government forces eventually prevailed 

as a consequence of shortfalls in guerrilla 

planning and strategy and a police and 

Army program of mass arrests, brutal 

interrogation, and leadership arrests and 

killings.59

Cuban Guerrillas—Bolivia. Ernesto 

“Che” Guevara’s failed 1966–1967 effort 

to promote and lead a revolution in 

Bolivia presents mainly examples of 

ineffective and sometimes inexplicable 

CI practices.

The overall events of the Bolivian 

initiative from Che’s arrival between 

September and November 1966 to his 

execution in La Higuera on 9 October 

1967 by a Bolivian 2nd Ranger Battalion 

sergeant, are too well known to require 

elaboration here.60 However, the consequence of many damaging CI failures are 

Despite a mediocre record as a 

guerrilla and manifest security 

and planning failures in Bolivia, 

Che is honored by a bust near 

the Bolivian location where he 

was killed by security forces 

after his capture. Ide (2004) 

photo, used with permission by 

Newscom. 
41

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

worth noting specifically, since they tend to be so woven into the overall 

narrative as to be obscured as distinct counterintelligence shortfalls. 

Cuban Revolutionary General Bayo, who died an old man the same year 

Che was executed, must have lamented whatever he heard about the mounting CI failures associated with his former protégé’s Bolivian adventure.61

While Guevara had a justified reputation from the Cuban Revolution for 

harsh “revolutionary discipline” at any suspicion of disloyalty—to include 

ruthlessly shooting suspected spies, collaborators, and defectors—the conduct of his 50–60 fighters in Bolivia were characterized throughout by 

extreme carelessness and a failure to observe the most basic kind of prudence.62 The general indiscipline among those fighters who accompanied 

him, and especially among the relatively few Bolivian recruits that joined 

him, allowed even the poorly trained Bolivian Army to press the guerrillas 

and build a picture of their presence.63 But some of the failures approached 

“strategic” setbacks and included the actions of dubious associates who 

were allowed to know of Che’s location, force makeup, and planning. They 

exercised sloppy tradecraft and on occasion suffered from clear or ambiguous betrayal. 

A case in point was the popularly known “Tania the Guerrilla” (birth 

name of Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider), an Argentina-born German who the 

Stasi recruited after she moved to the GDR with her communist parents in 

the 1950s.64 As a GDR “interpreter” for foreign visitors, she linked up with 

Che during a 1960 visit to East Germany and subsequently moved to Cuba 

working under MINIT and other auspices and advancing her relationship 

with Che and his Latin American revolutionary planning. In whose behalf 

she worked remains a question still. 

While Che undertook activities in Africa and elsewhere, Tania departed 

for La Paz in 1964 where she was assigned to:

a. Gather intelligence from acquaintances she made among the capital’s 

partying social set.

b. Develop infrastructure there in preparation for the phased arrival of 

Che’s cadres beginning in early 1966. 

However, when she undertook to meet with elements of Che’s guerrillas in 

the field, near the remote Ñancahuazú (Nacaguazu) camp in March 1967, 

she committed an inexplicable error for a Stasi and Cuban MINIT-trained 

operative. She left her vehicle, a rented jeep, unattended in a rented garage 
42

JSOU Report 09-1

at Camiri. It was discovered by the Army and found to contain documents 

describing the guerrillas, her contacts, and associates in La Paz and other 

material about her activities. This find substantially advanced Bolivian Amy 

knowledge of the guerrillas and their whereabouts, resulting also in arrests 

that damaged what there was of Che’s urban support infrastructure and 

requiring Tania to remain with the guerrillas in the field. 

Another embarrassing exposure of guerrilla secrets—one that provided final confirmation of Guevara’s presence in Bolivia at the head of the 

guerrillas—featured the Army’s April 1967 capture of the internationally 

known French “leftist intellectual” and guerrilla enthusiast Régis Debray, 

whose sympathies had led him to Havana where he taught philosophy at 

the university. Also arrested with Debray in the little Bolivian settlement 

of Muyupapmpa was Giro Roberto Bustos, a leftist guerrilla sympathizer 

sometimes described as a mediocre Argentine painter. The two were delivered to a meeting with Che at the camp via the redoubtable Tania a few 

weeks before her own security mishap in making a similar linkup. 

After spending some time in the guerrilla camp and learning many details 

about operations, both visitors decided that guerrilla life was best enjoyed 

vicariously from the relative comfort of Havana or another urban area. Upon 

an attempted exfiltration, however, they were caught. They were charged with 

being guerrillas, and under extended questioning by the Bolivian authorities Debray provided information about Guevara and the group, while artist 

Roberto Bustos obligingly drew pictures of the guerrillas. Their claims 

Tania’s inattention to 

operations security in 

Bolivia helped compromise Che’s presence and 

her own activities there 

in behalf of the guerrillas. 

She was killed by Bolivian 

security forces after being 

betrayed by an informer. 

AFP photo, Adalberto 

Roque, used with permission by Newscom. 
43

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

that they were journalists fell apart upon the recovery of documents from 

Guevara’s camps, but they were released under international pressures.65

The guerrillas suffered a major blow to their identities, size, and structure 

in early August 1967, again with the help of deserters who led the Army to 

caves where Che’s group had cached quantities of equipment, medicine, and 

clothing. But from a CI standpoint, the Army also found detailed documents 

describing the guerrilla urban infrastructure that allowed its further roll-up. 

In addition, and again inexplicably, they found many photos of the guerrilla 

participants—allowing for their easy identification—as well as passports and 

other material that further incriminated Debray and Bustos, who could no 

longer claim they were only journalists. 

Finally, to wrap up a last example of fatal and needless compromise, a 

ten-person guerrilla detachment, which had been separated earlier from 

Che’s main group, put their trust in a peasant-grocer from whom they had 

been buying food. That the man had been the cause of some past suspicion 

evidently did not influence a guerrilla inquiry. The insurgents asked about 

the best place to ford the Rio Grande stream. The grocer willingly obliged 

with an accurate answer while also notifying the Army. The group accepted 

the peasant’s offer to lead them to the water crossing. When all were in the 

water or just emerging, the waiting company-size Army unit killed all but 

one who was captured. Tania was among those who died.66

FARC—Colombia. The many visible blows dealt over recent months to the 

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the less visible but 

building pressure on FARC operations for the last several years, have been 

accompanied and propelled by counterintelligence shortfalls and failures. 

The FARC had enjoyed a long life and considerable success since its creation 

in the mid-1960s. The Marxist insurgent organization had a heritage of violent revolutionary antecedents and movements that prepared it well in both 

intelligence and counterintelligence skills. In addition to a long, indigenous 

revolutionary history, the FARC had been the beneficiary of Cuban and 

Soviet sponsorship; funding from drug trafficking; additional profits from 

a host of other criminal enterprises; and the use of terrorist training and 

arms trafficking networks that brought it into association with organizations 

as diverse as the IRA and Sri Lankan Liberation Tigers. 

The FARC had leveraged technology for years, albeit imperfectly, and 

had been among the early users of propaganda Web sites, e-mail, portable 
44

JSOU Report 09-1

computers, and some encryption. They had recognized accompanying intercept dangers as well and had exercised some caution in electronic transmissions and communications. The chief of the Colombian General Staff 

had noted, for example, that USB flash/thumb drives and computer disks 

have been disseminated by messenger rather than transmitted out of fear 

of interception (a sound enough practice). However, the intelligence and 

counterintelligence successes that were more manifest in earlier years began 

to fray visibly in the 21st century. 

This failure has been a consequence of enduring, high-quality U.S. support of the Colombia security establishment; the perseverance, effective 

response, and improved intelligence and operational capabilities of the 

Colombian armed forces, police, and state; the criminalization and apparent lack of focus by the FARC as profits loomed larger as a motivation than 

ideology or old political goals; and perhaps the sloppiness of an aging and 

tired organization that had undergone two or three generational changes 

among some members and leadership. In the counterintelligence area, the 

deterioration of the old discipline and attention began to be fatal. 

The loss of recently deceased FARC leader Manuel Marulanda to a heart 

attack in late March 2008 brought 

an abrupt end to many decades 

of successful evasion. FARC chief 

Marulanda’s death came in a month 

where Colombian military forces 

had closely pursued and periodically 

struck guerrillas in a continuing effort 

to eliminate key cadre.

FARC leader Manuel Marulanda 

Vélez (AKA “Tirofijo” or “Sureshot”) 

died of a heart attack in late March 

2008 as Colombian security forces 

applied increasing pressure against 

guerrilla forces. His loss was a serious blow to the FARC and added to 

setbacks from Government security 

force actions and growing FARC 

internal security compromises. Photo 

used by permission of Newscom.
45

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

The 76-year-old Marulanda had exercised a combination of caution and experience-based fieldcraft that neutralized two generations of pursuers, despite numerous reports of his death, 

and earned recognition as “el guerrillero más viejo del mundo”

—the oldest guerrilla in the world.67 “He [did] not sleep more than two or 

three days in the same place,” according to Colombian Defense Minister 

Juan Manuel Santos in regard to the elusive habits of the FARC chief, who in 

addition to his Manuel Marulanda Vélez war name and his Pedro Antonio 

Marín birth name, was nicknamed Tirofijo (or Sure Shot). 

While he was a hunted man since he served with aspiring Colombian 

guerrilla elements in the 1940s, and was tracked by government forces with 

special intensity since he founded the FARC in 1964, the 76-year-old Tirofijo 

lived to his natural end. That was not the case for others. His senior deputy 

Raúl Reyes was killed in early March 2008 when his camp was located and 

targeted by Colombian aircraft on Ecuadorean territory. Later that month, 

FARC Secretariat member Iván Ríos was killed (according to Colombian 

reporting) by his own security chief who delivered his severed hand and 

FARC laptop computers and documents to Colombian authorities as proof 

and for their exploitation. 

