3 Star – Page 11 – Public Intelligence Blog

Useful, Could Have Been *Much* Better

September 21, 2007

Amy B. Zegart

I was thrilled when this book arrived today, put everything aside, and spent the last two hours with the book.

It is useful, but it could have been much better.

The useful part is the academic model, the timelines of CIA and FBI missed opportunities, and in general, taking the kinds of recommendations that I and others have made, and putting them into polite terms that the la-di-dah crowd and the pontificators can accept. Adapt or die is a homage to Bob Gates, who excells at adapting politically, not professionally. When he and I spoke together at the War & Peace Conference in Paris, I went first, he got up, said “I'm not even going to touch that,” and launched into status quo speak. I am sure he shared Sandra Kruzman's view in the 1990's that my publication of “E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution & Intelligence: An Alternative Paradigm for NATIONAL Intelligence” (Whole Earth Review, Fall 1992, easily findable on the web), “confirms Steele's place on the lunatic fringe.” To the extent that this “safe” author and “safe” book nudge the young and mid-grade professionals to peek oput of their cubbies, it is helpful. Unfortunately, most case officers and analysts do not read widely and most have no idea of what world-class commercial intelligence practices and processes are–as John Perry Barlow said in Forbes some time back, “if you want to see the last vestiges of the Soviet era, go to CIA.”

Missing from this book, which could have been a barn-burner, are three things:

Equal coverage of White House, State, and Defense appointee failures

An appendix integrating all 500+ recommendations, most not implemented, with a structure that could have been of extraordinary value to the Director of National Intelligence.

A solid methodologically-grounded trade-off analysis of how best to spend $60 billion a year on national intelligence, including full consideration of both our rotten educational system that General Mike Hayden has ably lamented in two major speeches; and multinational information sharing.

The author's first book was an instant classic. The core point from the first book, that intelligence needs to be fixed big with the full weight of the President, or not at all because marginal fixes are not worth the political capital, remains extant. The DNI has not been empowered to “fix big” nor does he have the deep bench of iconoclasts needed to do anything other than a 500 day plan that is well-intentioned but still on the margins in the larger scheme of governance and intelligence reform.

This book is not as good, largely because is stays within the box and does not offer new substance, only organizes old stuff covered in many other books including my own (which are noteworthy for their absence from the bibliography–that is either contrived, or poor scholarship, take your pick).

Minus one star.

This is a fine book for the non-professional, the innocent bystander that wants something more substantive than Gertz, less polemical than Steele, less original than Allen, Hiam, or a host of others–I list a few below, more are in my lists.

If I were the publisher of this book, I would not reprint it until the author provided a consolidated actionable integrated appendix of all the recommendations structured so as to be immediately useful to Congress, the media, the public, and of course, the DNI whom we all support as best we can.

As I completed my review and spent another half hour with my notes, and especially noting that the books below (and many others) were not considered by this author, it hit me. She's drunk the kool-aid. This is a book by a person who so wants to please Condi Rice (her PhD mentor) and the extremist Republicans, that she was willing to sacrifice more than I expected to stay in the safe lane with safe authorities.

Minus a second star.

Moves the book into the pedestrian category, and that is a real shame, because had she kept her balance and used all the sources and intellect of which she is demonstrably capable, this book could have been most helpful. I am very disappointed. I recommend that the book be completely re-developed, or that an appendix of the integrated recommendations be offered free at the book's home page on Amazon; if that were done the book would be worthy of four stars, in my opinion, and I would change the rating, something Amazon now allows us to do.

A handful of the more obvious omissions:
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
Strategic Intelligence & Statecraft: Selected Essays (Brassey's Intelligence and National Security Library)
Informing Statecraft
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
Denial and Deception: An Insider's View of the CIA
Secrecy: The American Experience (World Religions: Themes and Issues)
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth'
Wedge: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11–How the Secret War between the FBI and CIA Has Endangered National Security
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
Secrecy and democracy: The CIA in transicion (Perennial library)

2007/09/192009/10/17

Review: Enemies of Intelligence–Knowledge and Power in American National Security

3 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Very Disapointing, Incomplete, Dated, and Annoying

September 19, 2007

Richard K. Betts

Retired Reader is as usual being kind. I agree that the book is useful as a sense of what the insider's want us to think, but it is at best a superficial summary (easily read) that has so many errors (of perception) and omissions (of fact) as to hardly be worthy of the read.

I quickly realized the general shallowness, but out of respect for the author stopped reading and instead went and read every single footnote, every single index entry, and indeed confirmed that this is a mix of old work, draws only on “members of the club” work, and fills in the gaps with Op-Eds and newspaper stories written by people who generally have no clue. Then I read the whole book.

