Psychological Support to Defense Counterintelligence Operations

Abstract

The practice of providing psychological or behavioral science support to counter-intelligence operations is relatively new, but actively evolving. Psychologists—some of whom refer to themselves as operational psychologists—provide assessments for, and consultations to, operators, case officers, service members, and others on psycho-logical or behavioral issues relevant for planning, managing, or terminating elements of an operation and handling human assets. Specifically, they may conduct direct or in-direct risk assessments, offer perspectives on source recruitment and handling, or sup-port interrogations and other information-gathering activities. Counterintelligence’s focal areas, currently, are counterespionage and counterterrorism. We describe how psychologists have provided value-added support to each of those Department of De-fense missions. Psychologists in the U.S. Armed Forces and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) are often required to function both as generalists and as specialists (Cronin, 1998). They are frequently called on to provide a wide range of nontraditional services in an even wider range of nontraditional contexts (Page, 1996). Military psychologists may even be asked to perform specialized assessments or interventions or to render professional opinions on issues with which they have no prior formal training or ex-perience (Johnson, 1995). A clinical psychologist, who may be “the only game in