Forensics

"Identity Intel Ops" Turn US Special Operators Into Combat Detectives

When you hear a report about an American counter-terrorism operation, especially one that results in the death or capture of some apparently notable militant in a hot spot around the world, you’ll often hear about how important intelligence was in tracking them down. What you won’t hear much about is exactly what this “intelligence driven” process necessarily entails in any detail. The War Zone has now obtained a document through the Freedom of Information Act that gives a more in depth look at how U.S. special operators are becoming combat detectives, gathering vacuuming up forensic details during missions that could lead them to their next target.

Though it’s just one piece of the intelligence puzzle, so-called “identity intelligence,” or I2, has become an essential part of the action cycle, which broadly involves gathering information, tracking individual terrorists, neutralizing them, and then repeating the process with any new data obtained during those raids. U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has codified these concepts what it officially calls Directive 525-40, Identity Intelligence. Thanks to the FOIA, we received what appears to be the most recent edition of this document, which is dated April 7, 2017. This replaced a previous version the Pentagon’s top special operations command had published four years earlier.