Intelligence (Government/Secret) – Page 52

2003/05/242009/12/04

Review: Terrorist Hunter–The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Religion & Politics of Religion, Terrorism & Jihad

US Terrorism, Open Sources, and Federal Ineptitude,

May 24, 2003

Anonymous

WARNING NOTICE: Reliable sources in the counter-terrorism world inform me that this book is partly fiction in that the author is systematically integrating the accomplishments of others into her story as if they were her own. I have, however, decided to leave my review intact because she tells a very good story and its key points are right on target. I recommend the book for purchase by all–on balance it is a fine contribution.—-

Although there are no endorsements or other means of validating the truth of this book, and “woman with four-children” may be a cover for a hyper-active Israeli man in his mid-20's who is of Arab descent, it reads with enormous credibility, it is loaded with correct references, and its many anecdotes about both the value of public records (open sources) and U.S. federal government ineptitude (especially the FBI but also including State, AID, INS, and the CIA) are in my opinion spot on.

This book is an excellent companion to Steven Emerson's book, AMERICAN JIHAD: The Terrorists Living Among Us. Indeed, it has occurred to me that the anonymous author of this book is, if not working directly for Emerson, then possibly in one of the Jewish-funded research elements that he relies upon for research assistance.

Among the many compelling points that I found to recommend the purchase and reading of this book are:

1) Israeli McCarthyism against any Jew willing to express need for a Palestinian state as part of regional stabilization
2) The Rabin assassination as the Israeli equivalent of the US Kennedy assassination–everyone remembers where they were
3) The vital importance of reading all Islamic charity information in Arabic, where the messages are violent and subversive–English for the fund-raising, Arabic for the incitement to terrorism
4) The catastrophic cost of American naivete pre-9-11 in putting all religious and charitable organizations off limits to US counterintelligence, however inept it might have been
5) The extraordinary utility of public records, not just within the US but from Israel and the Arab states, in nailing down relationships among charitable organizations, Saudi financiers, and specific individual terrorists
6) The extraordinary utility of historical (back ten years) Arabic newsletters and newspapers in nailing threatening statements and jihad intentions of people applying for US citizenship or already US citizens, because the federal government has no clue how to do proper open source research
7) The accuracy of the 1990 predictions of American proponents of jihad who claimed that the US's ultimate intent was to “occupy the Arab and Islamic oil sources”
8) The degree to which African Americans have been pulled into the jihad-aspects of Muslim extremism as practiced and preached in the US
9) The ineptitude of the FBI's “knock knock” neighborhood canvassing approach to basic information, completelely eschewing proper open source research and proper undercover collection
10) The ineptitude of the FBI in particular, but the US government in general, in sharing information about terrorists and their organizations (we are amused to note that Aqil Collins, in My Jihad, is virulent on this topic–evidently one thing both mujahids and Israeli counter-terrorism researchers can agree upon is that the FBI was and remains inept)
11) The suspect loyalties and competence of the FBI liaison to Saudi Arabia, who is of Muslim faith and refused to do proper undercover work against other Muslims while posted in the US
12) The pervasive and deep Saudi financial links to all aspects of US Muslim extremism, to include funding for mosques intended to be centers for radicalization over the long term
13) The early open source literature on how Bin Laden decided to apply his construction expertise to solving both smuggling and storage and protection issues in Afghanistan (we have in other reviews noted the importance of the book on Vietnamese tunnels, titled “The Tunnels of Cu Chi”)

As I finished the book, I agreed completely with the author's basic premise, to the effect that open source information about US terrorist and charity ties, properly validated, should be posted to the Internet for all to see. This appears to be the only proper response to continuing federal ineptitude. The author is compelling in stating that in the years since 9-11, very little has improved. The FBI continues to refuse to share, the State Department continues to be incompetent at screening terrorists out (and in one instance, allowed the Agency for International Development to offer funding to a known terrorist organization), the list goes on.

This is a very impressive personal account. The author's proven accomplishments, well-documented in the book, lend credence to the value of open sources and methods in the war on terrorism–and lend credence to the legitimate concerns of citizens who are overly trusting in their federal government, which appears to still be, 2 years after 9-11, massively inept.

2003/05/242009/12/04

Review: A Look over My Shoulder–A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Sometimes Bland, But Priceless Collection of Gems,

May 24, 2003

Richard Helms

Richard Helms is, after Allen Dulles, arguably the most significant US spymaster and intelligence manager in history. It is a fortunate circumstance that he overcame his reluctance to publish anything at all, and worked with the trusted William Hood, whose own books are remarkable, to put before the public a most useful memoire.

