Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 190 – Public Intelligence Blog

2009/07/032009/12/04

Review: The Attack on the Liberty–The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship

Summary Review Intended to Inspire Wrath of US Voters,June 20, 2009

James Scott

I have reviewed earlier books on the Liberty, and stood with the Liberty survivors and their kin in believing that the U.S. Government then led by Lyndon Johnson betrayed the public trust in this instance. A handful of books support the general betrayal of the public trust that began with Lyndon Johnson and continues to this day:
An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, New and Updated Edition
Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History
The Trial of Henry Kissinger
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars

That is the context within which the USS Liberty was attacked with impunity, and the deliberate attack covered up by the US Government, i.e. the White House and Cy Vance the Secretary of Defense. The US Navy protested but was silenced.

Perhaps the most important contribution this book makes is to record the current (2007) views of participants on both sides to the effect that this was a deliberate premeditated attack ordered by a person high enough in Israel to order the combined “joint” attack by both air force attack jets and naval torpedo boats.

The book confirms what has been claimed before, that the vessel was known to be US, and that the American flag was clearly seen by the attackers. DCI Richard Helms, interviewed in 2008, specifically confirmed the atrocity.

QUOTE from page 47: “The fighters destroyed the Liberty's machine guns, knocked out the antennas, and targeted the bridge to kill the officers and spark chaos among the crew.”

I am especially angry at the manner in which the Israeli's have bought the US Congress along with Wall Street and the banking world. See for instance:
They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy

Israel also spies with impunity on the US, both with formal and technical spy networks such as depicted in Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy: The Life and Murder of a Media Mogul, where every American Jew is considered a “sayonim,” a person who will support Israel spy operations that are treason against the US, and with non-official spying such as Congresswoman Jane “this conversation never happened” Harman supports.

The book is both a labor of love and extremely well-executed investigative journalism.

Israel murdered 34 US naval personnel and wounded 171. This was an international war crime.

This is a RIGHTEOUS BOOK (I actually write this just before putting the book down). Here are some of my notes:

+ Immediate impact of the cover-up was the failure to learn anything, such that the USS Pueblo was captured by the North Koreans (at the request for the Soviets, completing their needs for use of the crypto cards they acquired earlier).

+ Middle of the book is sad sickening detail not here-to-fore presented in such an organized and detailed manner, along with 22 compelling shameful photographs of battle damage. Points to remember:

–Smell of rotting bodies

–Oil-soaked environment

–Partial bodies were a recovery & identification challenge

+ Communications breakdowns combined with a quick Israeli apology kept reinforcements from reaching the Liberty for 17 hours.

+ The Skipper ramped readiness up, wanted to move, but would have lost line of sight needed for NSA intercepts. Similarly, Navy advisor to Adm McCain (the father) wanted to pull the Liberty back at same time that a submarine was pulled back, but Admiral McCain did not want to tangle with NSA and claimed he did not have the authority when he actually did. (Later he redeems himself somewhat by insisting on Purple Hearts and combat pay.]

+ The context (Viet-Nam in particular) made the Liberty a “problem” for LBJ. Quote from page 93: “The Liberty–now riddled with cannon blasts, its decks soaked in blood, and its starboard side ripped open by a torpedo–evolved in a matter of hours from a top-secret intelligence asset to a domestic political liability.”

+ We learn that LBJ's upbringing taught him to favor Jews, and that “Johnson has too heavy a roster of Jewish and pro-Israeli advisors” (page 139.

+ We learn that Pentagon loyalists toed the party line on covering the whole thing up.

+ We learn that the US inquiry did not answer the question “How and why did this happen,” that Admiral McCain forbade travel to Israel, and that the Israeli's were not forthcoming with logs from any of the attacking units.

+ We learn that the original Israeli “investigation” was done by one officer alone, and after very angry exchanges on all sides, redone with an outcome of 7 counts of negligence recommended and not accepted. The final report from Israel is riddled with lies that are pointed out by the Israeli Ambassador himself in furious messages home. I am reminded of Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed its Own POWs in Vietnam and Is Anybody Listening?: A True Story About POW/MIAs In The Vietnam War.

+ We learn the Israeli's ordered napalm to be used against the USS Liberty as it would be “more efficient,” and we learn that the US politicians in the White House considered sinking the USS Liberty at sea to get rid of the evidence–one can only recoil in horror knowing that they considered the crew “expendable” and did not care if it was sunk with or without crew.

