Aurora Borealis/Australis?
What is a Stringer? – Definition explained in Intelligence
Israel Archuletta
The best example I have seen of a stringer put to practical use is in Robert Baer’s See No Evil. As a clandestine operations officer in the CIA posted serving in Beirut, Lebanon, Robert Baer as a westerner could not readily gain access to information he needed in infiltrating Lebanon’s most notorious terrorist organizations. Baer explains in the book that in such situations, the CIA uses what he calls “access agents – those who don’t know secrets themselves but can access people who do” (Baer, 2002. pg 111). I see the term access agent and stringer as nearly interchangeable.
Baer’s stringer was a freelance journalist with contacts all over Lebanon. The most critical aspect of this stringer’s abilities was to travel across invisible lines separating neighborhoods run by rivaling groups of terrorists. Bear used his stringer in Beirut to collect public records of individuals he was targeting. This access agent was able to provide him with valuable information which could not be obtained through normal collection or surveillance methods. The journalist provided Baer with “stacks of civil registration documents, political membership lists, old newspaper articles, photos,” (Baer, 2002. pg 112) and other personal information. The journalist was paid for his information depending on its value.
Putting this hard to find information together helped Baer piece together intelligence on who was conducting the major bombings and kidnappings of westerner’s in Beirut throughout the 1980’s. Bear states that his stringer helped solve a terrorist case; the stringer himself had sources that could identify individuals’ involved terrorist acts. These access agents (or stringers) are vital to helping intelligence operatives piece together information that would other wise be impossible to collect and analyze