Most recently, the FARC’s extraordinary setback with the 2 July 2008 

rescue of 15 FARC hostages seemed to mark its growing intelligence and 

leadership disarray. In substantial ways this was a multiple counterintelligence failure for the FARC just as it was a success for Colombian military 

intelligence.68 Codenamed Operation Jaque (Check [mate]), the hostage 

rescue appeared to highlight Colombian intelligence/CI innovation and 

FARC intelligence/CI indiscipline. The Colombian intelligence penetration 

of the FARC Secretariat and lower levels, exploitation of communications 

indiscretions, computer forensic and document exploitation, psychological 

manipulation, and the final deception of the FARC group assigned to guard 

the hostages would have seemed highly improbable a few years ago.69

On the FARC’s part, this damaging setback was not due to a single lapse 

but a chain of information losses and security compromises that spanned 

several intelligence disciplines. The final Colombian military deception 

that saw the consolidated hostage group loaded on a helicopter and flown 

to freedom by Colombian security personnel impersonating guerrillas, 

media, humanitarian workers, and hired flight crew successfully capped 

the complex operation.70 While reports that some impersonators wore Che 
46

JSOU Report 09-1

Guevara-emblazoned t-shirts were a nice touch, the irony of Che’s own CI

failures was likely lost on the duped FARC members. 

While the operation will be examined closely and new details and interpretations emerge, the CI object lesson for guerrilla groups seems clear 

enough and are echoed in the calls for tight discipline, continuous suspicion, 

protection of all forms of communications, review of personnel qualities, 

and other imperatives practiced by most surviving or successful groups. 

Cuban mentor Alberto Bayo, obsessed with counterintelligence, would no 

doubt have reiterated some of the specifics he taught like “the group must 

be alert to enemy forces masquerading as supporters,” and that in some 

cases at least “more wars are won through cunning and shrewdness than 

by pulling the trigger...” 71

Huks—Philippines. Surveillance of meeting places, safe houses, camps, 

and other locations makes a list of concerns for most insurgent groups. For 

the most astute and experienced groups, the requirement to maintain a 

near paranoid suspicion of everything in one’s environment has also been 

acknowledged. Failure in these things has been commonplace, however, 

typically caused by inattention, overconfidence, miscalculation, or just bad 

luck. The Filipino Hukbalahap—usually shortened to Huk—was a communist guerrilla movement that emerged in the post-World War II period 

suffered often from a lack of training and adherence to defensive CI efforts 

in the face of tightening counterinsurgency pressures. 

Intelligence gathering enjoyed some success, including the creation 

of a network of informers and even the penetration of Philippine Police 

Constabulary and Army forces.72 The limited numbers of radios available 

FARC 1st Front commander 

“César” was duped and 

captured when FARC

hostages were freed in the 

Colombian July intelligence 

and special operations 

triumph. César had been a 

FARC member for 26 years 

and a front commander 

for 10. AFP Photo, Rodrigo 

Arangua, used by permission 

of Newscom. 
47

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

to the Huks were more often than not put to use as intelligence collection 

tools and a way of countering government counterinsurgency moves rather 

than a means of tactical communications. But while many Huks had fought 

against the Japanese as guerrillas, and with their central Luzon-centered 

force approaching 13,000 members by 1950, little systematized internal security existed of the type undertaken by more successful groups. An example 

of “overconfidence”—really inadequate preparation and carelessness—was 

described by one participant. Following a successful Huk operation, it was 

decided to dispatch young couriers with messages and operational money 

into an area further south in Luzon. They judged that it was not really necessary to conduct surveillance given recent successes and the past security of 

the area. Nevertheless, the meeting spot had been compromised or was at 

least guarded, with the consequence that two of the three young couriers were 

captured by Police Constabulary personnel, and the badly needed money was 

lost.73 Government counterinsurgency efforts had essentially destroyed the 

Huks by the mid-1950s, although groups that might be construed as successors (e.g., the Communist New People’s Army) appeared later.

Action for National Liberation—Brazil. Carlos Margehelli’s 1969 ambush 

and death at the hands of Brazilian police—a reminder that his “avoid 

carelessness, indiscipline, and lack of vigilance” imperative is not always 

enough—provides one example that underscores the dangers of treachery among insurgents. Marighella fell victim to Brazilian security’s arrest 

and coerced cooperation of two Brazilian priests that he trusted and who 

had helped him on previous occasions. When the priests asked for a meeting with him, he was willing to follow through, but also took precautions. 

The meeting was to take place in a parked car. Before the appointed time, 

Maighella donned a wig for disguise and went with one man for security to 

the area where the meeting was to take place. The security man, Marighella’s 

long-trusted bodyguard, studied the surrounding area. 

The activity appeared well within normal bounds (e.g., workers unloading supplies at a construction site, others engaged in building activity, and a 

young couple embracing in a parked car). Satisfied, the bodyguard indicated 

to Marighella that everything was clear, and the guerrilla chief approached 

the two familiar priests who were waiting in a parked Volkswagen. As he 

entered the car, however, the laborers and the couple in car dropped their 

pretenses, grabbed their weapons, and fired many rounds in the direction 
48

JSOU Report 09-1

of the car for some five minutes. Marighella had had no time to draw his 

own weapon, and he was shot five times and killed at the scene. Police fire 

also killed a policewoman and an uninvolved man who happened to drive 

by at the time. While Marighella’s caution may have seemed adequate, its 

failures reinforced the points on security, informers, and the constant threat 

faced by guerrillas in the field.74

Mau Mau—Kenya. As counterintelligence organizations and approaches 

go, the Kikuyu-based Mau Mau insurgency ranks among the more rudimentary efforts. Nevertheless, it is worth noting one societal dimension 

upon which the loyalty of the members was based in the effort to oust the 

British colonial government and win independence. Obvious protections 

against organizational penetration and spying were provided by the circumstances of tribe, family relationships, language, and race. But not all 

Kikuyu supported the Mau Mau, and many supported the British. Internal 

rivalries and disaffection, British support incentives, and especially penalties 

ranging from internment to execution constituted dangers that put constant pressure on the movement.75 British innovations in Kikuyu-manned 

“pseudo-operations” (of the type warned against by Alberto Bayo) enjoyed 

success as did efforts to turn Mau Mau groups and individuals away from 

the movement. General Sir Frank Kitson addressed the latter dimension 

in describing three factors that could be used to induce a man to shift his 

loyalty and that he tried to apply:

a. A “carrot” in the form of a positive incentive that has real attraction

b. A “stick” in the form of a disincentive, which makes him realize 

that continuing on the same course will result “in something very 

unpleasant happening to him”

c. A chance to demonstrate to his family and friends “that there is nothing fundamentally dishonorable about his action” of turning against 

the Mau Mau, and that he retains his self-respect.

Kitson enjoyed successes in applying this kind of approach, and it added 

to the other threats directed against the Mau Mau cohesion and activities 

While strong organizational measures were lacking for Mau Mau internal 

security, an effort to win and enforce loyalty was embodied in elaborate and 

powerful oath-taking ceremonies, rituals, invocations of magic, songs, and 

bloody threats. Former Mau Mau described these ceremonials in detail. 

While exotic and curious to Westerners, former members recounted the 
49

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

seriousness of their impact, and among their many elements were quite typical counterintelligence measures common to most insurgent movements. 

Once active Mau Mau Karari Njama (interviewed by U.S. anthropologist 

Donald Barnett) recounted the vow he took in a gathering for the purpose. 

After preparations involving animal parts, bloodletting, and being marked 

with goat’s blood in various places, the oath administrator began the indoctrinations as follows: 

May this blood mark the faithful and brave members of the Gikuyu 

(Kikuyu] and Mumbi Unity: may this same blood warn you that if 

you betray our secrets or violate the oath, our members will come 

and cut you into pieces at the joints marked by the blood.76

Following more ritual that need not be elaborated here, the actual oath 

was taken by the initiates facing Mount Kenya (preceded by a curse that in 

part declared “let this oath kill he who lies!”) The oath itself presented 21 

rules of conduct (not unlike that of the Bandido Motorcycle Gang, Taliban, 

and many other groups) that stipulated strict guarding of secrets on penalty 

of death, cooperation and readiness to work, generous donations, obedience to leadership, never spying or informing to the government, and other 

points. Later, a second oath was administered with requisite curses that reiterated some of the points of the first, but with more specifics on obligations 

to fight and reemphasis on the death that awaited anyone who betrayed the 

movement or did not fulfill his obligations. The second oath allowed full 

entry into the Mau Mau movement.77

The oath was considered as a serious obligation by many who took it 

and it influenced their actions. Karari Njama gave his specific views on the 

consequences of disobeying the oath. As he judged: 

In my opinion, though the oath itself may have no reaction, I consider that I have repeatedly vowed under God’s name and that if I 

disobeyed the oath, my lies would anger God whose wrath might 

result in all the curses I have made...and most likely I would meet 

a death penalty from our society.78

British efforts to undercut the magical and religious imperatives of the 

rituals, oaths, and ceremonies included the use of “witch doctors” (as they 

were termed at the time) to perform ceremonies that made the abandonment 

of the movement more acceptable. 
50

JSOU Report 09-1

Offensive CI Practice 

Offensive counterintelligence activities by guerrillas and other armed groups 

fall most closely into what the U.S. joint military definition terms counterespionage—the component of CI concerned with various kinds of aggressive 

and more subtle actions aimed at detecting, destroying, neutralizing, or 

otherwise influencing hostile intelligence activity aimed against them.79

While guerrilla groups have not crafted the kinds of careful definitions and 

legal strictures found in the U.S. and the West, the offensive CI concepts and 

activities developed convey the same general spirit and goals. 

Tupamaros—Uruguay. Many insurgent groups have used direct attacks 

and coercion against opposing intelligence and security personnel. The 

Tupamaros, for example, had a concept of “direct” and “indirect” approaches 

that to most eyes would both seem rather direct. In the former, a primary 

insurgent CI target like a government intelligence officer would be shot or 

otherwise killed. In an indirect approach, someone close to the target would 

be eliminated—for example, a bodyguard or assistant. The idea of the latter 

was to coerce the target into abandoning, or at least reducing, his efforts 

against the group while at the same time alienating him from colleagues 

and friends who would worry about their own safety brought about by any 

association.80

Abu Sayyaf—Southern Philippines. In a far different theater, the Morobased Abu Sayyaf Group in the southern Philippines has long bribed and 

coerced local police officials. The Islamic group claims a heritage from 

the mujahedin in Afghanistan, and while it can demonstrate ruthlessness 

and a kind of rough competence on occasion, its structure is poorly developed. “Intelligence chiefs” have been identified, but focused CI efforts of 

the type associated with some other guerrilla groups are not much in evidence. Nevertheless, security force pressures in the fall of 2004 appeared 

to have generated a series of direct actions against intelligence personnel. 