+ We learn that the US was willing to accept $3.3 million for the families, and the Israeli'[s refused, offering $1.25 million. Ultimately the Israeli bill came to $17 million of which $9 million was interest, and they finally settled for $6 million in three payments of $2 million each. What the author does NOT tell us is that the US taxpayer pays 20% of the entire Israeli government budget every year at the same time that the USA turns a blind eye to Israeli genocide against the Palestinians and Israeli theft of water from the Arab aquifers (see Chuck Spinney's brief on this at oss.net).

The book ends on a graceful note. I am impressed by the author's balance throughout. He finally visits Israel and meets one of the pilots, now Brigadier General Yiftah Spector. Accompanied by his father, who served on the USS Liberty, the author witnesses the Israeli officer saying “I'm sorry,” and his father saying “Thank you.”

2009/07/032009/12/03

Review: The Accidental Guerrilla–Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One

2 Star, Insurgency & Revolution

Accidental American Accidentally Rediscovers Old Knowledge

June 21, 2009

David Kilcullen

The author is an accidental American given access to top secret information and inner circles much more appropriate to Ralph Peters, Steven Metz, Max Manwaring, Gunny Poole, and many others who knew all this–and have sought to teach all this in speaking truth to power–for decades. Someone liked him, he was given temporal admission to the closed circle, and this book is what he knows and what they hear.

While the author provides a commendable view for one man in isolation, he is wrong on multiple points, e.g. ethnographic studies are not about ethnic studies, but rather about deep local studies that contribute to a mosaic of global understanding that is more nuanced than top-down generics; CIA did not coin the term Irregular Warfare, the French study in 1999 was long preceded by Policing the New World Disorder: Peace Operations and Public Security, etc.) This author joins the crop of new-bees who rediscover old knowledge. Sadly, this book is probably a measure of where the Secretary of Defense is going to take the Quadrennial Defense Review in 2008, and that makes me want to gag.

The author's facile explanation of “the accidental guerrilla” is that we are intruding in our Global War on Terror (GWOT), the locals are resisting our intrusion rather than being “insurgents,” and they are fighting to be left alone. I have a note: “weak on history, weak on internal sources of disorder [see the image on predicting revolution], completely ignorant of the larger picture of unilateral militarism, virtual colonialism, and predatory immoral capitalism.”

What I got out of this book:

+ Distinguishes between human and national security, implies correctly that USA and most still focused on state on state security and oblivious to the ten high level threats to mankind [which, I might add for the author's edification, are outlined in A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.]

+ Four models for thinking:
– Backlash against globalization
– Globalized insurgency
– Civil war within Islam
– Asymmetric warfare

On the latter, while the author has two insights: that cost asymmetry matters and that US will not develop because the military-industrial complex cannot profit from low-cost capabilities development, it infuriates me to find no reference to any of 20 or more pioneers of the asymmetric challenge from General Al Gray in 1988 to all of the speakers at the Army Strategy Conference in 1998. See my articles, “The Asymmetric Threat: Listening to the Debate”, and it's 10-year reprise, “Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A 20-Year Retrospective”.

I am especially annoyed by the failure to acknowledge and integrate anything at all by Max Manwaring or Ralph Peters, thus confirming my own view that this book is an immaculate conception of what passes for thinking at the high table, and totally disconnected from larger reality. Cf.
The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century
Uncomfortable Wars Revisited (International and Security Affairs Series)

On the first, I am totally amazed that anyone could earn a PhD and observe that globalization has created haves and have-nots, without any reference to solid literature such as:
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)

There are many other books the author has not had an opportunity to explore, in the comment I provide URLs for Gray, the two articles mentioned above, and an annotated bibliography leading to 500+ non-fiction books about reality organized into 20 or so categories.

The author has a diagram of the four phases of Al Qaeda operations: infection, contagion, intervention by others, and rejection by locals of foreign intervention.

There are some false notes, e.g. one explanation mounted for villagers joining the Taliban to pin down a US force, “Do you have any idea how boring it is to be a teen-ager in Afghanistan?”

I agree with the point on page 44, that insurgent successes seem as much due to inattention and inadequate resourcing on our part as to talent on theirs. Of course Charlie Wilson and Steve Metz said this first. Cf.
Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy

The author's assessment of the Taliban as the most competent tactical enemy faced by the US anywhere is interesting, along with his ground observations on use of snipers, prepared positions, and scouting-intelligence.

He largely ignores the Pakistani support for the Taliban, taking it as a given, and the involvement of Karzai and his brother in the drug trade. He does agree with the author of Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia with respect to Karzai compromising himself and his government.

