WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- The country's new National Clandestine Service will standardize tradecraft in the U.S. intelligence community.
In one of the most significant reorganizations of the CIA in its history, the Directorate of Operations, which is charged with recruiting spies, will be merged into the new, larger NCS, which will run the CIA's recruiting missions and assess human intelligence operations at other agencies, including the FBI and the Pentagon, U.S. News and World Report said.
"The change is aimed more at standardizing things like training and tradecraft across the CIA, FBI, and the Pentagon. This should allow operatives from different agencies to work together overseas more closely in the future," a senior intelligence official told the news magazine. "We want everyone to sing off the same tradecraft hymnbook."
Officials also want to ensure that intelligence reports use the same language so they can be interpreted accurately by policymakers, the magazine said. The new office will also work to avoid the problems of source credibility that plagued pre-war Iraq intelligence, U.S. News and World Report said.
The new NCS chief would be charged with creating standards for how the credibility of each potential informant or spy would be judged, it said.
