Agency-securities Books

The opening quotation from Harry Howe Ransom says it all-"Certainly nothing is more rational and logical than the idea that national security policies be based upon the fullest and most accurate information available; but the cold war spawned an intelligence Frankenstein monster that now needs to be dissected, remodeled, rationalized and made fully accountable to responsible representatives of the people."

Professor Johnson is one of only two people(the other being Britt Snider) to have served on both the Church Commission in the 1970's and the Aspin-Brown Commission in the 1990's, and is in my view one of the most competent observer and commentator on the so-called U.S. Intelligence Community. The book is a tour d'horizon on both the deficiencies of today's highly fragmented and bureaucratized archipelago of independent fiefdoms, as well as the "new intelligence agenda" that places public health and the environment near the top of the list of topics to be covered by spies and satellites.

Highlights of this excellent work, a new standard in terms of currency and breadth, include his informed judgment that most of what is in the "base" budget of the community should be resurrected for reexamination, and that at least 20% of the budget (roughly $6 billion per year) could be done away with-and one speculates that this would be good news to an Administration actively seeking trade-offs permitting its promised tax cut program. His overviews of the various cultures within the Central Intelligence Agency, of the myths of intelligence, and of the possibilities for burden sharing all merit close review.

He does, however, go a bridge too far while simultaneously rendering a great service to the incoming Administration. He properly identifies the dramatic shortfalls in the open source information gathering and processing capabilities of the various Departments of the Federal government-notably the Department of State as well as the Department of Commerce and the various agencies associated with public health-but then he goes on to suggest that these very incapacities should give rise to an extension of the U.S. Intelligence Community's mission and mandate-that it is the U.S. Intelligence Community, including clandestine case officers in the field and even FBI special agents, who should be tasked with collecting open sources of information and with reporting on everything from disease to pollution. This will never work, but it does highlight the fact that all is not well with *both* the U.S. Intelligence Community *and* the rest of the government that is purportedly responsible for collecting and understanding open sources of information.

On balance I found this book to be a very competent, insightful, and well-documented survey of the current stresses and strains facing the U.S. national intelligence community. The conclusion that I drew from the book, one that might not be shared by the author, was that the U.S. Government as a whole has completely missed the dawn of the Information Age. From the National Security Agency, where too many people on payroll keep that organization mired in the technologies of the 1970's, to the U.S. State Department, which has lost control of its Embassies and no longer collects significant amounts of open source information, to the White House, where no one has time to read-we have completely blown it-we simply have not adapted the cheap and responsive tools of the Internet to our needs, nor have we employed the Internet to share the financial as well as the intellectual and time burdens of achieving "Global Coverage." More profoundly, what this book does in a way I have not been able to do myself, is very pointedly call into question the entire structure of government, a government attempting to channel small streams of fragmented electronic information through a physical infrastructure of buildings and people that share no electronic connectivity what-so-ever, while abdicating its responsibility to absorb and appreciate the vast volumes of relevant information from around the globe that is not online, not in English, and not free.

It was not until I had absorbed the book's grand juxtaposition of the complementary incompetencies of both the producers of intelligence and the consumers of intelligence that I realized he has touched on what must be the core competency of government in the Information Age: how precisely do we go about collecting, analyzing, and disseminating information, and creating tailored intelligence, when we are all inter-dependent across national, legal bureaucratic, and cultural boundaries? This is not about secrecy versus openness, but rather about whether Government Operations as a whole are taking place with the sources, methods, and tools of this century, or the last. To bombs, bugs, drugs, and thugs one must add the perennial Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Of special interest to me were the detailed, almost day-by-day descriptions of events put together by the authors from as many sources as they could access. They begin to give a picture of a "day in the life" of at least some people involved in covert action, with secret supply missions by the Navy, flights to clandestine air strips, a sub popping up off the coast of Sumatra to rescue five CIA men, and a C-46 flying another bunch to safety at Clark AFB. As an American who has lived overseas for many years and met such people, I have long been curious about just what they do. (You can't ask them.)

