Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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!

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.

This is an inadvertent error by Amazon. The book has never been out of print. The book is listed correctly at the top of the list of books for Robert David Steele, and a currently available copy is at the link below:

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

THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE by Robert Steele is a paragon of how we as citizens in the U.S. should protect ourselves from the potential for incidents like Sept 11, 2001. Mr. Steele is highly qualified and prophetic, as proven, in his first book ON INTELLIGENCE written in 2000. This book of reference is a unique guide and should be read by every head of household who cares about his family and his country. I hope that everyone who dictates intelligence policy is paying close attention to this book and its myriad contents.

Steele argues that with the Cold War over, asymmetric threats should be the top priority for our military, for our intelligence agencies, and for any citizen concerned with security.

Fair enough. How would you reconstitute our security structure? He gets down to specifics in chapter 15, where he gives 26 rules for "the new craft of intelligence." These include an emphasis on translation of foreign sources, an emphasis on cultural intelligence (knowing your enemy), and gearing intelligence toward needs and customers vs. just following old habits and using the most ready capabilities.

This book rewards the reader with many interesting ideas to consider. But Steele badly needs a filter--I feel that there are way too many bad ideas in this book relative to the few nuggets. For example, his view of the causes of terrorism owes much to Noam Chomsky--a poor source for cultural intelligence. Furthermore, some (most?) of his proposals, such as instituting a draconian military draft, are not well thought out.

I think that there is reason to be concerned that we have not adjusted out thinking on military and intelligence matters to line up with current threats. But if this book is the best alternative, then we should be even more concerned.

Anybody that Generalizes Conspiracies or anything else for that matter is a raving idiot. And BTW, following the party line isnt going to save your retirement or investments.

Robert Steele, the maven of open source intel, explains why every citizen needs to start their own collection and analysis program. The first reason is so that she can understand the risk to herself of international crime and terrorism. The second reason is to protect her own liberty from domestic threats,private and public.
Buy this book. Think about what Steele has to say. The truth will set you free.

I find it difficult to believe that someone who endorses 9-11 conspiracy theories (see the authors review of "9-11 Mysteries" on December 7th) could be viewed as an authority on intelligence issues. If he ever had any credibility in the field, he's long since gone over the deep end.

Ironically, its people like him and his ilk, who believe a neconservative/Israeli conspiracy was behind the destruction of the twin towers, that best undermine the central premise of his book: that ordinary citizens need to take a greater role in intelligence. If 9-11 conspiracy theories are the sort of mind-numbingly stupid, paranoid output that can be expected from the sort of amatuer intelligence agents Steele wishes for, I'd prefer to leave it to professionals.