Anyone who cites Deborah Burger's pabulum about “revolution in intelligence affairs” is kissing the institution's ass (pun intended); and anyone who considers the Sims-Gerber book to be transformative (as opposed to useful if you want the status quo), is simply out of touch with reality, with the possibilities, and with the complex pathologies that plague both the intelligence community (see my five images) and our politicians, every one of them, but most especially Dick Cheney and Nancy Pelosi, impeachable for breach of trust. For additional background, see my IJCI commentary on “Intelligence Affairs: Evolution, Revolution, or Reactionary Collapse?”

This is in fact what annoyed me most about this book–it glosses over the high crimes and misdemeanors of the White House but also of the Cabinet, as well as the blatant errors and omissions of virtually every senior intelligence officer. The USS Liberty and USS Pueblo were outrageous acts of war that could have been defended against and also justified retaliation, but instead both Administrations covered up, as they covered up on 9/11 and the Kennedy Assassination. In the case of George Tenet, he screwed up three big things: the clandestine service; the hunt for Bin Laden; and his ignorance in refusing to follow the recommendations made by Boyd Sutton in “The Challenge of Global Coverage,” calling for 1.5B a year against the 95% of the world that we ignore at our peril.

This book gets three stars instead of the two I planned originally because the author is an original, has demonstrated he knows what the higher standard is, and I will simply assume that at this time in his life he too busy to read broadly. He could start with my reviews, which are free.

There are so many books over-looked by the author here that I just shake my head. I link to a few below.

I expected the author to be dismissive of open sources of information, and to ignore my own work despite the fact that he has been a speaker at one of my conferences and knows full well the contents of my varied books. What I was not expecting was what I consider to be an abject superficial apologia, almost a hearts and flowers farewell to the John McLaughlin's of the past.

I was also not expecting the quickly evident lack of familiarity (or lack of time to properly integrate if known) with the wealth of information from many authors on both policy and intelligence failures, and the facts thereof. Nowhere in this book, for example, does the author properly credit Charlie Allen with sending 35 line crossers into Iraq to confirm what we already knew from the defecting son-in-law: keep the cook-books, destroyed the stocks, bluffing for regional sake.

Although acceptable in an academic book of this kind, the author's lack of understanding of the magnitude of the budget (it is $60 to 70 billion, not the loose lips $44 billion that Mary Graham gave us) and his lack of understanding of how what we do now fails to address the ten high level threats to humanity that LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret) helped identify, fails to help us create the needed four forces after next including the White Hat Peace from the Sea and Peace from Above, relegates this book to the curiosity pile.

I was particularly annoyed by the disingenuous glibness in speaking of the value of an intelligence reserve, when the author knows full well that because of security blinders the secret puppies talk to just 14 of the 1400 Muslim experts in America; and either his obliviousness or naiveté in suggesting that dissent and multiple advocacy channels are worth anything when our young analysts are near idiots (the World Bank official I spoke to says their assumptions about Sudan and elsewhere are so ignorant as to be frightening); have no processing power, not even the analytic desktop that Diane Webb designed in 1985-1986, at which time I discovered we had no fewer than twenty “compartmented” projects to build the same all source fusion station, only each was a sweetheart deal with a different vendor; or access to the 96% of the information that the secret world does not have access to and will never have access to unless we first create a Multinational Information Sharing Activity outside the wire and able to share without restraint.

The book whimpers to an end. For a free and broader grasp of reality and pathology, see my reviews of other books on intelligence (especially the ones the author neglects to integrate), and sign up for the free weekly report, GLOBAL CHALLENGES: The Week in Review. See Earth Intelligence Network.

I won't even touch the lack of serious coverage of education, commercial intelligence, policy-maker ignorance, and all the other small but important details left out of this book. This book comes nowhere near the reality that you cannot create and maintain smart spies in the context of a dumb nation. This is what we get from a community that spends $60B a year creating a President's Daily Brief ($1.2B/week), largely ineffective at all else.

Below are the tip of the iceberg.

On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars
Denial and Deception: An Insider's View of the CIA
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
Wedge: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11–How the Secret War between the FBI and CIA Has Endangered National Security
Deep Cover: The Inside Story of How DEA Infighting, Incompetence and Subterfuge Lost Us the Biggest Battle of the Drug War

See my many lists for broader recommendations.