Below are a few of the gems that I find worth noting, and for which I recommend the book as a unique record:

1) Puts forward elegant argument for permissive & necessary secrecy in the best interests of the public
2) Defends the CIA culture as highly disciplined–he is persuasive in stating that only Presidents can order covert actions, and that CIA does only the President's direct bidding.
3) Makes it clear in passing, not intentionally, that his experience as both a journalist and businessman were essential to his ultimate success as a spymaster and manager of complex intelligence endeavors–this suggests that one reason there is “no bench” at CIA today is because all the senior managers have been raised as cattle destined to be veal: as young entry on duty people, brought up within the bureaucracy, not knowing how to scrounge sources or meet payroll…
4) Compellingly discusses the fact that intelligence without counterintelligence is almost irrelevant if not counterproductive, but then glosses over some of the most glaring counterintelligence failures in the history of the CIA–interestingly, he defends James Angleton and places the blame for mistreating Nosenko squarterly on the Soviet Division leadership in the Directorate of Operations.
5) Points out that it was Human Intelligence (HUMINT), not Imagery Intelligence (IMINT), that first found the Soviet missiles in Cuba.
6) He confirms the Directorate of Intelligence and the analysis it does, as the “essence” of intelligence, relegating clandestine and technical intelligence to support functions rather than driving functions. This is most important, in that neither clandestine nor technical collectors are truly responsive to the needs of all-source analysts, in part because systems are designed, and agents are recruited, without regard to what is actually needed.
7) He tells a great story on Laos, essentially noting that 200 CIA paramilitary officers, and money, and the indigenous population, where able to keep 5 North Vietnamese divisions bogged down, and kept Laos more or less free for a decade
8) In the same story on Laos, he explains U.S. Department of Defense incapacity in unconventional or behind the lines war by noting that their officers kept arriving “with knapsacks full of doctrine”.
9) In recounting some of CIA's technical successes, he notes casually that persistence is a virtue–there were *thirteen* satellite failures before the 14th CORONA effort finally achieved its objectives.
10) He gives Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) much higher marks at a user and leader of intelligence, such that we wondered why Christopher Andrew, the noted author on US Presidents and intelligence, did not include LBJ is his “four who got it” (Washington, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Bush Senior).
11) He confirms, carefully and directly, that the Israeli attacks on the USS Liberty were deliberate and with fore-knowledge that the USS Liberty was a US vessel flying the US flag on US official business.
12) He expresses concern, in recounting the mistakes in Chile, over the lack of understanding by President Nixon and Henry Kissinger (who writes the Foreword to this book) of the time lags involved in clandestine operations and covert actions.
13) In summary, he ends with pride, noting that all that CIA did not only reduced fear, it saved tens of billions of dollars in defense expenditures that would have been either defeated by the Soviets, or were unnecessary. There can be no question, in light of this account, but that CIA has more than “paid the rent”, and for all its trials and tribulations, provides the US taxpayer with a better return on investment than they get from any other part of the US Government, and certainly vastly more bang for the buck that they get from the US Department of Defense.

Richard Helms is a one-of-a-kind, and this memoire should be read by every intellience professional, and anyone who wishes to understand how honorable men can thrive in the black world of clandestine and covert operations. RIP.

2003/05/242009/12/04

Review: The Main Enemy–The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Extraordinary–Substantive History–Real World Good Stuff,

May 24, 2003

Milton Bearden

This book is a fine read, and to my surprise, the contributions from The New York Times are quite worthwhile. In essence the primary author, Milton Beardon, wrote the core of the book, on his experiences with the Soviet Division in the Directorate of Operations at the CIA, and in Afghanistan and Pakistan driving the Soviets in Afghanistan, and then journalist James Risen filled in the gaps with really excellent vignettes from the other side. The two authors together make a fine team, and they have very capably exploited a number of former KGB and GRU officers whose recollections round out the story.This is not, by any means, a complete story. At the end of thise review I recommend five other books that add considerable detail to a confrontation that spanned the globe for a half-century. Yet, while it barely scratches the surface, this book is both historical and essential in understanding two facts:

1) Afghanistan was the beginning of the end for USSR and
2) CIA made it happen, once invigorated by President Ronald Reagan and DCI William Casey

It may not be immediately apparent to the casual reader, but that is the most important story being told in this book: how the collapse of the Soviet effort in Afghanistan ultimately led to the collapse of Soviet authority in East Germany, in the other satellite states, and eventually to the unification of Germany and the survival of Russas as a great state but no longer an evil empire.

