Bachelor of Arts in Intelligence Studies

RECOMMENDED AS FIRST PROGRAM COURSE. REQUIRED AS ONE OF FIRST THREE PROGRAM COURSES. Explores basic deductive research procedures required in the conduct of qualitative case studies. Topics covered include development of research questions, literature reviews, research designs, and data collection methods. Qualitative case study analysis methods are also taught. This is a writing intensive course that requires a sound understanding of written communications. Students enrolling in this course should already be familiar with proper citations and documentation, grammar and syntax, and organizing their writing.

RECOMMENDED AS SECOND PROGRAM COURSE. This course surveys the U.S. Intelligence Community, with an emphasis on its current structure. Students review the members of the community and distinguish their key roles and missions. Students also assess the impact of the post-9/11 restructuring of the intelligence community.

RECOMMENDED AS THIRD PROGRAM COURSE. Explores the history of the development of the U.S. intelligence community and an assessment of its successes and failures in covert action, intelligence collection, and intelligence analysis activities from the American Revolution to today.

This course differentiates the basic elements of intelligence -- collection, analysis, dissemination, counterintelligence, and covert action -- through an understanding of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) as well as through a review of past historical events in which intelligence has played a key role. Students will examine the difference between intelligence and information and extrapolate the various steps of the intelligence cycle, as well as their purpose. Students will review the “lessons learned” that have come out of U. S. intelligence successes and failures and specify the role of the Department of Homeland Security and resulting changes to the IC.

A multidisciplinary survey of Imagery Intelligence (IMINT), Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), Human Intelligence (HUMINT), and Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT) is conducted. The background, capabilities, and limitations of each intelligence collection method are covered. The course focuses on planning activities which provide an integrated approach to intelligence collection.

Students comprehend the difficult legal and ethical issues in the intelligence community. The course examines the legal foundations and oversight mechanisms for the U.S. intelligence community. It also explores the major ethical problems confronting the intelligence profession.

Provides instruction in critical thinking and analysis skills meant to overcome cultural and psychological biases that can impact the objectivity of intelligence analysis and decision-making. Human information processing and problem solving are discussed from a psychological perspective, as well as psychological factors influencing the information processing of the individual analyst. Then critical thinking and analysis skills are covered, to include analysis of competing hypotheses, matrix analyses, decision/event trees, weighted rankings, and utility analysis, which are designed to improve the objectivity of intelligence analysis and decision making. (Prerequisite: INTL300).

Pre Reqs: Research Methods in Intelligence Studies(INTL300),Research, Analysis, and Writing(COLL300)

Describes the historical evolution of the U.S. national intelligence estimates (NIEs) from World War II to today. Covers selection of advanced qualitative analysis and modeling techniques for real world problems. Students learn to apply basic trend analysis techniques and forecasting methods such as alternative scenarios/futures, the Delphi technique, and the Lockwood Analytical Method for Prediction (LAMP). (Prerequisite: INTL300).

Pre Reqs: Research Methods in Intelligence Studies(INTL300),Research, Analysis, and Writing(COLL300)

This course introduces the student to the relationships between intelligence and homeland security strategy. The course utilizes a historical case study approach, analyzing both past and contemporary national security issues from an intelligence perspective to highlight the increasingly important role intelligence has played and will play in the homeland security strategy process. The course presents the evolving relationship between intelligence and homeland security strategy during the 20th century, with particular emphasis on the Cold War because of the lessons to be learned from that period.

This course provides students with an introduction to counterintelligence operations and techniques. Students will study passive and active counterintelligence measures, principles and processes of counterintelligence operations, its relationship to covert action, and the legal and ethical issues involved. Through a series of practical exercises, students will develop a sound knowledge of the practice of counterintelligence.

This course provides students with an introduction to foreign counterintelligence analysis. Students will learn and apply aspects of counterintelligence basic principles, concepts, missions, and functions. Students will be instructed in the analytical process, denial and deception identification, analytical techniques, threat profiling procedures, and analytical tools and databases.