These involved the kidnapping of three suspected intelligence personnel 

and informants and execution of another. Some observers thought that 

this pattern could constitute a trend in the elimination of intelligence and 

espionage threats, a judgment bolstered by the fact that no ransom demands 

were made before the hostages were executed.81 Highlighting the lack of 
51

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

careful intelligence, however, police concluded that Abu Sayyaf militants 

had missed the mark abysmally. Three of the executed men turned out to be 

salesmen that Abu Sayyaf had apparently mistaken for military intelligence 

personnel, and the fourth man assassinated was not a suspected intelligence 

officer as supposed but the provincial director of the Philippine Coconut 

Authority.82 The lack of competence that these actions represented seems 

well in accord with Abu Sayyaf’s level of organizational development.

Chechen Mujahideen—North Caucasus. Competence in identifying and 

eliminating enemy intelligence operatives, spies, and informers—and its 

status as an essential element of Chechen resistance—has been a hallmark 

of Chechen insurgents since the early days of organizational activity. A 

Chechen guerrilla “intelligence service,” together with specialized counterintelligence personnel, developed early in the existence of the Chechens 

claiming independence from Moscow. Guerrilla CI entities have been associated with the senior Chechen Republic of Ickeria (CRI) leadership, as it 

has developed over the last decade and a half. They have also been found 

among some of the various larger bands and groupings as well. These assets 

set out to identify Russian intelligence personnel from the military (Main 

Intelligence Directorate—GRU) and security services (the Federal Security 

Service—FSB and Ministry of Internal Affairs—MVD) as well as Chechen 

and other North Caucasus intelligence entities serving Moscow’s interests. 

Ferreting out spies and informers has been a central task, but it was in 

the elimination of intelligence operatives in which the Chechen CI effort 

excelled. Rebel forces claimed with some plausibility that Russian security 

structures had been penetrated. 

The clandestine head of a Chechen counterintelligence “special unit” 

claimed that the mujahideen had reliable agents operating in virtually all 

Russian special services and in other units working actively against them. 

These included “good channels of intelligence information right up to Putin’s 

closest circle, not to mention secret aides and officers who have been infiltrated into the so-called Chechen police and puppet ‘government.” 83 Such 

claims—and this was one of many—were buttressed by the Russians themselves, who indicated, for example, that the problem of leaks, especially with 

the admission of ostensibly loyal Chechens into some Russian military and 

security forums in Chechnya, was a “nightmare.” 84
52

JSOU Report 09-1

The identification and execution of an especially effective FSB specialist 

was reported by a guerrilla group operating in the village of Karabulak, 

Ingushetia. The target was a female agent, a native of Ingush, who had been 

responsible for the arrest and killing of 15 Chechen and Ingushetian mujahideen as well as the capture of others. The guerrilla effort then turned to 

tracking and eliminating her network of informers.85 In 2005, agents of the 

CRI (guerrilla) counterintelligence service identified and killed two intelligence operatives who were alleged to be Israeli Mossad agents.86 The Israeli 

interest in the region was alleged to have been sparked by the interaction 

among Chechen and Middle Eastern mujahideen groups. Whether Mossad 

agents or not, the elimination of suspected enemy intelligence operatives 

has been an active effort. One year for which statistics are claimed is 2005, 

where: 

...the Chechen special services...exposed, arrested, or shot 23 agents 

of the Russian secret services among Chechens. Some of them were 

re-recruited. Throughout this period of time 6 agents of Russian 

nationality, 4 Daghestanis, 3 Ingush, 2 Uzbeks, 2 Kabardins, 2 Tatars, 

1 Karachai, 1 Ossetian, 1 Bashkirian were seized or eliminated.87

U.S./Filipino Guerrillas—North Luzon, Philippines. The critical problem 

of dealing with the threat of informants and spies, working in behalf of an 

enemy determined to destroy them, generated analogous approaches for U.S. 

military personnel who were forced to operate as guerrillas. Six decades ago 

the U.S. servicemen—who with Filipino allies formed guerrilla units under 

the aforementioned USAFIP, NL—encountered an informant and espionage 

danger that compelled uncompromising countermeasures. 

The Japanese used a more or less uniform system of creating North 

Luzon informer networks. As described, they would typically buy off or 

otherwise win the support of a community leader or village mayor. After 

consolidating their influence over such individuals, they would use them 

to hire many local members of the population who, with the promise of 

additional reward, would gather any information on guerrilla sympathizers or the guerrillas themselves. Japanese punishment of those identified 

was quick and typically fatal. As a consequence, the local populace became 

extremely reluctant to engage in any cooperative efforts with U.S./Filipino 

irregular warfare groups, making some areas dangerous or untenable.
53

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

The USAFIP, NL General Headquarters issued orders calling for the 

elimination “of all persons found to be dangerous to the resistance movement” by members of the five district guerrilla groups operating under the 

headquarters.88 The effort was characterized by the U.S. commander as a 

“relentless trackdown” with special emphasis put on executing the main 

informant leaders. The operations were so intensive and so successful that 

most spies and informants fled their areas of operation and sought shelter near strong Japanese garrisons. This was not always sufficient. In one 

instance, a group of Filipino agents working for the Japanese was tracked 

by North Luzon First District guerrillas to the town of Cervantes in Ilocos 

Sur. The guerrilla unit attacked the Japanese garrison there that night, in 

the process burning the building where all of the informants had hidden. 

In addition to physically eliminating Japanese spies among the populace, 

the success in providing a safer environment for villagers brought many of 

them to the side of the guerrillas.89

Popular Revolutionary Army—Mexico. The Mexican Popular 

Revolutionary Army (Ejército Popular Revolucionario—EPR) appeared 

publicly for the first time in August 1996 in Guerrero state and while not 

a large movement, operates in many states today. It soon demonstrated 

its presence in at least rudimentary forms in a number of other Mexican 

areas though numerous, scattered small-scale attacks and bombings against 

police, military, government, and civil targets and media events. The group 

and its political arm, the Popular Revolutionary Democratic Party (Partido 

Democratico Popular Revolucionario—PDPR), were descended from other 

Mexican insurgent organizations in the region that were largely destroyed in 

the 1970s by mass arrests, interrogations, torture, and killings. They understood from the onset that Mexican intelligence, military, and police forces 

would be arrayed against them and their supporters. 

Just how well they seemed to understand the threat environment, and 

the ways the PDPR-EPR planned to use a combination of intelligence collection and defensive and offensive CI approaches, was evidently a surprise 

to the government when they became aware of the details in 2008. It was 

also impressive for a rural guerilla movement that was certainly not in the 

league of its better resourced counterparts in other areas of Latin America 

and the world. At the very beginning, in the middle 1990s, the PDPR-EPR

established an intelligence and counterintelligence component (Servicio 
54

JSOU Report 09-1

de Información or Information Service) that was heavily concerned with 

countering the plans and operations of the Government’s “main hunters of 

revolutionaries.” These were the military intelligence establishment of the 

Secretariat of National Defense and the roughly equivalent CIA analog, the 

National Center for Investigation and Security (Centro de Investigación y 

Seguridad Nacional—CISEN).90

The EPR’s Information Service was charged with establishing networks 

of informers, infiltrating state bodies, intercepting communications (telephone, mail, and penetrating government computer systems). Its roles and 

functions were set out in a 100-plus page document entitled “The Manual for 

PDPR-EPR Intelligence” (Curso de inteligencia PDPR-EPR), circa mid-1990s 

or later. The publication described the plan to establish an ambitious and 

extensive network of spy and informer cells including the capability to conduct special operations in behalf of information collection efforts. Included 

among the targets of infiltration were the military, police, CISEN, media, 

and federal, state, and local agencies. However, the information network 

was intended to extend to the common people and even the marginalized 

parts of the population. 

The primary goal was to know ahead of time the counterinsurgency 

plans and policies of the military, police, and other security forces.91 The 

extent to which this CI plan has been implemented and successful is far from 

clear. Nevertheless, the continued existence and operation of the EPR and 

its spinoffs suggests that it has developed mechanisms for identifying spies 

and informers as well as gaining some cognizance of the intelligence and 

counterinsurgency initiatives directed against them.92 Long-term survival of 

Masked members 

of Mexico’s Popular 

Revolutionary Army 

(EPR) receive a welcome from local 

residents in the central 

plaza of Teconoaga, 

a Guerrero State town 

located about 55 miles 

southeast of Acapulco. 

AFP photo, Matias 

Recart, used by permission of Newscom. 
55

Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

an insurgent group typically indicates a strong measure of CI discipline, and 

the EPR had defied what seemed to be the likelihood of an early demise.

The “Twelve Apostles” of Irish Republican Brotherhood/Irish 

Republican Army. Few armed groups have translated a concept for offensive counterintelligence into practice as well as Michael Collins and the 

Irish republican militants. His rationale was reasoned, clear, and intensely 

personal about his targets:

To paralyze the British machine it was necessary to strike at individuals. Without her spies, England was helpless. It was only by means 

of their accumulated and accumulating knowledge that the British 

machine could operate.93

An accompanying goal was to so outrage and frustrate British security 

officials that reprisals would be out of proportion and would alienate even 

larger segments of the Irish populace. More details have become available 

about the intelligence and counterintelligence organization that implemented the Collins concepts as oral, transcribed interviews, and writings by 

participants have been released. Michael Collins’ intelligence organization 

was well designed and manned for this principal purpose—to collect key 

information through its networks of well-placed typists, clerks, policemen, 

businessmen, waiters, desk clerks, transportation workers, and others who 

provided the most sensitive inside information from the British security 

together with outside observations that were essential too. All of the limited 

technical means available at the time were used. The information provided 

enabled the Volunteers (IRA) operational arm to attack and eliminate not 

just intelligence personnel in general but those individuals most important 

to the British intelligence-gathering operations. 

To accomplish this mission, every Volunteer company had a dedicated 

intelligence officer who reported to a brigade intelligence counterpart. The 

latter was subordinate to the man who ran the day-to-day operations at 

Volunteer intelligence headquarters, this under the oversight of Michael 

Collins. The subordinate officers recruited agents and informers who fed 

information to HQ used in targeting key intelligence personnel. At intelligence HQ—which was nicknamed the “Brain Center” and where key staffers 

became known as the “Inner Circle”—intelligence officers had specific areas 

or businesses to know about and assess, and fragmentary information was 

pieced together and analyzed. 
56

JSOU Report 09-1

As a consequence, while their Volunteer/IRA intelligence affiliations 

might have been deeply hidden, members might be quite visible in the 

normal workaday world. One prominent staffer, often involved in planning 

and supporting assassinations, wore a red- and blue-ribboned British Army 

badge in his lapel bearing the inscription “For King and Country.” The fear 

eventually inspired by Michael Collins allowed him to travel with a measure of freedom. Though he might be recognized, even some police officers 

who knew him on sight were reluctant to report his location. There was an 

effective “open source” component in which newspapers were carefully read 

for any information on RIC and British personnel, their assignments and 

positions, transfers, clubs, social activities, and photographs. Pertinent items 

were clipped and incorporated into card files and centralized in a database 

at intelligence HQ.

