The purpose of an offensive counterintelligence operation is not criminal prosecution, which would be the goal if the target were an American recruited by a foreign power to be an agent in this country. In such an investigation, DIA officers would work with the FBI to gather evidence for use in an indictment and a trial.
In strategic offensive counterintelligence operations, a foreign intelligence officer is the target, and the main goals most often are "to gather information, to make something happen . . . to thwart what the opposition is trying to do to us and to learn more about what they're trying to get from us," Sullivan said. In the case of terrorists, the object would be to identify people who might be "trying to do harm, collect information about us, and keep them from doing that."
With foreign intelligence officers, the end could be having them declared persona non grata and thrown out of the country. "There have been situations where . . . the embassy has been asked to remove the diplomat from the country in the past," Sullivan said.
But other operations have run so smoothly that the targeted foreign intelligence officer did not know he had been discovered, or even that he had been manipulated by having been fed false information to send back to superiors. "Depending on the nature of the operation," Sullivan said, "the guy could finish his or her job in the U.S. and be allowed to go wherever they're going."
Two years ago, the DIA asked then-Undersecretary of Defense Stephen A. Cambone for authority to run offensive operations along with a newer Pentagon intelligence agency, the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA). Cambone agreed to a two-year trial, during which those involved "performed admirably," according to Sullivan. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently approved the merger of CIFA into the new DIA center.