For anyone who has actually studied real-world conflict and especially revolutionary conflicts, this is a very annoying book that can be summed up with “Focus on the population, not the enemy; good governance works.” Duh.

The author appears unwitting of the fact that SOF went into Afghanistan in the first place with a tribal map from the Royal Academy in Sweden that was color-coded and backed up by current research, or that SOF is really beginning to excel at social network analysis and that company commanders are creating intelligence cells out of hide to do more of that.

I would recommend the book for its description of the “dialog of the deaf” where US officers speaking fast English show powerpoint slides to Afghan leaders, who then respond with a range of questions and complaints and observations that must be translated, neither side “getting” what the other was seeking to communicate.

The author is still a command and control loyalist: he says on page 150 that the fundamental problem is one of control–of people, terrain, and information. Sorry, but wrong. Sun Tzu today would say that “to gain control one must give up control,” and he would refer the aspiring commander to the concept of Epoch B leadership (see image posted above).

He itemizes the mistakes in Pakistan without mention of their British training:
01-Focus on enemy vice population
02-Large-scale-operations
03-Statis-garrison-posts
04-Overextended-active, reserve-deficiency
05-Inetic-overall
06-Discounting of local-assets
07-Lack-of-helicopters
08-Lack-of-mine-protected vehicles
09-Desire to copy US (?)

Five classes of threat facing Europe:
01-terrorist-cells
02-subversive-networks
03-extremist-political-movements
04-insurgent-sympathizer-networks
05-crime/terrorism overlap

Nothing on corruption, incompetence, failure to assimilate, waste, even organized crime and rotten education.

I have no argument with the author's basic premise, spelled out on page 263:

“…concepts such as hybrid warfare and unrestricted warfare make a lot more sense than traditional state-on-state, force-on-force concepts of conventional war.”

I agree with the author when he says counterterrorism is not a strategy, proposed an ARCADIA Conference, salutes the limits of our influence, and describes the emergence of an anti-Powell doctrine.

He makes eight recommendations:
01-political-strategy
02-comprehensive-approach
03-continuity of key personnel and policies
04-Population-centric
05-cueing and synchronization
06-close-genuine-partnerships
07-emphasis on building local security forces
08-region-wide approach

He says that ambiguity arises because the conflict [GWOT] breaks existing paradigms. Quite so, but for 20 years no one in Washington has been willing to listen to thousands saying this over and over.

His conclusion:
01-develop-new-lexicon
02-get-grand-strategy-right
03-rebalance-instruments-of-national-power
04-identify-the-new “strategic services” [not mentioned: Civil Affairs, Air Peace, Open Source Agency, Multinational Decision Support Centre]
05-develop-strategic-information-warfare

I put this book down with great sadness. Those who provided jacket blurbs did so with good intentions, but the conclusion that I come to is that this “closed circle” neither reads nor learns. The author is an accidental guru as well as an accidental American.

I regret Amazon limits me to 10 links, see 2008 Chapter: Annotated Bibliography on Reality for 500+ relevant works including The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State.

2009/07/032009/12/04

Review: Conscious Capitalism–Principles for Prosperity

5 Star, Capitalism (Good & Bad)

Straight from the Author: Systems are Value-Neutral, June 25, 2009

David A. Schwerin Ph.D.

Am in a UN design seminar and have been listening to the author, whose next book is Conscious Globalism: What's Wrong with the World and How to Fix It, and am enthralled. We are on a break. Here are the highlights:

+ Economic crisis we are experiencing is a blessing. We NEEDED this kind of large systemic failure to wake us up.

+ Systems, such as capitalism, are value-neutral. It is the individuals whose personal and social and cultural values determine the direction and nature of the system.

+ Values are a means of teaching what works for the long run. Individuals that cheat others know deeply that they are less worthy and soiled, but they get away with it, and the community does not protest, provided there is a certain level of global stabilization. When everything goes bad, then values re-assert themselves as “timeless.”

+ Politicians follow rather than lead. In the absence of public engagement, they follow the money.

+ “There is an influx of consciousness coming into the planet.” The new generation of young people have a different consciousness and appear to be ready to adopt longer views, less selfish views.

I really like the above point, and am reminded of Will and Ariel Durant, and their Lessons of History, that specifically isolated morality as a strategic value that is priceless.

The author is a phenomenal speaker and the message in this book is not out of date at all, but I do want to alert Amazon customers to the imminent availability of his new book, “Conscious Globalization.”

