SIGINT won by a wavelength (James Bamford)

 

written by James Bamford (The puzzle palace), 1982

pp.377-378

  “HUMINT [Human Intelligence] is subject to all of the mental aberrations of the source as well as the interpreter of the source,” Lieutenant General Marshall S. Carter once explained. “SIGINT isn't. SIGINT has technical aberrations which give it away almost immediately if it does not have bona fides, if it is not legitimate. A good analyst can tell very, very quickly whether this is an attempt at disinformation, at confusion, from SIGINT. You can't do that from HUMINT; you don't have the bona fides ── what are his sources? He may be the source, but what are his sources?”

  Having served as deputy director of the CIA and director of the NSA, Carter was one of the very few people to have been intimately associated with both collection systems, and in his opinion SIGINT won by a wavelength. “Photo interpretation,” he explained, “can in some cases be misinterpreted by the reader or intentionally confused by the maker in the first place ── camouflage, this sort of thing. SIGINT is the one that is immediate, right now. Photo interpretation, yes, to some extent, but you still have to say, ‘Is that really a fake, have they confused it?’ It is better than HUMINT, it is more rapid than HUMINT [but] SIGINT is right now; its bona fides are there the minute you get it.”

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πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ,ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα