by Timothy Aines

Created on: January 13, 2009   Last Updated: March 18, 2010

America needs as many good spies as it can get.  Badly.  Unfortunately, the atrophied state of American spying reflects the same level of sloth and cowardice that our foreign policy does. We want simple, clean and inoffensive foreign policy that doesn't get anyone killed. Taking political and physical risks are out. Because human spies can also wind up being a tad offensive and getting killed, our policy for human spies tracks our foreign policy.  

The current level of politically acceptable thinking about international spying in the U.S. Government can best be summed up as "hey, we have great technology, so let's do that instead." So, in order to understand exactly why we need more human spies, you need to understand just how they currently fit into the national intelligence collection apparatus.

A whopping 80% of the intelligence "take" gathered by every intelligence agency in the government is merely plucked from the airwaves. It simply doesn't get any cleaner than that. You put up an antenna targeted to your source of choice; whether it is a terrorist cell phone, telemetry from a bad guy rocket, or dropping in on the enemy armored division command post. There are so many things the government can electronically do in this area that are so highly classified, and so successful, that many of the conflict-avoiders in the U.S. Government think this is all we really need these days. After all, they argue, antennas don't get captured and tortured.  

15% of the rest of the take from the national intelligence vacuum cleaner comes from imagery. In the old days this was balloons and aircraft, but Francis Gary Powers put an end to that era after he was shot down in a U-2 spy plane in 1960. This single event, more than any other, freaked out the U.S. Government to its very core, a reverberation that lasts to this day. After all, how often does a U.S. President have to embarrassingly go in front of the world and say, "Yes, he's our spy, can we have him back please?" - as Eisenhower did. Ever since then, spy planes are mostly phased out and imaging satellites are in. Imaging comes in many forms, and at all times of day or night. A satellite can be parked over one spot of the earth and rotate with it, and thereby be permanently moored there (geosynchronous), or it can orbit the earth and move around (asynchronous). Like antennas, satellites are wildly popular as well because they also don't

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