Students in this course study and analyze Counterintelligence focusing on both U.S. and foreign counterintelligence, including the evolution of counterintelligence, perspectives on covert action since World War II, principles of covert action and deception, and assessments of successes and failures of counterintelligence. The student will be required to study a range of books and articles on this topic and will develop a comprehensive knowledge of counterintelligence, how intelligence agencies in the United States use counterintelligence and covert action to guard U.S. global interests and protect U.S. national security from adversaries. In addition, students will study how counterintelligence is collected and how modernization and technology affect these weapons of war.

This course differentiates the historical and contemporary patterns, modus operandi, capabilities, and vulnerabilities of organized crime organizations. Course content includes a review of the contemporary literature of South American, Mexican, Asian, European, & African criminal enterprises, traditional organized crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and transnational criminal enterprises.

This course studies the history of intelligence and espionage and reviews ancient espionage techniques, profiles famous agents throughout history, and focuses on such intelligence issues as SIGINT and HUMINT. The bulk of the course concentrates on 20th century intelligence, assessing changes in intelligence collection and priorities and analyzing how technological changes have affected intelligence collection.

This course will be an overview of Denial and Deception possibilities. It will review the history, concepts, and implications of Denial and Deception on national security decision making. It will also discuss foreign and domestic case studies, tradecraft, and the different methodologies associated with this form of intelligence training.

IS420 examines Intelligence & Assassination. The course evaluates intelligence in general, two major Intelligence Services, and a diverse range of so called ‘black operations’ case studies in the context of national security, economic and corporate interests, which have culminated in the ultimate sanction – assassination. The course then moves on to examine the most prolific and persistent form of assassination – that of sustained death squad activity, with case studies of: Germany (Weimar Republic), Spain, Punjab, Kashmir, Argentina, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Uganda, Northern Ireland, Indonesia, East Timor, Philippines, Brazil, South Africa and Serbia.

Investigates the history of covert action as a policy option for governments. Covert actions are those in which an operation may become known to the enemy or the world, but the responsible parties cannot be traced or proven. Current U.S. intelligence community and Special Forces capabilities and limitations for covert action are also covered.

The study of spies and their tradecraft. Through factual and fictional works the student will explore the geopolitical, ethical, constitutional, and bureaucratic implications of spycraft.

Examines the location, analysis of terrain, climate, natural resources, boundaries, transportation, communications, economic activities, and demographics of various nations and areas of the world.

This course examines Signals Intelligence also known by the acronym SIGINT. It covers the various methods and modes of collection, analysis and use of strategic and operational level communications (COMINT) and electronics (ELINT) intelligence. The course also reviews the security means available to protect friendly communications (COMSEC) and electronic emissions countermeasures (EECM).

This course demonstrates how various unclassified materials can be gathered to produce meaningful intelligence. Sample sources include: news services, databases, government documents, newspapers, journals, magazines, yearbooks and surveys, radio and TV sources, short-wave broadcasts, Internet, indexes, materials from various organizations, and country studies.

Introductory course that will define and examine Human Source Intelligence, commonly termed HUMINT, and place it in context with the other primary collection forms: signals and imagery.

This is a fundamental course to provide the student with the tools to develop an understanding of interrogation and practical interrogation skill. The course will focus on the interrogator and the subjects of interrogation. Specific issues of the course include behavioral, verbal, environmental, and legal aspects of interrogation.

Explores the capabilities and limitations of imagery intelligence collection platforms, the processing and interpretation of the imagery product, and the contributions of imagery intelligence to the all source intelligence effort. Students also learn the resources, bureaucracies, and processes associated with the U.S. government imagery system.

Improved capabilities of PC-based analytic programs make quantitative research designs increasingly important in intelligence research. Using an applied approach, this course covers the procedures for testing hypotheses using quantitative methods. Descriptive statistical analysis procedures are also taught. Students must have access to MS Excel.(Prerequisite: INTL300).

