Customer Reviews

Intelligence Power in Peace and War

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This is the textbook for the best and the brightest of both the academic world and the policy world. It is not an easy read, between the British language form and the deep thinking, but it is, as Christopher Andrew says, "the best overview" and "surely destined to become a standard work". I especially liked its attention to components and boundaries, effects, accuracy, and evaluation. Perhaps most usefully within the book is the distinction between long-term intelligence endeavors that rely primarily on open sources and serve to improve state understanding and state behavior, and short-term espionage that tends to be intrusive and heighten the target state's feelings of vulnerability and hostility. No intelligence library is complete without this book--it provides a rock-solid foundation for serious thinking about the intelligence in the 21st Century.

This is arguably the best book available on the essentials of intelligence production. It provides a basic, but accurate, description of intelligence production from collection through dissemination. Herman, not surprisingly, is especially competent in his explanation of intelligence collection and processing. Almost alone among writers on intelligence issues he notes the distinctions between single source, open source, and all source intelligence. He also provides an excellent description of the real intelligence cycle and the true relationship between customer requirements and collection planning and execution. This alone is worth the price of the book. Further the basics of intelligence that he presents in this book remain constant regardless of changing targets, priorities, and technical advances. For these reasons this book would make an excellent text book and ought to be the first book read by anyone seriously interested in the business of intelligence. For intelligence professionals, yes this is a very basic book, but in point of fact it clarifies and elaborates on many issues that are far too often taken for granted or discounted even though they are vital to intelligence processes.

Good as it is the book has one serious flaw. It is extremely weak on its discussion of intelligence analysis, a considerably more complex process than Herman seems to believe. In such an otherwise outstanding book this is odd, but understandable. One would suspect that Herman's career with GCHQ (UK SIGINT Service) was on the technical not analytic side of the work. Still this book provides an outstanding introduction to the arcane business of intelligence production and a good deal to think about for those already immersed in art and craft of intelligence. It is well worth its rather steep price.