Most Recent Truly Relevant (and Ignored) Offical Findings on Intelligence Reform, October 16, 2008
Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community
I testified to this Commission, and won the Burundi Exercise, a benchmark exercise in which General Lew Allen, USAF (Ret) examined what I could produce with six telephone calls to the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) world, and what the U.S. Intelligence Community could provide on a “no-notice” overnight basis.
This Commission's finding remain the most relevant to intelligence reform. They also remain the most ignored, one reason Senator David Boren (D-OK) was willing to write a Foreword to my own first book, On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World. In his Foreword (in the year 2000), Senator Boren points out explicitly that the reform recommendations of this Commission have been ignored by a succession of Directors of Central Intelligence (and today, Directors of National Intelligence.
There are a number of books on intelligence reform, I list a few below, and they all boil down to one simple truth: more outreach, less secrecy.
Best Truth: Intelligence in the Information Age
Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information (RAND Studies in Policy Analysis)
Bombs, Bugs, Drugs, and Thugs: Intelligence and America's Quest for Security
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
