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Lawfare Daily: National Security, Counterintelligence, and Counterespionage: A Guide for the Perplexed

March 18, 2026·51 min·4 clips

Former FBI agent Derek Piper reveals how counterintelligence targets foreign spies, while counterespionage focuses on recruited Americans.

Lawfare Senior Editor Michael Feinberg hosts a conversation with former FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Derek Piper about the differences between counterintelligence and counterespionage. The episode is prompted by the recent firing of an FBI Washington Field Office squad that handled Iranian counterespionage matters, which occurred one day before the United States effectively went to war with Iran. Feinberg notes that subsequent media coverage consistently conflated counterintelligence, counterespionage, and counterterrorism as if they were one discipline. Piper details his 21-year FBI career, which began on a counterintelligence squad in New York working on the Ghost Stories Russian illegals case. He subsequently moved through espionage investigations, a supervisory role on global counterintelligence matters, the internal espionage unit at FBI headquarters, a detailee position at CIA during the Skripal affair, and finally served as an ASAC at the Washington Field Office overseeing the global counterintelligence group. The core distinction they establish is that counterintelligence focuses on foreign intelligence officers operating inside the United States, identifying who they are and what they are trying to accomplish. Counterespionage focuses on the American side, investigating US persons who may have been recruited by those foreign officers to provide classified information or national defense material. Piper notes that the FBI academy provided roughly three hours of counterintelligence training when he attended in 2004, meaning most agents learn on the job. Piper describes how the counterintelligence mission expanded significantly from the mid-2010s onward. The FBI established the Foreign Influence Task Force around 2017 in response to foreign actors using cyber tools and social media to influence American elections and public opinion from overseas, eliminating the need for physical presence. Economic espionage also became a major focus as China in particular was found recruiting individuals to steal seeds, technology, and research, skipping years of R and D investment. Piper notes the sentencing for economic espionage cases rarely exceeded five years despite investigations lasting seven or more, reflecting Congressional reluctance to treat the offense seriously. The conversation addresses recruitment and handling of confidential human sources as core CI skills. Piper observes that good recruiters and good handlers are different personality types and that mismatching agents to roles is counterproductive. He describes how new agents would propose recruitment plans that had already failed, lacking the institutional memory to know better, underscoring the importance of time in seat. On counterespionage specifically, Piper explains the hybrid nature of the work. Cases require building alternate legal predication because the original intelligence tip often cannot be revealed in court without compromising sources. Most internal espionage allegations at the FBI turned out not to involve actual spying but rather other misconduct, affairs, or rule violations that created suspicious behavior. Piper emphasizes the need for emotional maturity in these investigations, since subjects who are cleared must return to work as colleagues. Both discuss why counterintelligence cases frequently involve high-profile political figures, arguing that politicians in Washington naturally have extensive foreign contacts that occasionally surface in routine intelligence coverage. Piper states that the Bureau was damned either way, accused of being political whether it investigated or declined to investigate. He notes that in his 21 years, no one could have identified how he voted. Feinberg draws a critical distinction between counterterrorism failures, which produce immediate visible casualties, and counterintelligence failures, which may not become apparent for a decade. He cites his former supervisor pointing to World War Two graves as counterintelligence failures and argues that current lapses in Chinese counterintelligence could become visible only if China attempts to invade Taiwan. Both express concern that the recent removal of experienced counterintelligence and counterespionage agents will have consequences that are impossible to see in the short term but potentially severe in the long term.

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