No individual is portrayed in great depth and it is just as well since most are rather unappealing, coming off as either connivers or flakes, or both. One character that did catch my attention was Fravel "Jim" Brown, a CIA careerist who was present when rebels he was supporting were captured by government paratroopers taking an airfield. He walked up to the paratroopers' commander, introduced himself as "Brown from Caltex," made some small talk, then slipped away. A few days and hundreds of kilometers away Brown was in a rebel-held port as it too was captured, by the same paratroopers. Once again he slipped away. Is there a name for that personality trait, extremely valuable for people in certain professions, that combines chutzpah with blarney?

As an American living in Indonesia, I found the book interesting and very readable. However, I suspect that readers with no knowledge of Indonesian political history or geography will find the narrative a bit tedious unless they are fervent espionage afficionados.

What has not been known until Vizzard authored this book, even by many of it's own employees is the influences of not only other government agencies but the anti-gun control organizations as well as party politics in the development of polices and missions by the leaders in this Bureau.

I spent nearly a quarter of a century as an agent with ATF and it's predecessor organization. I arrived on the scene (1959) as the heyday of liquor enforcement was fading. I was assigned to Bureau headquarters during the years when the Gun Control Act of 1968, and the Explosives Control Act of 1970, were enacted into law. I served in various managment positions in Washington, DC and later spent time on the firing line in two district offices (Detroit and Louisville) as the Assistant and finally as the Special Agent in Charge. My last two years with ATF before my retirement in 1983, were spent working on the streets and I received first hand knowledge of what it meant to be a "street agent" operating under the rules established as the result of the influence of internal and external politics.

The author has managed to capture the nuances of the pressures involved in enforcing laws that are not popular with segments of our society that have political clout. Politics are not limited to outside the agency and Mr. Vizzard has analyzed these as well. This book should be required reading for all special agents now on the job, former agents will be surprised to learn just how little they really knew about what was happening behind the scenes while working for ATF, all persons interested in government operations and even those persons who take umbrage of the law! s enforced by this battered but still proud agency will be impressed with the contents of "In The Cross Fire."

Among other things, it provides the most concise, thorough, accurate and comprehensive account of the tragedy at Waco that most readers will ever review. For this alone it is worth reading (and this opinion includes my own study of (1) the Treasury Dept.'s own report on The Investigation of Vernon Wayne Howell, AKA David Koresh, which is for sale by the U.S. Gov't Printing Office, and is well worth reading in its own right; and (2) hours before the TV in 1995 watching the House Congressional subcommittee hearing on Waco, which was completely inadequate, confusing, misleading and an absolute failure at discovering the truth - proof once again that politicians fail to get almost anything right). So if you really want to build your understanding of the events at Waco, read this book.

And the book is about much more than just Waco. It tells the real source of ATF's strengths (its agents, not its management), and why, because of these agents, with their "determination to perform in spite of inadequate resources, training, policy, leadership, and political support", ATF has been able (at least in the past, but probably not now or in the near future) to successfully compete with the FBI, an agency that was/is "far larger, better known, more prestigious, and infinitely better funded". And if you read carefully, you might even learn why this superior performance is doomed not to continue.

If you are an ATF Agent, with the typical love/hate relationship that most agents have with ATF, this book will speed you again through all of the conflicting emotions you have felt. And if you are one of ATF's critics, you will learn many things you did not know or even consider knowing before reading this book, and hopefully will begin to understand that in many instances you have criticized things that do not deserve criticism, and have failed to criticize the things that do. If you care at all about ATF, pro or con, READ THIS BOOK!

I would add that Hood provides a wealth of books of a similar vein (ie. accounts from intelligence field officers) that may also be of interest. It is without doubt an engrossing and intriguing read.

But if that's not satisfactory, there's the digressive account of the original model for James Bond: a Yugoslav by birth, assigned to spy on the Abwehr by the Soviets. In 1941, he arrives in America. His connection with Pearl Harbor & J. Edgar Hoover may leave you, like me, baffled forever: "How could they not know?

A book that unusual for the fact that it wasn't written to capitalize on current events. A very good account of the early post-WWII days in the espionage game.

*I didn't get the job.

Well it doesn't. It does fine all by itself. It gives some great insightful information to the reason behind some of U.S invasions, wars, and other candelstine efforts foreign and domestic.

