4 Star – Page 42 – Public Intelligence Blog

2006/04/302009/12/04

Review: Prelude to Terror–the Rogue CIA, The Legacy of America’s Private Intelligence Network the Compromising of American Intelligence (Hardcover)

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Some Inconsistencies, But Best Synthesis of Bush-Mafia-Dictator-Privatized Intelligence Network,

April 30, 2006

Joseph J. Trento

This is not a perfect book. It has inconsistencies and errors but this book has helped connect many dots from the other 690+ books I have reviewed.

I had no idea while I was at CIA as a clandestine officer that there are really multiple CIA's and that there are three *external* CIAS: the “Safari Club” led by Saudi Arabia, with France, Egypt, Morocco and Iran (during the Shah's time, not since); the murder network (South Africa, Israel, South Korea, and probably also Chile and Argentina during their worst years); and a privatized CIA running drugs and arms, laundering money, and generally doing things that were “off the books and out of control” as the author titles one of his chapters.

According to the author, Allen Dulles has the first private intelligence service at 44 Wall Street, relying heavily on the recruitment of former Nazis. There is a direct path from the CIA's fascination with former Nazis to the presence of Karl Rove in the White House.

The author draws on good sources to document the long-time relationship between Wall Street and certain companies such as the house of Morgan and Brown that leads us right up to when Buzzy Kronguard, formerly of Alex Brown, was executive director of the CIA at no salary. Prescott Bush, farther of the first President Bush, features heavily in the corrupt relations between CIA and the Wall Street mafia. These people financed the Nazis and weapons that killed Americans.

Interestingly, the Dutch are known to have all the details on the Bush family ties to the Nazis, and I have personally heard from the Dutch that they also have full details from the Chinese on drunken teen-ager George W. Bush, of whom photos are said to exist while he is incoherent and perhaps posed in naked compromising positions with his male Chinese tennis teacher). All of this is inevitably going to be in the public consciousness–right now it falls into what one author calls “Fog Facts”–known openly but not “computed” by the public.

This entire book is a tale of the corruption of intelligence, caused in part by the abysmal failure of US intelligence in the early years, ranging from failing to predict the Korean invasion to trying to assassinate Chinese premier Chou En Lai.

The Viet-Nam era empowered people like Ted Shackley (who died in 2002 and whose memoirs are coming out shortly). CIA learned to run drugs and arms, launder money, start its own banks, and generally avoid Congressional funding limitations and Congressional oversight. Unfortunately, creating a rogue CIA further incapacitated “CIA proper” of which I was a part, and the author reasonably points out that the fall of the Shah of Iran, the failure to understand the 1975 concerns about Shiite terrorism training camps, the assassination of Sadat, the CIA coup plans that were pre-empted by Qadafi, the growth of Al Qaeda, the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban (which deprived Wall Street of its drug crops, now restored courtesy of the U.S. Army)–the list goes on.

According to the author's sources, the CIA opened the Far East to the US mafia, and helped develop pipelines for the drugs that included piggy-backing on US servicemen corpses coming back into Dover AFP. Fast forward to CIA using Special Operations Forces to protect transmitters that allowed hundreds of drug airplanes to land in Panama where drugs could be traded for money and arms.

The author centers the book on Ted Shackley as a bridge figure among many “external” intelligence activities, but Clark Clifford is also key in the founding of the BCCI bank and in asking the Saudis directly to fund an alternative CIA to be known as the Safari Club. BCCI had overtly good intentions–to attract terrorist and criminal funds, but at root it represented the complete “sale” of US intelligence to the Saudis.

The politicization of intelligence is the other major theme in this book, and the Bush family features very prominently.

Side notes:

Ted Shackley recruited Zbigniew Brzezinski as a young Polish-American student, and had full access to him later when he was National Security Advisor.

Don Rumsfeld, today Secretary of Defense, was instrumental in persuading President Ford not to appoint Eliot Richardson, a reformer of known integrity, to the DCI position, and instead got Kissinger to invite Bush from Beijing, all to ensure that Kissinger's role in subverting Chile would be concealed.

As DCI, Turner shut the Israeli's out, essentially forcing them to adopt Shackley as their “black CIA” partner, and then Bush as DCI turned CIA over to the Saudi government.

Shackley fought Inman for the soul of CIA, and the evidence suggests that Shackley won, in part by blackmailing Inman in collaboration with the Israel lobby.

