Best Truth

The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) continues to be mired in the past despite the so-called reforms implemented internally since the end of the Cold War or imposed from without by Congress in the wake of the 9/11 catastrophe. Here is a book that offers a path to real reform based not so much on structural changes as changes in the intelligence production process. It makes a strong case for decentralization of intelligence production and the use by the IC of outside experts to assist in the analysis of specific intelligence subjects. The type of reforms that Berkowitz and Goodman advocate would give the members of the IC that elusive, but vitally important, attribute of flexibility to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. Unfortunately, the kind of reformation these authors argue for would require a major change in the internal culture of the primary agencies of the IC. For example, members of the IC now make extensive use of private, commercial contractors even for core missions such as intelligence analysis, but only within an elaborate bureaucratic framework designed to fill vacancies, not improve the analytic processes. The use of outside subject matter experts from academia and the business world hired for specific analytic projects on an ad hoc basis as advocated in this book really goes against the basic culture of the intelligence bureaucracy. It is true that the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and some National Intelligence Officers (NIO) within the NIC have resorted to outside experts, but this is scarcely representative of the IC as a whole. Indeed in this reviewer's experience, outside experts of any sort are about as welcome in the IC as women are in the monasteries of Mount Athos. So clearly this and the other elements of the reformation program offered in this book would require profound cultural changes within the IC. Robert D. Steele in a series of books such as "The New Craft of Intelligence" has attempted to develop some of the ideas presented in this book into specific practical changes affecting the way the U.S. produces intelligence. Steele's work would be a good follow on to this book.

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.