Anybody that lived through the era that the book was covered will get bored easily as no true secrets are revealed. But for those born around the 80's, will become very informed.

A good book, but not that good. I give it three stars because the title does not match the book.

Two things to remember:

1. It is ironic that Greeks now "love Macedonia" when they tried to eradicate its very existence.

2. If Macedonia has always been Greek, why did the Greek government deny its existence until the 1980's?

I attended a jazz festival in Macedonia in 1997 and have the greatest respect for this country and its people. There are a lot of varieties of people there who get along. Newspapers show Macedonia as conflicted but people there are very casual and respectful and friendly with each other.

Back to this book. This book makes you want to be a peacekeeper.

The one major deficit in this otherwise well organized book is that there are no illustrations or pictures - especially the lack of organization charts for both the UNPROFOR and the two UNPREDEP missions. A graphic illustration of the funtional relationships would have helped illustrate some of his organizational points. A photograph of the monument at Cupino Brdo would have enhanced his fascinating discussion of the small conflict there between the U.N. and the small groups of Serbian soldiers who attempted to take it, to provide another example.

His discussion of the "U.N.'s "Blue Line" that served as a border was similarly interesting but could have been better represented with a map and would be better presented still in a revised edition with the differences between the monitored line and the recently fixed borders agreed upon between the Republic of Macedonia and Yugoslavia.

The book, although relatively new, could then already be enhanced with a second edition's discussion of the relative success of the mission given paramilitary incursions onto Macedonian territory by western trained paramilitaries, the same paramilitaries now attempting to train Macedonia to have a reasonable military capability. But, from the quality of discussion in his text, I am certain that any revised edition would also shine.

One general lack, but not so much the author's fault as few think about these things, is not considering the relative effects of programs put in place by the west under sanctions and external war conditions which were carried over into the post war period, such that the international community got used to dictating certain conditions to Macedonia that it does not dictate to other countries without requisite international rewards. However, he is one of the few authors to point out the functional inability of the U.N. to provide respite to countries under economic seige through Chapter 50 compensation.

A special feature of this book are its chapter summaries and end of text summarization such that it comprises, before recent events, a decent list of lessons learned on the mission. The only lessons learned that he seemed not to have covered at all is the geographic spread of the mission, which needed aome other geographic components. One criticism of his discussion of the CIVPOL in Macedonia, besides their tiny size, was that there was no discussion of the dynamics of changing the size of the CIVPOL operation or how it might better have been comprised.

All in all, a nice study.

The text is designed to highlight differences in the two missions, one of which has been moderately successful, the other of which was an unmitigated disaster. It identifies three phases: pre-deployment, deployment, and post-deployment, and shows how these differences affected the outcome. It also identifies three groups who must cooperate to create success: the peacekeepers, the target nation, and the surrounding states. The failure in Angola can be traced to all three phases and all three groups. Likewise, the success of the Mozambique mission can also be traced to all three phases and all three groups.

Jett's analysis is superb. The lessons that can be drawn from this work would prove invaluable, if properly implemented in peacekeeping going forward. The necessary changes in the UN and its member nations will be challenging, but knowing they must be made is a good first step. Let us hope the people with the power to set peacekeeping on the right course are reading and remembering this one.

This book was, as other reviewers noted, originally a dissertation. So off the top, a prospective reader should know that this is a scholarly piece of work, not a novel. It is a well-written and quite readable work, though.

Ambassador Jett on balance does a good job of outlining why UN peace operations can fail, using the Mozambique and Angola cases to good affect. The work comes across as somewhat ill tempered at times, and is not happy reading if one is a supporter of peace operations. By and large, the arguments and conclusions make sense, in terms of outlining the failures and why they happen. There does not seem to be enough credit given to the successes, and the reforms that have taken place to fix some of what Ambassador Jett discusses.

Those are quibbles, though. The fact is, this book is a must read for those studying conflict resolution, peace operations, or any related field. It is a good read for anyone, given the current news. The book will not provide any potential solutions to the problems noted so well, which is an issue, but at least the reader will gain a good understanding of the problems.