Intelligence (Government/Secret) – Page 56

Easy Going Advanced Reader with Future Vision,

January 13, 2002

Michael Herman

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

Easy Going Advanced Reader with Future Vision, January 13, 2002

Intelligence Power in Peace and War remains the author's greatest work but this collection of well-focused essays, most never before available to the general public, provides a very easy-going (that is to say, easy to read) advanced reader that touches of some vital issues for the future including the restoration of ethics to the practice of intelligence, and the need to internationalize intelligence in the war between governments and gangs or other threats of common concern.

Every essay has its gems, from the first that explores the contradicting views of the essence of intelligence (one view from Kent has it as a particular kind of knowledge, another view has it as defined solely by its secrecy). The author excells at drawing out the relativism of intelligence as well as the changes–more concerned today with the security of others than of one's own state; and more committed (in the best of the services) to forecasting the future rather than manipulating the present.

The essay on intelligence and diplomacy is absolutely vital, beginning with the observation that we are now spending more on intelligence than diplomacy (in the US, 10 times more on secret intelligence than on normal diplomacy). The author concludes, without belaboring the paucity of diplomatic resources, that the UK model of intelligence–the allied model in some respects–has done well in not abusing its special knowledge to influence policy.

Discussing intelligence and the Revolution in Military Affairs, there are several trenchant observations, among the most helpful being that the current RMA is too obsessed with technology applicable to “things” (both as tools and as targets) while completely over-looking a revolution in technology applicable to text and to thinking. This is down-right brilliant and a long over-due issue for policy consideration. Interestingly, the National Imagery and Mapping Commission Report concluded in December 2000 that the USA has spent billions on collection technology during the Cold War, without a commensurate expenditure in what the Americans call TPED: tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination. If the Americans are to make a worthy contribution to allied intelligence in the 21st Century, one might hope they heed the author's observation and invest in global multi-lingual open source data ingestion, and multi-media analytic tools for “making sense” of the vast flows of readily available information–most of it not yet digital.

The middle section of the book covers many critical issues including the continued separation of security and and foreign intelligence, a separation that allowed 9-11 to occur in the USA. Among the really brilliant gems in this section: “The best test of an intelligence system is the all-source memory it builds up…” The reader can judge for themselves whether any intelligence organization can pass this rather plain-spoken test. The author is in the vanguard in terms of tapping into external expertise, shifting priorities from collection to analysis, and substantially improving inter-departmental coordination of assessments at the action officer level. Two reviews of Norwegian and New Zealand contributions and issues offer a helpful appreciation of where further gains might be made. Over the course of several chapters the author addresses the lessons of history and answers the question “did intelligence make a difference?” All of this material is quite stimulating, coming as it does from a man who was at the very heart of joint intelligence assessments, and his findings, some negative, must bear on how we adjust to the future.

Good as the first parts are, the best is held for last. Part IV, titled “Intelligence and a Better World”, contains two chapters–one on intelligence and international ethics, the other an afterword on the attacks of 9-11. These two are my most heavily marked sections, and in my own mind represent some of the author's freshest and most valuable thinking. The author is fully aware of the importance of shifting attention to the sub-state and non-state actors, and also of the need to begin sharing all-source intelligence in a multi-lateral fashion, in effect (citing two former US intelligence leaders) treating intelligence as an international good. He carefully explores the ethical and opportunity cost dimensions of covert intelligence activities against other sovereign state (certainly excluding rogue states), concluding that on balance open sources and good analysis are a better bet when combined with the increased trust that could result from eschewing intrusive covert penetrations that are not really necessary in relation to government secrets (terrorists of course being fair game for all available covert methods).

Addressing 9-11, the author has many helpful things to say, among them the observation that “The problems of counter-terrorist intelligence cannot be solved just by throwing money at them.” He ends with the compelling observation that the United States of America is incapable of protecting itself from international threats, even with its vast resources, unless it first devises new means of sharing intelligence and cooperating more closely with all other governments. I agree with him. Both “hard targets” and “global coverage” are beyond the ken of any single nation, and the “new craft of intelligence” that I and others are devising seeks to harness the full distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth–not just the intelligence of governments, but of legal non-state actors and citizens–the intelligence “minutemen” of the future. There are perhaps twelve really high-caliber commentators on intelligence in the English-speaking language, but this author, Michael Herman, continues to be the soft-spoken master of the domain–offering the best combination of erudition, experience, and ethical grounding–and we are lucky to have this book from him to help us all as we seek to revitalize intelligence in the aftermath of 9-11.

