ABSTRACT
Human intelligence (HUMINT) is practiced by the majority of agencies conducting intelligence collection within the domestic setting. Although the information collected via HUMINT is relatively small compared with that gathered through other disciplines such as signals intelligence (SIGINT) (discussed in a subsequent chapter), it can be particularly valuable. As intelligence scholar Mark Lowenthal has noted, it affords “access to what is being said, planned, and thought.” Furthermore, it is especially useful against many of the nonstate entities which domestically oriented agencies must disrupt, as the signatures of terrorists and criminal actors are relatively small, making them difficult to identify through technical means.1
