Customer Reviews

INFORMING STATECRAFT (INTELLIGENCE FOR A NEW CENTURY)

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Admirably writeen, lucid prose, outstanding thought, this book would be the first book I would assign to anyone looking to understand the nature of intelligence.

It is interesting to note that Codevilla wrote two of the best introductions on "how to think" about two major subjects- about war in "War, Ends and Means" and "Statecraft". It is a crime that this book is out of print, and one should do everything in ones power to obtain a copy.

The only other book in the intelligence field that approaches this level of worth is "The New KGB, Engine of Societ Power", an older 1980's book by Robert Corson. All the other poor books on intelligence either take the character of "The Puzzle Palace" (which is stupid and an insider's pro-old boys network hack job) or one of Noam Chomsky's blithering semi-conspiracy theories. "Informing Statecraft" is the only type of really usefull intellectual companion to intelligence work in all existance.

This book is exactly what an intelligence book should be- an attack on the structural inadequacies of the United States intelligence community in the guise of a "how-to" book on how to run things correctly. Flipping through the book, one will wonder at the bales of common sensical yet brilliant realpolitik critiques involved in his analysis of what intelligence should be about.

Yes, Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century is relentlessly critical of the blundering past performance of various administrations, e.g., "Note well that liberals in America, when in charge of government at any level, of university faculties, or of CIA directorates, take care to hire and award contracts to likeminded folk and to exclude others." P 231.

And, yes the aphorisms are authentic, fascinating, and call for radical reformation e.g., "Sound knowledge of a disorderly world, rather than faith in a trouble free, post-end-of-history `new world order,' will best fit nations to thrive in the twenty-first century." P 72. "There is never enough intelligence to guarantee instant success at no cost and never enough to overcome entrenched prejudice." P 213. "It is more important to define what any particular job, e.g., espionage, is to accomplish, how it is to be accomplished, and to hire the right kinds of people to do it, than it is to decide for which bureaucracy these people will work." P 293.

But the roots of this work lie deep in lessons that humankind desperately needs to understand now at the beginning of the new millennium: the mystery of foreign lands and the mystery of the language, culture, and people integral to them.
o Despite superficial signs of a uniform world culture (cassette recorders, jeans, soda pop, burgers, rock groups), Africans are becoming more African, Asians more Asian, Russians more Russian, etc. The often astonishingly good English spoken by young people from Moscow to Mecca - never mind the Indian subcontinent, where it is the lingua franca - has led many U.S. analysts to the disastrous conclusion that foreigners can be understood in terms of what they say in English. On the contrary, their English words are our symbols, to which they do not necessarily attach the same meaning or convictions we attach. P 239.
o The characteristics of the person sent to gather information often make the difference between information that is useful and information that is worse than useless. P 301.
o The network is most important. Closed terrorist cells in the Middle East are part of the semiopen entourages of terrorist chieftains who are part of overt Palestinian politics in which Arab governments take major parts. P 311.
o Among the most effective forms of propaganda is the propaganda of the deed-the sight of a corpse, and the feeling that one may be next. Nothing so cements a movement for the long run as martyrs, nor changes a government so definitively as killing its members or supporters. P 375.

After my first reading of Informing Statecraft, I read it at random, and find that no matter where I pick up the thread, it produces a comprehensively researched and unrivaled account of the intelligence industry. As always, Codevilla navigates the shoals of this information with great skill and dexterity.

I'm going to sound like a schoold-girl with an infatuation if I let what I think about this book out. One hears many reviews that begin with "This book should be the first book anyone reads about blah blah blah", but this is a rare case of crystal clear thinking about intelligence that amounts to a genius. Were I to make or run an intelliegence agency, this book would be the first book I would give to my officers and agents.

Maybe the reason for Mr. Codevilla's excellence is his devotion to translating Machiavelli (now that's someone I'd like to have in an intelligence agency), or maybe not. What I do know is this book talks first and foremost about the basic questions intelligence operations should be asking about themselves and their work.

I've read a lot of books about intelligence agencies, but they all end up being either a) anecdotal, story like intepretations, b) partisan tracts on different aspects of intelligence work, or c) op-ed pieces.

I would put this book even above such works as "The Puzzle Palace". The only other book I have read with this caliber material was on Russian intelligence, "The New KGB: Engine of Soviet Power".

This book, however, takes the cake, and it restores my faith in looking up obscure intellectuals- this reminds me of the HL Mencken maxim- "There are only two types of books: the kind of books people read and the kinds of books people should read". This book is the latter. Buy it and read it twice.