This book is especially recommended as a reader for university classes, and one hopes that gradually it will be understood within academia and business that intelligence is not some arcane secret priesthood, but rather the essence of governance in the age of information. The author, and this book, are most helpful contributors to the “Great Conversation”.

2001/12/112009/12/04

Review: On Intelligence–Spies and Secrecy in an Open World

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

9/11 is for intelligence what Sputnik was for science,

December 11, 2001

Robert David Steele

This book, the second edition, is an exact copy of the first edition with two changes: the publisher, and a new one-page Publisher's Foreword that itemizes the six intelligence and counterintelligence failures that allowed 9/11 to happen.9/11 is for intelligence what Sputnik was for science. The across-the-board failure of clandestine intelligence (overseas), counterintelligence (at home) and our generally mediocre understanding of the real world (since we lack a properly funded, language-qualified foreign or diplomatic service), all contributed equally.

Henry Kissinger is absolutely right when he laments the lack of any serious consideration of foreign policy in recent presidential and congressional elections, and that is what 9/11 must change–this book is intended to be useful to citizens as well as government and business intelligence professionals. It lays out with great precision (see the index) both $11.6 billion dollars (out of $30 billion a year) in potential savings that could be applied to the new craft of intelligence, and it recommends with great precision all that should be in a new National Security Act of 2002.

Intelligence in the 21st Century is too important to be relegated to a chaotic cluster of secret government agencies. It is time for all citizens to take an interest in intelligence, to migrate the proven process of intelligence (there is a great deal that is good about the U.S. intelligence community) into the business sector as well as over to the sovereign states and their localities, and to demand of our elected representatives a proper accounting for the failure, and measures to prevent future failures.

Less than 2% of the $30 billion a year intelligence has been spent on terrorism–the policy and intelligence leadership over several administrations have given lip-service to the war on terrorism–and there will be no improvements, no matter how much money we pour into intelligence and counterintelligence, unless we change the fundamentals–who's in charge, how we do it, who we do it with, and how seriously we take our responsibilities for protecting America.

2001/11/042009/12/04

Review: Roosevelt’s Secret War–FDR and World War II Espionage

3 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Mish-Mash with Some Raisins,

November 4, 2001

Joseph E. Persico

Intelligence professionals will be very disappointed by this book, citizens interested in Presidential approaches to intelligence, somewhat less so. The author's brilliant biography of William Casey, OSS Veteran and Director of Central Intelligence under President Ronald Reagan, was a much more satisfying book. What we have here is by and large a mish-mash of the works of others, together with an original composition on FDR's involvement in intelligence that is uneven–partly because the subject did not put much in writing, and partly because the author chose to rely primarily on secondary published sources.From the perspective of one interested in “Presidential intelligence,” that is, how does a President manage various means of keeping informed, the book is a must read but also a shallow read. We learn that FDR was a master of deception and of running many parallel efforts, balancing them against one another. We learn that FDR was remarkably tolerant of amateurism and incompetence, while good at finding the gems these same loose but prolific intelligence endeavors could offer.

Perhaps most importantly, we gain some insights into how Presidents, even when properly informed by intelligence (e.g. of Pearl Harbor in advance, or of the lack of threat from domestic Americans of Japanese descent) must yet “go along” and provide either inaction pending the public's “getting it”, or unnecessary action (the internments) to assuage public concern.

There are enough tid-bits to warrant a full reading of the book, but only for those who have not read widely in the literature of intelligence and/or presidential history. The British lied to the President and grossly exaggerated their intelligence capabilities, in one instance presenting a man “just back from behind the lines” when in fact he was simply on staff and lying for effect. We learn that the Department of State was twice offered, and twice declined, the lead on a global structure for collecting and processing intelligence. We learn that FDR himself concluded that Croatia and Serbia would never ever get along and should be separate countries.

