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

Robert David Steele (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0971566119 | ISBN-13: 978-0971566118 | Publication Date: April 8, 2002

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

(Steele) has written a book that can bring us together in facing our greatest enemies: ignorance, poverty, and mistrust. -- Hamit Gulemre Aybars, Rear Admiral, Turkish Navy (Retired)

As always, (Steele) is at once a teacher, historian, critic, and guide to the future. -- Dr. Loch Johnson, Regent Professor, University of Georgia

Constantly committed to truth and honesty...(Steele) demonstrates his ability to grasp the real issues. -- Pierre Lacoste, Admiral, French Navy (Retired), former Director of Foreign Intelligence (DGSE), France

No one is better at looking at intelligence issues "out of the box" than Robert Steele. -- Bill Gertz, author of The China Threat: How the People's Republic Targets America

Robert Steele is the Thomas Edison of the Information Age!...should be required reading for politicians, students, and concerned citizens. -- A Reader from APO AE

Steele consistently has been ahead of the pack in his appreciation of everything...his work thrills with its insights. -- Ralph Peters, Author of Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph

Steele consistently has been well ahead of the pack...his work thrills with its insights and ideas. -- Ralph Peters, Author of Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph?

[Steele's book] is the perfect weapon in our war against terror. --Robert Young Pelton, Author of The World's Most Dangerous Places

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 438 pages
• Publisher: Oss Pr (April 8, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971566119
• ISBN-13: 978-0971566118
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,583,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Peoples' Intelligence Agency, August 9, 2006

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Retired Reader (New Mexico) - See all my reviews

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

This was in many ways a difficult book to read and is even more difficult to review. It contains a number of original ideas on intelligence reform, national security, and the general state of the world. Yet they are presented in a rather choppy style that relies rather heavily on numerous diagrams, charts, and tables as well as lists of thoughts. Still this book is worth reading because Robert D. Steele takes on the business of intelligence reform in a comprehensive and refreshingly different approach.

The guiding, but unstated premise of this book appears to be that in the chaotic world of the 21st Century, intelligence is too important to be left only to the intelligence bureaucracy of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). According to Steele, it is time that the business of producing national intelligence was shared with the academic and business communities, with state and local authorities, and even with private citizens. Steele also makes the perfectly valid point that open sources can supply up to 80 per cent of the unprocessed data required to produce intelligence. Incidentally, Steele recognizes the quagmire the Internet poses to researchers and wisely offers suggestions for avoiding the large amount of misinformation that can be found on the net. The book offers some structural reforms to the IC, but its most valuable contributions are its proposals for cultural changes in the way that intelligence is produced and used.

Beyond its choppy style, however, the book is flawed. Steele seems curiously ignorant of the actual processes of intelligence production where by unprocessed information (data) acquired by source(s) is transformed into useful knowledge (intelligence) organized by subject(s). This transformation is accomplished by various combinations of processing, research, and analysis. His suggestion to concentrate processing of data from all sources into one agency is incredibly ill informed. In the same manner, he treats Geographic Information Systems (GIS) rather lightly, although they have been proven to be invaluable not only for visualization, but also for organizing and interpreting collected data and would be an ideal medium for integrating and presenting all source data. Finally he clearly does not know as much about the arcane world of technical intelligence as he thinks he does which leads him to some erroneous conclusions.

46 of 57 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb, original, useful thinking!, April 27, 2002

By 

Ralph H. Peters (Washington, D.C. area) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption (Hardcover)

I have watched the author's work over the past decade and consistently have been impressed by the originality of his vision and his determination to speak the truth, no matter the cost. As a long-time intelligence professional, I recognize the complexity of the system and the difficulty of making even incremental improvements, yet, by his energy and talent Robert David Steele is one of the few who have made an unmistakable difference. The dismaying events of September 11, 2001, confirmed much of what Steele had written and said, and undercut the arguments of his remaining critics (bureaucrats will always defend their turf). Now, in this latest book, Steele expands upon his unique, incisive and practical vision of what needs to be done to give the American people the quality of strategic intelligence they deserve. No individual will ever get it all right and there are certainly some things in this book with which I disagree--but that's healthy. An honest debate is far more valuable than the arrogance of those who classify our failures and failings. And even disagreeing with Steele is as stimulating as having an open-ended charge account in a high-class bordello on a Saturday night in the middle of a Civil War. Fascinating man, fascinating book. Very highly recommended. And the forward by Senator Pat Roberts, who has himself been fighting the good fight for years, puts the problem of intelligence precisely into context. In fairness, I must note that I supplied a supporting quote to the author for this book--but I believe so completely in the importance of his work that I will always go the extra step to bring additional attention to his theses and arguments. Well done!

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review of The New Craft of Inteligence, August 5, 2004

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E. H Knights "Edward H. Knight" (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption (Hardcover)

My deepest hope for the United States, and indeed, Earth is that decision makers would read this book, stew over it, let it keep them up at nights, and to finally get down to business. This book serves as a tocsin for the nation to wake up to the challenges we are presently facing and those that are just around the bend.
As a nurse with an interest in public health issues, this book states a great case for the claim that "The idea that the health of every nation depends on the health of all others is not an empty piety but an epidemiological fact." That's no joke brothers and sisters; 59 countries with modern plagues can be ignored only to our peril.