Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform) – Page 50

2002/01/312009/12/04

Review: See No Evil–The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Biography & Memoirs, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Misinformation & Propaganda, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Straight Talk from Patriot–Should Testify at 9-11 Hearings,

January 31, 2002

Robert Baer

As a former clandestine case officer, leaving the Agency in 1988 after unsuccessfully chasing terrorists for a few years, I knew we were in bad shape but I did not realize just how bad until I read this book. The author, working mostly in the Near East (NE) Division of the Directorate of Operations, and then in the Counter-Terrorism Center when it was just starting out, has an extremely important story to tell and every American needs to pay attention. Why? Because his account of how we have no assets useful against terrorism is in contradiction to what the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) told the President and his top advisors at Camp David on Saturday 15 September. According to the Washington Post of 31 January 2002, page A13, on the 15th the DCI laid out an ambitious “Worldwide Attack Matrix” and told the President that the United States had a “large asset base” from its years of working the terrorism target. One of these two men one is closer to the truth than the other. In my judgement, I believe Baer has three-quarters of the weight on his side. This discrepancy warrants investigation, for no President can be successful if he does not have accurate information about our actual capabilities.There are four other stories within this excellent book, all dealing with infirm bureaucracies. At one level, the author's accounting of how the Directorate of Operations has declined under the last three leaders (as the author describes them: a recalled retiree, an analyst, and a “political” (pal)) is both clearly based on ground truth, and extremely troubling. The extraordinary detail on the decline and fall of the clandestine service is one that every voter should be thinking about, because it was the failure of the clandestine service, as well as the counterintelligence service (the Federal Bureau of Investigation) that allowed 9-11 to happen…at the same time, we must note that it was a policy failure to not have investigated similar incompetencies when a military barracks in Saudi Arabia, two Embassies, and a naval destroyer were attacked, and it was clearly known in open sources that bin Laden had declared war on America and had within America numerous Islamic clerics calling for the murder of Americans–all as documented in an excellent Public Broadcast Service documentary.

At a technical level, the author provides some really excellent real-world, real-war annecdotes about situations where clandestine reporting from trusted operations officers has not been accepted by their own superiors in the absence of technical confirmation (imagery or signals). As he says, in the middle of a major artillery battle and break-out of insurgent elements, screaming over the secure phone, “its the middle of night here”. We've all known since at least the 1970's that the technical intelligence side of things has been crushing human sensibility, both operational and analytical, but this book really brings the problems into the public eye in a compelling and useful manner.

At another level, the author uses his own investigation for murder (he was completely cleared, it was a set-up) by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and at one point by the Secret Service, to shed new light on the complete break-down of internal security processes within the CIA. At its lowest point, he is pressured by DO management with a psychological evaluation to determine his fitness for duty–shades of Stalinism! I know this technique, of declaring officers unfit for duty based on psychological hatchet jobs, to be a common practice over the past two decades, and when Britt Snider was appointed Inspector General at CIA, I told him this was a “smoking gun” in the 7th floor closet. That it remains a practice today is grounds for evaluating the entire management culture at CIA.

There is a fourth story in the book, a truly interesting account of how big energy companies, their “ambassadors” serving as Presidential appointees within the National Security Council, and corrupt foreign elements, all come together. In this the spies are not central, so I leave it as a sidenote.

In my capacity as a reviewer of most intelligence-related books within these offerings, I want to make it clear to potential buyers of this book that the author is not alone. His is the best, most detailed, and most current accounting of the decrepit dysfunctionality of the clandestine service (as I put it in my own book's second edition), but I would refer the reader to two other books in particular: David Corn's “Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades”–its most memorable quote, on covert action in Laos, being “We spent a lot of money and got a lot of people killed, and we didn't get much for it.”–and Evan Thomas' “The Very Best Men–Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA”–its best quote: “Patriotic, decent, well-meaning, they were also uniquely unsuited to the grubby, necessarily devious world of intelligence.” There are many other books, including twelve (12!) focused on reform and recommended by the Council on Intelligence.

The author is a brave man–he was brave on the fields of war and clandestinity, and he is braver still for having brought this story to the public. We owe him a hearing.

