Curriculum: Law Enforcement Intelligence

INTV 305 will provide a broad overview of the American intelligence systems - collection, analysis, counterintelligence, and covert operations - and demonstrate how these systems work together to provide a "decision advantage" for policy makers. Students will also learn how US adversaries have shifted away from directly challenging American forces and have moved to a less risky hybrid warfare model to achieve their tactical and strategic goals. Students will use a combination of research and critical thinking exercises to gain an understanding of importance of how intelligence is used to inform the decision-making process as well as how to detect and guard against adversarial information operations designed manipulate information to induce decision makers to act against their own best interests.

Decision-making structures, processes, and outcomes relevant to American security policy; comparison with major foreign powers.

INTV 326 will provide students with an introduction to Intelligence Analysis and how intelligence professionals can incorporate tradecraft, including critical thinking and structured analytical techniques, to challenge judgements, identify mental mindsets, stimulate creativity, and manage uncertainty within the framework of providing sound assessments to decision-makers at the Strategic, Operational and Tactical level of war. Students will leverage scenario-based exercises to practice employing structured analytical techniques and other analytical methodologies in order to answer a decision maker's critical information requirements.

INTV350 will provide students with an overview of the five U.S. Intelligence Community recognized intelligence collection disciplines (Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), Human Intelligence (HUMINT), Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT), Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT), and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)) in order to understand how to employ collection to answer information and intelligence requirements in support of decision-making and situational understanding.  Students will gain insights into the capabilities, limitations and applications of sensors, and discern the functional responsibilities between intelligence analysts, collection managers and decision-makers across the national security enterprise.

INTV 352 will provide students with an introduction to Human Intelligence (HUMINT).  This course examines, defines, and applies HUMINT from a conceptual perspective that provides students with an understanding of HUMINT collection methods and an appreciation for the value of HUMINT as a critical enabler for policymaking in peace-time and war, for national security, and for decision-making across the Strategic, Operational and Tactical levels of war.  Students will use directed readings, scenario-based exercises, and focused discussion to apply critical thinking towards a final research project.

INTV 353 will provide students with an introduction to GEOINT operations and how intelligence professionals can incorporate tradecraft and technology to present visual depictions of critical information regarding enemy forces, terrain, and provide combat operations support to decision makers and operations planners. This course studies the electromagnetic spectrum and fundamentals of energy propagation as they pertain to GEOINT systems and phenomenology. Students will be introduced to the tasking, collection, and processing of GEOINT systems and data and GEOINT contributions to National Security, Homeland Security, and Strategic Partnerships. This fundamental knowledge may be applied to a diverse range of constantly evolving GEOINT situations including support to disaster relief, force protection, and combat operations.

This course introduces the student to the application of counterintelligence in law enforcement, operational intelligence, and information operations fields, including the legal, moral, and ethical considerations of using counterintelligence concepts. Students will then synthesize their learning in creating an unclassified counterintelligence solution to a real-world situation, using the concepts taught in this course.

This course is an introduction to the capabilities and uses of psychological operations.  Students will examine psychological operations capabilities, limitations, history, and challenges. As part of their learning experience, students will establish when psychological operations are appropriate, how to know when they have become the target of an effort to manipulate their behavior and how to mitigate its effects, and plan a psychological operation against a notional target.

INTV 400 will provide students with an introduction to counter-drug operations focusing on intelligence support to law enforcement operations, including tactical and operational policing, targeting, drug interdiction, and evidence collection for investigations and criminal proceedings within the U.S. criminal justice system.  Students will also gain insights into international counter-drug operations within the auspices of U.S. national security and the rule of law, examining counter-drug operations from a civilian and military lens. This course provides students a unique opportunity to explore the complex world of transnational and national drug operations, and the interagency work involved to attack drug operations networks and illicit financial networks that are the primary financial vehicle for many of the world's criminal and adversary organizations.

INTV 401 is designed to provide Intelligence and Information Operations students with an opportunity to explore the integration of intelligence-led policing with community-based policing and problem-oriented policing. Focus will be placed on educating students on the process of developing raw information into actionable intelligence, thereby allowing field officers to be more effective during routine law enforcement functions. Students will also learn the intelligence principles that exist within the daily operations of law enforcement.

INTV 403 will leverage intelligence analysis processes to support law enforcement entities in domestic and foreign operations against individual criminals and criminal/terrorist organizations.  Students will be provided an introduction to law enforcement crime scene investigation, focusing on the standards and legal considerations for collecting, processing, and exploiting evidence competently, efficiently and effectively to support criminal investigations and law enforcement.  Subsequently, given the ubiquity of digital devices and information systems, the course will also provide students technical skills to apply basic digital forensic techniques that would provide permissible evidence in a court of law.

