Customer Reviews

Keeping Us Safe: Secret Intelligence and Homeland Security

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was fortunate enough to study under Art Hulnick as an undergraduate. He is a fascinating man with an intelligence background that started in the Air Force intelligence, then moved to the CIA where he stayed for about 30 years. He told some great stories about how George Bush Sr (when he was Director of Central Intelligence) would visit his office and sit on the corner of his desk. He is now (I certainly think) one of the best professors that Boston University has and is still an active leader in the examination of the intelligence process.
If you have an interest in how the intelligence community works, what is going on with it now, or want to take your love of Spy movies to the academic level, this is a great read. It is not dry, but instead a great source of information without being sensationalist.
This is a well written book, and it is CURRENT, which is a priority for me. In ten years though the explanations it lays out and the issues it addresses will still be relevant.

This is a very disappointing book. Arthur Hulnick is certainly a very knowledgeable and perceptive observer of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also understands the collection and analytic processes that are the core of the IC. Yet this book still disappoints for three primary reasons.

First, time has passed this book by. After the book was written, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) got a new director in one Michael Chertoff and set up its own intelligence office under Charlie Allen with whom I am sure Hulnick is familiar. It also was written before the Hurricane Katrina debacle that revealed a highly dysfunctional DHS and its subordinate Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In the same manner the book was written before Ambassador John Negroponte was appointed as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and under whose stewardship the Office of DNI grew into a major bureaucracy (some 1,500 employees and rising) while avoiding any substantive reforms of the IC. One can only speculate what Hulnick would have concluded about DHS and DNI had this book been written in 2006 not 2004.

Second, Hulnick appears primarily interested in defending the performance of the IC against criticism that arose after the surprise of 9/11 and in the dubious intelligence that was used to fuel Operation Iraqi Freedom. While he is correct that much of these criticisms were unfair, it is also true that the IC as a whole and CIA in particular could have done a lot better than they did in both instances. Indeed some of Hulnick's comments appear very one sided. For example, he points out that in his experience the clandestine CIA officers he encountered were always knowledgeable, target smart, and culturally sensitive. Yet this is not a complete picture. Would he have us believe that there are no mediocre or incompetent officers? Experience would suggest that CIA, like the IC as a whole, has more than its share of mediocre or incompetent officers.

Third, Hulnick appears reluctant to actually investigate any real reforms of the IC and the way it does business. To his credit he does recognize David A. Steele as the leading advocate for more effective use of open sources by the IC. Yet he does not acknowledge that Steele also has advocated a profound transformation of the way the IC does business. Hulnick recognizes the need to transform the culture of CIA, but only in terms of improving the co-operation between it Directorate of Intelligence and it Directorate of Operations. This like the other reforms he advocates can only be classed as too little too late.

All in all his first book "Fixing the Intelligence Machine" (Amazon.com) is by far the better book.

How can the United States guard against terrorists? Arthur S. Hulnick's Keeping Us Safe: Secret Intelligence And Homeland Security covers the foundations of secret intelligence efforts and homeland security issues alike, explaining the need to revamp US intelligence operations to one more flexible in handling modern terrorist activities. The U.S. government's progress in establishing homeland security processes has been considerable, but more work is needed - and more adjustment of systems: Hulnick shows just where work should be revised to create a valuable program with new strategies and tactics.

The photo of the little girl at the airport pulling her own suitcase over the bars to enter the Threat Level Orange alert station was so cute, I thought this book would be on a level for an ordinary U. S. citizen to know what is going on. However, it is written by a former intelligence officer with inside knowledge of what has been happening and how it could be improved to insure our saftety both here in America and abroad.

He is a retired CIA officer who now teaches in Boston but he brings his insider's viewpoint to the updated research of the U. S. intelligence community as a reformer about intelligence (spy) reform. He wants to make us feel safe without denying our documented freedoms according to the Constitution of the United States in his liberty and security section. He calls this the ever-changing world of intelligence and seeks ways to break down the barriers between intelligence agencies and law enforcement. He is of the mind to restructure the intelligence game.

We sometimes need to be protected from the homeland security which is supposed to protect us. A guard at the metal detection center at the front door of the govt. building insisted on seeing my I.D.!!!! When I willingly showed him my Tennessee drivers licence with my photo, he confiscated it and would not return it (even though I am a native of this town, small in stature, white, female, of no danger to anyone); he held onto it until it was confirmed by the local police (perhaps he called the FBI, who knows?) that I have NOTHING, no record of criminal activity of any kind. A Clean Record, but he refused to believe it! I was treated as a criminal and denied my rights to my property -- the only I.D. I had which he kept hostage as I stood there crying.

Mr. Hulnick calls the Iraqis "a clever unknown enemy" and non-state actors (terrorists, spies, and criminals) emphasizing that "we need to understand the enemy, who he is and all about espionage." He gives a long list of acronyms we use in the States; some of the most unusual are:

CREEP -- Committee to Reelect the President (sounds about right!)
ELF -- Earth Liberation Front (what's that got to do with U.S.?)
ICE -- Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (they need some heat to get them going, I think -- a pun)
CATIC -- Chinces National Aerotechnology Import and Export Corp.
JETRO -- Japanese External Trade Organization
SARS -- Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (we'll all have it if a real alert sounds)
WAV -- Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (like in the movie STEALTH)
WMD -- Seapons of Mass Destruction
HUMINT -- Human Intelligence

Previously, he wrote a book in 1999, FIXING THE SPY MACHINE. He has an index and pages of notes on each chapter. He thought long and hard about this problem and presents here his solution to what we are doing wrong.