[1980s] Background and Parent Unit for Female in 14 Co in the British Armed Forces

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by acrosome

I learned Russian at the Defense Language Institute from 89-90. At the time it was a 48-week immersion basic course, though one of my classmates went immediately into the advanced course. Does the UK have an equivalent?

Originally Posted by dcarson

When a friend of mine went to work for No Such Agency in the 80s he was sent to DLI to learn Russian. He flunked out quickly as expected because his tests when hired had languages as his worst thing. But because they need lots of Russian speakers/readers they were apparently sending everyone when hired just in case they could actually learn languages. After that they put him in a job he actually tested as being good at. So at least some civilian agencies also use(ed) it.

I absolutely do not need to know details of you or your friend's application process, security clearance, work field or anything else that might be bound by NDA, confidential, NFORN or literally classified, but I'd like it if you, or anyone else with any experience of the Defense Language Institute, to speculate with me.

NSA is composed of computer scientists, cryptographers, mathematicians, physicists, programmers, signals analysts and a veritable legion of other technical experts and analysts. What they do not have is armed paramilitary spies. Nor does any other intelligence agency in the United States, with the single and solitary exception of the CIA, which is charged with certain duties abroad that no other government agency can perform.

In the UK, it's not like the SIS ('MI6') or the Security Service ('MI5') are much like the movies, either, as they're unarmed too, and when they absolutely need to enter dangerous areas, for example, to place technical surveillance equipment, MI5 agents are accompanied by RUC Special Branch officers and 14 Company operators, if they are in a very hard paramilitary area. If SIS (MI6) intelligence officers have to do the same outside the United Kingdom, there is evidence that current or 'former' SAS troopers accompany them to keep them safe.

Officially, the MI5 agents aren't trained with weapons or allowed to carry them, but 14 Company operators have admitted to lending them pistols for self-protection on such operations, mostly because they felt it would be too terrifying for untrained civilians to be somewhere they could be kidnapped for torture and execution, and not even have a weapon. If SAS troopers have ever felt the desire to arm untrained intelligence officers while undercover abroad, they did not share such information with any source who's gotten back to me.

So, okay, I'd like to encourage realistic and plausible speculation on what kind of women might have attended the Defense Language Institute from 1980 to 1991, while also having undercover work, armed and unarmed self-defence, and recruitment in her skill set.

Now, I don't know if the CIA use the DLI or if they use the Department of State's School of Language Studies, under the Foreign Service Institute. In practice, I'd imagine that CIA analysts and those case officers who will spend their careers under official cover as Foreign Service Personnel use the SLS, while paramilitary officers recruited from the armed forces are more likely to attend the DLI, probably under the cover that they are still serving soldiers, airmen, sailors, etc.

What about federal law enforcement or agencies with a domestic counterintelligence brief?

Would FBI agents attend a Russian-language course, either at the start of their career, if they scored very high in languages and other skill sets needed for them to be planning to go into the Counterintelligence part of FBI, or later in their career, perhaps before an assignment with CI implications?

How about prospective criminal investigators or Special Agents (1811) of the Department of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI), United States Army Counterintelligence (ACI) or their naval equivalent, which was successively named the Naval Investigative Service (1966–1985), the Naval Security and Investigative Command (1985–1988) and the Naval Investigative Service Command (1988–1993), but is today best known as the United States Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS)?

In any of those cases, would they only start language school once they had been through a full background check or is it possible that they could be in language school when they got the news that because of some irregularity in their past, they would not be getting the necessary security clearance to perform their duties?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The Ulster Defence Regiment was the first British Army regiment that had women in combat roles,

Since 14 Company spent a lot of time in Ulster, recruiting locals would have been advantageous. Learning the local accents and cultures was not trivial, and an outsider being spotted masquerading as a local on a 14 Coy mission would likely be in serious trouble.

My Irish source, freshly back from a sojourn over the border to buy cheaper whiskey, says he cannot see any kind of UDR soldier, female or male, being allowed to serve in 14 Company during the Troubles. Too much of a security risk, even if they were to just accidentally say anything to their friends or family.

