Agency-securities Books

I might have leaned toward four stars on this book, which is certainly a useful contribution, but it falls into the second tier for being a clear hit job---and shallow to boot. Gaps in the author's reading (or writing) appeared from the very beginning. Lost first star there.

He defines strategic intelligence as focused on threats and the use of force. Despite his mention of Adda Bozeman, he does not seem to have understood that the heart of strategic intelligence is deep and sustained study and understanding of foreign cultures, histories, languages, genealogies, and ties that bind--financial, religious, tribal, ethnic, etc. Lost second star here.

There are ten high-level threats, twelve remediation policies, and eight global challengers, and all 30 of these factors must be studied as a whole and in relation, in the present, near, and far term. Anything less is not strategic intelligence.

I am troubled by the author's rather black and white bias in tarring CIA with all the wrongs and exempting the policy-makers, and especially Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith, for their many errors and omissions as well as 25 specific high crimes and misdemeanors committed by Cheney alone as detailed in The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 and Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency.

The author has read (or written) selectively. His examples of failure on Korea do not include reference of the Secretary of State's Press Club appearance in which South Korea was explicitly left out of the American orbit. His shallow coverage of Viet-Nam does not benefit from a lack of reference to None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam, War Without Windows: A True Account of a Young Army Officer Trapped in an Intelligence Cover-Up in Vietnam, or Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars, among others.

His coverage of 9-11 is also deficient. While he properly criticizes CIA for failing to actually ramp up both clandestine penetrations and analytic talent, and he faults the FBI for not sharing with CIA, he fails to mention the 9 specific warnings from foreign governments that the White House chose to exploit to achieve "our Pearl Harbor"--the Israeli's even sent a video crew to capture the known-in-advance event for their archives, while Dick Cheney organized an "exercise" with a command center NOT in the target building where the command center was originally built at great expense.

On Iraq, I found the author irritating--almost whining--in his never-flagging effort to tar the CIA. Evidently he is not aware of, or does not wish to credit, the defection of Salaam Hussein's son in law and the 25+ line crossers Charlie Allen is said to have sent in, as recounted in Bob Woodward's State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III all of whom came back with the same story: kept the cookbooks, destroyed the stocks, bluffing for regional influence's sake.

I agree with the author on some key points:

1) DNI should not have been created, this just created another layer of bureaucracy so we could promote the losers who got us here one more time.

2) CIA is out of touch with reality. While the author glosses over the importance of open sources of information, he is evidently completely unfamiliar with what properly done OSINT can do, to include tribal genealogies and orders of battle, financial-family ties and asset mapping, and so on.

3) The author is certainly correct to whale away at CIA security. On the one hand, they did not want my wife's report on the 300 foreign intelligence officers she met at one of my conferences, including the LtGen from the KGB ("did you sleep with any of them? No? Forget about it.") and on the other these are the morons who harassed a GS-15 who dared to call Kazhikistan to solicit local views, to the point that she quit CIA and is now very happy as the Chief of the Intelligence Analysis Division at one of the Combatant Commands. I was barred from the campus by these fools for properly returning a classified document from USMC to CIA, taken with permission and transported both ways via authorized couriers.

4) The author is correct on the fossilized layers of "management" and bureaucracy, and he does provide a good review of shortcomings, but I for one, with experience across three of the four Directorates back in the day, consider this book to be a case of "several hundred bleats too many." Yes, CIA is a mess. Yes, CIA should not have 800 SES positions and 200-400 compartments that do not share with another. It is all that bad? No. I could turn CIA around in 90 days just by recruiting Amazon to mobilize all the top authors and readers on every topic; by creating external non-secret multinational intelligence-policy councils on every topic of importance as I am doing now with the Earth Intelligence Network; by asking DoD to make the Coalition Coordination Center into a Multinational Information Sharing Hub that does OSINT as well as multinational HUMINT and close-in emplacement of US-provided technical devices. Somewhere in there I would fire two thirds of the contractors, half of the security people, two thirds of the lawyers, and most of FBIS. This is not rocket science.

