Talk:Covert cell

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Just as a case study, the only successful (as far as I am aware) Saddam-era Iraqi covert cell was called "al-Nahdah" - The Awakening - and was founded in 1991. They studied how left-wing Latin American groups survived under repression by military dictatorships and modeled themselves accordingly. They organized themselves into hermetically sealed cells in order to survive any arrests-and the inevitable torture. It had so-called "dead cells," which were inactive until needed to replace those that were eliminated.

Their primary success was an assassination attempt on Saddam's son Uday in December 1996. While they failed to kill him, he was grieviously wounded, and the covert cell "proved that the Iraqi people could still act after the crushing of the uprising in 1991". The attackers escaped "undetected and unscathed" to Iran. - Out of the Ashes - The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein by Andrew Cockburn & Patrick Cockburn, Perennial, 1999.

[edit] Proposed merger with Clandestine HUMINT Operational Techniques draft

Now that page is up, I propose merging this material with Clandestine HUMINT Operational Techniques, of which the cell system is a key part. Do note there is also a Clandestine HUMINT page that I wrote, but perhaps should be renamed "operational techniques for clandestine HUMINT", just to improve the searching. Since the material here is not sourced, and is relatively short, I propose to include it in the draft new article, but not to redirect or merge without consensus, presumably in the Military History Project.

Please look at the drawings in the new article, both of the basic Western cell structure and how a cell network develops, and the different structure used by al-QaedaHoward C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, and please also look at Sleeper Cell. At this point it's a single sentence. I tried to get it redirected to this article a few months ago and was voted down, but you might have more luck. Dchall1 (talk) 14:45, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Sleeper, as a concept, runs through the Clandestine HUMINT and Clandestine HUMINT operational techniques pages. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps I will have better luck by presenting it in the context of a larger article -- I hope. Even if this article were not merged, clandestine cell would be more accurate than covert cell. Some of the operations being cited as using it, such as the French Resistance, clearly were covert rather than clandestine -- the Germans, after all, knew they were being attacked by an underground.

Within the intelligence community, covert and clandestine are not synonymous. The adversary is aware that a covert activity is happening, but does not know who is doing it, and certainly not their sponsorship. Clandestine activities, however, if successful, are completely unknown to the adversary, and their function, such as espionage, would be neutralized if there was any awareness of the activity.

"sleeper cell" is a somewhat special case, if, for example, it is clandestine until activated, as with a sabotage or terror unit. Still, there can be cells (or singleton agents) who are both clandestine and sleeper. While most WWII UK espionage agents sent to the UK were almost immediately caught and neutralized, a few, who infiltrated an area long ahead of time, and set up a clock repair shop or something else innocent that was also near a naval base, were only activated when there was a specific operational requirement. Sleepers also can be there for support services, such as emergency escape routes, backup communications, etc. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 17:53, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

I haven't changed any pointers, although I started with some of this material in clandestine HUMINT operational techniques. There are several new drawings, and a good deal more text, including how al-Qaeda cell structures seem to differ from other types. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:22, 21 November 2007 (UTC)