Glad it's back in print! The best book on intelliegnce out there, a beautiful sythesis of general principles and historical examples. In particular, Codevilla has grasped James Jesus Angleton's seemingly simple insight -- that our enemies, as thinking, breathing human beings, may actually go out of their way to feed us false intelligence, so that we will believe things that aren't true -- which has been totally lost to CIA for almost 30 years. Instead, it has been replaced with a naive faith that CIA is simply too smart and professional to be fooled.
Codevilla, from years as a Senate intelligence staffer, knows otherwise, and he chronicles one blunder after another. The lesson: since few if any of Codevilla's proposals were implemented, when CIA says something does or doesn't exist, you should be very, very skeptical. CIA has secret intelligence right? They know things we don't, right? Wrong.

"It is not too gross an exaggeration that when considering any given threat, DIA will overestimate, CIA will underestimate, and INR will blame the U.S. for it." From his opening chapter and his distinction between static, dynamic, and technical facts, on through a brilliant summary of the post-war spy on page 103 and lengthy sections on how we've gotten it wrong, how we can get it right, and what is needed in the way of reform, I found this book worthy of study. An analyst and political staffer by nature, the strength of this book rests on the premise in the title: that intelligence should be about informing policy, not about collecting secrets for secrets' sake.

Codevilla knows this subject. Years spent as a working intelligence professional and more years teaching the subject. His thesis, that intelligence is an instrument of conflict, is the most important place to start in understanding this book. As its title suggests, Codevilla wants intelligence server purpose, and that purpose is statecraft. Elsewhere, he enumerates the challenges of statecraft itself. Here, he focuses on a special - and especially important - aspect of statecraft: intelligence.

Written before 9/11, Informing Statecraft makes hay from Cold War intelligence experiences. Consequently, the book does not address the complex issues and consequences of pre-9/11 intelligence matters or those matters associated with weapons of mass destruction intelligence Iraq. Those issues Codevilla deals with in other writings.

To begin, Codevilla does a fine job of organizing the disciplines of intelligence. Guiding the reader through the thicket of terms and arcana, Codevilla structures his discussion of collection, analysis and production, counterintelligence, and covert action to provide the reader the foundation for the critique of these disciplines, which follows.

With respect to the collection disciplines, Codevilla argues that nearly any fact can be of great importance - or of no importance - depending on the use to which an decision maker might put it. It is possible for a political leader or military commander to choose the right course of action with little (or in spite of) information. Whether a fact turns out to be useful or harmful depends on timeliness, volume, intelligibility and inherent relevance. The consequences of poor collection capability are profound: not having a spy in the enemy camp means never knowing for sure about what is being prepared for the future. Not having a spy means relying on observation, with all its invitations to self-deception.

Once in a while a fact - a picture, a message, an event - is so clearly important that its value is self-evident. In such cases, an intelligence service may transmit the fact to policymakers without analysis, and the policymakers will see its meaning clearly. But even in such clearly obvious cases the key is knowing the difference between facts that can be treated that way and those that cannot. Consequently, the act of screening information for relevance itself becomes an act of analysis. Codevilla observes that two nemeses lurk behind every analytical process. First, there is rarely enough data to draw an unchallengeable conclusion. Second, since the data concern human struggles, it is likely to have been biased precisely in order to deceive the analyst. Moreover, the analyst, being human, comes fully equipped with bias.

Codevilla argues persuasively that serious interest and serious mind are the real prerequisites for quality analysis, and these characteristics distinguish professionals from amateurs. The author quotes Plato in saying that only an expert thief can understand thievery. Knowledge of perverse practices, argues Plato, is necessary but not sufficient to understand perversion. Vulnerability to such perversities is most acute during periods of urgency and stress. This is because, with regard to dynamic events, the analyst is at his greatest disadvantage: The data is sketchiest, the opportunities for deception and self-deception are greatest, and the time is shortest. The analyst must rely solely on his knowledge of the character of the people he is observing under such circumstances.

With respect to the contemporary question of intelligence failure in the nature of surprise, Codevilla's thesis is simple and clear: intelligence has done all it can when it delivers the best possible report that the facts allow to the right person at the right time. Distinguishing such intelligence failures from failures standing from other sources, he notes that the real intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor was not one of intelligence at all. The collectors instantly analyzed, and even managed to deliver. But the high officials who received the product did not order action.

Two factors intervene to complicate the proper delivery of intelligence. First, the providers of intelligence are jealous of their sources and methods. Second, the various users of intelligence all realize that the power to state officially what foreign conditions are like is at the same time the power to determine military budgets and foreign policy.

Codevilla addresses the discipline of counterintelligence in a refreshingly mature and disciplined manner. He thinks of the discipline of counterintelligence primarily as a quality control function. While intelligence services must busy themselves with a host of things, a part of them must be constantly devoted to collecting and analyzing facts about other intelligence services - in short, doing counterintelligence. Counterintelligence is often confused with security, that is, merely with protecting secrets and protecting against subversion. Whereas the objective of security is to cut and prevent all contacts between hostiles and those who are to be protected the objective of counterintelligence is to engage hostile intelligence, control what it knows, and if possible control also what it does. As others have argued, Codevilla acknowledges counterintelligence is the queen on the intelligence chessboard: when one side loses the contest for quality control, its intelligence services become a net liability.

