The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
“Creating a Smart Nation,” pp. 107-130
The International Intelligence Fellows Program, for senior officers (flag and bull colonel), is an example of where the future of intelligence must lie–in what the Swedes originated and I enhanced by adding sense-making:
Poetry, Tragedy, Reality, Manifesto of Sorts, October 28, 2008
Roberto Saviano
This can be a difficult book to read, with its never-ending littany of death, but I found the book–a translated work from the Italian–to be absorbing. It can and should be read with the capstone work by Moises Naim, Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy. Moises' book is a global strategic overview. This book is a tactical and operational microcosm that adds significant weight and dread to our overall understanding.
First off, kudos to the translator, Virginia Jewiss. There are turns of phrase throughout where it is clear that the poetry was in the original and was preserved by the translator, no easy accomplishment. Bravo.
Before setting out some of my notes, I will observe that the book concludes with the observation that it is not criminals, but the concert of criminals and politicians (to which I would add criminal corporations and financial networks) that is consuming the earth.
The last chapter is quite a brilliant conclusion, focusing on the illegal disposal of toxic waste as the ultimate crime against humanity and the Earth. I actually shuddered as I realized what the author was driving at: criminal organizations love the construction business in part because they can dispose of a lot of toxic trash mixed in with sand and cement–this means that you could be living in a building that is itself toxic, and will not know until everyone in the building is diagnosed with cancer.
Some of my notes:
+ Naples has a legal economy of roughly 2.6 billion Euros a year, with 1 billion Euros a year in the illegal economy. Compare this with the FBI and ILLICIT views that illicit is roughly 2 trillion a year against a 7 trillion a year “legal” economy.
+ Tax avoidance is the ultimate discount, and imposed services or and purchase contracts are the modern form of extortion.
+ Quality is NOT sacrificed. The criminals make their money by matching the quality, lowering the price, and demanding distribution.
+ Labels do not protest for three reasons:
– They share the dirt cheap production facilities with the criminals
– The criminals are maintaining the same high quality
– It spreads the “brand” even if half the brand is fake.
+ It's just business. Early on the author observers that Chinese Triads are not a big factor, while Chinese businessman are. He cites one as responding to this question by pulling our Euros, Dollars, and Yuan. “This is my triad.”
+ The Chinese are steadily stealing trade secrets from criminals all over the world. In one instance, they have persuaded a master tailor to allow himself to be video-taped, with a Chinese girl translating his every word into Chinese as he goes step by step.
+ The criminals lend money at 10%, beating the banks.
+ 500% return on investment in the drug business, $1000 invested and then rolled over each time becomes $100 million one year later.
+ Specific clan under discussion invoicing $500,000 Euros a day ONLY for narco-trafficking.
+ 300 killers on payroll, just for this one area.
+ Criminals are master businessmen, and open air drug markets are a model of precision, oversight, quality control, you name it, they do it RIGHT.
+ 179 varieties of ectasy. Drugs are a resource now, not just for getting high but for carrying on while exhausted, for living in a world best summed up by Don Quixote, “they are not asking now why they die, but why they ever lived.”
+ Middle class drugs on fire–instead of pushers, have drug circles (doctors, lawyers, etcetera), more like Tuperware parties.
+ Addicts used to test cuts of the drugs, rigorous focus on ensuring best quality before distribution. If the addict dies on the spot, the cut was not enough.
+ Madrid as entry point for drugs from Colombia and Peru, ETA using drugs in trade for arms including heavy weapons.
+ Garbage trucks one of the most successful mass transit means used for drugs, drugs underneath, lots of garbage on top.
+ Utilization of children at every level including directed murders.
+ Kid killer music in Italy is not rap, but Napolotean love songs and pop
+ When Eastern Europe broke from the Soviet Union, the criminal families were there first, making deals for entire arsenals. They stole NATO trucks to move the weapons without worry of being stopped in Italy.
+ Police do intercept text messages.
+ Women are now handling much of the back office work–financial–while the men spend more time on the street.