CIA placed officers under cover on the Hill, notably in Senator Dan Quayle's office.

The book left me with three thoughts for reflection:

1) 9-11 was the culmination of decades of CIA corruption and politicization. Of course there are other factors, but from 1975 forward CIA “sold out” and it can be safely said that Viet-Nam killed CIA and opened the doors to the privatization of dirty tricks, murders, and generally very bad out of control covert foreign policy and a consequent subversion of national security.

2) Cheap oil resulting from our support of ruthless dictators set the stage for the radicalization of the Muslim world against America. People are not stupid–they see the link between the US situation, US support for dictators, and their own suffering and exclusion from the wealth.

3) One day, someday, I am going to fund an ABLE DANGER analysis of the history of secret intelligence, starting with Richard Secord, who is in charge of GRAY FOX (the successor to YELLOW FRUIT) and who is not killing terrorists, which is what he is supposed to be doing, but instead continuing the for-profit external CIA, and Ted Shackley.

This is an important book.

2006/04/302009/12/04

Review: The Disposable American–Layoffs and Their Consequences (Hardcover)

4 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

Imperfect but Riveting and Essential,

April 30, 2006

Louis Uchitelle

Some of the criticisms ofThe Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead this book are valid, but I completely disagree with those who sound more and more like a corporate fascist every day, equating the “social contract” with socialism. If they would take the time to read William Greider's book The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy or Herman Daly's Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications or John Perkins Confessions of an Economic Hit Man or any of a wide variety of books that I have reviewed for Amazon readers, they might realize that the concept of the corporation as a legal entity that absolves its managers and stock-holders from immoral, predatory and even illegal behavior, is one that we can do without. I will go further–I have coined the term “Communal Capitalism” to describe that condition where the people retain ownership of the factors of production, and the managers are well-paid employees but not war profiteers or out and out thieves against the commonwealth.”

Hans Morganthau clearly identified the people–the demography of a nation–as a major sources of national power, and Thomas Jefferson was among the first to say that “A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.” Most recently I have reviewed the new book by Alvin and Heidi Toffler on Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives and there is much agreement between the two books, both of which address the dysfunctionality of our educational, health, energy, and transportation systems.

I am especially taken by the author's tracing of how a series of Presidents, but most terribly, President Clinton, essentially left the American worker to the wolves at the door, and made them disposable. Perhaps Clinton sold out to Wall Street and to bribes from corporations, a standard practice in our (see my review of the book by that title). Whatever the case, what this book clearly documents, albeit with more personal vignettes than I really cared to deal with, is that we are killing not just our middle class, but our worker class as well. This is nothing short of economic and social suicide.

There is one thing and one thing only that we can do to address this unhealthy economic situation that is exhacerbated by the double deficits (trade and debt): this book should be a call to arms for the public, which should demand that both its legislative candidates its presidential candidates in 2008, restore their integrity by once again serving as the champions of the worker-people rather than the corporate special interests.

There is a great deal that is wrong with our predatory form of capitalism, one reason why I champion communal capitalism (my term, not to be confused with socialism or communism but rather with capitalism of, by, and for the people). This author has very capably summarized the real costs to the people, and to the country, of irresponsible lay-offs from which we do not recover.

2006/04/302009/12/04

Review: The Pro-Growth Progressive–An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity (Hardcover)

4 Star, Economics, Politics

Ignores Health, No Budget–Reflections Not Solutions,

April 30, 2006

Gene Sperling

Anthony Gibbens' review is superb, and I endorse it and amplify on it. THis book loses one star to two flaws: it begs too many key issues (such as health care, and corporate accountability), and it has no budget and no section on tax reform and increasing government revenue by eliminating fraud, waste, loopholes, and bribery-induced subsidies. That is always my litmus test for serious books about economic policy. One can use the National Budget Simulation, for example, and actually test all these ideas. I, for example, have taken the trouble to identify $550 billion a year in readily available increases in federal tax revenue, and another $300 billion a year in defense and intelligence spending that could be redirected toward soft power and open source intelligence/revitalization of education and national research. It's not real until it's in the budget. This book is platitudinous, worthy of consideration, but not legislatively enactable.

There is no question but that Gene Sperling performed ably for President Clinton EXCEPT that he sacrified the American worker by opening the door for broad indiscriminate lay-offs (see my review of The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences by Louis Uchitelle) and he evidently did not see the economic urgency of completely recasting our national educational system (including exile of the stake-holders in the old system to Chinese re-education camps near Mongolia).