94

Assassinations were carried out by a group that came to be known as 

the “Squad” and also nicknamed the “Twelve Apostles” in a touch of black 

humor. The group functioned as a subcomponent of the Volunteer/IRA

intelligence staff and was made up of local Dublin men who had worked 

regular jobs of one sort or another. Some core members were required to 

quit their regular jobs and became full-time compensated members of the 

team. They guarded their identities, sympathies, and affiliations carefully 

even from other Volunteer/IRA members. Squad members themselves were 

astonished to learn eventually that there were actually two groups of execution operatives within the organization. Even after the 1921 treaty establishing the Irish Free State, some Squad members did not speak out for decades, 

and if then, it was only with the proviso that their words not be released 

until they had died. 

Police intelligence and a few others who were identified as being particular threats were warned to cease their activities or at least to become far less 

diligent. If they acquiesced, they were spared, but if not cooperative they were 

selected for execution. Target areas were reconnoitered, and the subjects of 

the executions identified by one or more people who recognized them. Squad 

members typically operated in from one to several pairs of assassins for each 

target and might have several support personnel for surveillance, identification, and logistics. After an intelligence officer identified a target for assassination, shooters followed or approached him at an opportune place and 

killed him with handguns. While many variants were in practice, one shooter 

would fire in an effort to stop and disable him, and the other would shoot 
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him in the head to ensure he was killed.95 Sometimes the shooters addressed 

the targeted police intelligence officer or official and sometimes not. 

Targeted CI executions added to the larger, broad casualties from sectarian violence directed against British security forces. From just January to 11 

December 1919, some 169 policemen were killed and 245 wounded throughout Ireland, with 52 military personnel killed and 108 wounded. Though 

relatively few in number, the highest visibility casualties were among those 

political intelligence detectives targeted by Collins’ Twelve Apostles.96 Police 

retirements grew rapidly in number, and demoralization was evident in both 

the DMP and RIC. While the impact on the G Division and the British security services was substantial, the most dramatic and devastating operation 

was the near-simultaneous execution of more than a dozen British secret 

intelligence operatives that (with reprisal killings by RIC Auxiliaries at a 

soccer stadium later that same day) came to be called “Bloody Sunday.” 

The deep-cover British intelligence unit known as the “Cairo Gang” 

(since a number of the members had been secretly phased into Ireland from 

intelligence work in Egypt) was established in Dublin in 1919 as British 

frustrations mounted.97

The Cairo Gang was nearly all killed by Michael Collins’ assassination teams and selected republican volunteers early one 

Sunday morning in Dublin. Based on a careful CI analysis to 

identify undercover members, the counterintelligence operation 

was designed to destroy the most effective of British intelligence 

operatives who had been closing in on Collins and other members 

of the leadership. Public domain image from Wikipedia. 
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Their purported aim was to reorganize British intelligence efforts in 

Dublin and to track down and kill members of the Inner Circle if not 

Michael Collins himself. Collins and the intelligence staff, however, became 

aware of their presence and purpose. Informers reported on the existence of 

the group and some identities, while the alarming, but temporary, detainment of several Inner Circle members highlighted a growing British threat. 

As a consequence, an operation to eliminate the Cairo Group was developed 

by Collins and the Inner Circle. 

Studying known Cairo Gang members, additional names were added 

together with addresses and other targeting information. The overall identification process included the comparison of typefaces on typewriters, 

“intercepting correspondence, examining contents of wastebaskets, tracing laundry markings, duplicating hotel room keys, and similar efforts.” 98

To carry out the operation, eight execution teams were formed from the 

Squad/Twelve Apostles as well as other Volunteer members selected for 

the purpose. They initiated the operation in the early morning hours of 21 

November 1920, killing eleven of the targeted British officers around the city 

and several others. A substantial number of men designated for assassination escaped, but the core of the Cairo Gang was destroyed, leaving only 

one member of the leadership alive.99

British authorities were initially incredulous at the scope, coordination, 

and success of the operation, and members of the security establishment 

with families fled for safety within headquarters at Dublin Castle. But 

British reaction came later that same day when RIC, auxiliaries, and some 

military elements raided a football game under Gaelic Athletic Association 

auspices, an organization known for republican affiliations. Accounts of 

the exact course of events vary, but British forces fired into the crowd—

killing or fatally wounding 15 people. This effectively accomplished another 

of Collins’ goals—provoking an overreaction—and the bloodshed on both 

sides that day contributed immeasurably to the pressure for a settlement 

as described earlier. 

Hezbollah—Lebanon. Hezbollah’s intelligence and counterintelligence 

establishment, built with the heavy investment and other direct support of 

Iran, approaches that of a state in the early 21st century.100 The full extent of 

the development of Hezbollah capabilities were either hidden or underappreciated, however, as they took shape in the 1990s and particularly after 
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Turbiville: Guerrilla Counterintelligence

Israel’s May 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The 2006 IsraeliHezbollah war revealed a vastly changed Hezbollah intelligence establishment. On the one hand, the extensive and effective efforts to harden and 

bury communication lines all the way up to forward positions practically 

on the Lebanese-Israeli border itself changed the nature of the battlefield. 

Israeli plans to close down or severely degrade Hezbollah command nets 

with sophisticated electronic warfare systems were at least partially neutralized by Hezbollah improvements. At the same time, improved Hezbollah 

communications and other signal intercept capabilities allowed Hezbollah 

to eavesdrop on Israeli tactical communications to an extent unimagined 

prior to hostilities. These were not “counterintelligence” developments of 

course, but the major Hezbollah CI achievement was protecting these intelligence developments from the usually efficient and persistent efforts of the 

Israelis to monitor them. The level of communications security for some 

years was clearly the result of tight discipline.

Observers have pointed to the establishment of effective Hezbollah 

HUMINT networks. An early indication of this developing network was 

the arrest of an Israeli Defense 

Force lieutenant colonel in 

2002. He was ethnically a 

Bedouin Arab, and his indictment with four others highlighted the existence of a 

10-person intelligence-gathering ring that traded information “for money, hashish, and 

heroin.” Some information 

Part of a Hezbollah HUMINT

network, an Israeli Defense 

Force lieutenant colonel—an 

ethnic Bedouin—was convicted of providing sensitive 

military and other information to 

Hezbollah handlers in return “for 

money, hashish, and heroin.” 

AFP photo, Tal Cohen used by 

permission of Newscom. 
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passed was “positive intelligence,” and some was more typical of CI targets 

like surveillance-device locations.101 While this betrayal was understandably presented as an anomaly—in part to avoid offending the loyal Arabs 

who served Israel in the military—in retrospect far more was underway 

in the CI dimension than supposed. Had the war not taken place, CI and 

other initiatives probably would have progressed even further, a possibility 

suggested by reports of Hezbollah off-the-shelf technology acquisition and 

the employment of an unmanned aerial vehicle that supposedly flew for an 

hour over Israeli airspace.102

Israeli reporting indicates that Hezbollah has used the popular social 

networking system “Facebook” to gather information on Israeli Defense 

Force (IDF) personnel. IDF members have been cautioned about posting 

personal and potentially compromising information online, and the dangers have reportedly been incorporated in security awareness training. An 

IDF soldier who served in an intelligence unit was sentenced in the late 

summer of 2008 to 19 days in a military jail for posting a photo of his base on 

Facebook. A further concern has been the possibility of terrorists establishing online friendships or arranging direct meetings with military personnel 

to all the attendant dangers this would pose. The further use of Facebook 

by Hamas terrorists and supporters during the IDF punitive operation in 

Gaza, to end rocket attacks, reinforced the concern. Facebook was used for 

disinformation purposes as well as for fund-raising.103

Just a few months before the 2006 war began, Israel suffered a loss of 

resources with the arrest of what some sources claimed to be “80 Lebanese 

Christian, Sunni Muslim, and Druze agents” in Lebanon. The arrests were 

reportedly based on a joint Lebanese Security Service-Hezbollah counterintelligence operation.104 Overall, these Hezbollah advances were accomplished in low-key, incremental fashion over several years in ways that 

did not attract undue attention—at least public attention—and apparently 

did not alter Israel’s fundamental assumptions about relative Israeli and 

Hezbollah military and intelligence capabilities. A 2007 U.S. Army assessment of the war as a whole reached conclusions similar to those reported 

elsewhere in Israeli and international reporting and added some details on 

the arrest of Israeli-controlled assets.

Between 2000 and 2006, Hezbollah also purportedly mastered the 

delicate art of counter-signals intelligence (C-SIGNET), a capability that 

would pay huge dividends in future wars with Israel. In the HUMINT arena, 
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Hezbollah also proved highly successful. Working with Lebanese intelligence 

officers, Hezbollah managed to “turn” Israeli agents in southern Lebanon 

and dismantle a sizable Israeli spy ring. “In some small number of crucially 

important cases,” wrote Crooke and Perry, “Hezbollah senior intelligence 

officials were able to ‘feed back’ false information on their militia’s most 

important emplacements to Israel with the result that Israel target folders 

identified key emplacements that did not, in fact, exist.” It also appears likely 

that Hezbollah succeeded in placing its own agents in northern Israel.105

Overall, while many gaps exist in what is known of Hezbollah CI initiatives, 

the growth of capabilities and the existence of a disciplined framework to 

promote and guide new developments gets little dispute. 

The offensive CI potential of Hezbollah infiltration of even major Western 

states—despite indifference to earlier calls for vigilance from some intelligence professionals—received more serious attention in the wake of the 

Nada Nadim Prouty incident. The case is well enough known to require 

little recapitulation here. In brief, Prouty was a Lebanese-born illegal alien 

who gained U.S. citizenship through a bogus marriage (i.e., carried out 

just for purposes of gaining citizenship). Possessing Arabic language skills 

and citizenship, she was hired as an agent for the FBI initially in 2003 and 

subsequently the CIA, working at the latter from 2003 to 2007 when she 

resigned.106

During this tenure, Prouty reportedly gained Top Secret compartmented 

clearances, had access to many sensitive cases, traveled abroad and was 

assigned to duties in the Middle East, and participated in the interrogation 

of Al Qaeda terrorist suspects in Iraq. She also improperly accessed FBI

files on a Hezbollah case involving her sister and brother in law as well as 

searched her own personnel records for indications of FBI interest. These 

activities and her relationship to Lebanese nationals of dubious affiliation 

eventually aroused FBI suspicions in late 2005 and ultimately resulted in 

charges being brought against her for fraud, improper official computer 

access, and immigration offenses. 