INTV 410 will provide students with an in-depth look into the space domain from a national security and intelligence analysis, planning and operations perspective, including assessing space capabilities, limitations, and vulnerabilities, and exploiting the space domain for optimizing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (collection operations).  This course will provide students an understanding of the opportunities, risks, and direct threats that exist in the space domain, and the implications for decision-making across the Strategic, Operational and Tactical level of war.  Students will leverage scenario-based exercises for awareness of the space domain and understanding of the complex threat and risk environment in order to answer a decision maker's critical information requirements.

INTV 427 will provide students an in-depth look at the role and practice of Intelligence in the United States Joint Targeting Cycle. This course builds on fundamental knowledge from previous courses, to include the concepts and methodologies used for Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment (JIPOE) and Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield. Additionally, this course will provide students insights into targeting state and non-state actors in competition and conflict, and integrating Intelligence into lethal and non-lethal strategies to create effects against competing or threat actors across all domains of warfare and competition.

The international state system; legal-political problems, including territory, environment, seas.

This course will survey the many issues surrounding the management and resolution of international and domestic conflicts.

INTV 455 will provide students with an in-depth analysis of the intelligence process; methodologies for evaluating data; threat modeling; and a process to evaluate of the needs of the Intelligence consumer. Students will utilize practical analysis exercises to become familiar with threat modeling, the estimative process, and Intelligence reporting techniques in order to answer a decision maker's critical information requirements.

INTV 459 will provide an in-depth examination of how to optimize the coordination of all available collection capabilities in order to support intelligence operations and the military decision making process. Students will conduct research and engage in practical exercises to determine optimal sensor deployment schemes and sensor-to-target mix in order to address different collection requirements.

Overview of the role of intelligence in the formulation and execution of US national security policy. Will include a detailed look at challenges facing both the analysis of intelligence information and the introduction of that analysis into the national security policy process. Will also entail close reading and discussion of selected declassified intelligence documents.

The course is intended to provide students with a framework for understanding how the United States came to have the intelligence system that it possesses today.  After briefly developing a concept of the basic functions of intelligence (the organized collection and analysis of information and conduct of covert action that support the formulation and execution of US national security policy) the course will look at the evolution of US intelligence activity as it increasingly embodied those functions.  The largely chronological approach will begin with early intelligence organization during the Revolutionary War, then proceed through halting developmental steps during the 19th and early 20th centuries.  It will finally look at the major organizational expansion of intelligence activity from the 1940s onward.  An overarching theme will be the linkage between the growth of intelligence organizations and the growing need for information by US policymakers increasingly involved in the international environment.  Each class meeting will include lecture and discussion.  Particularly in covering 20th century developments, the course will involve reading of declassified intelligence documents.

This course is intended to familiarize students with the basic purposes and nature of US covert action and to help them understand its historical development. More fundamentally, the course will seek to illustrate both covert actions' potential utility and its inherent limitations and challenges; challenges that in some respects have intensified with the rise of non-state actors, the information revolution, and other aspects of the post-Cold War environment. Finally, the course will draw implications for the role of covert action against current national security challenges, especially global terror networks.

An introduction to theories of international relations as applied to the study of terrorism, including an examination of major discourses on the conduct of state systems, the foundations of modern terrorism and associated evolution of ideology, tactics, and strategies; and evaluation of terrorist ideologies and how that evaluation can develop a framework for critical analysis.

This course provides students with opportunities for specialized work on an individual basis, consisting of training and practice in actual service in a technical, business, or governmental establishment.

INTV 496's content and scope of work will vary depending on the selected special topic. Because the issues within the fields of operational intelligence, law enforcement intelligence, and information warfare move at such a fast pace, this course will examine timely and relevant topics that impact support to federal, state, and local decision makers. Students will be expected to participate in frequent activities based on weekly readings and lectures; writing assignments and practical exercises; knowledge and performance based assessments, and other activities as assigned.

INTV 498 is designed to provide Intelligence & Information Operations majors with a capstone experience emphasizing integration of knowledge acquired in previous courses. The course provides a culminating experience for majors involving a substantive project that demonstrates a synthesis of learning accumulated in the major, including broadly comprehensive knowledge of the discipline and its methodologies. Students are required to incorporate a field research study into their research project. This is a self-directed course in which students develop and produce a senior-level research paper grounded in relevant research.