Biography & Memoirs – Page 12 – Public Intelligence Blog

Good, Not Great, Travelogue, not Strategic Dialog,

October 10, 2003

Madeleine Albright

This is a diplomatic companion to Hillary Clinton's lightweight personal story. Madame Secretary will never be confused with Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski. It merits comment that Hillary appears to have had a great deal to do with Albright getting the job. If you want a read that covers the years superficially, and glosses over a great deal of what actually did or did not transpire, this is the book for you. If you want serious reading about international relations, or grand strategy, or how to deal with the twenty big problems facing the world, see the other books I have reviewed for Amazon, including Joe Nye, Kissinger, Boren et al, Jonathan Schell, Shultz et al, E.O. Wilson, J. F. Rischard, and so on. Half the book is about the personal path to power, the other half is about very narrow slices of what the Clinton Administration chose to focus on–an administration where foreign policy and national security were largely on automatic pilot and very much in a back seat compared to domestic matters.Most troubling to me is the chapter on terrorism, chapter 22, titled “A Special Kind of Evil.” In exactly 17 pages (.03 of 512 text pages), Albright manages to gloss over the fact that she deliberately and repeatedly sided with Sandy Burger in constantly suppressing intelligence that warned suicidal terrorism was on the rise, and took a back seat–or no seat–on the subject of devising a national grand strategy for counter-terrorism. She is proudest of getting $1 billion for turning our Embassies into bunkers, something 9-11 demonstrated to be inconsequential.

She says “The response by the Clinton administration to the Africa embassy bombings and other attacks on our watch resulted in the apprehension of many terrorist suspects and established a strong precedent for international cooperation in fighting terror.” This is absolute and utter baloney. The reality is that neither the CIA nor the FBI or any foreign governments were actually put on a war footing, because the Clinton's did not want to dim the lights and bear down.

I find it quite noteworthy that “intelligence” does not appear in the index as a term. This is a book about travel and personal meetings, which is how Clinton's national security team spent its time. We have gone from that extreme to the other, of neo-conservatives who never served in uniform throwing military force around unilaterally and indiscriminately.

The next president must find a middle ground, an informed middle ground where intelligence, strategy, policy and spending (“it's not policy until it's in the budget”) are fully integrated, and America is able to devise a sustainable, strong, smart foreign policy that includes a robust homeland defense with homeland counterintelligence, a massive peace force, a considerable global constabulary force, and a big war force sufficient for two major regional conflicts at once. We cannot cut the national security budget by one penny, but by golly, we can do a *lot” better than either the passive Clintonians or the psychopathic Bushies.

2003/10/102009/12/27

Review: Madame Secretary–A Memoir

3 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Democracy

Good, Not Great, Travelogue, not Strategic Dialog

October 10, 2003

Madeline Albirght

Most troubling to me is the chapter on terrorism, chapter 22, titled “A Special Kind of Evil.” In exactly 17 pages (.03 of 512 text pages), Albright manages to gloss over the fact that she deliberately and repeatedly sided with Sandy Burger in constantly suppressing intelligence that warned suicidal terrorism was on the rise, and took a back seat–or no seat–on the subject of devising a national grand strategy for counter-terrorism. She is proudest of getting $1 billion for turning our Embassies into bunkers, something 9-11 demonstrated to be inconsequential.

2003/09/242009/12/04

Review: Bin Laden–The Man Who Declared War on America

4 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Terrorism & Jihad

Over the Top in Iraq, Brilliant in All Other Respects,

September 24, 2003

Yossef Bodansky

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add comment and links.

New Comment: this remains a very important foundation document for understanding the complete failure of US intelligence to detect and monitor Saudi government funding of violent Islam and Wabbabism.

The author is a brilliant Arabist who has refined the art of acquiring and exploiting open sources of information on bin Laden and terrorism to a near science. His “MOSQINT” lectures draw packed houses of professional intelligence officers from over 40 countries.

The book is a hard read, but if one desires to understand the murky inter-relationships among the *governments* of Pakistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, among others, the businesses and charities working actively to channel government and private funds to terrorists, and the global loosely-knit network of “fellow travelers” and jihadists, then this book is “Ref A.”

In my personal view, the author is a bit over the top in trying to link Iraq to bin Laden. This reminds of the Claire Sterling-Ollie North school of “anything goes” as long as you believe it. Having said that (and so has Vaclav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia, who personally dismissed a lie consistently told by the Bush Administration about a meeting in Prague between a terrorist known by the FBI to have been in Florida at the time, and an Iraqi intelligence officer), I give the book very high marks in all other respects.

The Conclusion, appropriately Chapter 13, is titled “What Next.” The book is worthy of purchase and recurring reference for this chapter alone. Especially troubling is the documentation of how many terrorists are moving around the world on legitimate passports from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Turkey, Kuwait, Algeria, Albania, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and other countries. The book adds confirmation to the many other references I have seen (many posted to OSS.Net news and reference section) regarding the active involvement of the Pakistani intelligence service in funding and training and facilitating travel for bin Laden personally, for his top lieutenants, and for terrorists in general.