Pre Reqs: Research Methods in Intelligence Studies(INTL300),Research, Analysis, and Writing(COLL300)

The rapid increase in multinational analysis and transnational organized crime, corporate drug trafficking organizations, and the impact of crime on national and international policy has created a critical need for law enforcement intelligence experts in the relatively new field of criminal intelligence. The course provides the student with an introduction to the methods and techniques of criminal intelligence analysis and strategic organized crime. It will demonstrate how to predict trends, weaknesses, capabilities, intentions, changes, and warnings needed to dismantle criminal organizations. Law enforcement professionals at the federal, state, and local level, criminal intelligence analysts working in private industry, and military intelligence personnel making a transition from a military to a law enforcement career will benefit from this course. Students will be introduced to techniques such as association and link analysis, visual investigative analysis (VIA), telephone toll analysis, matrix analysis, reporting and application to violent crime, and organized crime to include drug, white collar, and money laundering. This course emphasizes criminal intelligence as opposed to criminal investigation.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) contain a powerful set of tools for data acquisition, management, query and display. This course will provide students first with a substantial foundation in the history of cartography and mapmaking. The second major emphasis of this course will merge both theoretical and historical information with hands-on practical training utilizing the basic tools provided with the GIS software. Students will become familiar with the importance of metadata, editing and updating metadata and how this is important to the success or failure of the dataset as a whole.(Prerequisite: INTL300).

Pre Reqs: Research Methods in Intelligence Studies(INTL300)

Using the ArcGIS software, students will be taught how to manipulate datasets based on complex queries in several advanced platforms within the GIS environment including geospatial analyses, creating basic models, interpolation among multiple data points, and advanced data table editing and creation. Students will learn methodologies for determining the presence or absence of patterns and identify associations among different data layers. Additionally, students will be taught to examine cases where GIS could have been used but was not, and postulate how this system could have improved analysis within each case. This course will focus on vector data analysis techniques only. (Prerequisite: IS418 Geographic Information Systems I. (Prerequisite: INTL432).

Pre Reqs: Geographic Information Systems I(INTL432)

With states as the level of analysis, this course examines their political, economic, and social condition which allows an understanding of threats to the state and their vulnerabilities. Analytic procedures to assess a state’s military capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of their political and economic systems, and challenges presented by their social systems are included. This course is a prerequisite to any of the intelligence studies country analysis courses.

The student will explore computer information warfare and its military applications. The course will review the role of computers and the Internet in training cyber warriors – both civilian and military – for future cyber warfare. Students will develop offensive strategies and applications of cyber warfare. Students will assess and evaluate different methodologies to bring about the desired impacts on the opponent as well as U.S. critical infrastructure protection from rogue nations and network-centric terrorist groups.

Examines the current structures, functions, capabilities, and contributions of U.S. military forces and decision-makers as primary consumers of national intelligence, to include the US executive branch, military services, and joint/unified commands. U.S. joint operational planning procedures are also covered as students are introduced to the Joint Strategic Planning System and Joint Operational Planning and Execution System.

During this course, students apply tactical intelligence theory and practice in support of ground operations. The impact of terrain and weather on tactics, employment of multi-discipline intelligence collections (imagery, signal intelligence, human intelligence, etc.), and principles of tactical intelligence analysis form the core of the course. Students also develop an appreciation for the limits of process in applying the art of intelligence to deal with tactical problems.

This course compares the history and methods of foreign intelligence organizations which have played (and continue to play) a significant role in U.S. strategic intelligence, foreign policy, and national security strategy planning. The student will become familiar with their methods for conducting intelligence and counterintelligence in both the political and military realms, with the objective of discovering the similarities and differences among them, and also for evaluating their overall relative effectiveness.

This course is a comparative investigation of how intelligence supported U.S. national security policy during times of crisis and how the crises impacted on the intelligence community. The first part of the course focuses on the Cuban Missile Crisis and the role intelligence played in the outcome. Students will compare and contrast intelligence support to the Cuban Missile Crisis with another foreign policy crisis. The second part of the course focuses on the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations for reforming the intelligence community in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Students will compare and contrast the 9/11 Recommendations with the Intelligence Reform act passed by Congress.

This course will focus on a variety of aspects related to the U.S. war on drugs, including historical perspectives on counter-narcotics, U.S. policy and strategy, regional overviews, and intergovernmental relationships and liaisons with various agencies. The student will compare and contrast foreign views on counter narcotics with U.S. perspectives, will study the issues of foreign market analysis on narcotics, discuss the pros and cons of the war on drugs, and will also review the connection between the war on drugs and the war on terrorism. During the course, the student will develop a comprehensive understanding of how the U.S. views the war on drugs, how various policies affect outcomes of the war on drugs, strengths and weaknesses in policy and strategies, regional issues of counter-narcotics, and alternative solutions to the war on drugs.

