Customer Reviews

Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligence, 3d Edition

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Silent Warfare is probably the best introductory text available covering the subject of intelligence. It reads like a text book, but that's because it basically IS a textbook. It's a serious academic text rather than a cloak and dagger story. This is one to read for understanding rather than necessarily for pleasure.

The book is fairly short but covers all the bases in terms of types of intelligence, types of intelligence organisation, the various debates surrounding the subject etc. It is, perhaps inevitably, somewhat America-centric. British intelligence and the KGB stick their heads into the picture from time to time, largely to provide illustrative comparisons rather than as studies in themselves.

When making a point, the authors generally try to provide historical examples and comparison, which is helpful, especially for the beginner. It also helps to enliven the text a bit.

The book is extremely well sourced and many of the end notes contain further explanations and are extremely interesting in themselves.

The only thing I feel the book lacks, and this is a fairly minor quibble, is a bibliography. This would have been very useful, especially in what is intended to be an introductory textbook. A bibliographical essay with suggestions for recommended further reading would have been even better.

Quibbles aside, this is a very good primer and to the best of my knowledge there are no books on the market that can compete with it in terms of providing a solid academic introduction to the subject. People with a serious interest in intelligence would be well advised to follow this book up by taking a look at the works of Michael Herman, which provide more in-depth coverage (especially "Intelligence Power in Peace and War") and a non-American (in this case British) angle - though they may be a little heavy for the absolute novice.

To sum up, if you have never read an academic book on intelligence before this is the one to go for.

Both the authors, Abram Shulsky and Gary Schmitt, are respected intelligence organization professionals who have taken up university-level teaching and writing. The book is focused on intelligence theory and organization - not on tradecraft. As such, the principal audience of this book would likely be future intelligence policymakers or foreign intelligence organizations trying to gain an insight into US intelligence systems.

The book does a solid job of identifying what intelligence is, how it is collected (humint vs. techint), how it is processed, how it is systematically protected, and what counter-intelligence includes. In addition, it addresses the gray areas of covert action (Is it intelligence or military activity?) and plausible denial. Although much of this discussion could apply to most nations' intelligence bureaus, the authors only explicity describe the American intelligence system.

Perhaps the most outstanding feature of the book is the wealth of sources it contains. Many of these are freely and immediately available on the web for all to read. All the footnotes are very thoroughly explained and usually refer to a specific source. The source list itself adds tremendous value to the book by guiding the reader to so many numerous definitive works on intelligence operations.

All in all, this is a solid introduction to intelligence and a great book for pursuing its addition sources.

This book was first published in 1991, but is as current today as it was 14 years ago. This is because the authors have succeeded in conceptualizing intelligence functions and activities in an abstract, but very accurate manner. Although the authors provide a conceptualized view of intelligence, they also provide concrete historical examples to illustrate specific concepts. As a result the reader is given an understanding of intelligence that transcends current trends and practices within the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). The book is an excellent introduction to the discipline of intelligence independent of specific agencies or practices of the IC. For this reason the book should be of interest not only to folks with no background in intelligence, but also to experienced intelligence professionals. One of the biggest obstacles to real intelligence reform in the IC is the inability of reformers to formulate broad concepts of the purposes and functions of intelligence. Reading this book could go a long way in helping them to develop such concepts. As the final chapter of the book suggests, it shows the way to a theory of intelligence.

"Silent Warfare" is the best introduction I have found to the arcane world of intelligence and is an excellent textbook for an introductory course. However, in a utopian world that course would be taught over a year and in its second semester students would read another excellent intelligence text, "Intelligence From Secrets to Policy" by Mark Lowenthal, which moves from the abstract to general, but specific practices and operations of the U.S. IC. The two books compliment each other very well.

I bought this text a few months ago, having read so many positive reviews on Amazon. While I am not regretting having bought it, I wasn't all too impressed by it. As others have noted, one thing the text does well, is it gives a solid background on what intelligence is and what it is not.