The book ends weakly, with a mention of horizon scanning, which Singapore has turned into a 21st century new craft of intelligence, but the author evidently has not read Tom Quiggin's Seeing the Invisible: National Security Intelligence in an Uncertain Age, and is unfamiliar as well with the broader literatures on information society, modern intelligence, strategy & force structure, emerging non-traditional as well as catastrophic and disruptive threats, anti-Americanism and blow-back, and the negative impact of domestic politics on sound foreign and national security policy.

This is not suitable as a textbook.

On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time

It is difficult to imagine a better qualified individual to dissect the institutional being of CIA than Richard L. Russell. He is a 17 year veteran of that agency and is now a distinguished academic. Russell is unique among the many authors writing about CIA in that he was a real `working stiff' (intelligence analyst if you prefer) who actually observed and pondered what was going on around and above him.

Russell has produced an insightful, but devastating criticism of CIA and its inner workings. He goes to the heart of bureaucratic ineptitude that has become the norm for the analytic arm of CIA, the Directorate of Intelligence (DI). In this discussion he describes in a good deal of detail how managerial incompetence has combined with a deep seated anti-intellectual bias to produce DI analysts incapable of conducting substantive analysis. He is unique among intelligence writers in his recognition that to be effective, analysts must have target expertise. This look at the DI and the entire process involved in intelligence analysis and production is by itself a unique and invaluable contribution to understanding what is needed to truly reform the U.S. Intelligence System. This alone would be worth the price of the book, but Russell has also done an excellent review of the problems and foolishness that plague CIA's other arm, its clandestine service. Moreover, Russell provides a good deal of useful information on the theories supporting the concept of strategic intelligence and the related issue of the differences between `secrets' and `mysteries'. This is important to understanding what it is that the DI and its former senior branch, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) are supposed to produce. His discussion of the ill advised decision to create the position of Directorate of Intelligence and subordinate the NIC to it mirrors what most informed observers feel about the DNI.

This book is about CIA not the U.S. Intelligence System as a whole. Yet Russell's criticism of CIA and especially his observations on managers and analysts accurately describe analogous problems with the technical intelligence agencies (i.e. the National Security Agency (NSA) and the National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency (NGA)). It does not take a good deal of imagination to interpolate from this book that the entire U.S. Intelligence System is broken almost beyond repair. Russell offers some very good suggestions about how to repair the analytic capability of CIA, but these would only fix a part of the problem.

Apparently, not everyone in Russia was dying to develop democracy. In fact, the leadership likes to assume in times of trouble that the KGB was never disbanded, Yeltsin used their strong-arm tactics just as effectively as any Soviet premier.

Knight does write an interesting book, but there are some major flaws. I was reading this book for enjoyment, and found that it is about as dry as the vellum the Constitution was printed on - I fell asleep quite easily while reading it. That's not to say I didn't think it was good, I just wouldn't read it if I was suffering from insomnia. The second flaw isn't Knight's fault: this is an account of the first 4 years of the Russian Federation and the Commonwealth of Independent States through the eyes of the former KGB - what about the time since '95? Perhaps a post-Yeltsin update is in order. The third flaw is that Knight's research was primarily Russian newspaper and other media sources - so if you're interested in international espionage for example, the Russian media didn't cover it all except for the Aldritch Ames case.

However it does have its good points, and is a great source for anyone wondering whatever happened to the KGB. I wouldn't drop everything and get it, but if you can find it it is a good enough read.

Amy Knight identifies a part of post-Soviet society that the citizens of that former empire need to reconsile with. The Secret Police Empire is the remnant of Bolshevik terror and corruption that eats away at what could possibly be a law based society. Knight illustrates how post Soviet leaders have tried to distance themselves from their KGB goons but hurry back when going get tough.

