The Human in Human Intelligence

Abstract

Among the many tasks of Allied troops on the ground in the liberation and occupation of Europe, the need to find information about the enemy was of paramount importance: interrogating those who might hold this information, in other words obtaining ‘human intelligence’ (Humint), was a key necessity throughout the whole conflict. Humint refers to the gathering of intelligence through interpersonal contact. According to the NATO Glossary of Terms and Definitions, it is ‘a category of intelligence derived from information collected and provided by human sources’ (NATO 2010: 2H5), as opposed to intelligence-gathering through technical means such as ‘Sigint’ (signal intelligence). Humint therefore involves ‘the human’, highly-charged face-to-face encounters with ‘the other’, at different stages of the conflict, and generally in the context of interrogations. The quality and strategic usefulness of human intelligence are markedly dependent on the way the foreign is domesticated in these first-contact encounters with the other and on the ability of the mediator, namely the interrogator, to ‘translate’ the message in such a way that it becomes intelligible and assessable for strategic purposes. Humint is radically language-dependent. The material collected is foreign precisely because it is usually expressed in a different language and belongs to a different culture, so that those who can mediate through multiple cultures and languages inevitably become invaluable intelligence operatives.

‘We didn’t rely on interpreters at all. They were there to help non-linguist officers. The interpreters were looked down upon by German speaking officers. We were one step above the interpreters.’

(Interview, 18 August 2009)