The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption - Hardcover

Robert David Steele

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9780971566118: The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0971566119 ISBN 13: 9780971566118

Publisher: Oss Pr, 2002

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This book is the sequel to ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA International Press, 2000). That book, written largely for government and corporate intelligence professionals, remains the basic reference volume for the future of global intelligence enterprises. This book, by contrast, is a completely new effort that is written for every citizen of every country—the "intelligence minutemen" of the 21st Century. In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, attacks carried out by a non-state actor skilled at asymmetric warfare and using our own capabilities against us—attacks followed quickly by a nation-wide anthrax assault that closed Congress and terrified the U.S. Postal Service—it is imperative that every citizen have a clear-headed understanding of what is at stake and what needs to be done to keep not only America, but all civilized communities safe. It is especially imperative that citizens understand that the world is already at war, with millions of refugees in 67 countries, plagues sweeping across 59 countries, mass starvation in 27 countries, and deliberate genocide campaigns in 18 countries. These are "facts of life" that our schools, our media and even our intelligence communities have been unwilling and unable to represent intelligently to the public. It is against this backdrop of global chaos that terrorism rises.

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From the Publisher:

9/11 is for intelligence what Sputnik was for science. The across-the-board failure of clandestine intelligence (overseas), counterintelligence (at home) and our generally mediocre understanding of the real world (since we lack a properly funded, language-qualified foreign or diplomatic service), all contributed equally.

Henry Kissinger is absolutely right when he laments the lack of any serious consideration of foreign policy in recent presidential and congressional elections, and that is what 9/11 must change--this book is intended to be useful to citizens as well as government and business intelligence professionals. It lays out with great precision (see the index) both $11.6 billion dollars (out of $30 billion a year) in potential savings that could be applied to the new craft of intelligence, and it recommends with great precision all that should be in a new National Security Act of 2002.

Intelligence in the 21st Century is too important to be relegated to a chaotic cluster of secret government agencies. It is time for all citizens to take an interest in intelligence, to migrate the proven process of intelligence (there is a great deal that is good about the U.S. intelligence community) into the business sector as well as over to the sovereign states and their localities, and to demand of our elected representatives a proper accounting for the failure, and measures to prevent future failures.

Less than 2% of the $30 billion a year intelligence has been spent on terrorism--the policy and intelligence leadership over several administrations have given lip-service to the war on terrorism--and there will be no improvements, no matter how much money we pour into intelligence and counterintelligence, unless we change the fundamentals--who's in charge, how we do it, who we do it with, and how seriously we take our responsibilities for protecting America.

From the Author:

The current hearings, being held in secrecy and focused only on secret intelligence stovepipe failures, are largely political theater and beg the larger question of government competence in international affairs. The sad truth is that the entire government failed, beginning with the Department of State and the Immigration and Nationalization Service, and certainly including the Office of the President (both the past and present Administrations). This book supports citizen-centered intelligence, and calls for a new form of public intelligence community in which our state & local authorities as well as our international partners are fully integrated into a global Internet-based network for sharing the cost, time, and knowledge burden of 24/7 monitoring of important foreign area and foreign language information--in 29 languages that are not now effectively monitored by NSA, CIA, or anyone else.

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