On balance, Sperling is now one of those “has experience, listen to him” guys, but he is part of the last gasp of the old guard in the Democratic party, and for my money, a combination of Return of Rubin and Elevation of Matthew Miller would do more good. See my reviews of the books by both these stars.

The author lacks real familiarity with emergent technologies, especially bio-technologies that are CRTICIAL to reducing poverty and illiteracy (see my review of Tofflers Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives), and over-all the book does not represent a comprehensive strategy that reflects an understanding of system dynamics, both internal to the Republic and globally.

Bottom line: worth reading, 30% of this will be useful, somewhat tired. Rubin is more mature, Miller more innovative. Sperling needs to be in the car, but not driving.

2006/04/092009/12/04

Review: The Battle for Hearts and Minds–Using Soft Power to Undermine Terrorist Networks (Washington Quarterly Readers) (Paperback)

4 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Diplomacy

Several excellent contributions, fails to connect to open source intelligence,

April 9, 2006

Alexander T. J. Lennon

This is a pretty good volume from 2003, with a good mix of academics, journalists, and practitioners. The most useful pieces for me personally were on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages the Voice of America.

On balance this is a solid reference on all but two of the aspects of soft power: it completely neglects the importance of getting a grip on historical and cultural reality through open source intelligence (OSINT) and also neglects the strategic bottom line that demands an educated American public that is fully informed about the real world and demanding of intelligent policy choices.

The book certainly does well with the limitations of military power, the importance of nation building, the urgency of having a massive capability to do stabilization and reconstruction operations as needed, and the critical roles that public diplomacy and foreign assistance could, but do not, play in winning hearts and minds.

Of special interest to me was the failing report card on the broadcasting board of governors, whose equipment is 30 years old in many cases. I applauded the informed judgement of the author who made the case, based on experience, for keeping the short wave and middle band capabilities that too few understand is essential for Africa and other locations.

Across the book it becomes clear that the US needs to upgrade the Combatant Commanders or mirror them with a civilian coordinator for non-military strategy, power, and resources. As someone who grew up overseas with the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), and served in three Embassies overseas, it is crystal clear to me that we need to double the Department of State, in part by reconstituting USIA as a separate organization, and by placing USIA, the BBG, and a new Open Source Agency (for collecting and making sense of all public information in all languages all the time) in a tight partnership. We need to double and triple aid, develop a peacekeeping from the sea program, as well as the ability to do multiple Berlin Airlifts.

This is a good basic book for anyone thinking seriously about “soft power,” a term popularized by Joe Nye, whose varied books I have reviewed and recommend very highly.

2006/04/042009/12/04

Review: Pathologies of Power–Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (Hardcover)

4 Star, Atrocities & Genocide, Humanitarian Assistance

Foundation Work With Two Core Concepts,

April 4, 2006

Paul Farmer

This is a foundation book, if you have the time, money, and willingness to read broadly. If you want only one book on the cycle of health, human rights, poverty, and violence, buy Jeffrey Sachs' book on The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time in which this author, Paul Farmer, is praised, recognized, and clearly valued as a pioneer.

There are two bottom lines in this book:

1) Providing adequate low-cost health care for every human is the non-negotiable first step in eliminating human rights violations writ large (e.g. a year in a Russian prison could be an automatic death sentence from tuberculosis), poverty, and violence among the poor and between the poor and the more affluent.

2) Governments are failing. Here the author is in harmony with Philip Alcott, whose book The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State calls for the over-turning of the Treaty of Westphalia (no more respect for the sovereignty of dictators–as in America, when government become too destructive, the People have the right to abolish the government). The author believes that a larger non-governmental network, and public pressure to force governments to apply more money to health and less money to the military killing machine, will in fact not only end poverty, but unleash sustainable indigenous wealth.

His case studies are of necessity somewhat tedious and can be skimmed if one's mindset is inherently in agreement with his propositions–they do however provide deep documentation for the skeptical.

Another book that might be substituted for this one (especially if buying and reading Sachs) is the pioneering work of Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health which documents the global collapse of public health. A very long book, my Amazon review of it is summative and may suffice.