+ Humanitarian crises are great opportunities–they sell arms into the conflict, use the cash to buy humanitarian supplies, and then get paid to deliver half what they are paid for, with more arms on top. See Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict for earlier insights on black markets that spring up from badly managed humanitarian assistance.
+ Foreign enclaves of crime are poisoning the world. The author is shaken to find portions of Scotland now belonging to Italian crime families that manage legal businesses in the open, and global illegal businesses out of Scotland on the side.
+ Hollywood has provided provincial criminals with global inspiration, and helped legitimize their aspirations.
I have been reflecting recently on the failure of the US Government in all its forms–the executive, legislature, and judiciary–and drawing a distinction between secession from the Union, and the alternative, which as best I can tell is a life of crime. The 2008 election is theater–both the political parties are criminal and treasonous, neither of the candidates has been willing or able to discuss the substance of governance, and regardless of which of them out-frauds the other, we all lose. The USA is at a turning point, and I have the very strong feeling that this election, in combination with the Iraq war and the global financial collapse, could actually trigger at least one if not three secessions from the USA, which is no longer a Republic.
The author is a brave man, a poet, a scholar, and a gifted communicator. There are portions of the book where one's eyes glaze over trying to follow the path from one murder to the next, but the overwhelming message of the book for me, at least, is this:
Do we want to become like the kids in Naples, whose only choice is a life of crime with almost certain death; or do we want to take back the power, destroy both the political parties that sold us out to the corporations and the banks, and restore “home rule” including an end to the Federal Reserve, an end to absentee ownership, an end to corporate amnesty, and so on?
What does it mean to be human? I think it means to dare to want it all–a prosperous (ethical) world at peace, applying the Golden Rule, creating infinite wealth, and rapidly moving to a zero waste, zero corruption society. This book is a slap in the face for those who think the world is mostly okay. It's not.
Recommended by Daniel W. (see his summary comment below on upperworld versus underworld crime: The Outfit.
Other depressing books, ending with three hopeful books:
The Bush Tragedy
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
and
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
Heart-Felt, Intelligent, Useful but Still Believes in Democratic Party, October 26, 2008
Thom Hartmann
I bought this book after receiving the author's words from Tom Atlee that then became part of the prefaces for Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography). I then realized that this same author gave us Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class – And What We Can Do about It (BK Currents (Paperback)).
The author, a self-described liberal, accomplishes roughly three things in this book:
1) Introduces neuro-linguistic programming and framing concepts as a means of understanding the political theater that passes for democracy today;
2) Seeks to differentiate the conservative “code” versus the liberal “code” and criticizes both–the conservative code for being false and unsustainable, the liberal code for failing to make the leap that connects and empowers We the People.
3) Goes on to discuss how to combine “code-aware” story-telling with the reassertion, recreation, and promulgation of the new liberal “brand.”
I admire this book and recommend it highly. I could not give it the full five stars for two reasons: first, the author blindly accepts the Democratic Party as “good,” not recognizing that they are actually “crime lite” in contrast to the Republican Party (and also the new face of Wall Street, with the Republicans designated to take the fall this time around in what has been a “fixed” and fraudulent electoral system since the 2000 fraud made pre-selection a given option); and second; he actually thinks Nancy Pelosi knows what she is doing–I think she is a doormat with no spine, so right off we have some cognitive dissonance. This case has been made by Peter Peterson in Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It so I will not belabor it. BOTH parties are evil and BOTH parties have betrayed the public trust.
Where the author really connected with me was toward the end, when he spoke about resurrecting “We the People” and the “brand” of all that is good about liberalism. If I set aside my disdain for both parties, what the author has to offer is a “code” for the new Transpartisan Alliance and organizations like Reuniting America and the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility. Please do look them up.
The book seeks to help good people communicate good ideas.
Here are highlights from my reading, all good:
+ Politics is a set of stories intended to arouse specific responses.
+ The liberal story is about interconnected world with inherently good people who need safety nets and community; the conservative story, as portrayed by the author, is about people being evil, fate being deterministic, and gated communities being the solution.