There are two other stories in this book, and both are priceless. The first is a tale of counterintelligence failure across the board within both the CIA and the FBI. The author excels with many “insider” perspectives and quotes, ranging from his proper and brutal indictment of then DCI Stansfield Turner for destroying the clandestine service, to his quote from a subordinate, based on a real-world case, that even the Ghanians can penetrate this place. He has many “lessons learned” from the Howard and Ames situations, including how badly the CIA handled Howard's dismissal, how badly CIA handled Yuchenko, to include leaking his secrets to the press, how badly both CIA and FBI handled the surveillance on Howard, with too many “new guys” at critical points of failure; and most interestingly, how both DCI Casey and CIA counterintelligence chiefs Gus Hathaway (and his deputy Ted Price) refused to launch a serious hunt for Ames and specifically refused to authorize polygraphs across the board (although Ames beat a scheduled polygraph later). The author's accounting of the agent-by-agent losses suffered by the CIA as Howard, Ames, and Hansen took their toll, is absolutely gripping.

The second story is that of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and how the anti-Soviet jihad nurtured by America and Pakistan ultimately turned back on both countries. It may help the reader of this book to first buy and read Milt Bearden's novel, “The Black Tulip,” a wonderful and smoothly flowing account in novelized terms. From the primary author's point of view, it was Afghanistan, not Star Wars, that brought the Soviet Union to its knees. The primary author provides the reader with really superb descriptions of the seven key Afghan warlord leaders; of the intricacies of the Pakistani intelligence service, which had its own zealots, including one who launched jihad across in to Uzbeckistan without orders; into how the Stingers, and then anti-armor, and then extended mortars (with novel combinations of Geographical Information System computers and satellite provided coordinates for Soviet targets, all 21st century equipment that was quickly mastered by the Afghan warriors) all helped turn the tide. As America continues to fail in its quest to reconstruct the road of Afghanistan, having severely misunderstood the logistics and other obstacles, one of the book's sentences really leaps out: the supply chain to the rebels “needed more mules than the world was prepared to breed.”

This book is a collector's item and must be in the library of anyone concerned with intelligence, US-Soviet relations, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Saudi funding of terrorism. It is a finely crafted personal contribution from someone who did hard time in the CIA, and made an enormous personal contribution, in partnership with the hundreds of CIA case officers, reports officers, all-source analysts, and especially CIA paramilitary officers (including Nick Pratt and Steve Cash, forever Marines).

A few other books that complement this one: Thomas Allen & Norman Polmar, “Merchants of Treason”, Ladislav Bittman, “The Deception Game”, Vladimir Sakharov, “High Treason”, Victor Sheymov, “Tower of Secrets,” and Oleg Kalugin, “The First Directorate.” There are many more but these are my favorites.

2003/05/012009/12/04

Review: Intelligence–From Secrets to Policy

5 Star, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Primer for Presidents, Congress, Media, and Public,

May 1, 2003

Mark M. Lowenthal

Mark Lowenthal, who today is the Associate Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production (ADCI/A&P), was briefly (for a year) the President of OSS USA (I created OSS Inc., the global version). So much for disclosure and “conflicts of interest”. The previous review, after a year of being irritatingly present, needs to be corrected. Dr. Lowenthal was for many years the Senior Executive Service reviewer of intelligence affairs for the Congressional Research Service, then he went on to be Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence & Research (Analysis), and then he became the Staff Director for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he supervised one of the two really serious really excellent studies on all that is wrong with intelligence and what needs to be fixed. OSS was lucky to have him contribute to its development for a year before he moved on to another corporation and then to the #5 position in the US Intelligence Community. He needs no help from me in either articulating his ideas or doing good work.What the previous reviewer fails to understand is that Dr. Lowenthal's book represents the *only* available “primer” on intelligence that can be understood by Presidents, Congressmen, the media, and the public. While my own book (The New Craft of Intelligence) strives to discuss the over-all threats around the world in terms meaningful to the local neighborhoods of America, Dr. Lowenthal's book focuses on the U.S. Intelligence Community itself–the good, the bad, and the ugly. He is strongest on analysis and the politics of intelligence, somewhat weaker on collection and counterintelligence covert action. There is no other book that meets the need for this particular primer, and so I recommend it with enthusiasm. It is on the OSS.NET list of the top 15 books on intelligence reform every written.