The charges against Prouty resulted in only a $750 fine and no prison 

time. Whatever else may have transpired is purely speculative, but the entire 

experience underscored the potential, at least, of a foreign national with 

terrorist-group affiliations penetrating two of the allegedly most securityconscious Intelligence Community organizations in the U.S. Government, 

and with relative ease.107 As a consequence, the terms “counterintelligence 
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and Hezbollah” have gained a much closer association for U.S. security personnel as they have for Israel and other states in the region and abroad.

Conclusions

The guerrilla movements addressed herein often differ in historical background, goals, ideology, race, religion, resourcing, and sophistication. 

Nevertheless, the hostile and violent environments within which most 

groups must operate means that the insurgent—whatever his or her background—“lives in a world of security arrangements and survives by observing them.” 108 Government intelligence and security initiatives “force the 

insurgency to conduct intensive security investigations, reorganize components, relocate assets, revise its communications, or reeducate its membership” among other measures that require continuous monitoring if disaster 

is to be avoided.109

Despite the disparate nature of groups and areas of operation, common 

problems generate quite similar counterintelligence responses, as they seem 

to have done since the earliest recording of history. In addition, the widespread accessibility of information on techniques, the sometimes common 

sponsors and trainers from the past and present, and the not infrequent 

serious study by guerrilla groups of CI requirements has added to the adoption of common concepts. 

Guerrilla counterintelligence efforts most typically have both defensive and offensive components. Neither one component nor the other is 

usually judged adequate for providing the operational freedom and security required to pursue active initiatives. On the defensive side, sometimes 

elaborate guidelines dealing with general conduct as well as with specific 

operational security requirements are developed and incorporated into 

recruiting and training programs. More sophisticated groups use background and character investigational approaches that may be as strenuous 

as government security vetting and perhaps more so given the consequences. 

Insurgent and terrorist groups actively obscure their locations, capabilities, 

planning approaches, and intentions from active and potential adversaries. 

The practice of deception, cover story fabrications, forged papers, false identities, and the many other tradecraft practices have become systematized in 

some groups and practiced with skill.
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The serious and sensitive danger of infiltration and betrayal hangs over 

the heads of most guerrilla organizations. Frequent loyalty tests and vigilance approaching paranoia are real survival skills. While it hardly bears 

noting—given the richness of precedent from European, Asian, Latin 

American, Middle Eastern, and African groups—identified informants 

or spies are almost always killed as a matter of course. Some groups have 

elevated the need to make torture and the extreme violence of punishment 

for treachery so severe that these acts serve as object lessons for others who 

might contemplate straying. Security guidelines and procedures are as often 

as not written documents. They serve as training and reference sources 

for the guerrilla, on occasion seeming like the rules of normal fraternal 

or social organizations into which large doses of violence, deception, and 

uncompromising hatred have been blended. 

Offensive components of guerrilla counterintelligence are in their most 

aggressive forms aimed at infiltrating vulnerable parts of government, military, and police intelligence organizations; buying, blackmailing, or otherwise coercing members; and in some cases targeting specific individuals 

or any member for execution. Old approaches like those of Michael Collins 

from eight decades ago may seem like ancient history, but the approaches 

used by Israeli Mossad against selected Islamic terrorist leaders and those 

used by terrorist groups themselves are striking in their similarity of process 

and technique.110 The focused study and assessment of government, military, 

and police intelligence is highlighted particularly in jihadist writings, but 

guerrilla and terrorist groups—and even organizations like outlaw motorcycle gangs and animal rights advocates—have for years studied and tried 

to anticipate the approaches used by their adversaries. 

Guerrilla targeting of state intelligence and security forces may come to 

be a larger part of insurgent practice. Government analytical techniques, 

surveillance, and intercept capabilities and technological advances generally has made insurgent and terrorist group safety tenuous and operational 

freedom more and more constrained. As Michael Collins advocated with 

some success, not only does eliminating an enemy intelligence officer by 

coercion or assassination demoralize the security forces but it creates a 

greater reluctance among the population to cooperate with state authorities. 

From this perspective, what a state or populace may justifiably characterize as a terrorist event and coldblooded murder may in its more complete 
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context be understood from the guerrilla insurgent’s perspective as part of 

a “rational” counterespionage strategy. There is value in recognizing this 

context and any trends for a fuller understanding of guerrilla intentions 

and CI planning. 

Many specialists and numerous government studies and commissions 

have sought reforms to improve government intelligence collection and 

analysis that better counter insurgent and terrorist threats. Historian John 

Keegan, for example, reflected on what he believed to be the changed nature 

of intelligence requirements in the post-9/11 world and the intelligence challenges presented by networked organizations like Al Qaeda. He suggested 

some approaches to intelligence that many others have expressed in recent 

years. With an appreciation for the successes enjoyed during the British 

colonial period, he harked back to the great Rudyard Kipling espionage 

novel, Kim. He saw the half-English/half-Indian central character of that 

name as the ideal intelligence agent for today, where “brave individuals, 

fluent in difficult languages and able to pass as native members of other 

cultures, will have to befriend and win acceptance by their own societies’ 

enemies.” For CI purposes, this kind of person is clearly not the native 

Western graduate of a military language school or the most intense regional 

studies training. That training and education is useful and often essential 

for many military purposes and interaction with native populations. But 

the skills would better serve the recruitment, vetting, and productive handling of agents with native understandings, who themselves would have a 

difficult enough time surviving in any of the insurgent CI environments 

addressed above.111

Keegan’s study of intelligence in war over some 200 years—and what he 

saw in the threat of distributed, networked insurgent/terrorist threats—led 

him to believe that a return to the methods “which have come to appear 

outdated, even primitive, in the age of satellite surveillance and computer 

description” would be productive in intelligence/counterintelligence returns. 

He saw advantages that could be had “only by recourse to the oldest of 

all intelligence methods, direct and personal counter-espionage.” 112 These 

are fine ideas in many ways and are partially reflected in the current U.S.

military’s intensified emphasis on language and regional studies training, 

cultural intelligence initiatives, red-teaming approaches, “human terrain 

system” development, and efforts to bolster human intelligence capabilities.113 But they are easier to advocate than to implement in a CI sense and 
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do not take full note of the expanded and expanding perspectives of many 

insurgent groups and individual members alert to the potential of deception 

or treachery in its various forms.

The acquisition and application of CI-enhancing technology is commonplace for insurgent groups today and recognized in the intelligence 

planning of most governments. Most recently, this has come to include the 

exploitation of social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, 

and Twitter among others. They have proven to be of some utility to insurgents and terrorists in gaining knowledge of government security and other 

personnel—as noted earlier in regard to the IDF—as well as recruitment and 

alternate communications.114 While reports have not surfaced publicly on the 

guerrilla use of link analysis tools or more advanced software to better evaluate opposing intelligence organizations, no serious impediment prevents it. 

Information management tools will further enhance the long-demonstrated 

capabilities of guerrillas to observe and understand the local activities of 

military and security forces, leverage information from a supportive populace, even place spies in government organizations. Insurgent/terrorist study 

of adversary intelligence and security systems continue to become more 

systematic and developed than generally recognized. A number of groups 

diligently incorporate observations and lessons learned into recruiting and 

training programs; and some benefit from direct experience, intimacy, and 

immersion in the cultures of enemies that in early times may have seemed 

remote and unknowable, let alone open to the intimate understanding that 

globalization of information sometimes brings. 

Among other recent manifestations of CI-enhancing technology are 

results from U.S. fingerprinting programs aimed at “insurgents, detainees, and ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Horn of Africa.” It 

appears that many hundreds of these individuals had been arrested earlier 

in the United States for various criminal acts, minor and major. Despite 

being detained in Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere as a consequence of U.S.

residency, these people clearly had a far deeper understanding of the United 

States than might be supposed. Further suggested was that foreign insurgent 

and terrorist support structures in the U.S. and probably elsewhere could be 

quite developed. The CI implications of this are readily apparent.115

All of this raises the complexity of the CI “shadow battles,” as one specialist termed them. Insurgents and terrorists—including those whose responsibilities are in counterintelligence areas—may know and understand as much 
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about a government and its foreign allies as governments and coalitions 

know about them. Gaps in technology for intelligence and information 

handling remain vastly superior for most government, but in some cases—

for the better resourced groups—have the prospect of narrowing, given the 

availability of hardware and software. The time-honored frameworks for 

insurgent counterintelligence incorporate new developments quite effectively as the last several decades have shown. 

But despite a legacy of several thousand years of “CI wisdom” and the 

addition of the most modern innovations, insurgents are subject to many 

lapses in the face of unrelenting pressure. Not infrequently, these can be 

huge mistakes resulting in the loss of major leadership figures, areas of 

operation, key information, or psychological blows. Weaknesses in insurgent 

CI systems result from indiscipline and inattentiveness, fluctuating morale, 

internal rivalries, deterioration of goals, motivation (including criminalization), and always the pure happenstance and bad luck that Alberto Bayo 

cautioned about nearly 60 years ago. 

Counterinsurgent governments and allies can exploit these lapses and 

create them if prepared and persevering as history has demonstrated. CIA

officer Arango, in his look at both insurgent and counterinsurgent CI

problem sketched what is still the most effective basic approach: active CI

officers, armed with carefully developed data, a continuous study of their 

guerrilla adversaries, knowledge of their ideology and tradecraft, a carefully worked out CI program, analytical drudgery, and aggressive actions 

to promote insurgent dysfunction. The continuing danger, however, lies in 

insurgent and terrorist CI initiatives that are based on analogous approaches, 

which have the same goals, and may at times be implemented with greater 

effectiveness.
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Appendix

Excerpt from Counterinsurgency, Field Manual 3-24/ 

Marine Corps Warfighting Publication 3-33.5

Section IV. Counterintelligence and Counterreconnaissance

(pages 3–30, Headquarters Department of the Army, December 2006)

3-155. Counterintelligence counters or neutralizes intelligence collection efforts through collection, counterintelligence investigations, operations, analysis and production, and functional and technical services. 