2007/08/272009/12/04

Review DVD Revelation

3 Star, Religion & Politics of Religion, Reviews (DVD Only)

Above Average with a Good Point, Generally Low Rent

August 27, 2007

Carol Alt

I watched this movie tonight, and I must admit, I started it expecting to hate it, and instead found the patience to watch it to the end.

It's a B movie at best, with limited script, acting cast, set sophistication. Certainly worthwhile as a source of reflections, but I'd like to see a much more skilled cinematography community spreading the Christian message.

By the by, Revelation is not in the index, and the Gospel of St. Thomas continues to be community-oriented interpretation of God on Earth in community.

Other movies that have been uplifting for me:
Bonhoeffer
Gandhi (Widescreen Two-Disc Special Edition)
Tibet – Cry of the Snow Lion
The Snow Walker
What the Bleep Do We Know!?

2007/08/112009/10/16

Review: After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex Societies

3 Star, Complexity & Catastrophe, Complexity & Resilience

Good Idea Partially Executed

August 11, 2007

Glenn M. Schwartz

The book, an edited work, seeks to address a gap in scholarship, to wit, where others have covered why and how complex societies have collapsed, there is vitually nothing on how some, not all, regenerate. The editors do point out that most collapses are not total, and something is left (see my review of The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology) for a more nuanced review of this matter). It fails to go the full distance possible.

The combined authors posit a cycle of growth, collapse, and regeneration between ruralism and local autonomy, and urbanization with centralization of control.

In an excellent but not quite complete summary of the causes of collapse, the editors outline the following:

1. Fragmentation into smaller political entities
2. Partial or complete desertion of urban centers
3. Loss or depletion of centalizing functions
4. Breakdown of regional economic systems
5. Failure of civilization's ideology

They do not mention the latest and best explanation, that the more complex a society becomes, the more expensive it is to make incremental improvements in management, and the unaffordability of the always increasing cost for each always decreasingly effective improvement ultimately leads to implosion (see Collapse as linked above).

They do however mention in passing that large-scale inegalitarian systems tend to collapse over time–they are unsustainable. This tallies nicely with Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People while also contrasting with the literature on the The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization, and so on.

The authors are somewhat narrow in focusing on prior structures of rule, authority, and governability. One puts this book down with the impression it was a first date between a political scientist and an anthropologist, and they fell into psycho-babble as a neutral common ground. See my loaded image, with the full thesis at my web site under my photo/Early Papers.

An isolated but interesting observation on how state control of time and space (e.g. Daylight Savings Time, or in the US the more recent and most unwelcome additional hour of time change) are part of mind control, was worthy of note–just a the power of the state to define crime and insantity leaves us with a The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead, legalized corporate greed, and a mendacious Vice President who has committed 25 impeachable offenses and yet carries on with impunity (see Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

The conclusion, in two parts, consists largely of psycho-babble (the first part), and a very fine second part, much more interesting for its applicability to our time, that posits that when a centralized government goes too far in overseas adventurism, this opens the way for the provinces to secede and become autonomous again. I note that we have 27 secessionist movements in the USA, and they are having their second annual meeting in October of this year. I for one feel that there is no one now running, including Ron Paul, that understands that the secessionists, not the “party base” are the ones we should be listening to, for they are the only ones that see clearly that the Republic is no more.

To save the Republic, we must destroy two things and create one thing:

1. Destroy the Democratic and Republican parties (see Running on Empty: Contemplative Spirituality for Overachievers) and
2. Destory the unbound Executive and the abdicated Congress
3. Create a transpartisan ticket that demands electoral reform prior to 2008 and provides both a Sunshine Cabinet with integrated policies announced in advance, and a sustainable balanced budget that eliminates all personal income taxes while taxing the Federal Reserve for local, state, and federal revenues.

We need to make every budget transparent, and to publish every budget in time for citizen participation in the evaluation of every trade-off. We do this, or the United States of America is destroyed, courtesy of Wall Street, the Bush Family, the Saudis, and Dick Cheney.

This is a useful book, but only an elementary start. The authors are all well-positioned to go on now to the next level. See also the various books on surviving the The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century.

2007/06/272009/12/04

Review: The Final Move Beyond Iraq–The Final Solution While the World Sleeps

3 Star, Iraq, Religion & Politics of Religion

Christo-Fascist Zionist Idiocy–Nice Man with No Grasp of Reality

June 27, 2007

Mike Evans

The author's use of “the final solution” in the title tells us a great deal. First, it tells us he is unwitting of the sad irony of using Hitler's term justifying the genocide against the Jews. Second, it tells us he is naive and not very well read (as Hilter was not well-read on the Russian winter). Finally, it tells us he has zero grasp of global reality.