I understand that older books are out of date. I have read and appreciated many of them during my studies. However, for a book whose latest edition came out in 2002 to be this out of touch is laughable. The section about satellites was particularly amusing. It provided a lenghty definition of the term 'resolution', which was obviously aimed at a generation that has never used a home computer. Similarly, the book predicted how the cost of satellite imaging might go down and that it may become more common for smaller states to use it. In this day and age of Google Earth, I literally burst out laughing when reading this section.

There are other sections like this, but these two examples were particularly amusing and memorable.

To sum up, the less timely sections of this text on humint are well worth your time. Similarly, it does give sound definitions of basic terms and the scope of intelligence. Just be warned that you'll have to really bite your lip when reading some of the chapters on 'technology'.

As a whole, the American public is often unaware of the important role which intelligence collection and analysis plays within the development of national security policy; Silent Warfare provides an excellent introduction to this role. While not patronizing the reader, Shulsky and Schmitt have managed to break intelligence down into its basic components, explaining the theories and experiences through easy-to-understand historical contexts. They explain the differences between technical intelligence, human intelligence, and open source intelligence; they also explain the often overlooked role of covert operations within the confines of intelligence and national security policy.

While dealing with such a touchy subject, Shulsky and Schmitt are also careful not to gloss over the short comings of the intelligence community. Within Silent Warfare, they touch on issues such as the "not built here" syndrome, as well as the American tendency to project American values on other populations which may -- or may not -- see things the way we do. They take these criticisms one step further by also presenting possible solutions, as well as the solutions currently in testing phases.

Overall, I felt this book was a great introduction to intelligence, breaking the essential elements down into east-to-understand phrasing and terminology without talking down to the reader and without overindulging in the use of the infamous "alphabet soup."

I bought this book to gain a foothold of knowledge regarding the
world of intelligence. Needless to say this book did not dissapoint. Lots of cold, hard facts in easy to read format. If you want to start learning about how intelligence is gathered, this is a good place to start.

This book is an excellent introduction to Intelligence gathering. The three sources are human intelligence (HUMINT), technical means and Open Source (OS). I remembered reading where the Soviet Union shipped 5 tons (that's right - tons!) of openly available documentation, magazines, newspapers, trade magazines, journals, etc., to the KGB for analysis. The next question is what to do with all this information and form it into `Product'. Shulsky intended this book as an academic tome for an introduction into this arcane world. He does a good job, analyzing the process and using historical cases to enlighten the reader. Security Studies is a growing field due to increased unrest in the world, the rise of Radical Islam and the potential for conflict with globalization.

Michael Mandaville, Author - "Stealing Thunder" and the coming "Citizen Soldier Handbook: 101 Ways for Every American to Fight Terrorism"

After finishing this book I immediately lent it to a good friend of mine that was looking at getting into the intelligence community and he said the knowledge he gained from the book proved priceless when it came down to picking a career in an industry that can be very diverse and confusing. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in how the intelligence process comes together, and I would insist on someone reading it if they were thinking about getting into it!

I would say that this book would be a good first read for anyone interested in learning more about the intelligence community. It covers a wide variety of information without getting to in-depth into any one subject, so it feels like a pretty well-rounded experience. I also felt that the use of some historical examples really helped not only to make the book more interesting to read but to make some of the concepts easier to understand.

My biggest problem with this book is that at points it reads like a college textbook, which isn't always a particularly good thing. I also found some of the sections that talked about the relations between policy and intelligence to be pretty dull. Overall this book is a pretty informative and a mostly enjoyable read.

I found this book extremely flimsy in the treatment of intelligence community mechanics. It is a light introduction at best with many examples to demonstrate aspects at work that were all too obvious. The examples were nothing more than newspaper style rubbish that did little to add any value.

In fact, while the intent to demonstrate and discuss counter-intel ops was not the objective, the content in Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq, discussed far deeper details of actual silent warfare using real examples never before disclosed. Extreme Prejudice beats Silent Warfare in every particular although the goal of the Extreme Prejudice author was entirely different.

Avoid Silent Warfare. If you read newspapers augmented with investigative reports you are probably already familiar with everything Silent Warfare has to offer.