Counterintelligence includes all actions taken to detect, identify, exploit, 

and neutralize the multidiscipline intelligence activities of friends, competitors, opponents, adversaries, and enemies. 

3-156. Insurgents place heavy emphasis on gathering intelligence. They 

use informants, double agents, reconnaissance, surveillance, open-source 

media, and open-source imagery. Insurgents can potentially use any person 

interacting with U.S. or multinational personnel as an informant. These 

include the same people that U.S. forces use as potential HUMINT sources. 

Operations security is thus very important; U.S. personnel must carefully 

screen the contractors, informants, translators, and other personnel working with them. Failure to do so can result in infiltration of U.S. facilities and 

deaths of U.S. personnel and their partners.

3-157. Background screenings should include collection of personal and biometric data and a search through available reporting databases to determine 

whether the person is an insurgent. (Biometrics concerns the measurement 

and analysis of unique physical or behavioral characteristics [as fingerprint or voice patterns].) Identification badges may be useful for providing 

security and personnel accountability for local people working on U.S. and 

host-nation (HN) government facilities. Biometric data is preferable, when 

available, because identification badges may be forged or stolen and insurgents can use them to identify people working with the HN government.

3-158. Insurgents have their own reconnaissance and surveillance networks. 

Because they usually blend well with the populace, insurgents can execute 
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reconnaissance without easily being identified. They also have an early 

warning system composed of citizens who inform them of counterinsurgent 

movements. Identifying the techniques and weaknesses of enemy reconnaissance and surveillance enables commanders to detect signs of insurgent 

preparations and to surprise insurgents by neutralizing their early warning 

systems.

3-159. Insurgents may also have a SIGINT capability based on commercially available scanners and radios, wiretaps, or captured counterinsurgent 

equipment. Counterinsurgents should not use commercial radios or phones 

because insurgents can collect information from them. If Soldiers and 

Marines must use commercial equipment or unencrypted communications, they should employ authorized brevity codes to reduce insurgents’ 

ability to collect on them. 
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Endnotes

1. The term insurgent or guerrilla group as used here includes organizations that may 

variously be designated as “terrorist” and/or “insurgent.” Whatever distinctions 

some may make in the two categories, most foreign states struggling with armed 

groups consider them terrorists even if the international community does not. 

Colombia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, for example, is considered by both the 

U.S. and Colombian governments as an insurgent and a terrorist organization. 

Mexico’s People’s Revolutionary Army (EPR) guerrillas are not U.S.-designated 

terrorists; however, the government of Mexico considers them to be “terrorists 

and assassins.”

2. U.S. and western definitions of “counterintelligence” have varied in detail, 

depending upon the service or national intelligence entity proffering the definition. For example, in the military joint community, counterintelligence (CI) is 

considered to be “Information gathered and activities conducted to protect against 

espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted 

by or on behalf of foreign governments or elements thereof, foreign organizations, or foreign persons, or international terrorist activities.” See Department 

of Defense, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, Joint Pub 1-02, 12 April 

2001, updated 4 March 2008, p. 129.

3. For a concise description of U.S. counterintelligence in counterinsurgency 

operations, see the appendix herein for the pertinent excerpt (“Section IV. 

Counterintelligence and Counterreconnaissance” from Headquarters Department 

of the Army, Counterinsurgency, Field Manual No. 3-24/Marine Corps Warfighting 

Publication No. 3-33.5, Washington, DC, December 2006, pp. 3-30). In addition, as 

addressed in Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, “offensive” counterintelligence is for the U.S. Joint Military Community deemed “counterespionage,” 

which is designated as that aspect “designed to detect, destroy, neutralize, exploit, 

or prevent espionage activities through identification, penetration, manipulation, 

deception, and repression of individuals, groups, or organizations conducting or 

suspected of conducting espionage activities.” 

4. Attributed variously to 16th century Italian political schemer Nicolo Machiavelli, 

17th century French poet and fabulist Jean de La Fontaine (“C’est double plaisir de 

tromper le trompeur”), and perhaps others, the thought certainly has counterparts 

dating back to earliest human organization.

5. The excellent work compiled and annotated by Charles E. Lathrop, The Literary 

Spy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), presents a wealth of quotes, observations, and insights on intelligence (including counterintelligence) spanning 

several thousand years.

6. In Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. by Lionel Giles, Forgotten Books, 2007, p. 50, 

the attention given to espionage generally and counterintelligence specifically is 

too lengthy to even synopsize here. Modern readers will be much taken with treatment like Sun Szu’s “five types of spies” (local, inward, converted, doomed, and 
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surviving) and the “divine manipulation” that could create a near-impenetrable 

secret system. Available at www.forgottenbooks.org/ (accessed November 2008).

7. Peter Dubovský, Hezekiah and the Assyrian Spies: Reconstruction of the NeoAssyrian Intelligence Services and its Significance for 2 Kings 18-19 (Rome: Editrice 

Pontifico Istituto Biblico, 2006), pp. 104-108. The 2nd Kings of the Bible addresses 

this same period.

8. The tribal kingdom was called Chalda, and the king was named MerodachBaladan. The spy was targeted against the city of Larak, believed to have located 

on the west bank of the Tigris River—east of the ancient Sumerian capital of Kisk, 

between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The captured spy told his captors the location of Merodach-Baladan himself, the king who had sent him on his mission. 

9. This “Information Hub” network diagram is found in Dubovský, Hezekiah and 

the Assyrian Spies, Appendix 2, p. 267. 

10. Earth Liberation Front, et al., Security Culture: A Handbook for Activists, early 

2000s. The pamphlet was intended principally for Canadian activists, but was 

billed as useful for U.S. militants as well. Among the Internet editions was the 

3rd edition, November 2001, at http://security.resist.ca/personal/securebooklet.

pdf (accessed November 2008).

11. Ibid., p. 5.

12. See Anonymous, “The Animal Liberation Primer,” Animal Liberation Front, 

circa late 1980s or early 1990s, available at www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/

Fact%20Sheets/alprimer.pdf; the various treatment in the issues of Narco News at 

www.narconews.com/ (accessed November 2008); and many others.

13. Information in this section has been drawn from including analyses and assessments prepared and presented by a law enforcement officer (names withheld 

here) operating under the overall auspices of the West Texas High Intensity Drug 

Trafficking Area (HIDTA).

14. National Drug Intelligence Center, “Bandidos,” Drug and Crime Outlaw 

Motorcycle Gang Profile, U.S. Department of Justice, October 2002, Product No. 

2002-M0148-001, available at http://cryptome.org/gangs/bandidos.pdf (accessed 

November 2008).

 “The Bandidos,” Connecticut Gang Investigative Association, undated circa early 

2000s, available at www.segag.org/mcgangs/bandido.html (accessed November 

2008). 

 Other outlaw motorcycle gangs purportedly have analogous enforcement/coercion components to include Hell’s Angels “Filthy Few,” the Outlaws’ “SS,” the 

Pagans’ Black T-Shirt Squad” according to Information from the Southeastern 

Connecticut Gang Activities Group posted under “Motorcycle Gangs” at http://

faculty.missouristate.edu/m/MichaelCarlie/Storage/motorcycle_gangs.htm 

(accessed November 2008). 

15. Carlos Revillo Arango, “Insurgent Counterintelligence,” Studies in Intelligence, 

vol. 12, no. 1, Winter 1968, pp. 39-40. A companion piece by Arango, 

“Counterintelligence vs. Insurgency,” Studies in Intelligence, vol. 12, no. 2, Spring 
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1968, pp. 65-81, addresses the interaction between state CI and the insurgencies. See also Michael C. Conley, Mechanics of Subversion, American Institute 

for Research, Kensington, Maryland, second printing 1971, for the Defense 

Intelligence School, U.S. Naval Station, Washington, DC.

16. This excerpt from the short poem within the novel has appeared in many languages (e.g., “bajo el costaño de las ramas extendidas, yo te vendí y tú me vendiste” 

in Spanish, or “v teny kashtana, ya prodal tebya, a ti prodal menya” in Russian). 

The longer version, a recurring theme, reads “Under the spreading Chestnut tree, 

I sold you and you sold me; there you lie and here lie we, under the spreading 

Chestnut tree.” Outside mentors—such as the East German Stasi that with Russian 

and other East Bloc security services trained many Cold War insurgent groups 

in the craft of intelligence and CI—seemed to take the 1984 novel as a how-to 

manual or inspiration, rather than a cautionary tale of totalitarian oppression. 

Stasi chief, Erich Mielke, made a point of having his office suite numbered “101” 

from the novel’s much feared location of “the worst thing in the world.” According 

to the researcher and author, Anna Funder, Mielke wanted this number so much 

that “even though his office was on the second floor, he had the entire first floor 

renamed the Mezzanine so that he could call his room 101.” See the interview 

with Funder by Sarah Coleman, World Press Review, 2 July 2003, at www.arlindocorreia.com/081203.html (accessed November 2008).

17. See, for example, the entry for “theory” at WordNet: A Lexical Database for the 

English Language; available at http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=theory 

(accessed November 2008).

18. Bayo was transferred to the Spanish Foreign Legion as a consequence of his 

severely wounding a fellow officer in “the last sword fight” in Spain. Because the 

officer that he ran through was a favorite of the Spanish King, Bayo faced repercussions that, whether legal or not, helped shape his future guerrilla revolutionary 

career. 

19. It was especially important for a generation of Soviet special operations and intelligence personnel who built on Spanish Civil War lessons in World War II and 

later trained thousands of Third World insurgents and terrorists within the USSR 

and in camps around the world.

20. Biographical information and background on Bayo was found mainly in the preface and preliminary material by manuscript editor Robert K. Brown in Bayo’s 150 

Questions for a Guerrilla and in the semi-anonymous Web interview with members of the Bayo family now in El Salvador at “Eduardo,” “The Ballad of the Bayo 

Family,” www.thetimesharebeat.com/eddie/eddie80.htm (accessed November 

2008). 

21. “Cuba as a Base for Subversion in America” A Study Presented to the Subcommittee 

to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and other Internal 

Security Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 88th 

Congress, 1st Session, 8 February 1963 (Washington: U.S. Government Printing 

Office, 1963). 
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22. Alberto Bayo, 150 Questions for a Guerrilla, ed. by Robert K. Brown, trans. by 

Hugo Hartenstein and Dennis Harber (Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 2005).

23. Notable among these was former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, a principal figure in the Urgun and Stern Gang fight against the British and Arab opponents prior to Israeli independence, and later chief of an important Israeli Mossad 

operations component. It is widely reported that Prime Minister Shamir took 

the code name “Michael” in honor of Collins whose successes against a greatly 

superior force he admired.

