Category: 4 Star

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Review: War Without Windows

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Essential reference on intelligence failure in Viet-Nam,

April 8, 2000
Bruce Jones
Sam Adams may be more famous as the whistle-blower on CIA and U.S. military falsification of the numbers of Viet Cong and regular North Vietnamese army personnel confronting the U.S. in Viet-Nam, but this book is the very best account I have found of the intimate details of how politics, bureaucracy, bad judgment, and some plain downright lying falsified the military intelligence process at all levels of the U.S. military in Viet-Nam.
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Review: From the Shadows–The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Useful benchmark on intelligence-policy relationship,

April 8, 2000
Robert M. Gates
I wore out one fountain pen on this book. Bob Gates has served his country, and five presidents, as earnestly and capably as anyone might, and there is much to learn from this book. The level of detail is quite good. He is very critical of the Directorate of Operations for both misbehavior and a lack of management control in relation to Central America, and as one who was there I have to say, he is absolutely right. We disagree on the point of intelligence (he would say, “secrets for the president”, I would say “knowledge for the Nation”) but I believe we would agree on this: intelligence is important, and intelligence merits deep and sustained interest by the President.
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Review: In from the Cold–The Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the Future of U.S. Intelligence

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Essential Citizen-Led Reference on Intelligence Reform,

April 8, 2000
Allan E. Goodman
The Director of Central Intelligence now serving refuses to accept the word “reform” and persists in the traditionalist view that only incremental change is needed within the U.S. Intelligence Community. This book, by a very respected team of private sector authorities with experience in the business of intelligence opens by noting that “informed opinion overwhelmingly holds that many of the important questions about the intelligence agencies have yet to be addressed.” Their book, and mine, and the books coming out this year by Greg Treverton, the team of Bruce Berkowitz and Allan Goodman, and a group of ten authors including Mel Goodman and Bob White, are part of the responsible effort from the private sector to get the incoming President and the incoming Congress to finally accept their own responsibility for engaging these issues and legislating reform that will never come from within the U.S. Intelligence Community if it is left to its own devices and inclinations.
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Review: INSIDE THE COMPANY–CIA DIARY

4 Star, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Best Cold Look at Day to Day Clandestine Operations,

April 8, 2000
Philip Agee
I despise what Philip Agee did with this book, endangering the lives of real people and violating his oath as a commissioned officer in the clandestine service. I was also very surprised by the level of detail in the book, and concluded that he intended to betray the CIA well prior to leaving. I've served three overseas tours and three Washington assignments, and from all that time I can barely remember one cryptonym series and not a single true identity. I think Agee took notes and planned ahead to burn the CIA. This is a good diary, and I include it in this bibliography to represent the pedestrian side of the DO-the day to day monotony of going through the motions and doing agent recruitments and agent handling operations in third world countries where the bulk of what one does really does not contribute to U.S. national security or understanding.

Edit of 11 Jan 08 to add comment and links.

Comment: I am committed to reducing the secret budget from $60 billion a year to $12 billion, and the heavy metal military budget from $950 billion to $250 billion, with the savings directed toward waging peace and offering free education in all languages via free cell phones, the only way we will be able to create a prosperous world at peace.

Other links:
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion
Web of Deceit: The History of Western complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
See No Evil
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition

Edit of 12 Apr 09 to add three more links
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

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Review: National Insecurity–U.S. Intelligence After the Cold War

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Useful Annecdotal Opinions, Should be Bought and Read,

April 8, 2000
Craig R. Eisendrath

A project by the Center for International Policy, founded by Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), this book brings together a series of chapters that are largely anecdotal (but reasoned) pieces from former foreign service officers recalling all the terrible things CIA did or did not do while they were in service. It includes a chapter by Mel Goodman that some thought was to have been a full-blown book. The chapter by Richard A. Stubbing on “Improving the Output of Intelligence: Priorities, Managerial Changes, and Funding” is quite interesting. There is a great deal of truth in all that is presented here-Ambassador Bob White, for example, was in El Salvador when I reported, a graduate thesis on predicting (and preventing) revolution in my past, and I remember vividly our conversation about the need to suppress the extreme right if we were to stabilize the country.

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Review: Fixing the Spy Machine–Preparing American Intelligence for the Twenty-First Century

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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4.0 out of 5 stars US Intelligence is not broken…view from the inside,

April 8, 2000
Arthur S. Hulnick

This book has two good features-the author really does understand the personnel issues, and hence one can read between the lines for added value; and the book is as good an “insider” tour of the waterfront as one could ask for. How the book treats the CIA-FBI relationship, for example, is probably representative of how most CIA insiders feel. The book does not reflect a deep understanding of open sources and tends to accept the common wisdom across the intelligence bureaucracy, that all is “generally okay” and just a bit of change on the margin is necessary. In this respect, it is a good benchmark against which the more daring reformist books may be measured.

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Review: Predictions–Society’s Telltale Signature Reveals Past & Forcasts the Future

4 Star, Future

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4.0 out of 5 stars Useful and thought-provoking,

April 8, 2000
Theodore Modis
Or, everything you ever wanted to know about the S-curve and why it all makes sense in the end. This book is about creativity, competition, and the natural order of things. Mutants are most important during times of violent change (the end of a paradigm) when they offer substantial variation from the non-workable past and hence improve the shift toward survival by being more fit for the new circumstances. Interestingly, each successive transport infrastructure (canals to rails to roads to airways) provides an order of magnitude improvement in productivity. One could consider the personal computer and modem a way station on this trend, with networking and true global collaborative work tools as the next node. In the life spiral of change 1996 is the center of a “charging” period with new order and new technology, and will lead to tension and grow in the 2000-2010 period followed by a discharge boom and then relaxation and recession in the 2010-2020 period. Pollution is the next “global war” that needs to be fought, and we will not have a global village until we can reduce the travel time between any two points anywhere to 70 minutes and a cumulative cost for a year of such travel to 15% of the average global income.
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