Though a good book on the history of the role of Security Council in different countries it lacks the introductry chapter on What Security Council is for and its objects and some theory in reference to its position in the UN.

This book is now only available in hardback. However, it is most certainly worth it. The intricate relations between the UN Security Council and the whole machinery of UN human rights treaty implementation and treaty monitoring are explored, with excellent results. The book is also extremely well documented, well written, and offering the author's views which however do not impose themselves on the objectivity of the subject. It is a book I would recommend to all those interested in the subject, and it is - to my knowledge - the only major successful study on the relations between that specific UN body, namely the Security Council, and the complex UN human rights machinery.

This DVD-ROM only contains data file relating to SEC. Most of the SEC contents in this DVD-ROM are available in the internet. However, This DVD-ROM includes a large scope of information that makes it convenient to do research without having to browse the internet all over the places. Most of the files are in the PDF format. Can come in handy if installed in the notebook.

This certainly contains information you would never even think could be possible. These folks have skeletons in their closets, with each having more than one closet. The ones with the largest number of closets though is our own government. Interesting read for anyone wondering what the government has been doing behind the scenes with people the public has embraced.

An excellent account of the beginnings of Canadian security and intelligence activities, and the RCMP role in security and intelligence work. Easy read. Supported by many formerly official documents of the 1940s-1970s.

"The Complete Idiot's Guide to the FBI" is a good (although very basic) guide to the agency and its functions. Not surprisingly, just like other books in the "Complete Idiots" series, it caters to readers who only need a simple overview of the FBI.

"The FBI: A Comprehensive Reference Guide," by Athan Theoharis, is even better. Thomas Ackerman's "FBI Careers: The Ultimate Guide to Landing a Job As One of Americas Finest" is also a great book for agency information and history, and it's the best book on the market for FBI career seekers.

With this book, Judge Posner has completed what he refers to as his trilogy on the U.S. Intelligence System. The core of each book is an argument for creating a domestic intelligence agency that would be independent of the FBI. In this book this argument is amplified and joined with a detailed and effective critique of the FBI as an intelligence organization. Now Posner has no experience in the often arcane processes associated with production of intelligence nor has ever openly been affiliated with any intelligence agency. Yet his criticisms and suggestions should not be taken lightly. Much like the academic Amy Zegart (Spying Blind, Flawed by Design), he has made a serious and informed analysis of the U.S. National Security systems and found them badly wanting.

Posner does not denigrate the FBI. Indeed he recognizes it as a world class law enforcement agency, but points out clearly and carefully that the very attributes that make it so effective at law enforcement, make it highly unsuitable for the role of a domestic intelligence agency. Much as Zegart has done in her books, Posner identifies the cultural characteristics of the FBI that prevent it from developing into an effective intelligence producer. His arguments are logical and well constructed but are inadequate to force a change on the entrenched and complacent bureaucracies that make up the U.S. Intelligence System, and especially a bureaucratic force like the FBI.

In addition, to his primary purpose of building an argument for a new domestic intelligence agency, Posner offers some sound advice on how to make the Directorate of National Intelligence into more effective and more relevant agency. However, in this area Posner may have gone astray. He assumes the ill-conceived and badly executed reforms mandated by congress in the wake of 9/11 were really worth doing and that fixes at the top of the U.S. intelligence structure will make real improvements. In point of fact an argument can be made that imposing additional bureaucratic hierarchies on top of an already top heavy bureaucracy is analogous to putting a new roof on a building whose walls and foundation are rotting away.

The overarching practical suggestion of this book is that substantial public value is being lost due to insufficient collaboration in the public sector and that new ways of thinking and acting are necessary if systemic tendencies toward organizational fragmentation in increasingly obsolescent forms are to be reversed and public value interactively created. In this volume, Bardach is in search of a mode of discourse capable of standing up to social science scrutiny and modes of concrete action able to support the creation of public value in the face of public problems that do not conform well with our taxonomically formed organizational jurisdictions of the 20th century.

