Lesson 5, Inset 2: On Information vs Intelligence

 Transcription de la vidéo

There are two really important examples of information management. One is this relationship between information and intelligence. At all times, a UN-CIMIC officer is a CIMIC officer. Now, we all understand that intelligence operations derive a lot of their information that they later make into intelligence through activities like CIMIC, for very obvious reasons. But that doesn’t mean that a CIMIC officer is an intelligence operator. Not in any way, shape, or form ever is a CIMIC officer an intelligence operator. You keep those things separate. They’re related, but they’re separate. So, that’s really important. There are a couple of reasons for that, by the way. One is, of course, that you have to make sure that the integrity of your mission as a CIMIC officer working among and between all these different actors, particularly civilians, is never compromised. That’s the important thing. But, in more serious situations, when the environment is less than permissive, mingling or co-mingling CIMIC operations with intelligence operations could have certain force protection implications. You could get people hurt – or, even worse, killed – to include soldiers and civilians if you’re carelessly mixing those two things. So, remember to keep those things separate, and very, very discreetly so.