Dr. Farmer also makes the rather helpful point that doctors doing good can go places where human rights inspectors would be considered intrusive. He praises Cuba, and rightly so. Any country that can put 10,000 medical practitioners into Venezuela, and thereby earn “first call” on Venezuelan oil, is operating at a strategic level of insight that the USA simply does not match today. Readers may not like hearing that the USA is slipping down into the middle ranks of “has been” nations, but that is the reality. On our present course, we are importing poverty, allowing pandemic disease to rear its ugly head through bird flu, mad cow disease and other mutations that will jump to humans, and we have also busted the national piggy bank with the double deficits (trade and debt).

When Dr. Farmer talks about the pathologies of power, he reminds me of Norman Cousin's book by the same title, but does so in a very practical personal way. If human beings are a primary source of national power, then having uneducated human beings subject to disease, poverty, crime, and terror has got to be the single dumbest thing any great power can allow to happen, at home or abroad. Lest anyone dispute my contention on this point, see my reviews of Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America and also David Shipler's The Working Poor: Invisible in America and Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor See my review of Sachs for more detail on the specific topic of global poverty and why it matters to every citizen.

All ten of the high-level threats to humanity are connected, and all twelve of the stabilizing policies from Agriculture to Water must be connected as well.

2006/04/042009/12/04

Review: An Army of Davids–How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths (Hardcover)

4 Star, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

5 for Horizontal Knowledge, 3 for the Rest, 4 on Balance,

April 4, 2006

Glenn Reynolds

There are two “five star” ideas in this book:

1) That horizontal knowledge, peer to peer and distributed network knowledge, is quickly burying bureaucratic “top down” or vertical knowledge.

2) That “technological capitalism,” the author's term, enables the information works to control the means of production, finally achieving what I call “communal capitalism.”

3) Against bureaucracies, terrorists have the learning curve advantage. Against civilians, they did not.” The author is referring to the fact that the entire US intelligence and defense apparatus failed to stop the first two 9-11 planes whose attack was two years in the making, but citizens armed with a cell phone figured it out in 109 minutes and stopped the third plane.

4) Further to this, the author provides a riveting discussion of a story overlooked by the mass media on 9-11, the “improvised Navy” that helped evacuate lower Manhattan in what some call an American Dunkirk.

5) The author discusses the explosion in consumer creation and sharing, and makes a compelling case of suggesting that traditional aggregators of information are dead. Google is likely to die in the next five years, but something after Google will help structure, filter, link, and monetize. We are in a transition period and need to reach a place where all historical information, all current scholarship, and all future online publications, both formal and informal, can be leveraged through semantic web and synthetic information architectures.

Now to bring this full circle, I want to mention just a couple of other books, because what is happening in the USA today, ahead of the rest of the world, are three things:

1) The public was sparked by Howard Dean, and now is becoming empowered and mobilized. Citizen advocacy groups are integrating localized observation, information sharing technologies, and collective brainpower to the point that they are more competent and quicker than the government or corporate or media bureaucracies.

2) This Collective Intelligence or Army of Davids is becoming enraged over the end of the cheap oil (which the government knew about in 1974-1979 and concealed in order to keep the bribes from oil companies coming), the end of free water, the rise of pandemic disease, the decline in education and morality and responsible foreign policy.

3) Intelligent observations are being made by stellar thinkers just as Jeffrey Sachs The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time and C. K. Prahalad The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks) with the result that this Collective Intelligence, now mobilized and incited by the Bush Administration, sees a better way–a path into the future where we spend on peace and ending poverty, instead of war and invading other countries on a web of lies.

Bottom line: this is a useful book that provides a fragment of the total mosaic. I am very glad I got it, and hope that this review will not only lead you to buy the book, but to read my other reviews, which in the aggregate, provide a free graduate education on global issues in about two hours.

EDIT of 11 Dec 07: See also, with reviews:
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
The Global Brain: Your Roadmap for Innovating Faster and Smarter in a Networked World
Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution
The Wisdom of Crowds
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

2006/03/312009/12/04

Review: Crashing the Gate–Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics (Hardcover)

4 Star, Civil Society, Culture, Research, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Politics

Great on Internet Saving Democracy, Lose It Assuming Democratic Party Will Be There,

March 31, 2006

Jerome Armstrong

This is an absolutely superb book, one of the finest reviews, in a readable form, of all that ails this Nation. The authors are like fighter pilots, performing incredible feats of daring-do, right up to the point where they crash and burn by suggesting that the Democratic Party can win anything at all.