This is not your usual text on collaboration. It does not remotely consider collaboration a panacea to problems of policy and/or administrative fragmentation nor does it settle for the usual focus on collaborative behavior merely. It is concerned with understanding and building inter-organizational capacity. Understanding matters of potential or capacity, is not a historical strength of the social sciences. As such, the inquiry requires methodological advance rather than mere application of established methodologies. The methodological aspect of the text cuts in two ways. On the one hand, focus on methodological development is a seminal contribution of the text. On the other, it is an aspect of the text that makes access more difficult, in part for readers with academic backgrounds who were not exposed to such practical challenges in their methods courses, and most especially for practitioner readers whom the author also expresses hope to reach in its writing. It is a nuanced text that moves on and in-between theoretical, methodological, and empirical levels of abstraction simultaneously. Its risk is that it may appear too professionally-oriented for academics and too academic for practicing professionals. In its first edition, at any rate, I believe this text will prove to have been most accessible to a minority of reflective academics whose methodological questions probe beyond the ordinary and to a few reflective practitioners who happen to be more conceptually adept at differential levels of analysis than most practitioners or than most academics for that matter. Although it is not an easy read, the issues it raises are substantial and the text deserves a wider audience, most especially among that subset sometimes known as "pracademics," who straddle, however uncomfortably, the worlds of learning through and for practice and academic-based learning.

It may help to appreciate Bardach's contribution by placing it in a larger historical context of enduring contributions. For example, Bardach's concern for strengthening possibility inquiry and practice and for how we may learn purposefully to promote creativity in public management in ways that create public value is remarkably reminiscent of ways of thinking and acting articulated long ago by Mary Parker Follett in her 1924 volume, Creative Experience. As Peter F. Drucker, Warren Bennis, Paul Lawrence, and others underscored in their contributions to Mary Parker Follett--Prophet of Management, Follett's thinking was far ahead of her time perhaps just because she was able to perceive the world through a different "zeitgeist" or world view than did her contemporaries or most of her organizational successors in the last century. After her death, her work was largely forgotten (or conveniently pigeonholed in uncomprehending categories) so that even when sometimes ritually cited, her contribution was effectually lost to main currents of the twentieth century. Yet the challenge of possibility thinking that she posed in the organizational field endures and Bardach is one of a minority of scholars to pick up this challenge again on the cusp of a new century. Just as Follett was neither an empirical thinker merely, nor a normative thinker merely, but one concerned with the more creative process of actualizing potentials for the creation of public value, so likewise, is the challenge of better interactively understanding this creative process at the heart of Bardach's inquiry in this volume.

At a theoretical level, the text argues against "the more or less deterministic worldview of workaday social science" (p. vi). It is an attempt to articulate a conceptual frame of reference that gives central place to contingent notions of potentiality and capacity in human affairs. Bardach communicates this frame of reference by elaborating on the generative metaphor of "craftsmanship." He articulates a frame of reference in which the purposive activity of actors may be explicitly understood as playing a causative (and hence explanatory) role in human affairs. Although he doesn't cite the notion of causality as articulated in the literature of some realist (see e.g., Ray Pawson, 1997; 2006, chs.1-2) or critical realist methodology (see e.g., Andrew Sayer, 1993 and 2000), in this reviewer's judgment, his practical and theoretical concerns as reflected in this text are substantially inline with the theoretical re-conceptualization of causality for the social sciences as articulated in that literature.

