Intelligence (Public) – Page 46 – Public Intelligence Blog

Not Pedestrian at All–Packed with Insights,

July 10, 2003

Regis McKenna

Edit of 22 Dec 07 to add links.

Below is my review as planned before reading all the negative reviews….everyone brings their own baggage to any book. Following this short review, which was originally written for national intelligence professionals, I have added an addendum with a specific experience in France that illustrates why this book is valuable to anyone willing to take the time to reflect on its fundamentals.

————————

This may be one of the top three books I've read in the last couple of years. It is simply packed with insights that are applicable to both the classified intelligence community as well as the larger national information community. The following is a tiny taste from this very deep pool: “Instead of fruitlessly trying to predict the future course of a competitive or market trend, customer behavior or demand, managers should be trying to find and deploy all the tools that will enable them, in some sense, to be ever-present, ever-vigilant, and ever-ready in the brave new marketplace in gestation, where information and knowledge are ceaselessly exchanged.”

———————–

ADDENDUM: In coming to post the above review I noted a number of negative reviews along the lines of “so 1970's”, “no new ideas”, etc. Naturally any book is going to strike people with different levels of intelligence and experience differently. Our advice to intelligence professionals and managers at any level is to dismiss those other opinions, spend $20 and 1-2 hours with this book, and judge for yourself. Among many reasons why we found this book meaningful, given our focus on global coverage, weak signals, and being effective in 29+ languages, is the following experience:

In 1994, attending the French national conference on information, we heard one of the leaders of the French steel industry discussing a multi-million dollar business intelligence endeavor (in France this includes business espionage and government espionage in support of business) against steel industries around the world. The punch line, however, was stunning. At the end of it all, he said, they failed because they focused only on the steel industry. In the end, the plastics industry ate their lunch because it was able to develop very good plastic substitutes for automobile parts, including automobile under-carriage parts, and this hurt the French steel industry badly. It was from this occasion that we crafted Rule 003 (Book 2, Chapter 15) on the importance of Global Coverage, whose sub-title could be “cast a wide net.” McKenna has the basics right.

Fast forward to:
The Age of Speed: Learning to Thrive in a More-Faster-Now World
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

2003/07/092012/10/27

2003 Information Peacekeeping & The Future of Intelligence: The United Nations, Smart Mobs, and the Seven Tribes

Articles & Chapters, Civil Affairs, Civil Society, Complexity & Resilience, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), True Cost & Toxicity, Truth & Reconciliation, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Chapter 13: “Information Peacekeeping & the Future of Intelligence: The United Nations, Smart Mobs, and the Seven Tribes” pp. 201-225

2003/07/092012/10/27

2003 Peacekeeping Intelligence Leadership Digest

Articles & Chapters, Information Operations, Information Society, Intelligence (Commercial), Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Strategy, United Nations & NGOs

Appendix: “Peacekeeping Intelligence Leadership Digest” pp. 389-435

2003/07/072012/10/31

2003 PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: Emerging Concepts for the Future

Books w/Steele, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class

With a tip of the hat to the Netherlands Intelligence Studies Association and the Netherlands Defence College who hosted the most original conference on this topic ever, butdid not plan a book, I stepped in to meet the need for such a book. I learned from this group, especially from co-editors Ben de Jong and Wies Patje, and General Patrick Cammaert, RN NL (featured on the cover, in blue uniform) .

The United Nations continues to lack organic decision-support (the same is true of NATO). Being dependent on Member states that either do not invest in decision-support to begin with, or if they do, focus almost exclusively on secret sources and methods, is a certain prescription for issuing uninformed strategic mandates, poorly-devised force structure requets, dangerous tactical rules of engagement, and insufficient technical authorizations.

The book includes excerpts from the Brahimi Report and a Leadership Digest for Peacekeeping Intelligence.

2003/05/252009/12/04

Review: Leap of Faith–Memoirs of an Unexpected Life

5 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Country/Regional, Culture, Research, Diplomacy, Intelligence (Public)

Credible, Touching, Eye-Opener,

May 25, 2003

Queen Noor

… I hope that my review will provide a more balanced appreciation of this extraordinary book by an extraordinary former American of Jordanian extraction who, as a Princeton-educated professional, married to the King of Jordan, is able to summarize her life's work of building better bridges between the Arab world and the west.I note as a preface that I am aware of the Jordanian hospital for terrorists recovering from combat wounds, that there are many things still running against the people in Jordan. However, what I find in this double-spaced book–by no means a work of scholarship–is a personal story that is rich with wisdom, integrity, and insights into differing perspectives.

The true beginning of the book comes on page 32, when the author, then a student at Princeton, learned of the death of four students and injury of nine students at Kent State University at the hands of an undisciplined Ohio National Guard armed with real bullets. Most Americans over 40 will never forget the photo of the young woman kreening over one of the dead. That shooting leads to the following sentence in the book: “It was a seminal moment in shaping my view of American society. While I loved my country, I found my trust in its institutions badly shaken.”

The value of the book for me is in the author's credible discussion of what she calls “a fundamental lack of understanding in the West, especially in the United States, of Middle Eastern culture and the Muslim faith.” I took the entire book on faith myself–while rabid Jews may not agree, I am prepared to believe that Queen Noor has not been brainwashed, and that she is offering all readers a personal perspective on Arabs, Muslims, Israel, the Gulf War, the impact of US policies in creating millions of refugees and tens of thousands of dead, and so on. If anything, the book, one of hundreds I have read in the past several years, confirms my growing sense of ignorance. Every additional book I read in this area seems to confirm how little any one person can know, and how duplicitious and misleading most official accounts, or media stories, are. We have a long way to go in truly understanding one another, and we can all start by a) reading and b) discussing. Attacking this book, and this Queen, is not helpful.

Although I was was somewhat aware of the fact that Israel is in violation of United Nations resolutions calling for a separate and equal Palestine state, as well as compensation to the Palestinians driven from their lands and also are of the somewhat rocky start in the area from British mandates and Israeli terrorism utilized to drive the British from the area, I was unaware of Mahatma Ghandi's statement, “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct.”

The bulk of the book is less about affairs of state than it is about the loneliness of a Queen whose husband is public property and who never has any privacy. It is, none-the-less, an absorbing personal account of many specific people and their ethics–one comes away dismayed that Barbara Bush would send word to Queen Noor that she was a traitor to America, and pleasantly surprised to find that Prince Charles proved to be the only balanced courteous English leader at a critical time.

At the end of the book, and this no doubt explains the hysterical Jewish attacks against this Queen, mother, and author, I was persuaded of three things: 1) the US public and the US government does not have a good grip on Arab politics, culture, or needs; 2) the combination of Jewish power within US policy; Arab inattention to playing US politics from within; and the Zionist “myths” that take on a life of their own, are a major reason why US policy is ineffective and unsustainable in the long run within this vital area; and 3) Queen Noor was as good a queen as the Jordanian people could have hoped for, given the circumstances. This book was well worth my time, and I recommend it to every citizen who wishes to reduce conflict, increase understanding, and obtain a better return on how the U.S. taxpayer dollar is spent.

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.

2003/03/082013/01/29