Modern espionage information?

Question

Before 9/11, espionage was still a the cold war system. Where our enemies were clearly defined by their borders. But while nations have everything to lose, movements can survive on ideology alone.

Al Qaeda was a new kind of enemy, calling for a new kind of spycraft.

So my question is, how has the United States Intelligence community adapted since 9/11?

Is the CIA now training agents in Arabic instead of Russian? Instead of recruiting ivy league kids fluent in German, Russian or Chinese, are they now recruiting Harvard grads of Arab, Persian or Mediterranean decent?

Or has the CIA been replaced by new agencies unknown to most of the public?

I'm sure the NSA is still on top. But what about Delta Force? Or Black Ops? Whose commando tactics seem ill-equipped to face an enemy made of dispersed cell networks.

Who is training the new generation of western spies and how are they doing it?

If anyone knows of any books or sources on the subject, I'd love to know where I can find info!

Answer 1

Let me begin with a disclaimer: I have no first-hand knowledge of the US intelligence community. All I can tell you is based on familiarity with foreign (in your terms) intelligence and operational organizations.

The CIA has always been recruiting Arab speakers and training others in Arabic. They are still recruiting and training Russian speakers. What has changed, and this started happening before 9/11, was the proportion of Arabic assets within the CIA. This is a trend that began in the early 90's, as a response to the collapse of the USSR and what then seemed like the end of Russian aspiration for global hegemony. Of course, 9/11 was a great system shock and I have no doubt it has sped this process up.

You ask if the CIA has been replaced by new agencies unknown to the public. If it has, no one would tell you anyway :)
However, I would venture to guess that it has not, for the simple reason that I think replacing it would be a bad move.
Contemporary espionage is indeed different from what it was during the cold war (which ended around 1990), but the two arts have more in common with each other than they do with anything else. Therefore, the CIA should still be the best firm around to deal with it. Furthermore, what most characterizes modern espionage is the need to continually evolve - whoever can adapt faster to the other's last move is likely to achieve results. This means you have to have a dynamic organization, and if you can turn the CIA into one (and I'm sure this is a top priority for the pentagon) then it should have no problem adjusting to today's reality, and there's no need to build something new from scratch.
If you intended to imply that the motivation for replacing the CIA is the need for a more secretive organization, I would have to say I think you have a baseless conspiracy theory on your hand (please understand my bluntness). Terrorist organizations, because of the limited resources at their disposal (both financial and human resources), are far less capable of counter-espionage than the USSR used to be. Considering this, and that the CIA was deemed secretive enough to defend itself against soviet agents, I would think it would not suffer from the public knowing its name nowadays.
It is possible that new (smaller) agencies have been founded as a result of lessons learned in retrospect after 9/11, but I would expect those exist to complement the CIA, the NSA and the FBI, and not in order to replace any of them.

Delta Force and Black Ops - as I understand these are not intelligence organizations but operational branches. I see no reason for them to change significantly. Commando tactics can be highly effective against terrorist infrastructure, if the forces employing them are provided with sufficient preliminary intelligence (which is the big challenge today). I am referring to effectiveness in both securing new intelligence assets, and delivering damage to enemy operational capabilities (again, counter-espionage is less significant in this kind of conflict).

I'm sorry to say I don't know any good sources on the subject I can direct you too. Hope my answer is nevertheless helpful.

Answer 2

The military for several years now has been actively pursuing those with language skills and abilities just for this reason. The Air Force for instance now requires all its officers to take a linguist assessment test and if they show a high aptitude will take them out of their career field and put them in the linguist career field. Also there has been a greater emphasis on teaching Arabic and Farsi than other languages like Russian and Baltic ones because of the geographical scope of operations.

All of your federal law enforcement agencies have been more actively recruiting personnel with language skills and abilities for several years now as well and some even contract out for linguist support as well.

Answer 3

special ops and black ops and delta force have had training in this matter its the same ******* tactics that where used in Vietnam and who do you think trained these *** wipes to do this our own military. duh