Public Intelligence Blog – Page 4143 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

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The Next President, and Next DCI, Need to Read This Book,

April 8, 2000

Mr. Bruce D. Berkowitz

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

The Next President, and Next DCI, Need to Read This Book, April 8, 2000

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This book dedicates itself entirely to fixing the underlying process of intelligence. The authors place intelligence in the larger context of information, and draw a plethora of useful comparisons with emerging private sector capabilities and standards. They place strong emphasis on the emerging issues (not necessarily threats) related to ethnic, religious, and geopolitical confrontation, and are acutely sensitive to the new power of non-governmental organizations and non-state actors. The heart of their book is captured in three guidelines for the new process: focus on understanding the consumer's priorities; minimize the investment in fixed hardware and personnel; and create a system that can draw freely on commercial capabilities where applicable (as they often will be). Their chapter on the failure of the bureaucratic model for intelligence, and the need to adopt the virtual model-one that permits analysts to draw at will on diverse open sources-is well presented and compelling. Their concluding three chapters on analysis, covert action, and secrecy are solid professional-level discussions of where we must go in the future.

2000/04/082009/10/24

Review: National Insecurity–U.S. Intelligence After the Cold War

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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Useful Annecdotal Opinions, Should be Bought and Read,

April 8, 2000

Craig R. Eisendrath

A project by the Center for International Policy, founded by Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), this book brings together a series of chapters that are largely anecdotal (but reasoned) pieces from former foreign service officers recalling all the terrible things CIA did or did not do while they were in service. It includes a chapter by Mel Goodman that some thought was to have been a full-blown book. The chapter by Richard A. Stubbing on “Improving the Output of Intelligence: Priorities, Managerial Changes, and Funding” is quite interesting. There is a great deal of truth in all that is presented here-Ambassador Bob White, for example, was in El Salvador when I reported, a graduate thesis on predicting (and preventing) revolution in my past, and I remember vividly our conversation about the need to suppress the extreme right if we were to stabilize the country.

2000/04/082009/10/24

Review: Fixing the Spy Machine–Preparing American Intelligence for the Twenty-First Century

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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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.

2000/04/082009/10/24

Review: The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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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.

2000/04/082009/10/24

Review: Secrecy and Democracy–The CIA in Transition

5 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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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.

2000/04/082009/10/24

Review: Flawed by Design–The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC

5 Star, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret)

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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.

2000/04/082009/10/24

Review: Preventing World War III–A Realistic Grand Strategy

5 Star, Strategy

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Thinking Strategically Is More Important Than Tanks and Guns,

April 8, 2000

David M. Abshire

This book, apart from being the world's longest job description (for a Counselor to the President for Grand Strategy), remains a vibrant and provocative discussion relevant to guiding the Nation into the 21st Century. Part I discusses the “world theater” and Part II discusses in turn a grand strategy and then political, public, deterrence, negotiating, resources, technology, Third World, and economic strategies. The book ends with thoughts on organizing for strategy that should, because of who wrote them and how good they are, be required reading, in their twelve-page entirety, for the President and his entire Cabinet team.