From my own reading, I am listing below 5 books for each of two groups:

Predatory Immoral Capitalism:
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
The Working Poor: Invisible in America

Conscious Moral Capitalism Creating Infinite Wealth
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
In addition to the author's two books, see also
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

This book has been translated into Chinese and is in its second mass printing in China. From my own listening to this author in person, I draw out the lesson that capitalism is a system for innovation and individual entrepreneurship, and that no system is sustainable that seeks–as the USA does–to consume 25% of the earth's resources for the benefit of 5% of the global population.

2009/07/032009/12/04

Review DVD: Morning Light

4 Star, Reviews (DVD Only), Sailing

Worthy of time and money, could have been better, June 25, 2009

The Amazon review above stinks. Ignore it.

I would never, ever, have known of Morning Light if I had not been the only other person in an advanced meterology class in Seattle under master weatherman Lee Chesneau. The skipper Jeremy, the navigator Piet, and the back-up navigator Chris, and I, spent a full week together. I ended up feeding them and the instructor a lot of sushi.

These three were a cut above the norm, but one of the things I learned from being with them was just how normal the crew was, and the fact that they were giving up a working position in order to carry a camaraman–in other words, they came in second to a world-class professional crew even though handicapped by one cargo camaraman. I was surprised not to see this mentioned in the film.

As for the film, it had me on the edge of my seat and as mundane as some may find aspects of the film–not exactly a James Bond movie, and certainly not a drama with hotties such as Wind–for anyone who loves sailing, this is absolutely a great film to view alone or as an excuse for a gathering of like-minded folk.

My biggest disappointment in the film is the lack of detail on training–absent my comment and my direct experience, no one would know they got advanced meterology training, or that their initial southern pick went against everything they were taught (the wind rotates counter-clockwise). Nor did I learn anything of other training.

From talking to them I learned far more about the training and the details of equipping the boat, e.g. they were each allowed one small sack of personal items, and as the boat was put together there were furious arguments about the exact weight of the navigation light at the top of the mast, and the weight of the wire from the light to the power source. That is the kind of stuff I was hoping would be in this film.

So a bit disappointing, but a superb contribution and one that I would recommend as a gift to any aspiring sailor from high school onwards.

Other DVDs in my sailing library (see my Amazon List):
Volvo Round the World Race: The SEB Stopover Reports.
Racing To Win with Gary Jobson

2009/07/032009/12/04

Review: Fighting Identity–Sacred War and World Change (The Changing Face of War)

5 Star, War & Face of Battle

Our Bunker Hill-a STAKE in the Heart of “The Borg”, June 27, 2009

Michael Vlahos

I consider this book one of the most important books of our time, for it takes on “the Borg” at an intellectual level in a cultural context, and in so doing, speaks truth to power: our Emperors (“the Borg”) are naked and ignorant.

Early on he points out that ours is not the first globalization, and that previous globalizations have demonstrated that new identities rise within globalization and *cannot be put down* (his emphasis). New ideas, counter-establishment ideas, cannot be suppressed, and ultimately triumph in new consciousness at multiple levels. States struggle vainly, equating everything “new” with being a “threat,” and ultimately collapse under the weight of their own ignorance and inability to adapt.

The first few chapters suggest that our reaction to 9-11 opened a Pandora's box, that AF-IQ are our Waterloo, and that “non-state actors” is a generic term for all that is outside the state.

He specifies six “identity” migration paths: networks of conversion and subversion (e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood and the Pentecostals); autonomous urban subcultures (e.g. gangs); emerging nations; fighter fraternities; militarized Bucellani (vandal elites, e.g. the Taliban, a state within a state); and our own cross to bear, intercessor security sub-cultures (e.g. our military-industrial complex to which I would add, a Congress lacking in integrity).

TWO MAJOR POINTS:

1. The US Military is no longer Of, By, and For We the People, no longer a collective citizenry that is armed–in brief, the militarization of national policy has made us arrogant, ignorant, and repugnant.

2. By resisting change we are promoting change. I cannot help myself, I think of the anti-Borg from outer space that grows when we nuke it, shrinks when we show love.

The author points out that every US military intervention into a Muslim society has failed; that our failures lead to new formulas (reformations) rather than new directions (transformations); and that in being drawn in and maintaining the chaos space, we are feeding the metamorphosis of non-state cocoons into butterflies very hard to hit with an artillery shell or even an aimed bullet.

