1-7 Star Rating – Page 281 – Public Intelligence Blog

Good, Not Great, Travelogue, not Strategic Dialog

October 10, 2003

Madeline Albirght

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.

2003/10/092009/12/04

Review: Beyond Baghdad–Postmodern War and Peace

4 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Complexity & Catastrophe, Force Structure (Military), Future, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), War & Face of Battle

Iraq a Mistake, Muslim Outlands More Important,

October 9, 2003

Ralph Peters

Edited 2003 review to add links and respond to comment.

I normally rave over Ralph Peter's books. He is America's Lawrence of Arabia and a brilliant intelligence analyst, especially on non-conventional threats. In this book (actually, a collection of clippings, most from the New York Post, which says something right off), he goes a bridge too far–on the one hand, he and his mentor, General McCaffrey) go several bridges too far in their praise for the “courageous” strategy of the Bush Administration (it's not a strategy, it's a mindless vendetta bought and paid for by Zionists), and on the other, he applies his superb mind to the realities of our global conflict with radicalized Islam.

The book is full of gems. I've said he is a soldier-poet before, and this book continues that tradition. The flashes of brilliance demand the purchase and reading of this book.

His most important point, one that merits its own book, is that America has misplaced its priorities in attacking radical Islam through Iraq (and passivity toward Saudi Arabia's sponsorship of terrorism, a neglect that will cost vastly more than the Iraq misadventure), and that it is the Muslim “outlands” from Central Asia to Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and India (with the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia) where America would be elevating women, nurturing secular states, and spreading the gospel of peace and prosperity.

The author takes the long-view, at least a 50-year view, and this is in sharp contrast to the “quick win at any cost (to the future)” of the current Administration. Indeed, when the author describes bin Laden as “ultimately a blasphemer against his own religion, having appointed himself God's instrument upon earth, assuming the license to kill by the tens or tens of thousands those who do not share his vision, to purge, to punish, to sanctify,” the author is in fact describing George W. Bush, not just bin Laden.

The author overcomes the limitation of New York Post hyperbole in many of his pieces. Among the most interesting is one on the five socio-psychological pools from which terrorists draw their membership: underclass, “course of conflict” joiners, opportunists, hardcore believers, and mercenaries. Also helpful is his coverage of monotheist cultures, including a subtle reference to neo-conservatism aligned with Zionism as a rising monotheist culture potentially capable of undermining American democracy and religious tolerance.

Deep in the middle of the book we find his discussion of a world divided into three strategic zones, apart from North America: the monotheist zone centered in the eastern Mediterranean; the Sino-Verdic(Indian) zone; and the postcolonial zone of Africa and Latin America. His discussion cannot be summarized and contains many brilliant insights, including a conclusion that China is not a regional threat, and China's greatest variable is not its external ambition but rather its potential for internal implosion. He is provocative in envisioning a huge “Afro-Latino-American” triangle of power emerging, with Brazil, South Africa, and the USA as the potential engines for this renaissance of the Southern Hemisphere.

The author joins Robert Baer, whose book Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude in calling for a complete withdrawal of US support for the despotic and sleazy Saudi regime that blatantly continues to support global terrorism and the radicalization of Muslim youth.

Where Ralph Peters falls short, I believe, and I say this with the utmost respect for this warrior-scholar who has placed his life on the line more than once, is in allowing his ultra-patriotism to shut out the discordant and sometimes dissenting view of other patriots who are perhaps more willing than he to acknowledge that we ourselves are part of the problem. This book is a one-man opinion piece with no reference to other works, such as those by Jonathan Schell The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People, Mark Hertsgaard The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World, or Michael Hirsh At War with Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World, among the many other national security books I have reviewed here at Amazon. It falls prey, therefore, to the over-powering tuba effect, and loses some of its gloss in being so strident and so unabashedly “grind the bastards down, we are the light”–but then, we acknowledge that he was writing originally for the New York Post.

The author gets some big things right: Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright, and Sandy Berger have much to answer for in their deliberate avoidance of the reality of terrorism and their failure to go to a war-footing as both Dick Clarke and George Tenet, among others, advised. He also gets some things wrong. He is wrong, for example, when he speaks on page 166 of Islam's failure to generate a single healthy state, to that we answer: Malaysia. He is half-right when he half-bakes the French, who welcome different dictators to their bosoms for different reasons, while opposing American unilateralism, and he is half-right when he dismisses all of the anti-war voices as ill-considered and cowardly. He is largely wrong in dismissing “Old Europe” as a voice of reason, and he is mostly wrong in assuming that all is right with U.S. intelligence and that everything U.S. intelligence produces is reliable. I realize he is writing hyperbole for the public and knows better, but the book must be judged on its substance.

