1-7 Star Rating – Page 296 – Public Intelligence Blog

Advanced Reading for National Security Practitioner-Students,

July 25, 2002

Roy Godson

This is a really excellent collection of advanced reading on strategic denial and deception, and it makes the vital point that denial and deception are at the core of 4th generation warfare and asymmetric offense and defense strategy.The two contributing editors are the best-qualified experts possible. Roy Godson's work in the 1980's and 1990's on intelligence requirements, carrying on today with his advanced thinking on restoring covert action and counterintelligence as well as the synergy among these and collection with analysis, makes him the premier policy-scholar in this arena. Jim Wirtz, author of the very insightful “The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War,” and now chairman of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School where very advanced work is being done on the new craft of intelligence (both human and technical, both secret and open), adds a combat practitioners perspective.

While there are some similarities among a few of the contributions, on balance each one is sufficiently unique. Two key thoughts that jumped out:

1) Most of the lessons learned come from World War II. The authors were hard-pressed to find modern examples. The one used from the Gulf War (an amphibious feint) is in my recollection false–we were planning an amphibious attack, and it was only at the last minute that CINCCENT was persuaded to do a Hail Mary end run, prompted in part by some exceptional work from the Navy's intelligence center that showed the beach obstacles in great detail.

2) Two perennial lessons learned are that policy makers do not want to hear about possible hostile denial and deception–they want to stick with their own preconceptions (which of course make denial and deception easier to accomplish against us); and second, that intelligence experts tend to be under great pressure to cook the books in favor of policy preconceptions, while also being generally unwilling to believe the enemy can deceive them or accomplish slights of hand that are undetectable.

All of the chapters are good, but two struck me as especially helpful today: J. Bowyer Bell's “Conditions Making for Success and Failure of Denial and Deception: Nonstate and Illicit Actors,” and Bart Whaley & Jeffrey Busby, “Detecting Deception: Practice, Practitioners, and Theory.” The latter, building on a lifetime of study that included a review of eight strategic cultures as well as the cost of major deceptions (D-Day deceptions that fixed German forces cost less than 1% of the assets and could have saved the entire force), examined 47 seven different kind of “detectives” from scientists and bank tellers to biographers and private eyes, and creates nine categories of “detectibles”, concluding with the Law of Multiple Sensors, something that most stove-piped intelligence communities simply will not grasp for at least another decade.

This is both a serious work of scholarship, and a very valuable policy reader.

2002/07/252009/12/04

Review: Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards–U.S. Covert Action and Counterintelligence

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Critical Insights on Restoring Balance to Intelligence,

July 25, 2002

Roy Godson

Roy Godson is the only person to have systematically studied intelligence requirements in a holistic manner, consistently distinguishing among collection, analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action. His series in the 1980's, and then again in the 1990's, on intelligence requirements, stand alone as efforts to define and measure key elements.With this book, written and published prior to 9-11,Godson provides both a historical and a prescriptive treatment of the two most neglected and mis-managed elements of U.S. national intelligence: covert action (concealed influence) and counterintelligence (protecting our secrets by catching their spies and agents of influence).

While 9-11 demonstrated our incapacity in both these vital areas that comprise the black art side of national power, there is no other book and no other expert that has done more to itemize the details that must be contemplated (and are not now being contemplated) by those responsible for devising homeland security defenses. The author's appreciation for pre-emptive “offensive” counterintelligence and covert action, and his understanding of terrorist and criminal and other nonstate actors (one should include rogue corporations, of which there are many), make him particularly well-qualified to advise the Administration and Congress as we move toward what must be a draconian reconstitution and revitalization of national intelligence.