Codevilla urges a fresh understanding of covert action as a complement to contemporary statecraft. Secret relationships, he argues are a means of playing some members of a government against others, or of dealing with an entire body politic under false pretense. The commonplace view that covert action, which Codevilla calls "covered warfare," is the weapon par excellence of the weak states is true, he argues, but misleading. First, covert action works for the weak no insofar as they are weak, but insofar as they are smart. Second, it works even better for the strong than it does for the weak.

Having established a framework for his discussion, Codevilla turns to a critique of contemporary American intelligence.

As he was in previous publications, and has been in subsequent ones, the author is particularly hard on the CIA. Among all other nations, the United States struggles with the human intelligence discipline. This truth is born out in the historical facts of America's human intelligence institutions. The notion of the gentleman spy who steals into enemy territory to sow treachery and steal secrets has no basis at all in the history of the real Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's forerunner.

Today, he argues, real American spies, following the tradition of British intelligence, live by the rule that they themselves should neither masquerade as natives nor steal documents, but rather that they themselves should recruit and manage the people who do such things. Lacking technical, cultural, practical competence with respect to their targets, such spies will at best be ineffectual, at worst, liabilities. Writing before 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Codevilla offers a long and detailed critique focusing on pre-9/11 failures of US intelligence. He concludes that real intelligence reform will be extraordinarily difficult.

First, Congress is not well-positioned to shape intelligence. Congress lacks the required expertise, and the rule that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee may serve no more than eight years, and members of the House Intelligence Committee no more than six, helps to hold down expertise.

Second, it was before 9/11 and remains today extremely difficult to focus intelligence activities on the most important strategic challenges the country faces. True reform, Codevilla argues, does not consist of procedures, budgets, or of drawing bureaucratic "wiring diagrams" much less of bureaucratic vendettas. It consists of figuring out how the needs of the future differ from what the present bureaucracies deliver, and then acting dispassionately.

Third, Codevilla expresses concern over the quality of America's ability to attract and retain quality intelligence professionals. As with military for foreign service officers, intelligence professionals must be selected from among those intellectually qualified people who want to join the fray on their country's behalf. Commitment to the ends of one's country truly frees intelligence professionals to search for the most effective means. Moreover, intelligence is a people-intensive business. Good performance depends on an unusually wide variety of talents. Many of these talents are rare, and most are not of the sort that can be taught, especially by governments.

Reform is essential, concludes Codevilla. Even - or especially - in the post-9/11 world, this book is important. In the long run, he argues, governments get the intelligence they deserve. Whether in the post-9/11 world the American people are benefiting from their nation's recent and acute struggles with intelligence remains unclear - despite a dedicated and energetic effort at reform.

This book, although first published in 1991,remains an interesting and relevant meditation on the role of intelligence in support of U.S. national level decision makers and in the formulation of national security policies. Codevilla identifies such intelligence as `national intelligence' to distinguish it from military or other types of intelligence. His argument is that CIA, is the principal agency responsible for producing national intelligence, but requires a significant internal cultural change if it is to do so effectively.
He supports his argument with a rather well developed operational history of CIA in which he points out the dominance of the clandestine collection and covert operations side of CIA (known variously as the Directorate of Plans (DP) and Directorate of Operations (DO)) to the determent of an effective national intelligence program based on CIA's research and analysis side (Directorate of Intelligence). He is particularly scathing on the crown jewel of CIA national intelligence production, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). He observes correctly that an appallingly large number of NIEs have either been outright wrong or ignored or both wrong and ignored (and this was before the notorious WMD NIE).
Codevilla has a good deal to say about CIA's record of clandestine collection and covert action, but this was not the main theme of his book. His central point was that CIA had the primary role of providing the executive branch of government, the decision makers, with the best information available and had consistently failed to do so. He offers a rather unique but absolutely correct solution to this which is to change the culture of the analytic arm of CIA to reflect greater emphasis on subject matter expertise by analysts and to hold them accountable not for the number of reports they produce, but for their quality.
In 2004 the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was created and responsibility of NIE production along with the National Intelligence Council was then transferred to this office. It has yet to be determined if this move has materially improved intelligence support to the executive branch.
The National Security Establishment and CIA in particular have ignored this book for twenty years and are unlikely to pick it up at this late date. This doesn't make the book any less true or important. It would be a good companion to a more recent study of national intelligence issues, "Strategic Intelligence" (Scarecrow Press, 2009) by Don McDowell. McDowell is an Australian whose views dovetail nicely those of Codevilla.