The boundary that circumscribes the subject matter of this collection of translations traverses the desk of the head of the organisational component operating sources/agents/informers. On that desk, to cite the second half of Donald Rumsfeld‘s famous elaboration on how to tell intelligence from fact, ‘there’s judgement involved’ and ‘a lot of conflicting facts and information are brought together’. Beyond it, HUMINT has ceased to be an intelligence activity and become but one of many different and competing products on the basis of which timely and accurate – alternatively, late or wrong – decisions will be taken by political leaderships.