Arturo Munoz (intelligence)

Arturo G. Munoz (born August 15, 1949) is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer and a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation.

Munoz worked for 29 years at the CIA, both in the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) and in the Directorate of Operations (DO). He pioneered the application of anthropology to intelligence in groundbreaking intelligence assessments on insurgencies in Latin America. He collected human intelligence and also managed counterterrorism, counterinsurgency and counternarcotics operations. In Latin America, Southwest Asia, the Balkans, the Middle-East, and North-Africa, he conducted covert action campaigns with verifiable impact.

Biography
Munoz holds B.A in history and Spanish literature from Loyola University an M.A. in anthropology and Ph.D. in Latin American history, from Stanford University; and an ABD in anthropology, UCLA. As a graduate student, Munoz did field work with the Embera-Wounaan in Panama’s Darien Province, and the Yanomamo in Venezuela’s Upper Orinoco. He lobbied for the Sierra Club as a volunteer in Washington D.C. against US funding for the Pan-American Highway in the Darien Gap, arguing that completion of this road would devastate the tropical forest environment, as well as its indigenous people.

In 2009, Munoz retired from the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) and joined RAND Corporation as a Senior Political Scientist. He specialized in counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism issues, focusing on Afghanistan. He published a piece on the feasibility of civil defense for Afghan counterinsurgency, co-authored with Seth Jones.

Publications and on-going projects

 * Afghanistan's Local War: Building Local Defense Forces
 * Civil defense forces feasibility in Afghanistan.
 * USMIL information operations in Afghanistan.
 * Taliban propaganda and psychological operations.
 * Taliban strategy and tactics.
 * Taliban strategy and tactics.