On the NATO side, we learn that Eisenhower went with bad weather and the invasion succeeded in part because of a successful deception and in part because of Ike's courage in going forward in the face of bad weather–fast forward to how weather incapacitates our high-technology today. Most interestingly, we learn that FDR finally approved Eisenhower as leader of Overload, in lieu of his favorite, General Marshall, in part because he recognized that the allied joint environment required a general and a politician in one man.

This book is a hybrid, attempting to mesh presidential history with intelligence history, and perhaps this should gain the author some margin of tolerance. Unfortunately, in focusing on the relationships among the various intelligence principals and the president, he seriously passes over the enormous contributions of military as well as civilian and allied intelligence to the larger undertaking, and one is left with the narrow impression that American intelligence consisted largely of a number of self-serving clowns vying for Presidential favor.

The flaws inherent in a Federal Bureau of Investigation dominated by J. Edgar Hoover, and the lack of cooperation between the FBI and other major intelligence activities that continues today, are noted throughout the book.

Bottom line: worth buying and reading to gain insight into the challenges facing a President who can become isolated from reality by a corporate staff, but nowhere near the quality of Christopher Andrew's For the President's Eyes Only, or any of many good histories of espionage in World War II.

2001/11/032014/12/05

Review: Waging Modern War–Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat

5 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), War & Face of Battle

Most Miss Point: Book Excells At Highlighting Our Weaknesses,

>November 3, 2001

Wesley K. Clark

Every citizen should read this book so they can instruct their elected representatives and vote for military reform. As things now stand, we will lose the war on terrorism over time because of the perennial flaws in our system that this book identifies.Don't Bother Us Now. The U.S. political system is not structured to pay attention to “early warning”. Kosovo (as well as Croatia and Serbia beforehand and later Macedonia) were well known looming problems, but in the aftermath of the Gulf War, both Congress and the Administration in power at the time said to the U.S. Intelligence Community, essentially: “don't bother us anymore with this, this is inconvenient warning, we'll get to it when it explodes.” We allowed over a hundred thousand to be murdered in genocide, because our political system was “tired.””Modern war” is an overwhelming combination of micro-management from across the varied nations belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; a reliance on very high-tech weapons with precision effect that are useless in the absence of precision intelligence (and the lawyers insist the intelligence be near-real-time, a virtual impossibility for years to come); and an obsession with avoiding casualties that hand-cuffs our friendly commanders and gives great encouragement to our enemies.

Services versus Commanders. The military services that under Title 10 are responsible for training, equipping, and organizing the forces–but not for fighting them, something the regional commanders-in-chief must do–have become–and I say this advisedly–the biggest impediment to the successful prosecution of operations. The detailed story of the Army staff resistance to the use of the Apache helicopters is the best case study I have ever seen of how senior staff generals with political access can prevent operational generals with field responsibilities from being fully effective. In combination with the insistence of the services that forces be held back for Korean and Persian Gulf threats that might not be realized, instead of supporting a real war that existed in Europe, simply stated, makes it clear that there is a “seam” between our force-creating generals and our force-fighting generals that has gotten *out of control.* The fog of war is thickest in Washington, and the greatest friction–the obstacles to success in war–are largely of our own making.

Lawyers, Fear, and Micro-Management. Just as we recently witnessed a lawyer overruling the general to avoid killing the commander of the Taliban, General Clark's war was dominated by lawyers, a fear of casualties, and micro-management, from Washington, of his use of every weapons system normally left to the discretion of the field commander. This has gotten completely out of hand. Within NATO it is compounded by multi-national forces whose commanders can refuse orders inconsistent with their own national view of things, but reading this book, one is left with the clear understanding that General Clark was fighting a three-front war at all times: with the real enemy, with the media, and with Washington–his NATO commanders were the least of his problems.

Technology Loses to Weather and Lacks Intelligence. Throughout the book there are statements that make it clear that the U.S. military is not yet an all-weather military, and has a very long way to go before it ever will be. Aligned with this incapacity is a high-technology culture that suffers from very weak maintenance and an almost complete lack of intelligence at the level of precision and with the timeliness that is needed for our very expensive weapons to be effective. Nothing has changed since MajGen Bob Scales wrote his excellent Firepower in Limited War, pointing out that artillery still cannot be adequately supported by the intelligence capabilities we have now.