The author's focus in the conclusion on the potential for Central Asia (all former khanates, all Muslim, all angry separatists from the Soviet Union) is especially interesting, as we see the beginnings of a “third front” there, with India-Pakistan being a fourth front, and South Asia a fifth front. Latin America and Africa are the sixth front. In brief, the author is one of those documenting the depth and scope of a global terrorism threat that the Bush Administration has unwisely chosen to attack with conventional military means, on six different fronts, none of which is sustainable in the medium or long term.

The author anticipated terrorist attacks against the UN and NATO when he discusses, on page 403, the Muslim declarations that include the UN and NATO in the fatwas against the USA, because the Muslim world “is being deceived by [these organizations], because they are hostile to Muslims and are responsible for all the massacres being perpetrated against Muslims in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Albania, and Kosovo.” The UN in Iraq has been hit twice. I expect NATO in Afghanistan to be hit several times between now and the end of 2003, and I expect US special forces units to be massacred in detail in Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

Bin Laden, dead or alive. Right. Bin Laden could not, in his wildest prayers to Allah, have imagined a better partner for fostering terrorism around the world than hip-shooting cowboy and unilateralist George W. Bush. Bin Laden created a global system of terrorism, the fire if you will, and George W. Bush and his neo-conservatives are blindly pouring $250 billion worth of tax-payer funded gasoline on that fire.

The author has recently been the recipient of the Golden Candle Award from the international open source intelligence committee. His citation reads:

“For his global multi-lingual open source investigations into terrorism, and his extraordinary professional achievement in writing and publishing “BIN LADEN: The Man Who Declared War on America”, years before the 9-11 World Trade Center demonstration of what well-funded suicidal terrorism can achieve when intelligence and policy both fail to focus on the threat.”

Whatever research or opinion flaws might be contained in this book, it is an essential reference in understanding both the dangers of terrorism, and the futility of the current US “strategy” for defeating terrorism by hammering and then abandoning Afghanistan and Iraq.

More recent books relevant to this one:
The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Vintage)
The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

2003/07/152010/01/05

Review (Guest): Liar’s Poker–Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street

5 Star, Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Biography & Memoirs, Corruption

5.0 out of 5 stars One hand, one million dollars, no tears.

July 15, 2003

john purcell “johneric99” (Purcellville, VA USA)

In the 1980's, Michael Lewis was a neophyte bond salesman for Salomon Brothers in New York and London for four years. Liar's Poker is a high-stakes game the traders, salesmen, and executives play each afternoon, but it is also a metaphor for the Salomon culture of extreme risk-taking with immediate payoffs and clear winners and losers.

This is the story of how Lewis survived the training program, inept but mean-spirited management, an aborted take-over even featuring a white knight, layoffs and the 1987 market crash before quitting to find his real calling as a business journalist. While Lewis's career did not take off quickly, he eventually became a highly paid producer, although not in the league of the true top dogs.

Lewis tells the real story of Wall Street in both go-go and crash days with self-deprecating humor enlivened with his ecletic wit. Colorful and well-known Wall Street characters appear such as Michael Milken, Lazlo Birini, Warren Buffett, Bill Simon, Sr. and John Guetfruend. All business students need to read this as even those with advanced degrees in finance such as myself, will learn how things really work. The story of how the junk bond and collateralized mortgage backed security markets emerge is told to fill in a chapter in financial history. Perhaps most interesting is some of the political machinations, rampant at Salomon, which lead for example for Salomon to ignore the junk bond market, allowing others to flourish and eventually attempt to take-over Salomon using junk bonds.

Lewis also describes for all investors the conflicts of interest and lack of governance on Wall Street long before Eliot Spitzer and Arthur Levitt became the champions of the little guy. My next step is to read Lewis's later books.

2003/07/042009/12/04

Review: Living History

3 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Politics

Book Achieves Its Low Objectives,

July 4, 2003

Hillary Rodham Clinton

I happen to feel that Hillary Clinton is one of the best female leaders in America, so I bought the book hoping for the best. I was disappointed. The book achieves what strike me as its rather low objectives: showcase the earnest persistent attractive self–tell the story as blandly as possible while avoiding any of the really hard issues, like why Bill had to look for satisfaction elsewhere.Of note, from a national security point of view, was the complete lack of reference to intelligence as in CIA, terrorism, analysis, or anything resembling attention to the facts. As an intelligence professional, if Hillary were to be elected President, I would worry about her appointing her hair dresser as Director of Central Intelligence. [Henceforth, I will evaluate every Washington biography for its attention to intelligence–looking back over several hundred such biographies I was struck by how few–George Shultz being the exception–actually discuss national intelligence and its role–or failure–within the national decision making process.]

Over-all, this book is a fast read and if you like Hillary, you will love the book, if you hate her sight unseen you will not like the book. What disappointed me most was that it is not the kind of analytical “what went wrong, what did I learn, what would I do if I were president” read that I was hoping for. Although she lightly dissects the failure of her health care reform initiative and the terribly unjust impeachment of Bill Clinton, I walk away from this booking thinking “great personality, but no architecture for the future.”