The middle of the book expands on the theme of war as “creative destruction” (a mantra in the commercial intelligence world), while pointing out that in ignoring morality, the Napoleonic and Clauswitzian essential (“the moral is to the physical as three is to one”–today I would make it 10:1) the US is giving up the very power that matters, and failing to understand that identity is stronger than materiel. He points out that the “others” have commitment, sacrifice, collective effectiveness, breeding in battle, are fighting on their home ground, and achieve transcendence in resisting the US. Meanwhile, in the US, 1% do the fighting and the other 99% are asked to go shopping.

P26: “America's problem comes with the discovery that it is merely the midwife rather than the godfather. We fight so as to get nothing from those we legitimize.”

I have a note culture is identity is being is sacred and together form consciousness.

The author is critical of Al Qaeda and its many mistakes, but credits them with drawing the US out into creating the chaos space within which other indigenous forces are rising.

His section on method discusses the utility of history and anthropology, both foreign “denied areas” to the USG IMHO.

The author points out the obvious that is not so obvious to those sacrificing America's blood, treasure, and spirit in our name, i.e. two thirds of humanity is “the other” living the Hobbsian life that is “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.,” For these people, war is an entry point to negotiations, and the new players acquire legitimacy by out-lasting (not necessarily out-fighting) US forces.

As we move toward the conclusion the author speculates that we may be headed for a new Middle Ages with a global pandemic, climate change, and an energy crunch (to which I would add water crunch).

AF-IQ went wrong in five ways:

1. Liberation fizzled (I add, because neither Rumsfeld nor Gates are serious about waging peace)

2. Al Qaeda showed up in Iraq (the author neglects Iran's glee and strategic leverage)

3. No miraculous reconstruction (according to Paul Wolfowitz , “at their expense”)

4. No democratic transformation (to have expected one was idiocy or mendacity)

5. World did not, will not, accept the “Long War”

Chapter 8 on “fit” credits Martin van Creveld with the term, and elegantly discusses how our leaders went to war, ordered others to war, without the slightest understanding of “the other.” The “American way of battle” that Tony Echeverria has pointed out is not a way of war at all, has been, in the author's words, “the helpmate to enemy realization.”

On page 176 the author itemizes our “transformation” rules set and concludes it is flat out wrong.

1. Situational awareness (based on remote technologies)
2. Precision killing (ineffective for individuals)
3. Rapid dominance (not so fast)
4. Kill enough of the enemy and their leaders, and resistance will fold (simply not so).

PP191-192 are a stake in the heart of COIN–it is not wrong, it is simply ignorant and oblivious of the strategic Whole of Government and Whole Earth ramifications of spending all of our money on a lemon. COIN is (my words) “Borg triumphant.” COIN is “bento-box consciousness” and RAND–normally a supplicant cheer-leader– has outlined its demise in detail.

P202: “The events of 9/11 drove us back to Great War, but this time without *the people.* This Great War was *and remains* a war of the leadership and its tribal confederacy. It is a state-military enterprise, but far more significantly, *it is also now a state-military liturgy.* (Emphasis in original.]

The author notes that the “other” has a faster learning curve than we do, and on page 182: “Today's non-state actors know us better than we wish to know them.” This is an indictment of the USG.

See the images loaded under the book cover, and below books consistent with author's intent:
The Lessons of History
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence and the Will of the People
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Uncomfortable Wars Revisited (International and Security Affairs Series)
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars
The Tunnels of Cu Chi: A Harrowing Account of America's “Tunnel Rats” in the Underground Battlefields of Vietnam
Radical Man

2009/07/032009/12/04

Review: Responsible History

5 Star, History

Nobel Prize Material–Elegant, Exudes Integrity, a Joy to Read, June 27, 2009

Antoon De Baets

This is, in my opinion, a Nobel-level contribution to all scholarship as well as to humanity. The author is at the intersection of history and human rights, but I also see him as having provided a definitive typology of responsible scholarship that exudes INTEGRITY, the one word that captured the essence of Buckminster Fuller and his ideal to create a world that works for all with disadvantage to none.

Two other books that provide context for this one, but are focused on the substance of history rather than the ethics of history where the author is clearly the vanguard, are:
The Lessons of History
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past

See the image I have posted for a number of other book covers and the core “data pathology” concepts that undermine our ability to create a prosperous world at peace.

The author is also responsible for Censorship of Historical Thought: A World Guide, 1945-2000, a book that is grotesquely over-priced by the publisher, so with sadness I must limit my foundation for praising this author on the basis of this single properly-priced volume.