I have heard from commentators on my reviews that my listing of alternative books is as valuable or more valuable than detailed criticism of those books I consider to be intellectually decrepit, so below I respectfully offer the one book from the retired US military neo-cons that set the stage for this book, and then a series of books–just a few of hundreds (see my lists for more) that this author clearly has not read and consequently has no clue.

The outline of biblical propphesies is classic Bible-thumping stupid–these are the people that do not read ANYTHING other than the Bible or the Left Behind Series, and get their foreign affairs “wisdom of the ages” from the Pat Robertson 700 Club.

Israel and the US appear to be the last two nations on the planet that still think they can force their way on 6 billion people. The Iranians are actually a major bulwalk against the idiot Arabs who are now infecting Africa (as is China), and the Iranians understand two things really well:

1) Nuking them (70 million) will arouse 2 billion Muslims around the world

2) They can cut the supply line from Kuwait to Baghdad anytime, they can use Stingers to bring down any “Baghdad Airlift,” and they can take out one of the carriers in confined Gulf waters with a Russian Sunburn missile (zig-zaps at 2.2 mach) and a Pakistani nuclear warhead. Israel will be hit with 20,000 missiles from Lebanon, and several pre-placed bombs, including at least one dirty bomb and maybe even one nuclear suitcase bomb, will go off in Tel Aviv.

Now for the books:

Pro Neo-Con, The First Stupid, the Others More Intelligent
Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror
Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History
An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror

Anti Neo-Con, See My Lists for hundreds more relevant books
The Unconquerable World
Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
A Half Penny on the Federal Dollar: The Future of Development Aid
Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America

2007/06/262009/12/04

Review: Outrage–How Illegal Immigration, the United Nations, Congressional Ripoffs, Student Loan Overcharges, Tobacco Companies, Trade Protection, and Drug Companies Are Ripping Us Off . . . And

3 Star, Politics

Pathetic Kludge, Incoherent, Largely a Waste

June 26, 2007

Dick Morris

I can imagine the conversation that led to this “book.”

Dick: I'm broke. Clintons won't help me.

Agent: Throw together a book that slams the liberals, panders to the right, and is full of emotional issues you can kludge together.

Dick: Great. Eileen, have that kid at the local community college google for 12 hot issues, throw something together.

Three months later: “the book.”

Yuck. See my review of Lawrence Goodwyn's The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America (Galaxy Books), and the other books listed below, for more serious thinking.

I read a lot. I think strategically and am in the process of developing a holistic approach to the ten high-level threats to humanity, the twelve policies needed to deal with them, and the eight challengers (all with huge populations). It is in that context that I see this book as a hysterical, incoherent, badly written kludge of hot button issues summarized from Internet searches and Op-Eds. I went through the footnotes and while I may have missed one or two, I could not find a single BOOK–not a single one. This is hyped out of context garbage.

This is incomplete, inauthentic, and incoherent. It does not propose solutions. This author cannot add and is incapable of putting together a balanced sustainable budget. See the list below for more thoughtful books.

On pharmaceuticals, the author rails against the industry's successful lobbying that prevented the US Government from negotiating for reduced prices, but completely misses the larger context: that health care is a four-part solution of lifestyle, environment, alternative or natural cures, and–last and least–medical remediation. He is also evidently unaware that units that sell for $600 in the US and $60 in Canada sell for $6 everywhere else, and we can eliminate the forecasted unfunded future obligations for Medicare overnight.

He lists Cuba as a sponsor for terror. As I reviwed this book I thought to myself, “fired by the left, pandering to the right.” This is not a pretty piece of work, and it is almost pathetic in its ranting.

There is no mention in this book that I could find of the two issues that really matter: restoration of the Constitution, and electoral reform to restore We the People as sovereign.

The author(s) try to end on the cute note that Outrage is better than Cynicism, but I find nothing in this book that contributes to a more measured strategic executable program.

This book is second-hand hype, and largely worthless to any serious discussion. I have put it away, never to be looked at again, and washed my hands after doing so.

See my lists on democracy and on transpartisanship for more serious reading. A few books that are head and shoulders above this one:

Where Have All the Leaders Gone?
The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love
The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics
Democracy's Edge: Choosing to Save Our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Escaping the Matrix: How We the People can change the world
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest

2007/06/252009/10/16

Review: Sharpening Strategic Intelligence–Why the CIA Gets It Wrong and What Needs to Be Done to Get It Right

3 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

June 25, 2007

Richard L. Russell

I might have leaned toward four stars on this book, which is certainly a useful contribution, but it falls into the second tier for being a clear hit job—and shallow to boot. Gaps in the author's reading (or writing) appeared from the very beginning. Lost first star there.