2003/05/252009/12/04

Review: Leap of Faith–Memoirs of an Unexpected Life

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Intelligence (Public)

Credible, Touching, Eye-Opener,

May 25, 2003

Queen Noor

… I hope that my review will provide a more balanced appreciation of this extraordinary book by an extraordinary former American of Jordanian extraction who, as a Princeton-educated professional, married to the King of Jordan, is able to summarize her life's work of building better bridges between the Arab world and the west.I note as a preface that I am aware of the Jordanian hospital for terrorists recovering from combat wounds, that there are many things still running against the people in Jordan. However, what I find in this double-spaced book–by no means a work of scholarship–is a personal story that is rich with wisdom, integrity, and insights into differing perspectives.

The true beginning of the book comes on page 32, when the author, then a student at Princeton, learned of the death of four students and injury of nine students at Kent State University at the hands of an undisciplined Ohio National Guard armed with real bullets. Most Americans over 40 will never forget the photo of the young woman kreening over one of the dead. That shooting leads to the following sentence in the book: “It was a seminal moment in shaping my view of American society. While I loved my country, I found my trust in its institutions badly shaken.”

The value of the book for me is in the author's credible discussion of what she calls “a fundamental lack of understanding in the West, especially in the United States, of Middle Eastern culture and the Muslim faith.” I took the entire book on faith myself–while rabid Jews may not agree, I am prepared to believe that Queen Noor has not been brainwashed, and that she is offering all readers a personal perspective on Arabs, Muslims, Israel, the Gulf War, the impact of US policies in creating millions of refugees and tens of thousands of dead, and so on. If anything, the book, one of hundreds I have read in the past several years, confirms my growing sense of ignorance. Every additional book I read in this area seems to confirm how little any one person can know, and how duplicitious and misleading most official accounts, or media stories, are. We have a long way to go in truly understanding one another, and we can all start by a) reading and b) discussing. Attacking this book, and this Queen, is not helpful.

Although I was was somewhat aware of the fact that Israel is in violation of United Nations resolutions calling for a separate and equal Palestine state, as well as compensation to the Palestinians driven from their lands and also are of the somewhat rocky start in the area from British mandates and Israeli terrorism utilized to drive the British from the area, I was unaware of Mahatma Ghandi's statement, “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct.”

The bulk of the book is less about affairs of state than it is about the loneliness of a Queen whose husband is public property and who never has any privacy. It is, none-the-less, an absorbing personal account of many specific people and their ethics–one comes away dismayed that Barbara Bush would send word to Queen Noor that she was a traitor to America, and pleasantly surprised to find that Prince Charles proved to be the only balanced courteous English leader at a critical time.

At the end of the book, and this no doubt explains the hysterical Jewish attacks against this Queen, mother, and author, I was persuaded of three things: 1) the US public and the US government does not have a good grip on Arab politics, culture, or needs; 2) the combination of Jewish power within US policy; Arab inattention to playing US politics from within; and the Zionist “myths” that take on a life of their own, are a major reason why US policy is ineffective and unsustainable in the long run within this vital area; and 3) Queen Noor was as good a queen as the Jordanian people could have hoped for, given the circumstances. This book was well worth my time, and I recommend it to every citizen who wishes to reduce conflict, increase understanding, and obtain a better return on how the U.S. taxpayer dollar is spent.

2003/05/242009/12/04

Review: Free Flight–Inventing the Future of Travel

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Biography & Memoirs, Future

Opens the Sky to Non-Pilots, Great Overview,

May 24, 2003

James Fallows

I bought this book for a very practical reason. In the aftermath of 9-11 I was thinking about moving to Smith Mountain Lake, four hours drive to the South of Washington, D.C., and I wanted a sense of whether “general aviation” might provide me with a once a week “commuter solution” for getting back up to the National Capitol Area.The book is fully satisfactory. While some might complain that it tells a personal story, I found this perfectly useful as a means of understanding both the pros and cons of airline travel through “hubs” that impose time loss on the passengers for the convenience of the commercial airline companies, versus “general aviation” which allows point to point travel.

Most interesting to me was learning that with the hubs and the problems inherent in airline travel today, the average speed for any trip by air can be just about the same as the average speed if going by car–60 miles per hour.

I ended this book with three understandings that more than warranted its purchase:

1) I, a non-pilot, could easily learn to fly and it would not only be worth my while, but great fun as well.

2) General aviation, while not as robust as it could be, is alive and well in America, and new solutions (including an airplane that comes with its own parachute, lowering the entire plane, with passengers, in the event of an engine failure) are there.

3) NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency) does a lot more than space flight–I was quite astonished to find that they are heavily engaged in thinking about general aviation solutions, and generally optemistic that in an era when time is the most precious commodity, and general aviation may be a solution for many businessmen as well as traveling families that shy away from the nightmare of getting kids through airports.

Bottom line: a great read, a great buy, and a vision into the future that is practical and fun.

Category: Biography & Memoirs

Review: Madam Secretary–A Memoir