I read a lot–almost exclusively non-fiction about information, intelligence, emerging threats, anti-Americanism, the lack of strategic culture, white collar crime, and the negative impact of US domestic political machinations on our national security and prosperity. This book is one of the single most extraordinary overviews I have ever seen, and if you buy and read only one book this year, this is the book.

I bought the book on faith, but for those who wish that the publisher had done a proper job of posting the table of contents, let me just post that information.

American Reality covers corporate cons, theocons, neocons, and other losers

This Ain't No Party starts with Divided We Fail and then discusses how each of the major movements (labor, environment, women) failed.

The Gravy Train is about white-collar crime–the beltway mafia, the commission mafia, the media, propaganda against our own.

Laying the Groundwork is best summed up by the quote from Mahatma Gandhi on the first flyleaf: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” We WILL win–there are not enough guns on the planet, or enough places for white collar crooks and crooked politicians to hide, to keep us down or avoid our justice.

Civil War discusses the Dean machine and the path to “Netroots.”

The book concludes with Inside the Gate, which I have mixed feelings about–the authors have some thoughtful ideas on challenging every Republican, but they miss the boat completely in failing to understand that the Democratic political leadership is just as corrupt, slightly more stupid, and much less ruthless and effective.

That leads to my two critiques that take away one star, but I certainly do consider this book a must read and the authors to be geniuses and thought leaders:

1) Peter Peterson, in Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It does a much better job of laying out the prevailing mood across America, which is essentially, “a pox on both parties.” They have both main-lined bribery, they both lack ethics, vision, strategy, and a commitment to the public interest, and neither party is suited for managing America. What the authors forget, perhaps because of their focus on the Dean revolution (which failed–as did the more electable Edwards). John Kerry was the epitaph of the Democratic Party, and Hillary Clinton will be its gravestone.

2) The authors make the mistake, from the above starting point, of thinking this is about mobilizing a bigger Democratic base against the Republicans. That will not work. Base on base, the Republicans will win every time in this era; in part because the Democrats have given up faith (see my review of the utterly brilliant The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right by Rabbi Michael Lerner). As I tried to tell Dean and then Edwards and then Kerry, you do not beat a bigger dog with another dog, you beat them with a dog-catcher. There is only ONE dog-catcher issue in this country, and it is this: does EVERYONE's vote count? The answer is no. Hence, I see the author's well-intentioned guidance going down the drain UNLESS they write a second book, which I eagerly encourage, that does two things this book does not do:

a) Show how an American Independence Party, to be launched on the 4th of July, can have a federalist organization that includes conservative Democrats, moderate Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, Independents, and Couch Potatoes all as self-organized units that come together with one goal, and one goal only: crushing the extremist religious-corporate right, and restoring the concept of moral representative democracy to America. Any Congressman who fails to leave either the Republican or Democratic Party, who fails to join the new party, should be defeated in 2008.

b) The authors could write a handbook for organizing the people through a national budget simulation that brings out the issues and demonstrates what Paul Ray has known all along (see my review of “Cultural Creatives” and Google for “New Political Compass”): every issue can attract a mix of ideological views where consensus can be achieved. The problem with our two main parties today is that their corruption eliminates honest representations (see my review of “Breach of Trust” in which the author discusses how forcing Members to vote on the “party line” dishonors their obligation to represent their District). I am prepared to contribute financially if these two authors will establish a web site where we can create a virtual coalition government, with all “wings” of the American Independence Party represented, and where we can use a national budget simulation (it's not policy until its in the budget”) to sort out our spending priorities inclusive of elimination of the double-deficit and a shift of $100B a year toward waging peace. Ralph Nader's book “Crashing the Party” has some good ideas-why can't we do this under the author's guidance, and also pick a coalition cabinet that challenges both Republican and Democratic candidates to do the same and participate in cabinet-level debates under the League of Women Voters?

This is a super book, but the authors repeat the mistake Joe Trippi made early on (see my review of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything: the Internet will not save the Democratic Party. Using the Internet to create a new umbrella party will, however, save democracy. The two should not be confused. The Democratic Party today is Republican Lite, and not worth saving. Bring on book two-I'll buy the first 100 copies!

EDIT of 11 Dec 07: Lou Dobbs on CNN is calling for all Americans disenchanted with the two party system to register as independents. This seems to be catching on. Reuniting America is hot (Unity08 is not–last gasp of the two-party spoils system). If 100 million voters come back to vote after dropping out these past eight years, it is game over on corruption, and a new day for democracy.