To end on a most positive note, Ralph Peters is completely utterly correct when he points out that America has, in the past 20 years, surrendered the battlefield to our non-state enemies in advance, for lack of attention and insight and will. Ralph is one of perhaps ten people I listen to with rapt attention–his voice, when integrated with the voices of others with different perspectives, is a lifeline to reality, a voice we ignore at our peril.

2003/09/252018/09/07

Review: Gold Warriors–America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold UPDATE to Add Links to CDs

5 Star, Corruption, Crime (Government), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Impeachment & Treason, Military & Pentagon Power, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Earth-Shattering, Faith-Shaking, Well-Documented Deceit,

September 25, 2003

Sterling Seagrave

This book is earth-shattering and faith-shaking, a well-documented tale of deceit at the highest levels of the US government. So controversial and potentially explosive are the findings of this book, to wit, that the White House recovered most of the Nazi and Japanese loot and created a secret slush fund for covert political operations world-wide, that the authors go the extra mile and offer, at a nominal price, two CD-ROMS containing 60,000 pages of supporting documentation including the Japanese treasure maps used by the US to recover the gold and other valuables.Major players include Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Nixon, both Allen and John Foster Dulles, Douglas MacArthur, John McCloy, and the famous unconventional warrior Edward Lansdale. What we learn from this book is that those writing about “blowback” (the consequences of unwise US actions) have barely scratched the surface. What we learn is that rather than truly seeking to help the Japanese, Chinese, and other looted nations recover in the aftermath of WWII, the most senior leaders of the US government, no doubt with the best of intentions, actually conspired with Nazi bankers and the Japanese imperial family to create a Black Eagle Trust controlled by a very select hand-picked cabal in Washington.

Originally used to fight communism, the Black Eagle Trust, according to the authors and as thoroughly documented by the book and the two CD-ROMS (which I am happy to have in hand), quickly became a global slush fund used to bribe national leaders and manipulate elections around the world. This fund remains in existence today, making the Swiss Holocaust funds seem like loose-change. According to the authors, major banks are “addicted” to the funds and would face collapse if public investigations resulted in a forced return of this gold and related certificates to the rightful owners.

The authors have produced a magnificent work of both scholarship and investigative journalism. They document the extent of Japanese looting of Korea (beginning in 1895) and China as well as the other countries in the “co-prosperity sphere.” They document the manner in which Japan hid most of the gold in the Philippines (some in Indonesia), and were forced to leave it there from 1943 onwards, when US submarine interdiction became too effective to risk shipments homeward.

I found the level of detail in this book to be quite gripping. The ingenious nature of the Japanese burial sites, with caverns below the more obvious tunnels, with sea-water protection, with maps created in reverse–and the in-bred cruelty of the Japanese, thinking nothing of burying all of the US and other national slave labor *and the Japanese engineers* alive as the final stage of protecting the looted treasure, leave one stunned.

The authors document the central role played by Lansdale in recognizing the opportunity and then briefing MacArthur and then President Truman. According to the authors, the architects of the Black Eagle Trust were three advisors to President's Roosevelt's Secretary of War, Henry Stimson: John McCloy (later head of the World Bank), Robert Lovett (later Secretary of Defense), and Robert Anderson (later Secretary of the Treasury). They made the case to Roosevelt, and presumably to Truman after Roosevelt died, that it would be impractical to return the looted gold to the rightful owners, in part because many of the looted countries were now under Soviet control.

The authors, who conducted many interviews in support of the work, including interviews of former CIA deputy director Ray Cline, who they say was involved with Lansdale and the gold in the 1940's and remained involved with the black gold through the 1980's, provide copies of documents showing the redirection of the looted gold to 176 bank accounts in 42 countries. The gold was then used to support the creation of gold bearer certificates that were in turned used to bribe the most senior officials around the world.

The authors tell a shocking tale of how quickly MacArthur chose to collaborate with the very leadership of Japan that declared war on the USA and was responsible for genocide and looting in Asia on a scale rarely achieved by anyone else. Bringing the story up to date, the authors show how prior attempts to investigate the Black Eagle Trust have led to the ruin of individuals such as Norbert Schlei, at one time deputy attorney general to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. While I have no direct knowledge and cannot be certain myself, I believe the authors have provided a sufficiently compelling case to warrant an international investigation concurrently with a General Accounting Office investigation to be chartered by Congress with unlimited supeona powers specifically directed against classified personalities and archives.

If this story is true, and I personally think that it is, then the US government, in active collusion with the very people the American people fought to defeat in WWII, has been guilty of fraud and depravity on a global scale and against the best interests of both the American people, and the against the rightful owners of the looted gold and other treasures. The authors may well have uncovered the last really big secret of the post-WW II era, and in so doing, opened the way for a restoration of the balance of power among diverse nations, and a sharp delimitation of the abuses that appear to characterize American leadership when it thinks it can rely on secret gold and stolen oil to engage in imperial adventures and domestic improprieties. As an American citizen and voter, and as a person of faith who believes that we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us, I find this book to be shocking, credible, and a basis for popular outrage and demands for truth and reconciliation.