Strategic Mobility Shortfalls, Tactical Aviation Constraints. Although General Clark judges the air war to have been a success, and an essential factor in facilitating “coercive diplomacy”, he also communicates two realities about U.S. military aviation: 1) we do not have the strategic aviation lift to get anywhere in less than 90-180 days, and his request for a 75 day mobilization was not possible as a result; and 2) our tactical aviation assets are so specialized, and require so much advance preparation in terms of munitions, route planning, and so on, that they cannot be readily redirected in less than a full day. A full day. This is simply outlandish.

We Don't Do Mountains. No statement in the book hurt me more than one by an Army general telling General Clark that his plans for the ground campaign could not be supported by the U.S. Army because “we don't do mountains” This, in combination with the loser's attitude (no casualties) and the general reluctance of the services to put their high-tech capabilities like the Apache at risk in a real war, sum up the decrepitude of the U.S. military leadership and the Revolution in Military Affairs-Andrew Gordon in Rules of the Game has it exactly right-the post Viet-Nam and post Cold War era has left us with a bunch of high-tech chickens in control of military resources, and we need to find ourselves some rat-catchers able to redirect our military toward a lust for man to man combat in every clime and place-and the low-tech sustainable tools to do the job.

General Clark's concluding words, on page 459: “In Kosovo my commanders and I found that we lacked the detailed prompt information to campaign effectively against the Serb ground forces. Most of the technologies we had been promoting since the Gulf War were still immature, unable to deal with the vagaries of weather, vegetation, and urban areas, or the limitations of bandwidth and airspace. The discrete service programs didn't always fit together technically. And (sic) the officers who operated the programs were not qualified to work across service lines and did not understand the full range of national capabilities. I worried about the nature of Joint skills even among senior officers.” Are we ready? No.

2001/10/222012/12/02

Review: The Unlikely Spy

5 Star, Fiction, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Captures the Essence of Wheels within Wheels,

October 22, 2001

Daniel Silva

Together with “Enigma” and “The Black Tulip” by Milt Bearden, and of course the George Smiley series by John Le Carre, this is one of my few really recommended fictional accounts related to espionage.The art of lying to one's own people, at multiple levels of duplicity, some venal, much of it unnecessary, has helped to mystify, confuse, and sometimes glorify the intelligence profession.

As an intelligence professional myself, I will simply say that this is one of my top six and that it would not be called fiction if it did not depart for the pure realities as much as it does. This book captures the “essence” of duplicity within government in a time of war, and I find the whole book absolutely captivating and worthwhile.

2001/10/222009/12/04

Review: Enigma

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Communicates the Challenges, Captures the Thrill,

October 22, 2001

Robert Harris

For captivating true life signals intelligence there are several books one can go to, including those by James Bamford on the American system (Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets) but for really getting into the enormity of the challenges and the thrill of the individual code-breakers when they succeeded, this is the book I recommend.

It completely ignores the enormous contributions made by the Poles (who gave the English two Enigma machines at the beginning of the war) as well as the heroic deeds of Tommy Brown (youngest George Medal winner at 16, survived with code materials taken from a sinking German ship), but I have found no better novel to communicate the absolute goose-bump emotional roller-coaster that the Bletchley Park gang experienced.

If anything, this novel convey a human side to code-breaking that offsets the modern-day obsession with massive computers.

2001/09/302011/09/06

Review: Very Special Intelligence

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Brilliant, Relevant Today, OpIntel Thrills, Deep Insights,

September 30, 2001

Patrick Beesley

This is a brilliant piece of work, and extremely relevant today. Had America had an Operational Intelligence (OpIntel) Plot (24/7 operationally-oriented put it all together all the time watch center), I daresay the terrorist attacks on America would have been prevented in good time.I started reading this book the week prior to the attacks, having bought it off the shelves of the Army War College bookstore, whose judgment I have always respected, and I have been absolutely absorbed–thrilled–with the deep insights that this work provides on how best to manage an operationally-oriented watch center that does “all-source fusion” against a constantly changing real-time real-world threat.