+ The author provides a truly impressive and subtle primer on neuro-linguistic programming, framing, and most impressive, how to help people transform “victim” stories into “learning” stories.
+ He places great stress on not seeking to stop or end or criticize bad status quo behaviors and policies, but instead trying to find fundamental connections (we all want American the Beautiful) and then seeking consensus on new positive ideas.
+ The author provides a very concise summary of Hobbes' Leviathan (war is a natural state) versus Locke's two treatises (and no mention of the social contract that I noticed), which points out that accumulated wealth is unnatural and impairs the broader community. I really enjoyed this.
+ He discusses the Jeffersonian draught of instruction on how a colony might secede, and I myself, speaking at the secessionists' conference in mid-November, make a note to look it up–if we cannot dismantle the two criminal parties, then secession is the only “legal” option for Vermont, the South, the Pacific Northwest, and so on.
+ The author draws a number of contrasts with story-telling examples, of “conservative” versus “liberal” framing:
– SECURITY: gated community versus all happy
– MORALITY: about what people do in private versus public welfare
– MONEY: “death tax” versus “rich kid tax”
– IRAQ: “just war” versus “unjust occupation”
The author resonates with me when he uses Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) and John F. Kennedy (JFK) as the examples of the liberal brand done right.
He points to an example of government doing the right thing in Germany: they ordered the banks to give very low cost loans to home-owners for buying solar power systems; and they ordered the power companies to buy the excess power at seven times the going rate. The outcome: they got 100,000 solar-powered homes GIVING BACK the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant (and the power company saved that investment).
In passing he slams Reagan for ending the non-profit status of health care, and Gingrich for teaching the Republicans how to code their way to victory.
The book ends with “democracy begins with you…you're it.”
Books that I am reminded of and recommend along with this one:
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations (KMCI Press)
The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
Imagine: What America Could be in the 21st century
The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
I believe this book, as with the other books mentioned above, matters. However, I believe it is very important for all to reflect on the FACT that neither of the two candidates has addresses the substance of governance; neither has published a draft balanced budget; and regardless of who wins–with the fraud on both sides evening out–We the People all lose.
To end as the author suggests, with a personal story: I am an estranged moderate Republican, leaning toward Libertarian, who also respects all that the Green Party stands for, while yearning for every citizen to be an Independent. We the People are no more–for now. Corruption reigns in America–we are a “Cheating Culture” through and through.
Extremely Good Effort for One Mind–Missing Some Links, October 25, 2008
Joshua Kurlantzick
I first studied China, the “Middle Kingdom,” in 1975 when I found Mao relevant to my primary interest, understanding and addressing revolution in all its forms. The image above is the heart of my graduate-level quick look at how the PRC exercised foreign influence back then. In addition, my father was a Chinese “guest” in 1967-1968 after pirate militia sank his trimaran enroute from Saigon to Hong Kong, a story told in Yachtsman in Red China.
The author has done a superb job of observing, interpreting, and documenting. I take away one star for a certain amount of naiveté and incompleteness–the book ends somewhat weakly–but I totally disagree with those who consider this book disorganized or less than four stars in merit. I found the book absorbing, consistent with my own recent observations tracking Chinese irregular warfare including both electronic warfare and waging peace in Africa and South America, and over-all, I cannot think of a finer book for American diplomats, politicians, and students of serious mien.
The author opens with a very personal and relevant account of how he watched the fall of US influence and the rise of Chinese influence in Thailand, marking the late 1990's as the time of change. To his surprise, when he asked US diplomats about this, he found them unaware. Today, they are aware, but powerless in the face of a White House that under Dick Cheney has totally destroyed the policy process (for an account of how this was done, see The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill.
He follows the 1990's in Thailand with a very compelling comparison of how George Bush was heckled by Australian senators and booed by the Australian public in 2003, while a few days later the Chinese leader Hu Jin Tao was welcomed as a hero. He points out that Australians now see US unilateral militarism as a threat to Australian peace and prosperity fully co-equal to the threat of radical Islam. For one balanced take on foreign public perceptions on America, see The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World
He properly credits Joe Nye with the term “soft power” but I am in agreement with the anthropologists and others who now choose not to use that term because global presence has to be managed as a Whole of Government/Whole Earth enterprise, something Stewart Brand and others understood decades before the rest of us. Of all Stewart's books, my favorite remains Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility: The Ideas Behind The World's Slowest Computer, a book I fear the Chinese appreciate vastly more than the two idiot parties now looting the US commonwealth on behalf of their Wall Street masters.
