I’m Captain Nicholas Weishaar, from Abbotsford, British Columbia. I’m an Intelligence Officer serving with the Canadian Forces Joint Imagery Centre in Ottawa, Ontario.
Narrator: The days of simply knowing who and where the enemy is and knowing how they fight, are over. The job of an Intelligence Officer is to predict the future in an asymmetric world.
WEISHAAR: We provide commanders and other high-ranking officials, both in the government and in the military, with the information they need to know at that moment to make decisions that could affect people’s lives or the direction of an entire country.
Narrator: Intelligence Officers are responsible for ensuring that their commanders are well informed, because just knowing what’s going on, on the ground, in the air or on the seas is not enough. They need to know and understand the operating environment – the weather, the terrain, the enemy, the people and the politics - as events are unfolding.
Intelligence Officers lead the teams that collect and provide leaders with that information from a variety of sources.
WEISHAAR: Some of them are highly classified, but some of them are open-source, including news as well as social media.
Narrator: Collecting intelligence is both an art and a science. Intelligence Officers use computerized tools to help them and their teams go through massive amounts of information. They use technology to track electronic signatures and get very clear images taken from the sky. After that, it’s up to each Intelligence Officer to use their instincts, their intuition, their training and tradecraft to evaluate the situation. And even when there are pieces missing from that puzzle, they need to be able to make the call, because incomplete information now is more useful than a complete picture after the fact.
WEISHAAR: The job we do is actually much more interesting than what you see on TV. We have a much wider breadth of responsibilities, we’ve got many more capabilities than you just see on TV and it allows us to actually have a deeper understanding of real issues, current events, and really society at large that you just won’t get anywhere else.
Narrator: On completion of their training, Intelligence Officers will likely be posted to a Canadian Armed Forces Base, working with the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Special Operations Forces.
Wherever they go, Intelligence Officers, do a lot of writing, a lot of thinking and a lot of talking to people about what they know and what they think is going to happen.
They spend a lot of their time on base, working behind a desk, supervising the information gatherers and molding their reports into a concise, readable form.
Intelligence Officers will find themselves conveying information to a very senior audience early on in their career, so they have to become comfortable very quickly, communicating information effectively to officers of senior ranks, and being confident about the information they’re presenting.
WEISHAAR: The first word when you get out of intelligence training is credibility. You’re going to come out as a very green analytical mind and you’re going to actually have to earn the trust and the credibility that is required of any Intelligence Officer.
Narrator: As their careers progress, an Intelligence Officer could end up commanding an All Source Intelligence Centre or an intelligence collection unit, or be the Senior Canadian Liaison Officer at an embassy, or work as an Intelligence Advisor at a military command.
WEISHAAR: I personally don’t believe that there’s any job out there in the civilian world, or even in the Canadian Forces, that allows you the opportunity to effect change like being an Intelligence Officer. The amount of credibility that comes with being a competent Intelligence Officer is simply extraordinary.