It became clear to me as I worked through every word of this superior work that modern intelligence has become too bureaucratic and that all-source analysis has become too distant from both the sources and the consumers. The Operational Intelligence Center (OIC) whose story is told here worked with no fewer than seventeen distinct sources streams, each with its own idiosyncrasies, its own fits and starts–and it worked directly with its operational clients, fully appraised of friendly plans and intentions and able to provide workmanlike inputs at every turn. We need to get back to this approach!

There are a number of vital lessons to be learned from this book, which I recommend in the strongest terms as one of my “top ten” relevant *today*. Among them:

Sharing Secrets Matters. It was the Russians who helped the British get started in 1914 with a gift of a German Naval Signal book, and it was the Poles who saved the day early on in World War II with a gift of two working Enigma machines.

Ops Must Sleep With Intel. Too many times I have seen operators ignore intelligence because they do not understand it-there are too many breakdowns in communication along the way, and if the operators have not trained with, lived with, slept with, caroused with, their intelligence counterparts, the two cultures do not come together effectively in times of crisis.

Ops Cannot Do Raw Sources. The corollary of the above is that Ops simply cannot keep up with the nuances of sources and is not able to evaluate sources in context to good effect.

Intel Must Sleep With Ops. The intelligence propensity to compartment everything to the point of meaningless, and the “green door” mentality that is especially characteristic of the crypto-analysis community, amounts to a death wish. Some secret sources must be “ultra” secret, but some form of bridge is needed-the OpIntel Center (which the U.S. Navy, alone within today's US secret bureaucratic archipelago, does well) appears to be a vital and relevant solution.

Plots Must Be Co-Located and Ideally Integrated. Early separation and distance between the intelligence plot, the commercial shipping plot and the operational plot leads to waste and death. Ultimately an integrated plot, or at least a blue-green plot next door to the red plot, is absolutely vital to effective prosecution of real-time war.

Lose the Old Guys. The first thing that needs doing when preparing for a long war is to lose the old guys. No disrespect intended, but as has been documented time and again, those that get promoted in peacetime bureaucracies tend to be too conformist and too subservient to peacetime protocols to adapt well to unconventional and very fast-moving wartime conditions. [Present company always excepted!.]

Hire the Retired. This is not a contradiction. Old guys with big egos and high ranks have to go-but bringing in the best of the retired, generally at the field grade level, can have an extraordinary positive impact in the rapid maturation and stabilization of the full-speed-ahead wartime watch.

Doctrinal Disputes Kill. Unless there is a homeland defense doctrine that fully integrates and exercises the capabilities and internal cultures of the Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, and civilian agencies (and civilian agencies!) there will be a year or two of major and almost catastrophic losses until it gets sorted out the hard way.

Home Arrogance Kills (UK Version). The persistent unwillingness of home side personnel to admit that their own security measures can be broken by clever enemies, and the general sloppiness of all hands with respect to Operations Security (OPSEC) will take a heavy toll.

Home Arrogance Kills (US Version). There is a theme with regard to the Americans. While their money and their manpower are gratefully accepted, their arrogance knows no bounds. They entered the war believing that there was nothing the British could teach them-further on into the war, the Americans risked Ultra by acting too aggressively on its information.

Red Cell Oversight Needed. One thing that jumped out at me from this book was the urgent need for having a very senior person-a retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, managing a Red Cell to provide oversight over operational decisions to exploit the most sensitive sources. [By this I mean, a senior authority who can overrule and forbid operations whose success might endanger the special source.]

Negative Reports Matter. I was really struck by the circumstances surrounding a German break-out up the Channel, in which a number of normally reliable and overlapping intelligence collection endeavors all were forced back by weather, broken down or what-not. From this I took the lesson that negative reports matter. By failing to report to the OIC on their non-status, they failed to focus the OIC on all the possibilities. Thinking the flank covered, the OIC left the flank open.

Tommy Brown Matters. The book ends on a marvelous note, pointing out that without the heroism of Tommy Brown, a 16 year old cabin boy and youngest recipient of the George Medal as well as two other adults who died in the process of grabbing vital enemy signals materials off a sinking vessel, the allies would have been deaf for much of 1943. At the end of the day the best technical intelligence comes down to a brave human who risks all to make it possible.

Category: Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Review: Intelligence Services in the Information Age