Is recruiting CIA agents an effective way to obtain foreign government secrets?
Recruiting foreign agents is an effective but not flawless way to obtain foreign government secrets. It’s all part of what we call ‘human intelligence’. You’re recruiting a human to give you information, and it goes without saying that sometimes that person might lie, sometimes they might exagerate, sometimes they might have their own interests at heart or the interests of their own government, so while it’s an effective way to get information it’s not always fool proof, it’s not always an effective way to get really valid information, and we end up with a lot of intelligence that doesn’t have a value because we might be relying on someone who’s reliable in and of itself.