The author says that the Chinese think of their primary power as everything outside the military and security realm. See my image above for a nuanced understanding that is still valid–the names have changed, but the Chinese are simply playing a modern version of Middle Kingdom ubber alles.
The author reviews the mis-steps under Mao (Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, export of revolution), and then gives proper credit to Deng Xiao Ping as the transitional and transformational leader who adopted pragmatic reforms. The deal China made, in substituting enhanced nationalism for absolute communism, was “make money, not trouble” and all would be allowed.
The new leaders are college graduates and in many cases have graduate degrees. The end of the Cold War freed China from fear of Russia, and now China is focusing on the Second World. For good reasons why, see
The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order
The new era leaders clearly understand that global problems impact on them, and they must pursue global solutions.
Here are the 20 elements of China's global strategy as I understood them from the author's excellent account.
01 Stability in the 14 countries on its borders
02 Cease military confrontation (e.g. Spratleys), use non-military assets
03 Go after resources all over the world
04 Create ring of allies as buffer against US and other interventionists
05 Non-interference in affairs of others
06 “Born-again Multinationalism” (Susan Shirk)
07 Cooperative agreements (7 with Mexico, 14 with Venezuela, etc)
08 Help those the US shirks or slights (Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia, Uzbeckistan…)
09 Offer socio-economic model in which state, not market, is steering
10 Focus on small nations ignored by US and others
11 Cultural and public diplomacy ****needs its own book****
12 Direct recruitment of overseas Chinese in 1980's, used their wealth, $30B or 7% of external investment, as seed crystal for 1990's boom
13 Aid, trade, easy loans, investment (a fraction of what US does, but they get more mileage out of theirs by how and when and why they do)
14 Easy fit with corruption and deals outside the rule of law
15 Lots of construction including free buildings for headquarters (the author does not say this, I do: “no extra charge for the electronic bugs”)
16 Junkets to China, junkets with issue training for the staffs
17 Exporting men (this could have used more attention–Argentina will be majority Chinese by 2020 or so)
18 Exporting visual media (#2 in the world right now)
19 Rolling Taiwan back, everyone withdrawing recognition
20 Direct influence both good and bad (good: anti-drugs, some effort on human trafficking, on disease; bad: illegal lumber harvests in Myanmar, Indonesia)
The last three chapters are not as arresting, but still good:
IX: America's soft power goes soft, both Clinton and Bush killed us overseas
X: Shanghai Cooperation Organization, giving US “wedgies” all over the world
XI: Rest of World waiting for two things from USA: live up to our values and stop our bad policies
The author is a big naïve (or less informed) when he lambasts the Chinese for supporting dictators and fails to realize that our two corrupt political parties love 42 of the 44 dictators as their best pals (see Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025).
Serious book by a serious person for serious people. Well done.
My last four allowed links:
Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography)
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
Primer for the Non-Professional, October 24, 2008
Gary Berntsen
This is a publisher's idea of a quick buck. The author did what he could within the constipated formula. It is recommended for anyone who knows very little about intelligence and wants a useful overview that avoids the nitty-gritty. Indeed, this is a very fine companion to Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy(3rd Edition), which is deficient in the very areas where this book offers a rather gross-level overview to the student new to the intelligence discipline. The price is reasonable, one reason I was tempted.
I tried hard to justify four stars but I just cannot do it. There is nothing wrong with this book, if you want a Middle School reader with a handful of ideas that are good but not unique, while avoiding anything that could have held the book up when being reviewed by the CIA, this is it. It is a small book with 19 brilliantly selected chapter titles each receiving as many as six or as few as two (small) pages.