2001/11/122009/12/04

Review: The Rise and Decline of the State

5 Star, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Insurgency & Revolution, Military & Pentagon Power, Public Administration, War & Face of Battle

Historical Pessimism Absent Recommendations for Change,

November 12, 2001

Martin van Creveld

Anything Martin van Crevald writes is a five, and this book, although over-priced (…), is as as good as history can get. His notes are world-class, including a highly relevant note in the final chapter, to wit, that according to Soviet General Lebed's 1997 public statement that, “out of 100 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs manufactured for the Soviet Union's special forces, two-thirds could no longer be accounted for.”To begin with, Van Crevald damns the state for its consistent increase of taxes and its decrease in public services. The state has become, in a word, incompetent and archaic–its grossly over-funded militaries are increasingly helpless in the face of covert and guerrilla violence, at the same time that states are spending more and more on police forces and less and less on a rapidly growing politically deprived disenfranchised underclass.

He ends, as a historical purist, without making recommendations for change. Indeed, he quotes Mao Tse Tung, “The sun will keep rising, trees with keep growing, and women will keep having children.”

In many ways Van Crevald's book serves as a capstone to the fifty or so books I have reviewed in the past year, most of them about strategy, threat, intelligence, and the so-called revolution in military affairs, for what I take from this work is that the state does have an extremely important role to play in assuring the common security and prosperity of the people, and we abandon the state at our own peril.

Every nation, but especially the most prosperous nations that have allowed virtually out of control immigration and set no real standards for citizenship, must very carefully examine its policies and premises, both with regard to what constitutes citizenship and loyalty, and what services it must offer to preserve and protect the commonwealth.

I am told that the FBI was prevented from searching the homes of several of the suspects in the weeks prior to the 11 September attacks, because we have granted to our visitors–illegal as well as legal–all those rights that might better be reserved for proven citizens. Van Crevald's work is not, as some might take it, the death knell for the state, but rather the bath of cold water for the statesmen–and for those citizens who care to instruct their politicians on our demand for renewed focus on resurrecting the connection between citizenship, taxation, representation, and security.

2001/09/212009/12/04

Review: Defense Policy Choices for the Bush Administration 2001 – 2005

4 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power

Core Reading, Treats Traditional Defense in Isolation,

September 21, 2001

Michael E. O'Hanlon

Every citizen needs to read and think about the future of national defense. This book is one of the core readings.

Among the recommendations in this book that make it essential reading for anyone concerned with streamlining and revitalizing national security, I consider the following to be sensible:

1) cost savings should not be achieved through the wholesale abandonment of overseas commitments (13);

2) achieve additional cost savings as well as increased operational utility by sharply limiting spending on the most advanced weapons and mobility systems, applying the savings to maintaining readiness and buying larger numbers of “good enough” weaponry (83);

3) citing Stephen Rosen-he could also have cited Colin Gray-he urges a slowdown in the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) while emphasizing that true RMA's are less about technology and more about the very best mix of people, time, and information to produce innovation (88);

4) in this vein, he noted the continued excessive focus on mobility platforms rather than C4I or joint service experimentation (90);

5) homeland defense needs several billion more dollars per year (129), a recapitalization of the U.S. Coast Guard by with at least a $750 million a year increase (135), and a sharply increased focus on setting C4I security standards for unclassified communications and computing networks across the nation, with roughly $100 million a year additional;

6) politely put, National Missile Defense is best conceptualized as theater missile defense (TMD, 143); and

7) Taiwan would be a nightmare for all sides.
Among the assertions in this book that give me pause are

1) defense down-sizing in the past ten years has been successful, trimming a third of the budget and manpower while retaining quality and cohesion (p. 1);

2) that 3% of the Gross Domestic Product is adequate for defense spending and we do not need to go to the less-than-traditional 4% (3-4);

3) that the Marine Corps should be employed to relieve Army troops in the Balkans (57) or Korea (80);

4) that North Korean armored forces would have great difficulty breaking through Allied lines to Seoul (71);

5) that rogue nations like North Korea would attempt to provide their infantry with chemical protective gear when using chemical weapons (73);

6) that US airpower is both a rapid-response solution for distant threats as well as an overwhelming response for sustained threats (76, passim);

7) that arsenal ships are survivable in off-shore loiter mode (111); and

8) that an overseas deployment rate of 8% of the total force is too high (227).
Having said that, and with all my reservations about a book, no matter how talented the author, that does not preface its discussion of force structure with a review of the recommended strategy, and a discussion of the recommended strategy with a review of the real-world right-now threat, I have to rate this book a solid four in terms of seriousness of purpose and utility of content.