24. In December 1918, British general elections saw Sinn Fein win the majority of 

Parliamentary positions from Ireland. However, Sinn Fein members refused to 

go to London to take their seats, instead setting up an Irish Parliament in Dublin. 

For the British this was an act of treason and, together with a Volunteer ambush 

of policemen and other developments, precipitated full-blown conflict.

25. Both the RIC Reserve Force and the smaller RIC Auxiliary Division paramilitaries (composed mainly of former British soldiers including World War I veterans 

recruited in England) were sometimes loosely called “Black and Tans.” However, 

the notorious designation was applied most usually and specifically to the Reserve 

Force. They gained an enduring reputation for brutality among Republican militants, supporters, and civilians swept up in the conflict.

26. Broy, assigned to the Detective Division, was sometimes termed a “detective,” but 

is more accurately described as a typist assigned to prepare reports on IRA and 

Sinn Fein activity in T. Ryler Dwer, The Squad and the Intelligence Operations of 

Michael Collins (Dublin: Mercier Press, 2005), p. 10. 

27. Michael T. Foy, Michael Collins’ Intelligence War: The Struggle Between the British 

and the IRA 1919-1921 (Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press Ltd., 2008) provides one of the best focused treatments of Michael Collins’ intelligence work.

28. Dwer, The Squad, p. 7 makes the point about a premeditated provocation on the 

part of Collins.

29. For two treatments of Michael Collins, his life, and the environment in which 

he operated, see the reprint of the excellent 1926 two-volume biography by P. S. 

Béaslai, Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland (London: Corinthian 

Press, 1985) and Margery Forester, Michael Collins: The Lost Leader (Dublin: Gill 

& Macmillan, 2006). 

 For some concise, easily accessible discussions of and by Michael Collins, see 

Colm McInerney, “Michael Collins and the Irish war of Independence,” April 

2004, at www.threemonkeysonline.com/threemon_printable.php?id=5 (accessed 

November 2008) and the complete online text of Michael Collins, The Path to 

Freedom (Dublin: Talbot Press and London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1922) at ftp://ftp.

ucc.ie/pub/celt/texts/E900001.001.sgml (accessed November 2008).

30. The Minimanual has been published in a number versions ranging from reproduced typescript translations to bound commercial volumes—for example, 

Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla (Montréal & Toronto: Abraham Guillen Press/

Arm the Spirit, 2002)—and several digital versions. For the latter, see www.marxists.org/archive/marighella-carlos/1969/06/minimanual-urban-guerrilla/index.
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htm (accessed November 2008), and www.usma.edu/DMI/IWmsgs/LowProfileInsideOut.pdf (accessed November 2008). 

31. All quotations are taken from the Marighella, Minimanual version found on 

the U.S. Military Academy site. See www.usma.edu/DMI/IWmsgs/LowProfileInsideOut.pdf.

32. This quote is from an 8th century Arab political treatise noted by Francis Dvorik, 

Origins of Intelligence Services (Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1974) as cited 

in Lathrop, The Literary Spy, p. 47.

33. The publication—Muhammad Khalil Al-Hakaymah, The Myth of Delusion: 

Exposing the American Intelligence (al-Maqreze Center Site, 11 September 2001)—

is available in translation at http://cryptome.org/mod-usintel.htm (accessed 

November 2008). Also a discussion and assessment of the work is found at Brian 

Fishman, “Al-Qa’ida’s Spymaster Analyzes the U.S. Intelligence Community, 6 

November 2006, www.ctc.usma.edu/MythofDelusion.pdf (accessed November 

2008). 

34. Abu Bakr Naji, Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which 

the Umma Must Pass, sponsored by the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, 

Harvard University, trans. by William McCants, 23 May 2006, as presented at 

www.wcfia.harvard.edu/olin/images/Management%20of%20Savagery%20-%20

05-23-2006.pdf (accessed November 2008).

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid., pp. 67-68 in the original and as annotated on the referenced translation.

37. Ibid.

38. Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown 

Threat,” New York City Police Department Intelligence Division, New York, 2007; 

and Pierre Thomas and Jack Date, “Intelligence Officials: Dozens of Europeans 

Have Trained in Terror Camps in Pakistan,” ABC News, 20 June 2008, available 

at http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5213783&page=1 (accessed November 

2008). 

39. Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants in the “Declaration of Jihad 

Against the Country’s Tyrants Military Series,” a document entered in evidence 

at the trial for the African Embassy bombings, Southern District Court, New 

York City Attorney General’s Office, circa early to mid-1990s, in translation from 

Arabic.

40. Jon Swartz, “Terrorists’ use of Internet spreads,” USA Today, 20 February 2005, 

available at www.usatoday.com/money/industries/technology/2005-02-20-cyberterror-usat_x.htm (accessed November 2008). 

41. Abdul Hameed Bakier, “The New Issue of Technical Mujahid, a Training Manual 

for Jihadis” Jamestown Terrorism Monitor, vol. 5, Issue 6 (29 March 2007), available at www.jamestown.org (accessed November 2008).

42. Christopher Dickey,“The Taliban’s Book of Rules,” Newsweek, 12 December 2006, 

available at www.newsweek.com/id/44121/page/1 (accessed November 2008).
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43. The Sicilian Mafia guidelines for conduct, several related to internal security, 

were discovered during the Italian police’s arrest of Salvatore Lo Piccolo, who is 

alleged to have been the new head of the Sicilian Mafia. According to BBC media 

reports, they were as follows: 

a. No one can present himself directly to another of our friends. There must be 

a third person to do it.

b. Never look at the wives of friends.

c. Never be seen with cops.

d. Don’t go to pubs and clubs.

e. Always being available for Cosa Nostra is a duty—even if your wife’s about 

to give birth.

f. Appointments must absolutely be respected.

g. Wives must be treated with respect. 

h. When asked for any information, the answer must be the truth.

i. Money cannot be appropriated if it belongs to others or to other families.

j. People who can’t be part of Cosa Nostra: anyone who has a close relative in the 

police, anyone with a two-timing relative in the family, anyone who behaves 

badly and doesn’t hold to moral values. 

 See “Mafia’s ‘Ten Commandments’ found,” BBC News, 9 November 2007.

44. John Keegan, Intelligence in War: The Value—and Limitations—of what the 

Military Can Learn About the Enemy (New York: Vintage Books, 2002), p. 315.

45. Ibid., p. 316.

46. Patrick K. O’Donnell, Operatives, Spies and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the 

Men and Women of World War II’s OSS (New York: Free Press, 2004). 

47. Quoted in Michael Levitin, “East Germans drew blueprint for Cuban spying,” 

Miami Herald, 4 November 2007. 

48. Ibid. See also Jorge Luis Vázquez, “El Archivo del MINIT y el Asesoramiento de 

la Stasi” (The MINIT Archive and Stasi Consultation), Misceláneas de Cuba, 24 

February, available at www.miscelaneasdecuba.net/web/article.asp?artID=14131 

(accessed November 2008). This site for the Switzerland-based Cuban publication 

also lists many of the articles written about the MINIT and Stasi connection by 

the same author.

49. The appearance of Iraqi-foreign fighter animosity appeared at least as early as 

June 2005 as reported in Sabrina Tavernise, “Marines See Signs Iraq Rebels Are 

Battling Foreign Fighters,” New York Times, 21 June 2005. 

50. Ernesto Che Guevara, The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara (New York: 

Pathfinder Press, 1994).

51. Héctor Béjar, Peru 1965: Notes on a Guerrilla Experience, New York: Monthly 

Review Press, 1970, from Gérard Chaliand, ed., Guerrilla Strategies: An Historical 

Anthology from the Long March to Afghanistan (Los Angeles: University of 

California Press, 1982), p. 280.

52. Ibid.
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53. Patrick Chabal, Amílcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War, 

African Studies Series (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 

80-81. 

54. Ibid., p. 81.

55. Good cases in point are the Irish Republican Army and offshoots, Sri Lanka’s 

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelan (Tamil Tigers), the Revolutionary Armed 

Forces of Colombia (FARC), Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian groups, and 

the Kurdish (Kurdistan) Workers Party (PKK).

56. In addition to Carlos Revillo Arango, “Insurgent Counterintelligence,” see also 

Michael C. Conley, Mechanics of Subversion, American Institute for Research, 

Kensington, Maryland, second printing 1971, for the Defense Intelligence 

School, U.S. Naval Station, Washington, DC, especially pp. 89-101, which make 

similar observations about insurgent security requirements in urban and rural 

environments.

57. R. W. Volckman, We Remained: Three Years Behind Enemy Lines in the Philippines

(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1954), p. 133.

58. Ibid., especially pp.115-115, 130-135, and 178-180.

59. Arturo C. Porzecanski, Uruguay’s Tupamaros: The Urban Guerrilla (New York: 

Praeger Publishers, 1973), pp. 32-37.

60. Among the many books dealing with Guevara’s Bolivian adventure:

a. Daniel James, ed., The Complete Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara and Other 

Captured Documents (New York: Cooper Square Press, New Ed edition, 2000) 

provides the first-hand account.

b. Henry Butterfield Ryan, The Fall of Che Guevara: A Story of Soldiers, Spies, 

and Diplomats (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1999) gives some 

balanced context.

c. The many declassified CIA, State Department, and other documents now 

found at Peter Kornbluh, “The Death of Che Guevara: Declassified,” National 

Security Archive— www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB5/index.html 

(accessed November 2008)—provide a more complete picture with primary 

source documentation from the period. 

61. The extensive volumes of Soviet partisan CI tradecraft and lessons from a huge 

World War II irregular warfare effort—and especially rural guerrilla operations—

were apparently not shared by a Moscow leadership that took an increasingly dim 

view of Cuban revolutionary adventure in Latin America.

62. Despite its small size, the force was grandly styled “National Liberation Army of 

Bolivia” (ELN—Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Bolivia). See http://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/National_Liberation_Army_of_Bolivia (accessed November 2008).

63. In the spring of 1967, for example, the poorly hidden diary of one of the Cuban 

fighters was discovered at the guerrillas’ main camp, which had been located for 

the Army by guerrilla deserters who led them to it. See the reproduced introduction to Harry Villegas Tamayo, ‘Pombo: A Man of Che’s guerrilla’: The Story 

of an Epic Chapter in the History of the Americas as presented at www.blythe.
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org/nytransfer-subs/97cari/Introduction,_English_Edition-_Pombo_ (accessed 

November 2008).