He defines strategic intelligence as focused on threats and the use of force. Despite his mention of Adda Bozeman, he does not seem to have understood that the heart of strategic intelligence is deep and sustained study and understanding of foreign cultures, histories, languages, genealogies, and ties that bind–financial, religious, tribal, ethnic, etc. Lost second star here.

There are ten high-level threats, twelve remediation policies, and eight global challengers, and all 30 of these factors must be studied as a whole and in relation, in the present, near, and far term. Anything less is not strategic intelligence.

I am troubled by the author's rather black and white bias in tarring CIA with all the wrongs and exempting the policy-makers, and especially Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith, for their many errors and omissions as well as 25 specific high crimes and misdemeanors committed by Cheney alone as detailed in The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 and Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency.

The author has read (or written) selectively. His examples of failure on Korea do not include reference of the Secretary of State's Press Club appearance in which South Korea was explicitly left out of the American orbit. His shallow coverage of Viet-Nam does not benefit from a lack of reference to None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam, War Without Windows: A True Account of a Young Army Officer Trapped in an Intelligence Cover-Up in Vietnam, or Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars, among others.

His coverage of 9-11 is also deficient. While he properly criticizes CIA for failing to actually ramp up both clandestine penetrations and analytic talent, and he faults the FBI for not sharing with CIA, he fails to mention the 9 specific warnings from foreign governments that the White House chose to exploit to achieve “our Pearl Harbor”–the Israeli's even sent a video crew to capture the known-in-advance event for their archives, while Dick Cheney organized an “exercise” with a command center NOT in the target building where the command center was originally built at great expense.

On Iraq, I found the author irritating–almost whining–in his never-flagging effort to tar the CIA. Evidently he is not aware of, or does not wish to credit, the defection of Salaam Hussein's son in law and the 25+ line crossers Charlie Allen is said to have sent in, as recounted in Bob Woodward's State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III all of whom came back with the same story: kept the cookbooks, destroyed the stocks, bluffing for regional influence's sake.

I agree with the author on some key points:

1) DNI should not have been created, this just created another layer of bureaucracy so we could promote the losers who got us here one more time.

2) CIA is out of touch with reality. While the author glosses over the importance of open sources of information, he is evidently completely unfamiliar with what properly done OSINT can do, to include tribal genealogies and orders of battle, financial-family ties and asset mapping, and so on.

3) The author is certainly correct to whale away at CIA security. On the one hand, they did not want my wife's report on the 300 foreign intelligence officers she met at one of my conferences, including the LtGen from the KGB (“did you sleep with any of them? No? Forget about it.”) and on the other these are the morons who harassed a GS-15 who dared to call Kazhikistan to solicit local views, to the point that she quit CIA and is now very happy as the Chief of the Intelligence Analysis Division at one of the Combatant Commands. I was barred from the campus by these fools for properly returning a classified document from USMC to CIA, taken with permission and transported both ways via authorized couriers.

4) The author is correct on the fossilized layers of “management” and bureaucracy, and he does provide a good review of shortcomings, but I for one, with experience across three of the four Directorates back in the day, consider this book to be a case of “several hundred bleats too many.” Yes, CIA is a mess. Yes, CIA should not have 800 SES positions and 200-400 compartments that do not share with another. It is all that bad? No. I could turn CIA around in 90 days just by recruiting Amazon to mobilize all the top authors and readers on every topic; by creating external non-secret multinational intelligence-policy councils on every topic of importance as I am doing now with the Earth Intelligence Network; by asking DoD to make the Coalition Coordination Center into a Multinational Information Sharing Hub that does OSINT as well as multinational HUMINT and close-in emplacement of US-provided technical devices. Somewhere in there I would fire two thirds of the contractors, half of the security people, two thirds of the lawyers, and most of FBIS. This is not rocket science.

The book ends weakly, with a mention of horizon scanning, which Singapore has turned into a 21st century new craft of intelligence, but the author evidently has not read Tom Quiggin's Seeing the Invisible: National Security Intelligence in an Uncertain Age, and is unfamiliar as well with the broader literatures on information society, modern intelligence, strategy & force structure, emerging non-traditional as well as catastrophic and disruptive threats, anti-Americanism and blow-back, and the negative impact of domestic politics on sound foreign and national security policy.

This is not suitable as a textbook.

Category: 3 Star

Review: Spying Blind–The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11