2002/07/232009/12/04

Review: The Volunteer Recruitment (and Membership Development) Book

4 Star, Best Practices in Management, Civil Society

Somewhat Dated, Some Nuggets,

July 23, 2002

Susan J. Ellis

This book (acutally an 8.5 by 11 manual), originally published in 1994 and based on 1980's readings, is somewhat dated and has been only marginally updated. It falls into the second rank of the four books that made the cut from among the many available. Helen Little's “Volunteers: How to Get Them, How to Keep Them” stands alone as the single “must buy.” This book is co-equal to two others, each recommended as supplementary reading because each has something to offer at a secondary level: Sue Vineyard and Steve McCurley's “Best Practices for Volunteer Programs” and Jarene Frances Lee with Julai M. Catagnus, “Supervising Volunteers: An Action Guide for Making Your Job Easier.”There are two aspects of this manual by Susan Ellis that I did not see in the other books: first, her emphasis on casting a wide net and reaching as many potential volunteers as possible….(“Most people do not say ‘no'; they simply never knew you wanted them to say ‘yes'.) While I am skeptical of wasteful advertising programs in this time of diminishing leisure hours, there is something to this. The other vital chapter that this manual offers is the one addressing the importance of image, i.e. the public perception of the organization seeking volunteers, the reputation that it can specifically draw on as a resource.

There are a few flakey notes (e.g. one vignette about recruiting people to call parents and offer support as they are getting kids out the door to school. Any normal parent, especially if one parent is absent or has an early work start, would be furious at any volunteer daring to call in the midst of the chaos that charactizes getting three kids out the door to three different bus pick-up times.)

This manual does have an index. Bottom line: dated, some nuggets, if volunteers are vital to your success, worth getting.

2002/05/292010/10/16

Review: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Civil Society, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Democracy, Electoral Reform USA, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Public), Justice (Failure, Reform), Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

Greg Palast

Let Freedom Ring–Truths the Corporate Thieves Can't Hide

May 29, 2002

The most distressing aspect of this book, written by an American expatriate publishing largely through newspapers in the United Kingdom, is that all of this information should have been published in U.S. newspapers in time to make a difference–to inform the voting public–but was not. One can only speculate how corrupt our media have become–how beholden to their owners and advertisers–if we cannot get front page coverage of the Florida government's disenfranchisement of over 50,000 predominantly black and democratic voters, prior to the presidential election; or of the raw attacks on our best interests by the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and others linked in a “trigger” network where taking money from one demands all sorts of poverty-inducing and wealth theft conditions.

Even more timely are his stories about the current Administration continuing a practice of the former Administration, spiking, curtailing, forbidding intelligence investigations into Saudi Arabian government funding of bin Laden's terrorism as well as Pakistani production of the “Islamic” atomic bomb.

His exposes of corporate misdeeds, some criminal, some simply unethical, all costing the U.S. taxpayer dearly, are shocking, in part because of their sleaziness, in part because our own newspapers do not dare to fulfill their role as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, of informing and educating the people of this Nation upon which the government depends for both its revenue and its legitimacy.

Although I take this book with a grain of salt (wondering, for example, why he did not ensure that Gore's campaign had all that he could offer in time to challenge the vote disenfranchisement as part of the Supreme Court case), there is enough here, in very forthright and sensible terms, to give one hope that investigative journalism might yet play a role in protecting democracy and the future of the Republic.

AA Mind the Gap — Vote and/or Comment on Review

2002/05/292010/09/14

Review–The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Atrocities & Genocide, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Corruption, Culture, Research, Democracy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Politics, Priorities

Hard Truth–Left, Right, or Independent, It Is The Truth

May 29, 2002

Patrick Buchanan

Patrick Buchanan has impressed me enormously with this book. For one thing, he has his facts right. The English-speaking peoples, as Churchill called them, and the Caucasian peoples, as our Russian colleagues as well as Europe might be inclined to describe them, are not replenishing their populations. Immigrants have been a blessing to this country (my mother, for instance), but in the absence of a judicious combination of repopulation, immigrant integration, and sustained civic duty by the larger population, we become hollow and fragmented.

Most interestingly to me, Patrick Buchanan and Lee Kuan Yew, former Premier of Singapore, perhaps the most intelligent man in Asia, are in total–and I do mean total–agreement on the vital importance of the family as the foundation of civilization and continuity. I grew up in Singapore, and have extremely deep feelings of respect for Lee Kuan Yew, and what I see here is two men, as far apart as the earth and philosophy might separate them, who agree on the one core value apart from religion (it does not matter which religion, only that one respect within a religion): FAMILY. Family is the root of cultural continuity and civil sustainability, and if we allow the traditional nuclear family to enter into minority non-replenishment status, we are in fact destroying the Nation.