I mean, the 14 Company people were there under false names and not allowed to socialize with locals while their tours lasted, so anyone whom the local people might recognize would have been pulled out for their own safety. They sent operators home early if they were seen without a balaclava by a lot of people during an op, because it burned them for further operations.

This fits with everything else I've seen. I've not found an absolute prohibition, but it's made absolutely clear that no one who passes the psychological and security screening to get into 14 Company is allowed to have emotional attachments to any side of the Northern Ireland question.

As Rennie, the author of the definite book on the subject, says, the way you can be sure that there was never an officially condoned plan to assassinate PIRA leaders is that no one ever knew where they were at all times, except 14 Company. So no such plan could have moved past the barracks talk, because if it was adopted for real, 14 Company would have to have been a full participant and he doesn't believe they'd obey orders to assassinate unarmed people, even criminals, when they should arrest them instead. If one of 14 Company went bad, they could go very bad indeed, considering everything they knew, and their skill sets, but Rennie says he doesn't believe any of his fellow operators would take part in assassination missions in Northern Ireland.

Rennie has some philosophical theory it has to do with how their team ethos and central tenets were founded in professionalism. The personality types who made it through were those who were patient, organized, detached even under stress and that they justify all the boredom, discomfort and tension by the belief that if they are professional enough, they'll prevent terrorist attacks without creating any new martyrs or new terrorists with grudges.

The operators of 14 Company also get to spend their time on operations all the time. They don't train to the peak of absolute perfection in killing people and breaking things, like the SAS, and then get asked to wait quietly. There was an SAS troop on duty with them in Northern Ireland, at all times, except those boys didn't get called out except for massive raids, which happened... almost never.

So, Rennie says that the SAS troopers, like young and adrenaline-charged men everywhere, talked a lot about how they wanted off the leash and kill all the buggers. But they couldn't have, not without 14 Company, because all the targets continually moved around between safe houses, and 14 Company was the only one with any actionable intelligence. Which Rennie says was never used with a Home Office warrant and the RUC Special Branch there to make arrests.

On balance, I think the evidence supports his description of the unit he served in. No one has ever linked 14 Company to the activities of the Force Research Unit and the very existence of that unit, apparently duplicating the official intelligence roles of RUC Special Branch, Security Service (MI5) and 14 Company, suggests that senior Army figures felt that the existing organizations were too constrained by legalities, warrants and the like.

14 Company carried out surveillance and worked with the local police to make arrests based on that surveillance. They helped the Security Service (MI5) to set up technical surveillance equipment, bugs, video, trackers, etc. Crucially, however, they didn't run agents and they weren't in any way associated with the British Army Intelligence Corps. They were not trained by them, run by them or reporting to them.

Rennie never mentions the FRU and, technically, it would probably have been secret from him. Neither the British nor anyone else tend to give out broad, all-sources security clearances. Anyone running covert ops will usually be supposed to deconflict ops to make sure there's no friendly fire, but 14 Company wasn't supposed to fire except in dire self-defence, so there were forces they did not deconflict with (the UDR, for one), and I strongly think that FRU and their masters didn't tell others about secret units working under other parts of the UK military, intelligence or security forces, not unless they really have to.

On the subject, though, Rennie mentions that because of the frustration of the SAS troopers, waiting all the time for a chance to use their skills, and resolve the situation in the way they were trained, if the military had ever been given the green light to start stacking Irish paramilitary bodies, there would have been no problem finding SAS troopers willing to act as shooters.

As most soldiers everywhere, they have a pretty simple view of the world. Anyone who counts as 'the enemy' is someone they figure they ought to be taking out, with their weapons and their skills, and anything preventing that is just red tape that allows a problem to persist. So, if armies were democracies, most of the SAS troopers would have voted for shooting all the members of paramilitaries, on any side they claimed to be, and then going home for Christmas. Lovely chaps, Rennie says, just continually frustrated by their role in Northern Ireland, which could be summed up by, 'Wait'.