This course examines terrorism as a social and political instrument from past to present. Topics include Latin American influences on terrorism, origins of Middle Eastern terrorism, Osama Bin Laden & Al Qaeda, U.S. domestic terrorism issues, counter terrorism, homeland security, national & domestic intelligence resources against terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and future issues on terrorism.

This course assesses the impact of terrorism on U.S. national security. It focuses on a variety of aspects related to U.S. policy on terrorism, the threat of terrorism to U.S. national security, and the problems inherent to U.S. counterterrorism. The student will develop a comprehensive understanding of how the U.S. views terrorism, how various policies affect outcomes of counterterrorism, strengths and weaknesses in policy and strategies, threats to U.S. national security, and suggestions for solutions to these threats.

Modern criminal business, to include drug trafficking, trafficking in people or weapons, gold and precious gem smuggling, and even terrorism are reliant on how such activities are funded. Without some form of funding, illicit actors and illicit behaviors would have difficulty existing. This course will explore the shadowy world of illicit finance, from money laundering to Hawalas, to fraud, trade, and corruption used to fund illicit actions.

This course examines the processes involved in forecasting terrorism. The syllabus examines terrorism in general, actual and planned cases of chemical and biological weapons, and improvised weapons of mass destruction. It continues by differentiating the varying magnitudes of threat and effect of nuclear, radiological, biological, chemical and high explosive weapons, and analyzes terrorist precedent, strategy & psychology, from which terrorism forecasts and counter-terrorism activities are generated. It moves on to examine traditional and newer methods of forecasting terrorism: Intuition-based; profiling; conflict vulnerability analysis & prognosis (early warning); Atypical Signal Analysis & Processing (ASAP), and the Khalsa systematic Indications & Warning (I&W) methodology. It concludes with a brief overview of less conventional and known Military & Intelligence forecasting programs such as AMP (Anomalous Mental Phenomena): Remote Viewing and Psycho-kinesis (electron movement).

Students analyze the evolving and eclectic modern Chinese state. They review the development of the state during the Republican Era and evolution in the Republic of China as well as during the Maoist and post-Mao eras. Students assess the Chinese military expansion, its communist economic state, and its future potential and the likelihood of collapse. (Prerequisite: INTL434).

Pre Reqs: Threat Analysis(INTL434)

Explores the development of the future Iraqi state. Students first study Iraqi history through the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein. The role of ethnic and religious rivalries is covered in-depth. Post-2003 stability and development activities are also investigated. (Prerequisite: INTL434).

Pre Reqs: Threat Analysis(INTL434)

Students investigate the growing role of Iran as a Middle East Power. A study of Iranian history through the 1979 Revolution is conducted. An in-depth analysis of post-revolution development is then made to determine Iran’s military, economic, and social strengths and weaknesses. A central focus is on the development of Iran’s nuclear programs. (Prerequisite: INTL434).

Pre Reqs: Threat Analysis(INTL434)

Addresses the issues in and around the Korean Peninsula. Students make an in-depth examination of key differences between North and South Korea and their neighbors. This will be accomplished by examining historical, sociological, economic, geographic, political, and defense factors as they relate to current issues important to the Korean peninsula today. (Prerequisite: INTL434).

Pre Reqs: Threat Analysis(INTL434)

This course is an introduction to terrorist cults and personalities. Studies focus on a variety of aspects related to terrorist organizations and individuals. Course content will cover a variety of aspects related to terrorist organizations and individuals, including Osama bin Laden, Sinn Fein, and Hizballah.

This course is designed to provide a solid foundation for undergraduate study in the online environment. Students will be introduced to learning theory, the tools available in the online classroom and campus, and online research. Identification of personal learning style allows students to improve their study/learning techniques and prepares them to succeed in college level courses. Students will be introduced to formatting and citation styles. APUS policy and procedure is addressed. There is an emphasis on written communication to assist students in the transition to the online environment.

The Senior Seminar in Intelligence Studies is required for all majors. This capstone experience for Intelligence Studies majors will review and integrate their academic coursework, strengthen their understanding of intelligence research methodologies, and relate their academic preparation to their post graduation goals. Students will conduct original research and present their findings to the class in written and e-portfolio formats. Student must have SENIOR standing to register.