UPDATE: The below links have NOT been tested.

CD1) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BhNOJWR2I3oYrmCZV2mrBhq3ff2xY8gh?usp=sharing

CD2) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1sLqiNhnW1fN_u1DM5ZOPiR3XzL1y9BZe?usp=sharing

CD3) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YYaIlVqHW8RJWUd6eRIqSbaefJNAC17p?usp=sharing

2003/09/242009/12/04

Review: The Great Unraveling–Losing Our Way in the New Century

4 Star, Economics, Politics

Read Preface and Introduction, Skip the Rest,

September 24, 2003

Paul Krugman

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add comment and links.

New Comment: the author was ahead of his time. See new links below.

The book is worth buying for the Preface and Introduction alone. The rest of the book is a somewhat irritating replay of every column the author has ever written, and not nearly as well done or as riveting as, say, Tom Friedman's replays in “Longitudes & Attitudes”. However, if you have not read the author's columns, his bite-size descriptions of irrational exuberance, crony capitalism, the failure of the Federal Reserve, fuzzy math, how markets go bad, and global spoilage, then they are all certainly worth browsing.

The Preface has three core ideas: 1) the elites are ruling badly and not beneficially for the majority of the population including all the voters and most of the stockholders; 2) politicians and corporation chiefs are getting away with blatant lies to the public because of a media that avoids critical inquiry; and 3) open sources of information–all that lies in the public domain–are more than adequate for anyone to get a grip on reality.

The Introduction is a bit scarier and more pointed. The author joins Mark Hertsgaard, author of The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World in suggesting that the radical right is creating nothing less than a Reichstag in America. In the author's view, and he quotes Kissinger in chilling terms, the radical right is a revolutionary power that is very deliberately and with malice at all times, rejecting and undermining the democratic rules of the game. In the author's words, the radical right is “a movement whose leaders do not accept the legitimacy of our current political system.” The author goes so far as to suggest that the radical right considers elections as “only a formality” and that they will do anything–including subversion of the Constitution–to “win” those elections and reap the domestic and foreign “looting rights.”

Disclosure: I used to be a conservative Republican and used to think such ideas were simply over the top. I have been radicalized by the last 200 books I have read (and reviewed on Amazon) and I have to say, while the third of the nation that is close-minded and ideologically-blindered on the right may give the author short shrift, the other two thirds–the drop-outs and splinter parties, and the failing Democrats–they should take Krugman very seriously. He is an economist, teaching at Princeton, not a journalist nor a sensationalist, and in my view, when one combines his book with that of Clyde Prestowitz, a Presbyterian elder and solid Reagan Republican and fiscal conservative (Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions), with that of William Greider, writing on the immorality and social costs of capitalism as we practice it today (The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy), one can only conclude that the Republic, and that for which it stands, have been hijacked, are being looted, and the American Democratic experiment is on very thin ice.

The index to this book is helpful in running down specific individuals, corporation, and organizations that have committed crimes against the Nation that the author has addressed in his many columns for the New York Times, as repeated in this book.

2003/09/242009/12/04

Review: Terrain Analysis of Afghanistan

5 Star, Geography & Mapping

The Bible for Reconstruction & Military Operations,

September 24, 2003

Kent D. Lee

I am a very happy owner of this volume, and I will certify that it is easily worth $2,500 to $5,000 for any construction or paving company bidding for or awarded contracts in Afghanistan.I have known Kent Lee and East View Cartographic since 1995, when they were instrumental in supporting me in a competitive exercise to demonstrate all that could be done with “open sources” of information, versus narrowly-focused classified capabilities. The ability of this individual and this organization to acquire and then exploit Russian, Chinese, and other third-nation source material has made them the single most important geospatial entity in the world after the National Imagery and Mapping Agency.

Every page is clearly printed and the maps, all in color, are extraordinary. The fine print can be a burden if you have to read more than a few sections at a time, but was a necessity–the book would not be easily portable otherwise.

I understand that similar books are in the works for Iraq and other countries where terrain analysis is a vital element of reducing costs and increasing profits and operational successes. This book is both essential to prior planning, and essential to on-going operations.

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

2003/09/242009/12/04

Review: Intelligence and the War in Bosnia–1992-1995 (Perspectives on Intelligence History)

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Complexity & Catastrophe, Crime (Government), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Force Structure (Military), History, Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Religion & Politics of Religion, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle

Unique Blend of Lessons Learned and Tutorial on Intelligence,

September 24, 2003

Cees Wiebes

This is a superb publication. An American, who would never have received the kind of direct official support provided to the author by the government of The Netherlands, could not have written it.This is the only book that I know of that fully integrates deliberate studies of UN intelligence; Western and NATO intelligence (which the author correctly notes does not exist); Dutch intelligence; and belligerent party intelligence.

