Asset

Asset  (Spycraft)
A resource by means of which intelligence is gathered; but also a person through whom things are getting done.

An asset (or intelligence asset) can be a person within an organization or country, who provides information to an outside party; a HUMINT source.

It can also be used to describe journalists who receive their manuscripts, or work orders, from intelligence agencies.

General definition for intelligence gathering

An asset can be: "any thing designed, developed, cultivated or utilized to collect [the] information [which is] required." The asset is what is used to get the information.

Politicians as assets

Jeff Gates expresses the view that: "An asset is someone who has been profiled in sufficient depth, that if you put them in a time place and circumstance, you know within an acceptable range of probabilities, that they will perform consistent with their personality profile." By extension of that thought an asset is a person in a position of influence, in politics or other areas, where he/she accomplishes things on behalf of a third party, knowingly or unknowingly.

Adolf Hitler was profiled from the US side as early as 1922 by military attache Truman Smith to: "form an estimate of his character, personality, abilities, and weaknesses."

 

Examples

Page name	Description
Gannett/Assets	The assets of Gannett, the mass media corporation.
Eric Johnston
Matsutarō Shōriki	Japanese media mogul and politician. Investigated for war crimes and imprisoned in the same cell as yakuza boss Yoshio Kodama, his friend Ryōichi Sasakawa, a preeminent fascist political fixer, and Nobusuke Kishi, the future key man of the Liberal Democratic Party, Shoriki was released without trial in 1947, and not long after began his covert career as an informant and propaganda agent for the CIA.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Manuel Noriega	“He was a pawn in an international game that was way bigger than him and he certainly paid dearly," said Barbara Trent, a filmmaker who directed "The Panama Deception," a 1992 documentary about the U.S. invasion. "He was a small-time player catapulted to international fame by the U.S. government and the media to drum up support for a ruthless invasion," Trent added. Working with the CIA Noriega ruled Panama from 1983 to 1989. Before and during that time, he worked with multiple U.S. intelligence agencies who agreed to ignore allegations that he was a drug trafficker in exchange for a staunch anti-communist ally in Central America during the height of the Cold War. Noriega was paid handsomely for his help, about $10,000 per month at one point, according to John Dinges, author of "Our Man in Panama: How General Noriega Used the United States and Made Millions in Drugs and Arms (1990)." "The relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon was quite intense in the early '80s," Dinges told ABC News. "He was considered an important asset, and everyone in the documents I've read spoke very highly of him. He was trusted to the extent that you trust someone who is a paid intelligence asset.”	Manuel Noriega ABC News Kaelyn Forde	2017
Monte Overacre	“Monte Overacre's most important job was recruiting overseas spies. He worked on the campus of a university (though he carefully guarded the identity of the university) in the San Diego area, where he managed a team posing as telecommunications academics, recruiting visiting foreign technology experts to spy for the U.S. back in their home countries-from South America to Europe, Africa to Asia-to keep the agency on top of new technological innovations. Under the guise of running a series of seminars on telecommunications, Overacre and his MXSCOPE team would invite scientists, engineers, and government and corporate officials from all over the world to come to San Diego. Once there, unwitting attendees would be scoped out by Overacre, evaluated, and targeted for recruitment as potential CIA agents, or "assets," after they returned to their home countries. The recruitment efforts were typically unsavory. "The old methods work even with the nerds, sometimes even better," he wrote. "Trips to massage parlors, strip clubs, wild bars with aggressive white women, etc., make these guys come unglued, just like any truck driver. Once you have gotten a guy laid and paid the bill for him, you have a friend for life. Eventually, the recruits would probably be handled by a CIA case officer working out of the U.S. embassy or, more frequently, operating under nonofficial cover, posing as an American businessman. By then, the new agents likely would be on the CIA’s payroll.”	Mother Jones Monte Overacre Robert Dreyfuss	1998

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