I tried reading each “chapter's” Core Points a second time, and found little to arrest my attention (or that of a future President). Support Colombia. Spray crops in Afghanistan. Special Ops is under-represented. Hmmm.
The eleven recommended books are an afterthought. Obviously the author is an experienced case officer but he is not broadly read and none of the books deal with the profession of intelligence–a couple by bubbas, a couple on counter-insurgency, a couple on the Islamic mind–you get the idea. In this instance, “practical guide” appears to mean “my personal view, without bothering to look into anything anyone else has recommended…)
All of my books are free online, and of course here on Amazon, so I won't flog them. The core chapters can also be found online, notably “Presidential Leadership” from the first book, “New Rules for the New Craft of Intelligence” from the second, and so on.
I cannot do justice to all the deep books, including the author's own, Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander which I strongly recommend instead of this book, as well as First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan. See my varied lists, especially the early ones before I started focusing on Earth Intelligence across the board.
Here are the aspects of intelligence as it pertains to national security, and a single recommended book for each, among many others I have read and reviewed here at Amazon:
1) Does it inform policy?
Informing Statecraft
2) Does it avoid doing harm?
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
3) Do policymakers abuse it for their own ends?
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
4) Do we tell ourselves and the public the truth?
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
5) Can intelligence make a difference?
Intelligence Power in Peace and War
6) Can intelligence see the invisible?
Seeing the Invisible: National Security Intelligence in an Uncertain Age
7) Do we do as well as we can analyzing what we collect?
Lost Promise
The author is a good, brave, and talented man in the field. We are losing too many like him now, before their retirement age, because we are allowing contractors to steal them and rent them back to us at twice the price. If anyone were listening to me, which they are not, I would have two policies:
1) Pay for performance at commercial rates
2) Lose your clearances for two years if you leave before retirement age, and start the clearance process over when you come back, but if you get to retirement, we hold your clearances for five to ten years without your having to commit to a vendor (or any single vendor) right away and to allow you to free lance while still having your original agency as “home base.”
The US Intelligence Community consists of incredibly good and earnest people trapped in a very bad system with multiple sucking chest wounds from security to acquisition to leadership (no middle, losing the seniors at the directorate levels) to you name it. Nothing in this book is going to fix that, I am sorry to say. We need a firehose, not another Happy Hour menu to throw on the fire.
Disappointing, Some Value, October 22, 2008
Gregory F. Treverton
There are six (6) pages in this work that held my attention: pages 11-12 (Table 2.2 Analytic Concerns, by Frequency of Mention); page 14 (Figure 3.1, A Pyramid of Analytic Tasks); page 20 (Table 3.1, Wide Range of Analytical Tools and Skills Required); page 34 (Figure 5.1, Intelligence Analysis and Information Types), and page 35 (Table 5.1, Changing Tradecraft Characteristics). Print them off from the free PDF copy online (search for title).
My first review allotted two stars, on the second complete reading I decided that was a tad harsh because I *did* go through it twice, so I now raise it to three stars largely because pages 11-12 were interesting enough to warrant an hour of my time (see below). This work reinvents the wheel from 1986, 1988, 1992, etcetera, but the primary author is clearly ignorant of all that has happened before, and the senior author did not bother to bring him up to speed (I know Greg Treverton knows this stuff).
Among many other flaws, this light once over failed to do even the most cursory of either literature or unclassified agency publication (not even the party line rag, Studies in Intelligence). Any book on this topic that is clueless about Jack Davis and his collected memoranda on analytic tradecraft, or Diane Webb and her utterly brilliant definition of Computer Aided Tools for the Analysis of Science and Technology (CATALYST), is not worthy of being read by an all-source professional. I would also have expected Ruth Davis and Carol Dumaine to be mentioned here, but the lack of attribution is clearly a lack of awareness that I find very disturbing.
I looked over the bibliography carefully, and it confirmed my evaluation. This is another indication that RAND (a “think tank”) is getting very lazy and losing its analytic edge. In this day and age of online bibliography citation, the paucity of serious references in this work is troubling (I wax diplomatic).
