You have to have trustworthy LN's, otherwise your Intel becomes limited and extremely hard to verify. Every good security crew, uses LN's in three ways, 1) first person interactions with locals (locals deal with locals). 2) informants, Intel collection and verification (from routs to community leaders to knowing/understanding the groups and players). 3) low profile security, intelligence gathering and personnel recovery (nothing better than a few LN's in the crowd feeding you info and able to act immediately, etc).
That said they have to be well vetted, completely trustworthy and well integrated into the team and very well compensated...otherwise they feed you to the wolves.
Ambassador Stevens had shit security, had bad Intel through the local community level and had LN's that walked. Honestly, whoever was AIC of that security team should have a lot to answer for. The fact that they bailed on him while he was alive should put them out of the industry for life. Keep in mind I'm talking about the DoS guys, not the CIA guys. The CIA security contractors should all be wearing the Congressional Medal of Honor for what they did. Someone must follow those guy's around with a wheelbarrow to keep their balls from dragging.