It would be twice as valuable if it included a thorough discussion of what kind of Global Coverage intelligence investment is needed in order to make defense forces relevant and capable in the future; and if it included a discussion of how defense forces are but the most expensive instrument of national power, and must be designed and funded in consonance with the other instruments, and especially the severely underfunded diplomatic, economic, and cultural instruments.
The author, easily one of the top three citizen-reviewers of the national security spending program, ultimately recommends less expensive weaponry, a different two-war capability (“1+A+i”), selective reductions in overseas deployments, more defense and less nuclear offense, selective increases in homeland defense including the U.S. Coast Guard and joint experimentation, and a modest increase (roughly $25 billion) of the defense budget that would combine with his recommended savings to yield the $60 billion or so transformation delta that others have recommended.
I like and recommend this book. Out of context, however, it is a dangerous book, for it will lead an inexperienced President and a Cold War team to the conclusion that only a transformation of the traditional military (Program 50) is necessary. O'Hanlon has done it again-he has provided the baseline from within which a reasonable public debate about defense transformation might ensue. The military issues he addresses comprise both the foundation and one of the four corners of our future national security-my concern about this book is that it is completely isolated and makes no mention of the other three corners without which we cannot maintain a proper roof over our heads: intelligence (threat understanding), strategy, and Program 150 soft power-power that today is both silent and emaciated.

2001/03/312009/12/04

Review: Resource Wars–The New Landscape of Global Conflict

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Military & Pentagon Power, Politics, War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Ground Truth That Will Be Ignored,

May 31, 2001

Michael T. Klare

This is a very thoughtful and well-documented book that has been 20 years in the making–although it was actually researched and written in the past three years, the author is on record as having discussed water wars in 1980, and should be credited with anticipating the relationship between natural resources, ethnic conflict, and great power discomfort well before the pack.

He covers oil in particular, energy in more general terms (to my disappointment, not breaking natural gas out from oil, a very relevant distinction for commodities brokers), water, minerals, and timber. His footnotes are quite satisfactory and strike a very fine balance–unusually good–between policy, military, and academic or industry sources.

Sadly, I believe that this book, as with Laurie Garrett's book on the collapse of public health, will be ignored by the …Administration, which appears to have decided that real war is only between states, that energy is something to be increased, not moderated in use, and that real men do not concern themselves with ethnic conflict, small wars, or scarcity of any sort in the Third World.

As I reflect on this book, and its deep discussion of the details of existing and potential resources wars (it includes a very fine illustrative appendix of oil and natural gas conflicts, all current), I contemplate both my disappointment that the author and publisher did not choose to do more with geospatial visualization–a fold out map of the world with all the points plotted in color would have been an extraordinary value–and the immediate potential value of adding the knowledge represented by this book on resources and the Garrett book on public health threats–to the World Conflict & Human Rights Map 2000 published by PIOOM at Leiden University in The Netherlands.

What I really like about this book is its relevance, its authority, its utility. What I find frustrating about this book is that it is, like all books, an isolated fragment of knowledge that cannot easily be integrated and visualized. How helpful it would be, if US voters could see a geographic depiction of the world showing all that the author of this excellent work is trying to communicate, and on the same geographic depiction, see the military dollars versus the economic assistance dollars that the U.S. is or is not investing. The results would be shocking and could lead to political action as the community level, for what is clear to me from this book is that there is a huge disconnect between the real threat, our national security policies, and how we actually spend our foreign affairs, defense, and trade dollars from the taxpayers' pockets.

A trillion dollar tax cut, or a trillion dollar investment in deterrence through investments in natural resource stabilization and extension? Which would be of more lasting value to the seventh generation of our children? The author does not comment–one is left to read between the lines.