In a language that would be appreciated by realist or critical realist methodologists such as those above, Bardach states "the analytic problem is in understanding purposiveness not as a product of individual will alone but as a product of the interaction between individual will and certain conditions in the environment." Bardach's discussion does usefully build upon Lawrence Mohr's important and still under-appreciated distinction (1982) between variance theories (typically employing quantitative methods), process theories (typically employing qualitative methods), and notions of causality corresponding to each (for readers interested in a concise summary of distinctive notions of causality corresponding with these distinctive types of social science theories, see e.g., Joseph Maxwell, 2005). Bardach instructively draws attention to how a sensible variance analysis is functionally dependent upon a prior qualities analysis. Perhaps most fundamentally from a methodological perspective, Bardach makes a constructive and empirically grounded foray into conceptually unconfining notions of causality in the social sciences and broadening understanding of this fundamental notion in ways appropriate for action, which is also to say, for acting upon the potential of a situation when it matters most, in real time.

Unfortunately, in his focus on methods and causality interwoven throughout the text, the author seems to leave many practitioners shaking their heads wondering what he's talking about. His thoughtful exploration of uses and limits to conventional boundaries of social science methods for addressing real world challenges deserves further serious attention by policy and organizational scholars. This book is courageous in attempting to articulate a theoretical connection that holds much promise for distinguishing modes of inquiry relevant to worlds of practice, yet whose theoretical groundings I do not believe anyone has articulated fully or even adequately for a practitioner's audience to date.

Bardach's focal concern for potential and capacity lead him to be centrally concerned with the interaction between "an evolving medium of linked possibilities and purposive intervention." The interactive process with which he is concerned is resonant not only with the work of Mark Moore on creating public value (a referent he explicitly draws upon), but is also resonant with what is conceptualized in the notable yet currently less attended to policy work of Giandomenico Majone (1989) and Donald Schon and Martin Rein (1995) as a dialectical policy process. Surprisingly, Bardach makes no mention of these referents despite the obvious relevance of a policy dialectic to this focal issue he examines.

In speaking of the process of potentiality in-between linked possibilities and purposive intervention, Bardach refers more generically to "an ongoing developmental process." Bardach's focus here is also notably similar to what Alberto Guerreiro Ramos articulated as "objective possibilities" with respect to developmental issues at large (1971). Indeed, it seems to this reviewer that Bardach would substantially strengthen his case by placing his work explicitly in the frame of reference of possibility-thinkers just as Michael Barzelay carefully did in his insightfully developed (1992) work. Neither scholar, however, developed a historical frame of reference for articulating possibility thinking. To the best of my knowledge, that is a task still left unaddressed in the policy-administrative field. Bardach's specific concern in this text is with articulating, building, and acting upon situational potential for interagency collaboration. In so doing, he surfaces issues that have been at the periphery of social science concerns in the last century. Yet in so doing, he appears remarkably perceptive to this reviewer and to offer important methodological cues for the further development of professional scholarship in the century to come.

Whatever direction social science programs take in the coming century, I believe professional schools such as programs of public policy and public administration are going to need to recover actionable forms of inquiry and knowledge if they are going to remain closely relevant to the practitioner base that they ostensibly serve. I believe that however it is assessed in the short term, in the long term, Bardach's text will be understood as one of those critical stepping stones that help the professional policy and organizational fields begin to rethink their methodological foundations and seek to help practitioners creatively engage experience in a 21st century world whose problems are not likely to be well handled either within jurisdictions of the formal taxonomic organizations created in the 20th century or via ways of thinking and acting currently commonly fostered in the social sciences.

In conclusion, this is one of those books where a mature scholar was truly thinking as he wrote. It's clear he's not simply regurgitating anything he had already figured out before he started writing. As such, it is a book that requires serious study rather than a text that can be lightly breezed through. It's got enough accessibility challenges in this regard to withhold one star. But in terms of the worthiness of the read, it's a five star book. One could hope that the author may make room for a second edition. It's a unique contribution and addresses a set of topics that are only likely to increase in relevance and import as the new century wears on.

Although this book was very thourough, concise, and well-researched, they managed to bore me completely with a topic I usually find fascinating. Do not buy this book for interesting reading; it is useful as a reference only.