Here are ten books–only one of mine (and all seven of mine are free online as well as at Amazon):
Informing Statecraft
Bombs, Bugs, Drugs, and Thugs: Intelligence and America's Quest for Security
Best Truth: Intelligence in the Information Age
Early Warning: Using Competitive Intelligence to Anticipate Market Shifts, Control Risk, and Create Powerful Strategies
The Art and Science of Business Intelligence Analysis (Advances in Applied Business Strategy,)
Analysis Without Paralysis: 10 Tools to Make Better Strategic Decisions
Strategic and Competitive Analysis: Methods and Techniques for Analyzing Business Competition
Lost Promise
Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political–Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption.
On the latter, look for “New Rules for the New Craft of Intelligence” that is free online as a separate document. Both Davis and Webb can be found online because I put them there in PDF form.
The one thing in this book that was useful, but badly presented, was the table of analyst concerns across nine issues that did not include tangible resources, multinational sense-making, or access to NSA OSINT.
Below is my “remix” of the table to put it into more useful form:
54% Quality of Intelligence
54% Tools of intelligence/analysis
43% Staffing
43% Intra-Community collaboration and data sharing
41% Collection Issues
38% Evaluation
32% Targeting Analysis
30% Value
Above are the categories with totals (first initial below connects to above). The top four validate the DNI's priorities and clearly need work.
32% T Targeting Analysis is important
30% V Redefine intelligence
30% Q Analysis too captive to current
30% To Directed R&D for analytic technology needed
27% T Targeting needs prioritization
27% S Analyst training important and insufficient
22% V Uniqueness
22% E PDB problematic as metric
22% To “Tools” of intelligence analysis are poor
22% To “Tools” limit analysis and limited by culture
The line items above are for me very significant. We still do priority based collection rather than gap-driven collection, something I raised on the FIRCAP and with Rick Shackleford in 1992. Our analysts (most of them less than 5 years in service) are clearly concerned about both a misdirection of collection and of analysis, and a lack of tools–this 22 years after Diane Webb identified the 18 needed functionalities and the Advanced Information Processing and Analysis Steering Group (AIPASG) found over 20 different *compartmented* projects, all with their own sweetheart vendor, trying to create “the” all-source fusion workstation.
19% C S&T underused, needs understanding
16% E Critical and needs improvement
14% E Assess performance qualitatively
14% Q Quality of analysis is a concern
14% Q Intelligence focus too narrow
14% S Language, culture, regional are big weaknesses
11% A Leadership
11% L Must be improved
11% Q Problem centric vice regional
11% Q Global coverage is important
11% C Open source critical, need new sources
11% I Lack of leadership and critical mass impair IC-wide
11% I IC information technology infrastructure needed
11% I Non-traditional source agencies need more input
8% V Unclear goals prevail
8% T Targetting analysis needs attn+
8% C Collection strategies/methods outdated
8% S Concern over lack of staff or surge capability
8% S Intelligence Community-wide curriculum desireable
8% I Should NOT pursue virtual wired network
8% I Security is a concern for virtual and sharing
5% E Evaluation not critical
5% Q Depth versus breadth an issue
5% Q Greater client context needed
5% C Law enforcement has high potential
5% S Analytic corps is highly trained better than ever
5% S Career track needs building
5% I Stovepiping is a problem, need more X-community
5% I Should pursue virtual organization and wired network
3% V Newsworthy not intelligence
3% L Radical transformation needed
3% E Metrics are not needed
3% E Evaluation is negative
3% E Audits are difficult
3% Q Long term shortfalls overstated
3% Q Global coverage too difficult
3% T Targeting can be left to collectors
3% C All source materially lacking
3% C Need to guard against evidence addiction
3% C Need to take into account “feedback”
3% S Should train stovepipe analysts not IC analysts
3% S Language and cultural a strength
For the rest, not now, but three at the bottom trouble me: the analysts do not have the appreciation for feedback; they do not understand how lacking they are in sources; and they don't know enough to realize that radical transformation is needed.
On balance, I found this book annoying, but two pages ultimately provocative.