Several recurring themes of lasting value emerged from my reading of this book:

1) The UN is dangerously devoid of intelligence qua decision-support. The culture of the UN leadership, the UN bureaucracy, and the UN delegates is one that places a higher priority on the semblance–the mockery–of lip service to open sources and legal methods, while sacrificing the lives of UN forces in the field. One cannot read this book, and its superb documentation of how UN Force Commander after UN Force Commander pleaded for intelligence support, only to be told no by the staff in New York, without becoming very angry. This book makes it perfectly clear that the UN leadership failed the Croats, the Serbs, and the international peacekeepers, in every possible way. Toward the end of the book the author also focuses on the UN as a source for the belligerents, i.e. UN incapacity for operational security and secure communications in fact makes it a primary source for belligerents seeking to kill one another.

2) The West failed in Bosnia in part because it became over-reliant on technical intelligence (which it could not process or analyze with sufficient speed and reliability), and did not have adequate numbers of competent clandestine Human Intelligence (HUMINT) or even ground-truth observers in the region. A contributing source of failure was the evidently deliberate decision on the part of the Clinton White House to downplay the conflict and to withhold such intelligence warning as they did have from the UN, in the misplaced belief that sharing such information would interfere with the peace process. Tens of thousands died because of Clinton White House irresponsibility.

3) Intelligence “liaison” or structured sharing across national boundaries, was an ungodly mess made worse by the inherent biases and rose-colored glasses worn by the Americans and the British on one side, and the French and the Germans on the other. “Wishful thinking” by policy makers interfered with proper assessments of the relative condition and intentions of the various belligerents.

4) The CIA clandestine endeavor was split, with one Station operating out of Sarajevo and another out of Zagreb, and no overall coordination or integration of sources and reports.

5) Civil Affairs (CA) as a military occupational specialty is blown forever by CIA Directorate of Operations (DO) abuses, most without the permission of the U.S. European theater commander. CIA/DO managers should be disciplined for this breach of internal US government protocols.

6) The Dutch were not ready to field a major operational or tactical intelligence support architecture, and in-fighting among various elements prevented the various analysts from making the most of what little they could glean from varied sources. The same was actually true of all Western intelligence communities–all had other priorities and too few resources [although language deficiencies are not emphasized by the author, one presumed a grotesque lack of required competencies across the Croat and Serb dialects as well as Yugoslavian, Turkish, and Arabic]. In the view of a senior officer whose quotations close Chapter 3, heads should be rolling for dereliction of duty–although the subject refers only to the Dutch, the reviewer would add US and British heads as well.

7) The book excels–is remarkable and perhaps unique–for its discussion of the secret arms supplies–not only the routes, the providers, the landing zone delivery means–but the active violation by the US of the embargo, and the active role of US Special Forces in violating the embargo without a covert action “finding”, and hence also in violation of US law. Other nations were equally at fault. It is clear from the book that the UN needs not only operational and tactical intelligence for the specific area of operations, but an extended intelligence and operational capability sufficient to *interdict* incoming arms to the belligerents. This book may well be the single best reference on this topic.

8) The sections of the book on signals and imagery intelligence are a work of art, combining historical scholarship with original research and a very fine tutorial aspect. The listing of the 11 disadvantages of SIGINT (pages 224-228) is the finest I have ever seen. The bottom line in both instances is: too much collection, too little processing and analysis. The author uses a remarkable quote from a former Director of the National Security Agency to make this point: good news is that we can exploit a million messages a day; bad news is that we don't know which million out of the billions we capture to do… Also interesting is the detailed accounting of belligerent party competencies in SIGINT and IMINT, to include the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and advanced methods.

9) The book ends with two notes that I choose to emphasize, although the author makes many valuable observations in his conclusions that I will not repeat here: first, support to UN operations was the *fifth* priority for Western intelligence, coming after force protection, after ground truth observation, after support for air targeting, and after support for NATO ground troop planning; and second, Doctors Without Borders, a non-governmental organization, was the *only* entity to get true validated warning of the Srebrenica genocide.

The index is terrible-names only. Properly indexing the book for references to all intelligence sources and methods as well as events and practices, would make it 2X to 3X more valuable as a basic reference.

This book is highly recommended and a “must have” for every national security and international affairs library, and for every professional interested in peacekeeping intelligence.

Category: 1-7 Star Rating

Review: Madame Secretary–A Memoir

Review: Beyond Baghdad–Postmodern War and Peace

Review: Gold Warriors–America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold UPDATE to Add Links to CDs

Review: The Great Unraveling–Losing Our Way in the New Century

Review: Terrain Analysis of Afghanistan

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

Review: Intelligence and the War in Bosnia–1992-1995 (Perspectives on Intelligence History)