2003/03/082009/12/04

Review: Fixing Intelligence–For a More Secure America

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Useful Informed Opinion,

March 8, 2003

Gen. William E. Odom

There are two very important themes running through this book, and they earn the author a solid four stars and a “must read” recommendation. First, the author is correct and compellinging clear when he points out that even the most senior intelligence professionals, including DCIs, simply do not understand the full range of intelligence organizations, capabilities, and problems that exist–just about everyone has spent their entire career in a small niche with its own culture. Second, the author is unique for focusing on an area that is both vital and ignored today: that of creating joint and combined intelligence concepts and doctrine to ensure that minimal common understandings as well as training competency levels are reached across varied jurisdictions; and to enable competent community resource management, also non-existent today.The author is positively instructive in this book, providing both trenchant indictments (for instance, of the National Reconnaisance Office for being oriented toward big budgets and inputs rather than missions and outputs), and many common sense observations that all need to be factored into whatever the Senate finally decides to do about intelligence reform.

Among the many important points that he makes, I especially agree with his pointing out the need to fully integrate the management of inputs and outputs within each of the major collection disciplines–as he notes, disconnecting the building of satellites, or aerial imagery vehicles, or unmanned aerial drones, from the actual needs of the end-user and the actual responsibility to produce imagery intelligence, leads to precisely what the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Commission Report of December 1999 noted as the major shortfall in national intelligence–close to a trillion spent on secret satellite collection, and nothing spent on tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination (TPED). The author specifically identifies $6 billion in savings being achievable from the NRO budget over five years–savings that could be applied to enhancing analysis, creating competent clandestine collection capabilities, establishing global open source collection activities in each of the theaters, and creating a new national counterintelligence and homeland security intelligence program.

In passing, on page 146 the author “blows the whistle” on the deception imposed on the public by the CIA's clandestine service, which was actually largely incapable in Afghanistan in 2001, and was saved secretly by Russian sources & methods. My own sources tell me that there are some very ugly stories yet to be made public, and the author–whose access and credibility cannot be questioned–is helpful in sharing what he knows on this–America needs a competent clandestine service, not one that pretends that clerks mixed with cowboys, all working from official installations, are anything other than a joke.

The author demonstrates a very deep understanding of the shortfalls of the intelligence bureaucracy, the intelligence culture, intelligence leadership, and the policymakers that fail to direct or exploit intelligence on behalf of the Nation.

There are a few weaknesses in this book, costing the author one star, and they are mentioned to correct the record, as it were–in no way do these weaknesses reduce the value of the book or the importance of the author's views when we finally get around to fixing U.S. intelligence.

First, he is limited in his understanding of the importance of Global Coverage of lower tier issues that can be addessed by open source intelligence (OSINT), including commercial imagery and Russian military combat charts; and he is equally limited in his understanding of both OSINT, and the urgency of finding new means of supporting multilateral peacekeeping operations that mix both government militaries and government law enforcement missions with non-governmental and other private sector actors.

Second, he continues to have a modest obsession with technical solutions, and neglects to properly address the shortfalls in inter-agency information sharing and processing that could be partially resolved by enhancing the National Security Agency's considerable computational power to that it can become an all-source processing manager–at the same time, the author seriously over-states the availability of both bandwidth and tactical processing, while under-stating the enormous flood of unclassified information, including geospatial information, that must be processed if commanders are to be able to understand their combat environments in near real time.

Lastly, the author comes close to spasms of fury when referring to the Central Intelligence Agency, and to a lesser extent, to the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of State. His anger and disdain with regard to these organizations are recurring He is clear in his view that the “all source analyst” cannot and should not be centralized, that analysts must work for the end-users, and that both CIA and DIA should be abolished. While I disagree with this viewpoint, it is a mature informed viewpoint that CIA and DIA managers must address–they ignore General Odom's concerns at their peril.

The book is based on the 1997 study by the National Institute for Public Policy that was chaired by the author and included such other thoughtful executives as LtGen James Clapper, today the head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. The author has made his own statement in this book, and it is perhaps the most practical and the most focused on the public statements on the need for intelligence reform. This book has been added to the OSS.NET listing of the top books on intelligence reform.