As with most books I consider special I began by reading the notes (40 pages) and the bibliography (18 pages), and from these extracted the following terms I place in alphabetical order:

Abuse-of-history
Academic-freedom
Access-to-information
Censorship
Civil-and-political-rights
Defamation
Denunciation
Duties-to-the-dead
Ethics
Fakes-and-forgeries
Frauds-and-myths
Freedom-of-information
Hard-truth-vs-good-faith
Harming-the-dead
Holocaust-denial
Humanitarian-law
Human-rights
Incitement-of-hatred
Inquisition
Posthumous-rights
Propaganda
Protection-of-literary-and-artistic-works
Repression
Rights-vs-reputations
Right-to-history
Right-to-memory
Smear-campaigns
Social-reconstruction
Social-role-of-the-historian
Truth-and-reconciliation
Uncertain-knowledge
Voices

The book does not contain a biography of the author, searching for <dr. A.H.M. (Antoon) de Baets> yields his contact information, I have copied and loaded his photo from another site.

I learn that 2005 was the first time in history that “abuse of history” is formally defined as a meaningful concept, by the International Committee of Historical Sciences. The author is a founding leader of the Network of Concerned Historians, generally in support of human rights investigations.

Table 1.1 on page 13 is so valuable I am loading an image to honor the author. I am not doing this for the many other more complex tables that represent deep nuanced thinking and a philosophy of history that is GOOD. Buy the book.

On page 14 he gives us two definitions:

+ The abuse of history is its use with intent to deceive.

+ The irresponsible use of history is either its deceptive or its negligent use.

Table 1.2, 4 pages (19-22), is an exquisite typology of abuses within irresponsible history.

Table 1.3, 3 pages (26-28) is a delightful itemization of 19 general motives for historical writing, with many more refined motives included as subsets.

Table 1.4 on page 34 lists 22 attributes of abusers, and I cannot help but think of how easily they describe the most senior officials of most governments and corporations.

The author discusses the nature of dictatorships and their abuses as well as the post-dictatorship abuses that characterize the handing of their archives. I am of course reminded that the USA today is “best pals” with 42 of the 44 dictators discussed in Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025, *and* that Leon Panetta, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is refusing Congressional demands for archives on CIA's role in rendition and torture.

I learn from the chapter on defamation and how restrictive defamation laws are used to repress the truth. I also learn that the courts have made clear that charges of anti-Semitism as a means of repressing honest criticism of Israel and the Jewish lobby do NOT enjoy the same standing as normal charges of defamation because the anti-Semitic smear campaign violates rights of others rather that addressing the truth of the matter.

The author provides a fascinating discussion of judicial deference to historians in recognition that arriving at a best truth is a specialized craft.

The second half of the book on responsible history is equally engaging and most professional. It covers the duties of the living to the dead and the rights to memory and history. The author concludes that the dead do not have rights, but the living do have duties to both the dead of the past and the unborn of the future. Table 4.2 on pages 134-137 is a phenomenal listing of moral and or legal wrongs to the dead.

In examining memory and history, the author concludes, with full and proper documentation of work by others, that memory is a foundation for thought and therefore is a right; and that in exceptional cases the government can and must intervene to establish a right to the truth that is an essential aspect of transitional justice and is a right of the larger social group that has been wronged, not just of an individual. I learn–and perhaps this is Dutch humor but I appreciate it–that habeas corpus has a counterpart in history, habeas data.

The final chapter discusses and rejects eight reasons not to have a code of ethics for history, and then lists ten on page 187 that I provide in abbreviated form below.

01-focus-of-moral-awareness
02-formulates-rights-and-duties
03-instrument-to-teach-core-of-the-profession
04-compass-to-detect-irresponsibility
05-instrument-to-evaluate-conflicts
06-helps-reduce-irresponsible-use-and-abuses
07-clarifies-foundations-and-limits
08-helps-protect-historians
09-enhances-autonomy, transparency, and accountability
10-increases-public-trust-and-understanding

He concludes that the past will not go away and will remain both an area of conflict and abuse, and an area of reconciliation and responsible use. I am taken with one of the last lines in the book, on page 198:

“…historical writing is not an ordinary operation of memory. It is a rather peculiar operation of factual memory, based on freedom and integrity, r3espect, and the careful and methodically determined search for truth.”

This book is unique! It is in my view one of the most important works published in recent memory, and it has value for the future of humanity in defining the moral obligations of all professional researchers, not least of which are the spies–intelligence collectors, analysts, and managers.