The government's ability to locate and destroy the urban guerrilla lessens as the guerrilla's strength grows and its mass support increases. Popular support adds informants who can provide the urban guerrilla with intelligence on enemy strength and movements, and increases as well the number and variety of safe havens. Supporters can give the enemy false information, thereby wasting their time and making their operations extremely costly.
The variety of sources open to the urban guerrilla for intelligence are potentially greater than those available to the police. The masses see the police daily, but the police do not know who among the masses is giving the urban guerrilla information. Intelligence on the hated government agents should be readily available to urban guerrillas through supporters who report on the government's injustice and violent suppression.
Intelligence is but a minute fraction of the contribution made to the urban guerrilla through its base of popular support. That support represents an extraordinary potential to the urban guerrilla. It is basic that the urban guerrilla create an organized intelligence network among its base of popular support. This network furnishes the guerrilla with necessary information on the plans and movement of the enemy, its location, logistics, the best banks to rob, communications facilities, and secret enemy operations.
Solid intelligence in the hands of the urban guerrilla becomes a well-aimed weapon to be directed against the dictatorship. The enemy has no way to defend himself against an important leak that can jeopardize its interests or leave it open to our attack.
Contrarily, enemy intelligence seeks information so that it can destroy us or render us impotent. Here the urban guerrilla must face the threat of betrayal from inside his organization, and defend himself against enemy infiltration. The best tactic is to denounce publicly all traitors, spies, informers, and provocateurs. Our struggle is waged from a base of mass support. The brutality, corruption, and incompetence of the enemy reduces its mass support. Therefore the masses denounce and identify informers and spies to the urban guerrillas so that they can be physically eliminated. This is the correct method. It is supported by the masses, and reduces greatly the potential of enemy infiltration and spying.
A guerrilla counter-espionage and counter-intelligence service works against spies and informers. Intelligence, on the other hand, cannot concentrate solely on information about enemy movements, or through obtaining knowledge on the infiltration of spies into the movement. intelligence covers a broad spectrum, embracing all information, even on the most insignificant matters. Intelligence gathering is an art that must be mastered by the urban guerrilla. Those skilled in this art amass bits and pieces of intelligence in the normal course of their daily lives.
The urban guerrilla lives with and mixes with the masses. He listens carefully to a variety of conversations and observes inter-personal relationships, all the while disguising his interest with skill and good judgment. information is easily gathered in all places where people work, study, and live. Information on bill payments, business operations, personal and business plans, personal opinions, an individual's state of mind, trips planned, the layout of buildings, offices, and rooms, and the location of operations centers -- all are important bits of intelligence that should be fed into the urban guerrilla's intelligence system.
Observation, investigation, reconnaissance, and exploration of terrain provides excellent information. The urban guerrilla never travels without observing and without paying attention to security, for the unusual and unexpected is always likely to occur. The urban guerrilla keeps his eyes and ears open, his senses alert, and engraves in his memory every necessary fact, present and future, so that his function will not be impaired.
The urban guerrilla reads the newspapers and follows other organs of mass communication. He is informed, and informs others. The individual urban guerrilla who masters the intricate and immensely complicated art of gathering intelligence holds a decisive advantage.