2001/03/312009/12/04

Review: Secrecy–The American Experience

5 Star, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), History, Information Society, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Extraordinary Contribution to National Sanity and Security,

May 31, 2001

The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Senator Moynihan applies his intellect and his strong academic and historical bent to examine the U.S. experience with secrecy, beginning with its early distrust of ethnic minorities. He applies his social science frames of reference to discuss secrecy as a form of regulation and secrecy as a form of ritual, both ultimately resulting in a deepening of the inherent tendency of bureaucracy to create and keep secrets-secrecy as the cultural norm. His historical overview, current right up to 1998, is replete with documented examples of how secrecy may have facilitated selected national security decisions in the short-run, but in the long run these decisions were not only found to have been wrong for lack of accurate open information that was dismissed for being open, but also harmful to the democratic fabric, in that they tended to lead to conspiracy theories and other forms of public distancing from the federal government. He concludes: “The central fact is that we live today in an Information Age. Open sources give us the vast majority of what we need to know in order to make intelligent decisions. Decisions made by people at ease with disagreement and ambiguity and tentativeness. Decisions made by those who understand how to exploit the wealth and diversity of publicly available information, who no longer simply assume that clandestine collection-that is, ‘stealing secrets'-equals greater intelligence. Analysis, far more than secrecy, is the key to security….Secrecy is for losers.”

2001/01/102009/12/04

Review: For the President’s Eyes Only–Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush

5 Star, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret)

For Presidents, Cabinet Members, Commanders, & Senior Staff,

January 10, 2001

Christopher Andrew

“Over the past two centuries only four American presidents-Washington, Eisenhower, Kennedy (briefly), and Bush-have shown a real flair for intelligence.” This 660-page book documents this assessment, and ends with the conclusion “The presidents in the twenty-first century, like their Cold War predecessors, will continue to find an enormously expensive global intelligence system both fallible and indispensable.” His general findings in the conclusion are instructive: presidents have tended to have exaggerated expectations of intelligence, and have frequently overestimated the secret power that covert action might put at their command. For all that failed, both in intelligence not getting it right and presidents not listening when it did, intelligence undeniably helped stabilize the Cold War and avoid many confrontations. This book is extremely relevant to the emerging discussion, in 2001, about the need to depoliticize the position of the Director of Central Intelligence, and perhaps to consider a new National Security Act of 2001.

2000/10/132009/12/04

Review: Creating the Secret State–The Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943-1947

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Deep Insider-Doctoral History, Relevant Today,

October 13, 2000

David F. Rudgers

This is an admirable and unusual work, of doctoral-level quality in its sources and methods, while also reflecting the professional intelligence career status of the author. It complements Amy Zegart's broader book, Flawed By Design, in an excellent manner. This book, focusing as it does on the CIA alone, and on internal sources not readily available to Zegart, fills a major gap in our understanding of the CIA's origins. The author excels at demonstrating both the actual as opposed to the mythical origins of the agency, and pays particular heed to the role of the Bureau of the Budget and that Bureau's biases and intentions. At the end of it all, the author notes that the agency was moving in controversial directions within four years of its birth, quickly disturbing Harry Truman, who is quoted as saying, twenty-years after the fact (in 1963), “For some time I have been distributed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational arm and at times a policy-making arm of Government….I never had any thought when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak-and-dagger operations.” The author himself goes on to conclude that “the nature of the new threats and the revolution in information acquisition and dissemination have thrown traditional ways of intelligence organization, collection, evaluation, and distribution into question. … CIA has entered the second half-century of its existence striving to avoid the fate of its OSS parent. In the process, it is groping for new missions and purposes while blighted by the legacy of its past derelictions, and while operating amid a rapidly changing global environment and technological revolution that are rendering its sources, methods, organizations, and mystique obsolete.” I would hasten to add, as my own book documents, that we will always have hidden evil in the world and will always needs spies and secret methods to some extent, but this book, combining academic rigor with insider access, must surely give the most intelligent of our policy, legislative, and intelligence managers pause, for it very carefully documents the possibility that 75% of what we are doing today with secret sources and methods need not and should not be done. This book has much to offer those who would learn from history.