2003/03/082013/01/29

2003 IJIC 16/1 “The Citizen as ‘Intelligence Minuteman'”

Articles & Chapters, Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)

Alessandro Politi, “The Citizen as ‘Intelligence Minuteman‘”

2003/01/312009/12/04

Review: War in a Time of Peace–Bush, Clinton, and the Generals

5 Star, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Strategy, War & Face of Battle

Important Piece of the Puzzle,

January 31, 2003

David Halberstam

I look for three things in a book on national security in the information age: 1) does it offer deep insights into specific personalities or situations not available from any other book; 2) does it highlight deficiencies in the process or substance that are not well understood by the public; 3) and finally, does it add anything to the larger discussion of war and peace in the 21st Century. On all these counts, Halberstam satisfies. Indeed, having read his book several months ago, I have put off reviewing it because I wanted to spend more time pulling the nuggets out–as those who follow my reviews know, they are both evaluative and summative.This book validates most of what General Wes Clark says in his own memoir, “Waging Modern War,” and thus in that sense alone it has great value: the Army was unwilling to trust the US General walking in Eisenhower's shoes with either ground troops or helicopters, and also unwilling to fight in mountains. This is such a terrible self-condemnation of America's most important Armed Service that every citizen should be shuddering.

The second major theme I drew from this book was one that the author highlights toward the end of the book when he quotes Madeline Albright, then Secretary of State, as saying (on page 409), “We're just gerbils running on a wheel.” For this the U.S. taxpayer pays $500 billion dollars a year? For gerbils? In combination with Pentagon deception of the President in railroading General Clark out of NATO early, and a wide variety of other practices between personalities in Washington that would get you fired in any serious corporation, the overall impression that one draws of the Washington foreign policy and national security establishment is one of inattention alternating with craven back-stabbing. This is not an environment that is operating at peak efficiency, nor can it be trusted to act in the best interests of the voter and taxpayer.

A third theme, and this impressed/depressed me tremendously, is that of journalism and open sources of information getting it right early, only to be ignored. The author–Halberstam–takes great care to tell a story of respect for the accomplishments of another journalist, Roy Gutman of Newsday, whose headline on 21 November 1991, “Yugoslavs Need West's Intervention,” was the beginning of a series of insightful articles that had little impact at the time. Joining the insights of journalists was the ignorance of history by politicians–Halberstam comments particularly on the lack of European understanding of just how recognition of Croatia was the opening of a Pandora's Box of genocide. I was especially struck, throughout Halberstam's accounting, as to how crafty the Balkan players were, how able they were at deception and distraction, and how inept the Americans and the Europeans were at interpreting the situation and the ploys–with massive genocidal consequences.

A fourth theme that was not emphasized by the book, but which I would highlight based on a passing observation by the author with regard to the lack of television coverage, has to do with the absolute imperative for America and Europe to have both a strong television industry that can go into the dark places where today only adventurers like Robert Young Pelton (“World's Most Dangerous Places”) dare go–while at the same time governments need a “ground truth” cadre of observers who are accustomed to and can survive instability and combat, and are not trapped like rats in Embassies, reporting reality second or third hand. We simply don't know. We simply do not have trusted observers–or TV cameras–in 80% of the places where we most need to have reliable independent observation.

Finally, there were a number of recurring points across the whole book, points where I ended up making annotations:
1) Civilian-military relationships are not marked by trust
2) Presidential teams tend to lack depth, have no bench
3) Washington promotes the least offensive, not the most talented
4) Bush Sr. got no bounce from Gulf War–this is suggestive today, as the son follows the father's path.
5) Satellite imagery was used to detect Haitians building boats–this struck me as so symbolic of all that is wrong with the US intelligence community–rather than someone walking the beaches and seeing and sensing directly, we use satellites in outer space, at great cost, to do remote viewing…
6) Trust, Truth, and Morality–Halberstam may not mean to say this, but my reading of his book, influenced by Joe Nye's book on “The Paradox of American Power,” was just this: all the money and all the military hardware in the world will not win a conflict in the absence of trust among the civilian-military players; truth about the fundamentals on the ground; and a morality that empowers tough decisions early enough to prevent genocide.

The book ends on a mixed note–on the one hand, observing that prior to 9-11 (and many would say, even after 9-11) America has distanced itself from the world; and on the other, noting that this is a very strong country, slow to anger, slow to rouse, but when roused, capable of miracles. More upbeat than I expected, I was almost charmed by the author's optimism, especially in light of the many books he has written about the corridors of power and the pitfalls of American adventures overseas.