Category: Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Posted on

Review: Brassey’s International Intelligence Yearbook, 2002 Edition

3 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful but Incomplete and Does Not Add Original Thinking,

August 6, 2002
Robert D'A. Henderson
I was quite interested to see this book very favorably reviewed in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence (IJIC), the top journal in the field, so it was with some disappointment that I found it to be less robust than I expected.At one level, that of a very basis reference, it could be a solid four-star effort, and I give the author and publisher credit for having conceptualized and executed this on-going endeavor. Especially bothersome is its limited coverage–a directory such as this, especially in the aftermath of 9-11, must be comprehensive and include countries like Colombia, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the Central Eurasian “stans” to name a number that are not covered.

I found both the updates and the further readings to be a very mixed bag, with too many countries that I am familiar with suffering from what appears to be either an over-reliance on one or two primary sources or somewhat random notation. It is clear to me that this book does *not* benefit from a systematic literature review, nor is it really current with the great web sites that are available, both in general terms as well as with specific country orientations–on top of the limited coverage, less than a third of the world, this really reduces its value.

This book has the potential to be a five-star reference work of enormous value, if it makes the following changes:

1) Create a broader board of advisors. The author performs heroically for one man, but clearly does not have the global network of true experts that is needed to make sure his coverage is world-class.

2) Add a State of Intelligence report to the front of the book, with regional overviews. The emergence of a European intelligence community, the impact of the Kosovo war on this movement as well as NATO, NATO's publication of an open source intelligence handbook, etc., the specific points of failure for 9-11 as well as the Afghan campaign that failed to capture the Al Qada leadership, all should be in there, together with the Homeland Security initiative and new relations among nations now quasi-committed to improved cooperation against terrorism–while decapitating their programs against crime. To be a proper reference work, this book must also take care in the overview to tease out the threads of progress among the varied intelligence communities that exist-national civilian, military, law enforcement, investigative journalism, business intelligence, and academic studies on intelligence. The fact that it does not reference such vital organizations as the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, or the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts, for example, suggests that the book is being put together along very old lines of thinking, and is not yet coming to grips with the dramatic changes occurring in the real world of intelligence.

3) The publisher, or a non-profit foundation, must fund a proper literature review. Even for the United States, the most obvious country, most of the intelligence reform books published between 1999 and 2002 and listed by the Council on Intelligence do not appear in this reference work, nor does it retain the Aspin-Brown Commission Report or the House Permanent Select Committee Report on IC21, as references of continuing relevance.

4) The index must be expanded to include all authors and organizations.

5) The acronyms must be expanded to be truly comprehensive. A one page listing that is mostly military ranks and failed to include the acronyms PfP (Partnership for Peace), OSINT (open source intelligence), or C4I (command, control, communications, and intelligence–a vital aspect of understanding where intelligence fits in the larger picture) is simply not serious.

Bottom line: I will keep this book as a light-weight reference, but I will not buy it again unless the publisher gets serious about producing a quality product that is truly international and reflective of the intelligence reform and intelligence failure lines of inquiry that are well-known to serious professionals who understand that intelligence is the core competency of both governments and organizations in the age of information.

Vote on Review
Vote on Review
Posted on

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

5 Star, Censorship & Denial of Access, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Misinformation & Propaganda, Strategy

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars 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.

Vote on Review
Vote on Review
Posted on

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

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars 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.

Vote on Review
Vote on Review
Posted on

2002 The New Craft of Intelligence (Asymmetric Studies)

Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Monographs
New Craft of Intelligence (Asymmetric Studies)
New Craft of Intelligence (Asymmetric Studies)

This was my first attempt to formalize the two major paradigm changes that the Department of Defense continues to resist at levels below the Secretary of Defense, himself an intelligence professional:

Need to shift from state-based threats with fixed addresses to non-state threats able to play “off the shelf.”

Need to shift from heavy reliance on high-tech secret sources to low-tech human and open sources.