[The Library Information Warfare Series] Back to Basics: Check Your Sources!

Sometimes, it's not all about having a PhD in Propaganda.

I have run into this problem many times when dealing with intelligence gathering and counter intelligence. Honestly, it forms the basis, the first couple of steps in just about everything I do. Whether I'm talking to friends, gathering information for research, or digesting the latest news, the first thing I do is always the same. I think it's honestly the most important part of intelligence gathering, whether for an agency, a group, or personal use.

Check your damn sources!

No, I don't mean make sure it's on along list of "approved, scholarly sources". This is a good tell that a source is knowledgeable, peer-reviewed, and well respected in the community, but it does not mean that the source is reliable for your use. 

A lot of this depends on the use-case. If my use-case is to spread propaganda, convince people of a mostly true agenda, or turn people towards a cause, the most important objective is to find a source that fits my narrative. If I want to convince someone that the 2nd Amendment, the Constitutional Amendment concerning the right to bear arms in America, is just and inalienable, I'm much more likely to look on an NRA official or sponsored website, rather than a gun law advocacy site. Both sites would technically be accurate, but only one of them fits the narrative I'm pushing.

Let's take it past the use-case and look at common, important considerations regarding intelligence sources. There are three important and interlocked aspects of a source to take into consideration before making judgement on a source, outside of making sure they fit a narrative. 

Background, Bias, and Benevolence.

I'm going to explain the 3 B's of Source Auditing through a central example. Let's say I'm looking into the local chapter of Antifa. I have seen the rising violence of the chapter in my city and I want to do some investigating to see if there is anything I should pass on. Luckily, I have a left leaning pal named Marcus who has been going to Antifa meetings. He's definitely a lefty, but is worried about the rising tensions and violent tendencies for the group. He is an avid and well-spoken pacifist, believing that the left tide can only roll over the nation by peaceful protest. Peace is easy to speak about, but his home life is hardly peaceful. His dad and he don't have the best relationship, as Poppa Marcus owns most of the banks in our small town. His mom was pretty poor growing up and had to work for everything she has, something that spurred on Marcus's socialist tendencies.

Now, let's pause. I just gave you some information on Marcus's Background. One of the most important parts of his background is my relationship with him. Forming newfound relationships for intelligence gathering is incredibly difficult and can take some serious knowledge on tradecraft, so having someone you have already established a rapport with is incredibly valuable. More specific to this objective, Marcus seems to have a pacifist streak. That part of his background gives him vested interest to pass on intelligence concerning possibly violent activities in the group, another plus. Tough home life can be a pretty easy stepping stone, as it is a pretty easy conversation started between friends, and using this can be important. Empathy can be used, depending on the situation.

Marcus introduces me to Xiansheng, a Chinese native and first-generation migrant. We establish a rapport, and he gives me his number when I tell him I'm thinking about joining the chapter. Xiansheng texts me, gives me his email, and I do some looking into his background. Xiansheng's parents were pretty infamous in Mao's Red Guard, leftist extremists renowned for beating people to death in the streets for even hinting at ideas that were outside of Maoist thought. Xiansheng brags about them on his blog, remembering the glorious days in China when the Great Chairman Mao was in power, both in politics and in the minds of his people. Xiansheng studied Marxism and Maoism in an infamously leftist state-sponsored school in China.

Here, we introduce the idea of Bias. Xiansheng is clearly heavily biased to the left, both because of his Background and because of his education. His parents were Red Guards, the state-sponsored propaganda machines that used clubs when literature didn't do the job. His parents were somehow convinced that sending people by the millions to starve to death in impoverished countrysides was noble, so Xiansheng is likely very heavily inundated with this kind of leftist thought. While Marcus has spoken many times about how evil he thinks his father's wealth is, he's no Red Guard. He has a leftist bias, but Xiansheng has to be approached with care. When someone is so heavily inundated with this kind of propaganda, from before they could walk to the day they marched the streets in America, Bias is an important factor. Normally this asset is seen as a negative. If a source is biased, it's considered a bad source. For consumption of news, this is true, but in intelligence gathering, this is valuable. If I want to establish a rapport with Xiansheng, I can use this bias. I can speak fondly of the Red Guard, probe his tendency for violence by speaking about it myself. Xiansheng's bias is a very easy way to establish a close relationship with him, which is an extremely important part of intelligence gathering. 

Days pass, then weeks. I've been to several meetings and learn there is a march coming soon. I've got enough information to show that the group has violent members and have established enough of a working relationship with members to find out that many of them had a history of violent crime. I've noted which members usually carry weapons, which carried firearms, and which carried firearms or other weapons illegally. I planned to go to the police two weeks before the meeting and hand off my findings. Late one night, after a meeting discussing march routes and recent events, I make a dangerous mistake. I walk to my car, hop in, and drive straight to my house. Normally I would take a route that intentionally exposed possible tails, people following me home from the meeting. Tonight, though, I slipped. I was tired and went straight home, hardly noticing the car that followed me from the parking lot. 

The next day, I check the Twitter group message we all spoke in, and there were over a hundred messages. Someone had taken photos of me getting into my car, a nice one at that, and driving back to my large house with my motorcycle parked out front. The comments were seething angry. I had told the group I was a high school teacher, but the car and bike and home were way out of a teacher's pay grade. The comments ranted on and on. "How could we have let a filthy capitalist into our midst?" "He's probably a fed." "Only thing to do now is torch it all and let him start from nothing. Maybe then he will learn."

Now, we arrive at Benevolence. I'm not worried about Marcus. We're friends, and while we have differences in political opinion, he wouldn't seek to harm me. Xiansheng is a different story. We aren't near as close, and a son of two Red Guards is likely to be equally as violent. He expressed many times how much he wanted to "torch those expensive houses, burn them all to the ground." When I begin to develop my threat landscape, Xiansheng is at the top of that list. Benevolence, or in this case the likelihood a source is going to be a threat, is very important to consider, especially for OPSEC. A threat is not only likely to harm you, but could also feed you false information, seek to uncover your true purposes to undermine the investigation, and could also recruit you as their own intelligence agent. In Xiansheng's case, he could easily use coercive threats to force me to give the police false information or gather intelligence on how they're going to deal with the protest. Or he could just torch my house. The other members all coalesce into one, central threat. Group think is a common precursor for violence, as the hive tends to be just as violent as their most violent member. The entire group, excluding Marcus and a few others, are now a threat.

Real World Conclusion

This is a pretty dramatic example. Antifa torching your house for running a counterintelligence mission is not likely to happen to everyone. I think they illustrate the Three B's pretty well. Whether it's Antifa or the equally abhorrent Fox News (long rightwing Background, heavy Bias, but traditionally Benevolent in most considerations), considering the source is an extremely important foundational first step when gathering intelligence. The Three B's of Source Auditing are not to be considered an exhaustive checklist. This is an integral part of your operation, and you really should spend an exorbitant amount of time checking your source.

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