Patrick Buchanan speaks of how we are no longer one nation under God–or one nation, period. There is a great deal to what he says. For one thing, Mexico has reclaimed American territory all the way up to the Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty line, and the at least one major Republican family seems to be an active element in support of Mexico's illegal as well as legal immigration subversion of America. For another, and Joel Garreau did this in his book by this title, very intelligently, America is geographically, culturally, and economically really NINE nations in terms of geophysical and cultural separation.

The author also alludes to the growing separation between the federal government, which is agreeing to supra-national deals that hurt the states and the population at large–or refusing to sign off on deals (e.g. the Kyoto Treaty) that would actually benefit future generations. One is left with the feeling that we have three different Americas–the federal bureaucracy, the state-level authorities, and the people, and somewhere in here our methods of governance are failing to reconcile the behavior of the first two with the values of the third–in part because the people are all over the lot in terms of values, and we have lost our social cohesion.

Bottom line: he may never be President, but Patrick Buchanan speaks to the core of American values, and he must always be respected and listened to at the high table of American politics.

2002/05/282013/10/20

Review: Grant’s Secret Service The Intelligence War from Belmont to Appomattox

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)

William B. Feis

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-Intentioned, Terrible Maps and No Timelines, May 28, 2002

I do not regret taking the time to read this book, and it is a well-intentioned worthy effort–however, given a new choice, I would probably go with the alternative, by an intelligence professional, “The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War.”

I give the author, not an intelligence professional, high marks for the research, the story-telling, and the consistent themes. I give the editor and publisher low marks for the terrible maps (many seem to have lost their unit location markings and other key annotations) and the lack of tables showing “who knew what when…”

Three themes stayed with me as I put the book down:

1) A great deal can be accomplished in terms of intelligence with even a very small number of people–as few as 1-2 on staff, 3-5 behind the lines. We in America have substituted billions for technology and a cast of close to 100,000, for rather poor intelligence and counterintelligence.

2) Maps, especially “information maps,” are worth their weight in gold. I was reminded by this book that intelligence has in the past been an off-shoot of topographical engineering and map making, and do believe that we must restore the “hard-wired” connection between geospatial information and the “data” that our human, imagery, and signals professionals seek out.

3) Deserters, prisoners, and legal travelers are a gold mine of information and must, must, must be systematically exploited. No matter the degree to which they may offer up untruths and deceptions, the bottom line is that any commander who fails to plan for the systematic exploitation of these human resources, and to do so in a timely fashion, is derelict in their duty. As I recall, we do not yet have a proper table of organization or equipment in the U.S. force inventory for handling such individuals–the worst battalion, or the over-burdened military police, or some kludge collection of reservists, seems to end up being the solution each time. This dereliction is even more costly in “low intensity” environments.

I will not make too much of it, but I was especially pleased to see how much of Grant's intelligence came from enemy newspapers.

The author seeks to make much–perhaps too much–of how Grant did not allow himself to be immobilized by a lack of intelligence, substituting initiative when intelligence was lacking, but I for one don't buy it. What I see in the book is a substantive appreciation by the General Commanding of the role of intelligence, however poorly manned or funded, and that makes all the difference.

2002/05/282011/09/05

Review: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace – How We Got to Be So Hated

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, Complexity & Catastrophe, Congress (Failure, Reform), Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Economics, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Force Structure (Military), Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Priorities, Public Administration, Religion & Politics of Religion, Science & Politics of Science, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Security (Including Immigration), Strategy, Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Gore Vidal

5.0 out of 5 stars You Get the Government You Deserve…., May 28, 2002

This book should be read in conjunction with Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy Vidal's book should be subtitled “you get the government you deserve.”

I cannot think of a book that has depressed me more. There are three underlying issues that make this book vitally important to anyone who cares to claim the title of “citizen:”

1) Citizens need to understand what their government is doing in the name of America, to the rest of the world. “Ignorance is not an excuse.” All of the other books I have reviewed (“see more about me” should really say “see my other reviews”) are designed to help citizens evaluate and then vote wisely in relation to how our elected representatives are handling national security affairs–really, really badly.

Continue reading “Review: Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace – How We Got to Be So Hated”

Category: 1-7 Star Rating

Review: Strategic Denial and Deception–The Twenty-First Century Challenge