2020: It just kills me to have wasted decades wandering in the wilderness (but I did learn a lot no one in the US IC has a clue about). I am praying for a second chance to help our government get it right under President Trump.
Foreword by Senator David Boren (D-OK), whom I helped with the National Security Act of 1992, and now the President of one of my educational passages, the University of Oklahoma. The Act was blocked by Senator John Warner, who feared losing jobs in Virginia. This is how I learned that transformation and reform must always be job and revenue neutral across all sub-state political boundaries.
This was my first book, still the most comprehensive professional look at what is wrong with secret intelligence and why it does not meet the needs of its avowed single customer, the President, nor anyone else in government and certainly not the public.
With great sadness, as of 2020 nothing has changed for the better–it has in fact become worse, as the new money has had the same effect as gasoline poured on a fire. Secret intelligence and effective spies are urgently needed, but they must be secret and effective, not dependent of foreign intelligence services, and not ignorant of open sources of information in 183 languages we do not understand.
My latest thinking on this subject–what I would do if I were Director of National Intelligence or had one with a holistic public service mindset willing to listen–is covered by 2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated which should be read in sequence after first reading Journal: Reflections on Integrity, and in other publications visible at https://robertdavidsteele.com.
See Also (Free PDF and Amazon):
Steele, Robert. Human Intelligence: All Humans, All Minds, All the Time, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Press, June 3, 2010.
Free Online PDF: SSI Steele Human Intelligence
