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(S) Embedded with USSOCOM: NSA Reps Provide Direct Analytic
Support
FROM:
NCR SOCOM Technical Rep in USSOCOM's Center for Special Operations (F1T)
Run Date: 01/09/2006
(TS//SI) Geospatial exploitation techniques are particularly useful in tracking terrorists.
(U//FOUO) The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) is fully engaged in the
Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). According the GEN Brown, Commander USSOCOM, "The
asymmetric nature of this war and diversity of the enemy require our nation to employ an
exceptionally skilled, highly responsive, and adaptive force. These hallmarks of Special
Operations Forces (SOF) are why USSOCOM is assigned a leading role in our nation's fight."
Today's battlefield is not defined by geography, sovereignty, or sophisticated weaponry. Rather,
it is an ill-defined battlefield of regional and global networks that terrorists exploit to further
their beliefs... and NSA's support to USSOCOM is adapted to this fluid environment.
(TS//SI) NSA has several representatives embedded throughout USSOCOM and the SOCOM
Center for Special Operations (SCSO). NSA reps support their customers through a variety of
venues, including direct analytic support to the USSOCOM analysts and planners. This
analytic support runs the whole gamut of NSA's capabilities, to include passive and active
exploitation, telephony, and DNI support. To be effective, the NSA reps must be trained in the
GeoCell mission and possess an overall knowledge of the NSA SIGINT system.
(TS//SI) While traditional contact-chaining techniques continue to serve as a powerful
developmental tool, a purely geospatially based approach to target development can be even
more significant. Using powerful geographic information systems tools like ArcView, a
geospatially oriented approach can be particularly effective at finding things such as
safe houses, ingress/egress "ratlines," meeting sites or hide sites, suspect sites, or
VIP facilities. These techniques have also allowed analysts to locate and track al-Qa'ida
associates and discover a vast and disperse network of Iranian agents in Iraq serving the
Iranian Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) or the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
(TS//SI) The NSA analytic team at USSOCOM uses geospatial exploitation techniques to track
terrorists as they transition from communications mode to communications mode, and provides
this data to USSOCOM analysts and customers in a timely manner. Geolocational exploitation
directly supports active operations planning -- operations to find certain people and physically
target them, operations to find a way to make contact and recruit or capture them, or operations
in which law enforcement takes action to deter a crime.
(U//FOUO) Forces assigned to USSOCOM are tactically and strategically engaged in this war,
whether on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, or as planners looking at the next potential
area of conflict. NSA analysts are supporting this effort as well, either as expeditionary
SIGINTers, or as support to planners at SOCOM HQS. Both jobs are vital to success and fulfill
the NSA mission of supporting the warfighter.
"(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet
without the consent of S0121 (DL sid_comms)."
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DERIVED FROM: NSA/CSSM 1-52, DATED 08 JAN 2007 DECLASSIFY ON: 20320108