CIA, INC.: Espionage and the Craft of Business Intelligence [Paperback]

F. W. Rustmann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 2002

Every major government on earth recognizes the value of intelligence and employs an intelligence service to collect it for them. Businesses should be no different. Knowing how to gather information about the strength of your competitors, being able to anticipate their next move, and preventing them from stealing your secrets are critical keys to success in the new economy. Executives, entrepreneurs, and business school students must realize that the success of their companies partially depends on their effectiveness in the realm of business intelligence. This book teaches the principles of intelligence and counterintelligence, using the CIA’s methods as a model for the business world.

CIA, Inc., explores the major aspects of business intelligence, including competitor intelligence, risk analysis, business and market analysis, counterintelligence, background investigations, due diligence, and security surveys. F. W. Rustmann draws on his experience as a CIA operations officer and a pioneer in the field of corporate intelligence to describe the collection, analysis, authentication, and reporting of intelligence.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Rustmann's title is a good summing up of this book. A former CIA officer and founder of the business intelligence company CTC International Group, Rustmann recounts many of his CIA activities as examples for business. His story of how he infiltrated an apartment building next to a foreign embassy and drilled through the common walls to plant microphones is riveting. He warns that foreign nations use such methods to steal proprietary information from American businesses at an estimated value of $100-$435 billion in 1997 alone. After explaining many of the techniques of the intelligence trade, Rustmann tells how businesses can fight back using such simple measures as thoroughly screening new employees and business partners. Unfortunately, covering the gamut of business intelligence and security, including the September 11 attacks, leaves little room for depth. Still, the book serves as a good introduction, and the many CIA anecdotes along with its clear writing style would keep even a general reader happy. Recommended for business collections in all libraries and for anyone interested in spying and the CIA. Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ., Erie, PA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

U.S. corporations get ripped off by the tens of billions of dollars by unscrupulous business competitors and aggressive practitioners of economic espionage such as China, France, and Israel. To Rustmann, formerly a high-ranking clandestine officer in the CIA, the financial damage can be ameliorated through the application of basic intelligence principles. Rustmann's discussion of them, from describing the difference between raw and evaluated intelligence to defining different types of agents (double, access, etc.), although expert, is a standard presentation of the craft of intelligence. What flavors it are the author's experiences as a case officer and chief of station, which he hopes illustrate analogous situations in the business world. Some don't, but those that do, such as Rustmann's bugging of a foreign embassy, plainly underscore the high risk to naive businesspeople of technical threats to their operations. For them (or, more likely, their security and human resources personnel), Rustmann ably and clearly presents the concepts for incorporating counterintelligence into corporate culture. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Potomac Books Inc. (November 4, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574885200
• ISBN-13: 978-1574885200
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,382,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Intelligence Pro's Rapid Primer on Modern Espionage, April 11, 2002

By 

Roy K. JONKERS (McLean, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: CIA, Inc: Espionage & the Craft of Business Intelligence (Hardcover)

If anyone wants to get a rapid primer on how modern espionage relates to the national and international business world, this is an excellent book to read. It is surprising what this veteran CIA officer, a highly respected core member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), has been permitted to say by the Agency about various operations. To this jaded reader/reviewer, in the profession for fifty-odd years, I particularly liked that the author told his stories in an entertaining, straight-from-the-shoulder fashion, warts and all, telling what worked, what did not work. There are no maudlin reminiscences or ego-stroking, occasionally present in personal memoirs. Rustmann makes the connection between his experiences, for example in bugging a foreign embassy, to the needed preventive and protective actions by US business. The book is recommended reading for corporate officers, but even quite apart from its message to business, it is also a public primer on the crafts of human intelligence and counterintelligence, from the recruitment of spies to collection operations and analysis, from the threat posed by foreign (or competitive) economic intelligence collection in the US (particularly from minorities with "dual" loyalties) to the protection of information and the detection of espionage operations. In the end one realizes that in business, just as with terrorism (also discussed), we are still living in an jungle, in which the uninformed and unwary may pay a heavy price. Rustmann's book is recommended reading for corporate professionals, but also for students and members of the public who want to know more about US and foreign espionage operations from a highly reputable professional.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required reading for anyone in industrial security or intel, March 18, 2002

By 

Ed Sorensen (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: CIA, Inc: Espionage & the Craft of Business Intelligence (Hardcover)

This is a MUST READ for anyone involved in the industrial security or intelligence business as an employee or as an independent resource. It will definately put one on the right track to producing consistantly reliable intelligence research for business/industrial clients. It will also provide a running start at defining the methodology for protecting your proprietory information.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bad day or bad book?, February 21, 2003

By 

S. Johnson "lenexa_jayhawk" (Kansas City) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: CIA, Inc: Espionage & the Craft of Business Intelligence (Hardcover)

While I could not more agree with the previous reviewers as to the entertaining style of the book, I must say that after finishing it I could not shake the feeling I'd been duped by an ex-CIA agent who was looking to make a little money on the side by writing folksy recollections of his service time. If you're interested in reading about TLAs and other acronyms, this book is for you. If you want a spy novel, this might be for you, too, but don't expect any gunfire or semi-automatic weapons discharge, casinos with mixed drinks, double agent Halle Berry's, or anything remotely related. This book tells gut-level stories in a manner befitting Mark Twain, almost, and remembers once in a while to try and tie CIA-type spying into corporate intelligence by dropping short chapter sections on things like the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 and to make sure the reader is fully aware that Europe, China, and Japan have no qualms about stealing our corporate secrets. Oh, and for those of you who would like to take some tips on having a book qualify as "competitive intelligence", be sure to confuse the term business intelligence with competitive intelligence. And make sure that you watch carefully for the nepotism angle since the author's daughter gets a shot at outlining some web sites for gathering intelligence (and not many at that), though it's impossible to tell where her writing begins and his ends due to the consistency of voice in the narrative.

Finally, I'm still smirking at the jacket cover photo. Man, how serious can it get? Especially for a book that sheds such little light into competitive intelligence except to put a bug in your ear (pun intended) to watch out for bugs, how to determine if you're paranoid or really being bugged, or how to give your agents code names like the CIA does.