US Intelligence is not broken…view from the inside,
April 8, 2000
Arthur S. Hulnick
This book has two good features-the author really does understand the personnel issues, and hence one can read between the lines for added value; and the book is as good an “insider” tour of the waterfront as one could ask for. How the book treats the CIA-FBI relationship, for example, is probably representative of how most CIA insiders feel. The book does not reflect a deep understanding of open sources and tends to accept the common wisdom across the intelligence bureaucracy, that all is “generally okay” and just a bit of change on the margin is necessary. In this respect, it is a good benchmark against which the more daring reformist books may be measured.
No Better View of the Clandestine Mentality Exists,
April 8, 2000
Victor Marchetti
This is one of perhaps ten books from prior to 1985 that I decided to include because of their continuing value. I believe that both history and historians will credit these two individuals with having made a difference by articulating so ably both the clandestine mentality and the problems extant in the lack of oversight regarding proprietary organizations, propaganda and disinformation, and intrusive not-so-clandestine operations.
Strategic and Sensible Reference for Intelligence Reform,
April 8, 2000
Stansfield Turner
Stansfield Turner was a Rhodes scholar and naval officer who rose to command of a carrier task group, a fleet, NATO's southern flank, and the Navy's most prestigious intellectual institution, the Naval War College. He served from 1977-1981 as Director of Central Intelligence under President Jimmy Carter, and his book in my mind was the first serious contribution-perhaps even a catalyst-to the growing debate over whether and how much reform is required if the U.S. Intelligence Community is to be effective in the 21st Century. His eleven-point agenda for reform is of lasting value, as are his ideas for intelligence support to those responsible for natural disaster relief and other non-military challenges.
Too Hard to Fix on the Margins–Fix Big or Don't Fix At All,
April 8, 2000
Amy Zegart
This is a very worthy and thoughtful book. It breaks new ground in understanding the bureaucratic and political realities that surrounded the emergence of the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA was weak by design, strongly opposed by the military services from the beginning. Its covert activities emerged as a Presidential prerogative, unopposed by others in part because it kept CIA from being effective at coordinated analysis, for which it had neither the power nor the talent. Most usefully, the book presents a new institutionalist theory of bureaucracy that gives full weight to the original design, the political players including the bureaucrats themselves, and external events. Unlike domestic agencies that have strong interest groups, open information, legislative domain, and unconnected bureaucracies, the author finds that national security agencies, being characterized by weak interest groups, secrecy, executive domain, and connected bureaucracies, evolve differently from other bureaucracies, and are much harder to reform. On balance, the author finds that intelligence per se, in contrast to defense or domestic issues, is simply not worth the time and Presidential political capital needed to fix but that if reform is in the air, the President should either pound on the table and put the full weight of their office behind a substantive reform proposal, or walk away from any reform at all-the middle road will not successful.
Not necessarily for students, this paperback from the Ballentine Espionage/Intelligence Library is sensational. I had already been a case officer overseas when I read it, and I read it with real admiration for the Soviet Division and the case officers who had the luxury of doing it “right.” From the overseas evaluations to the discreet subway signal of interest in Moscow to the follow-up that resulted in a recruitment in place and an ultimate exfiltration across the desert of Kuwait, this is a magnificent account of “the way it is supposed to be” in the clandestine service. It has a spy's kind of happy ending-really rotten treatment by CIA security blockheads during the resettlement program, a very long drunken period, hit bottom, and finally get clean and work your way free from the system on your own.
This book goes a long way toward explaining CIA's intellectual and operational constipation in the 1950's through the 1970's. It follows James Jesus Angleton, who tied the Agency in knots and went so far as to privately tell the French that the CIA Station Chief in Paris was a Soviet spy, and William King Harvey, who literally carried two six-guns both in the US and overseas “because you never know when you might need them.” Included in this book are some serious details about the operations against Cuba, a chapter appropriated titled “Murder Corrupts”, and a good account of how Harvey, in perhaps his most important achievement, smelled out the fact that Kim Philby was indeed a Soviet spy. The concluding thought of the book is exceptional: “Immersed in duplicity and insulated by secrecy, they (Angleton and Harvey) developed survival mechanisms and behavior patterns that by any rational standard were bizarre. The forced inbreeding of secrecy spawned mutant deeds and thoughts. Loyalty demanded dishonesty, and duty was a thieves' game. The game attracted strange men and slowly twisted them until something snapped. There were no winners or losers in this game, only victims.”
FBI and CIA at War With One Another–Hurting America,
April 8, 2000
Mark Riebling
I cannot do this book justice, other than to say that I had never understood the depth and stupidity of the bureaucratic hostility between the FBI and the CIA-mostly the fault of the CIA these days but certainly inspired in part by Hoover in the early days-until I read this book; and that it should be required reading for every senior CIA manager. From the FBI's failure to communicate its very early knowledge of Japanese collection requirement on Pearl Harbor via the Germans, to the assassination of President Kennedy, the World Trade Center bombing and the Aldrich Ames case, this book makes me ashamed and angry about how bureaucracy and secrecy subvert loyalty, integrity, and common professional sense on both sides of this “wedgie” contest.