64. A book dealing with Tania’s life was written by her Cuban paramour and MINIT

trainer Ulises Estrada, under the title Tania: Undercover with Che Guevara in 

Bolivia, Ocean Press, 2005. As would be expected, it presents an admiring view of 

Tania that is questionable in many respects. Ocean Books typically publishes radical tracts, mainly dealing with Latin America (including the 2008 Che Guevara 

Calendar).

65. Both of the arrested men claimed later that they revealed nothing about Guevara, 

but the evidence suggests otherwise. See Butterfield, The Fall of Che Guevara

among other sources for extended discussion of the affair, as well as Olivier Truc, 

“¿Entregó Regis Debray al ‘Che’ Guevara?” (Did Regis Debray hand Over ‘Che’ 

Guevara) El Mundo, 28 January 2001.

66. The peasant-grocer, Honorato Rojas, was himself executed by remnants of 

Guevara’s supporters about two years later. For one of many accounts of the 

ambush, see Henry Butterfield Ryan, The Fall of Che Guevara: A Story of Soldiers, 

Spies, and Diplomats (New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1999), Chapter 

5, “Guerrilla Triumph and Trouble,” especially pp. 118-121.

67. Tirofijo appeared in many guises, some illustrated in the photo gallery put 

together by Semana magazine in May 2008 at www.semana.com/photos/

ImgGaleria-G_2451_2008524_105335.jpg (accessed November 2008). 

68. The FARC hostages included three U.S. military contractors held since 2003, international figure and former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt 

held for 6 years, and eleven Colombian military and police personnel.

69. A reading of Mark Bowden, Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw

(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001), gives considerable insight into the communications intercept capabilities available to the Colombian Government, as 

the successful and violent drug trafficker Pablo Escobar was tracked and killed. 

This was in 1993, a decade and a half ago. Both skills and technology have vastly 

increased, as has U.S. security assistance under Plan Colombia. 

70. See the following:

a. Simon Romero, “15 Hostages Held by Colombian Rebels Are Rescued” New 

York Times, 3 July 2008

b. “Rescatan a Betancourt y otros secuestrados por FARC” (Betancourt and 

Other Hostages Ransomed from the FARC), El Universal, 2 June 2008

c. “Betancourt, U.S. contractors rescued from FARC,” CNN World News, 2 June 

2008, available at www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/07/02/betancourt.

colombia/index.html (accessed November 2008)

d. “Rescue hinged on fake ‘international mission,’” CNN World News, 3 July 

2008, www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/07/02/farc.rescue/index.html 

(accessed November 2008)

e. Simon Romero and Damien Cave, “Bold Colombia Rescue Built on Rebel 

Group’s Disarray,” New York Times, 4 July 2008.
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71. See the prior section on Alberto Bayo. 

72. Major Lawrence M. Greenberg, The Hukbalahap Insurrection: A Case Study of 

a Successful Anti-Insurgency Operation in the Philippines, 1946-1955, Historical 

Analysis Series (Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1987), 

pp. 50-51.

73. William J. Pomeroy, “The Huk Guerrilla Struggle in the Philippines” in Chaliand, 

Guerrilla Strategies, pp. 91-93, from Pomeroy, The Forest: A Personal Record of 

the Huk Guerrilla Struggle in the Philippines (New York: International Publishers, 

1963). The contraction “Hukbalahap,” shortened further to “Huk,” meant “People’s 

Army Against the Japanese.”

74. See the account in “A Manual for the Urban Terrorist,” Time, 2 November 1970, 

available at www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909683-1,00.html 

(accessed November 2008). 

75. For detailed treatments of the Mau Mau insurgency from different perspectives, 

see Frank Kitson, Bunch of Five (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1977) and David 

Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire

(New York: W. W. Norton, 2005). 

76. From Donald L. Barnett and Karari Njama, Mau Mau from Within: Autobiography 

and Analysis of Kenya’s Peasant Revolt (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966) 

as cited in Chaliand, Guerrilla Strategies, p. 139.

77. Ibid., pp. 142-143.

78. Ibid., pp. 144-145.

79. See, endnote 3 and the entry “counterespionage,” Department of Defense, 

Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, p. 128.

80. Porzecanski, Uruguay’s Tupamaros, pp. 45-46. 

81. See Zachary Abuza, Balik-Terrorism: The Return of the Abu Sayyaf (Carlisle, PA: 

Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, September 2005), p. 12,which cites 

the following as the original sources addressing these incidents: 

a. “Reward Offered for Hinolan’s Attacker” MT, 16 November 2004

b. “Suspected Abu Sayyaf Gunmen Abduct Doctor in Sulu,” PDI, 22 November 

2004

c. “Philippine Government Official Dies in Suspected Abu Sayyaf Attack,” 

Deutsche Presse-Agenteur, 12 December 2004

d. Julie Alipala, “Sayyaf Men Abduct, Execute 3 Salesmen from Pampanga,” 

PDI, 11 January 2005.

82. Ibid., p. 12.

83. “The experience of Mossad is unacceptable to us,” Chechenpress, 29 October 2004, 

translated in CEP20041101000342.

84. Andrey Soldatov and Irina Borogan, “Tyazhel’iy Feys’ i drugiye: Taktika 

spetssluzb posle Beslana: stavka na likvidatsiyu” (Heavy face and others: tactics 

of the special services after Beslan: a staff for liquidation), undated circa late 
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2004, available from www.agentura.ru/press/about/jointprojects/mn/escadrons/ 

(accessed May 2007).

85. “Great success of Chechen secret services,” Kavkaz Center, 12 February 2004, 

available at www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2004/02/12/2399.shtml (accessed 

November 2008). 

86. “Mossad Agents Eliminated in the Northern Caucasus,” Kavkaz Center, 6 April 

2006, available at www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2006/04/06/4578.shtml 

(accessed November 2008). 

87. Ibid.

88. Volckmann, We Remained, pp. 125-126. 

89. Ibid., p. 126.

90. Jorge Torres “Las células secretas del EPR” (Secret Cells of the EPR), Proceso, 

No. 1639, 30 March 2008, available at www.la-verdad.com.mx/principal/index.

php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7542&Itemid=168 (accessed November 

2008).

91. Ibid.

92. Ibid.; also Miguel Badillo, “Un Curso de Intelligencia para el EPR” (An Intelligence 

Course for the EPR), Contralínea, October 2004, available at http://contralinea.

com.mx/ (accessed November 2008). 

93. Dwyer, “The Squad,” p. 36.

94. Ibid., pp. 14-15.

95. The early use of .38-caliber revolvers was abandoned for .45s or other more powerful rounds when the 38s failed on the first assassination to have the requisite 

stopping power.

96. Ibid., p. 73.

97. The British officers were also said to frequent the Cairo Bar in Dublin. Other 

members of the group came from service in Russia and apparently other locations 

as well.

98. Hartline and Kaulbach, “Bloody Sunday,” p. 75.

99. Ibid; Dwyer, The Squad, pp.172-187; and James Gleeson, Bloody Sunday: How 

Michael Collins’ Agents Assassinated Britain’s Secret Service in Dublin on November 

21, 1920 (New York: The Lyons Press, 2004).

100. One effort to describe the complexity of the Hezbollah security establishment is 

found at Carl Anthony Wege, “The Hizballah Security Apparatus,” Perspectives 

on Terrorism, vol. II, Issue 7, available at www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.

php?option=com_rokzine&view=article&id=51 (accessed November 2008). 

101. James Bennet, “Israeli Bedouin Colonel Is Formally Charged with Spying,” New 

York Times, 25 October 2002.

102. David Eshel, “Hezbollah’s Intelligence War: Assessment of the Second Lebanon 

War,” Defense Update, 3 January 2007, available at www.defense-update.com/

analysis/lebanon_war_1.htm (accessed November 2008). 
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103. Gil Ronen, “Hizbullah Spying Through ‘Facebook,’” IsraelNN.com, 5 September 

2008; received via www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/127494; and 

Nathan Hodge, “Gaza War’s New Front: Facebook”, Wired, 9 January 2009, 

received via http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/01/facebook-fundra.html.

104. Richard M Bennett and David McKenzie, “Hezbollah - a clever and determined 

enemy,” Asia Times, 9 August 2006, available at www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_

East/HH09Ak04.html (accessed November 2008).

105. Matt M. Matthews, We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War, 

The Long War Series Occasional Paper 26, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center 

(Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2008). See Alastair 

Crooke and Mark Perry, “How Hezbollah Defeated Israel, Part 1: Winning the 

intelligence war,” Asia Times Online, 12 October 2006 (www.atimes.com/atimes/

middle_east/hj12ak01.html) for the quote included in the citation.

106. Fred Burton and Scott Stewart, “Hezbollah: Signs of a Sophisticated Intelligence 

Apparatus,” Stratfor, 12 December 2007, available at www.stratfor.com/weekly/

hezbollah_signs_sophisticated_intelligence_apparatus (accessed November 2008) 

and “Counterintelligence Case: Nada Nadim Prouty,” Counterintelligence Centre, 

undated, accessed 30 June 2008 at http://cicentre.com/.

107. Burton and Stewart, “Hezbollah”; “Counterintelligence Case: Nada Nadim 

Prouty”; and Robert Spencer, “A Slap On The Wrist,” 14 May 2008, available at 

http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=BBD775F8-3730-48F2-

AD1D-2683AF9ED18A (accessed November 2008). 

108. Arango, “Insurgent Counterintelligence,” p. 45.

109. Arango, “Counterintelligence vs. Insurgency,” p. 80.

110. A reading of Dwer, The Squad and Aaron J. Klein, Striking Back: The 1972 Munich 

Olympics Massacre and Israel’s Deadly Response (New York: Random House, 

2005) suggests the same controlled audacity and common methods in reconnaissance, identification, and execution. 

111. Keegan and others have pointed to the Israelis, with a population base well suited 

for recruiting operatives from an array of cultures as being a particularly good 

example. Keegan, Military Intelligence, p. 316.

112. Ibid.

113. The programs are apparently having a substantial, positive impact in interacting 

with foreign nationals in counterinsurgency environments. 

114. Noah Shachtman, “Online Jihadists Plan for ‘Invading Facebook,’” Wired, 18 

December 2008, received via from http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/onlinejihadist.html.

115. Ellen Nakashima, “Post 9/11 Dragnet Turns Up Surprises,” Washington Post, 6 

July 2008.