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Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, from Baghdad to the Pentagon

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This is a personal memoir of a former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) intelligence analyst of his experiences at DIA. As such it provides a snapshot of the professional life of a working analyst both here and in Iraq. Based on his experiences, Rossmiller has concluded that DIA is a dysfunctional organization suffering from incompetent management, inconsistent leadership, and a lack of a coherent mission plan, hence the title of his book. Rossmiller joined DIA straight from college, served only two years, and was familiar only with a small part of the Iraq effort mounted by DIA in support of Operation Iraqi freedom and its aftermath. So how accurate is his account and his conclusions?

Well to anyone familiar with DIA, his conclusions appear remarkably on the mark. Since its creation by Robert McNamara, DIA has been an agency in search of a mission. Although designed to be the military equivalent of CIA, DIA has never been able to acquire the cache' of CIA although it has also managed to miss most of the notoriety as well. The personal of DIA are an uneasy mix of military and civilian intelligence professionals under the often erratic management of military line officers and a few civilians of often dubious qualifications. DIA management is at best a mixture of competent and incompetent officers and civilians at all levels. This in large part is due to the Byzantine selection and promotion processes common to the IC as a whole, but exacerbated at DIA by the need to have a large number of military officers at field grade or higher in most senior positions whether or not they are qualified. Further, like the rest of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), DIA makes the fallacious assumption that all analysts of a given grade are identical so fails to recognize good analysts from bad. And it is certainly true that analytic judgments are often warped by the pernicious practice of letting rank trump facts or by elephantine attempts to support often badly conceived policies.

Rossmiller's account of his assignment to a DIA counter-insurgency operation in Iraq is a classic example of inept managers who relied on the DIA team actually deployed to sort out a mess caused by their incompetence. But his account of his experiences in the `Direct Action Cell' under a Captain White (USAF) also explains why DIA is able to function at all. Rossmiller is an acute observer and a facile writer who has written a well crafted book.

In case anybody cares, this reviewer worked with DIA on and off over a career of 42 years in the IC and actually worked at DIA for two years as an integrated analyst a quarter century ago. From Rossmiller's account it appears DIA today is unchanged from those far off times.

DNI Mike McConnell is a good man trapped in a very bad pyramidal system that is inherently duplicitous. He is presiding over what retiring Defense Senior Intelligence Leader Rick MacKenzie calls, in this book, "the underlying insanity of our intelligence agencies."

As the author of the original strike, On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World, honored with a foreword by Senator David Boren, former chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and several other books moving the ball forward in the public (since our government is broken, not just the intelligence community) I must confess that the author of this book pursues a path that is inherently attractive to me. I have a bias for the truth, and a bias against the $60 billion a year in insane waste that Mike McConnell is presiding over.

Out of the ten books that arrived today, this is the one I could not put down. Below are my summative highlights, and then other books that support this author.

For a first time author and a young man at that, my first flyleaf note reads, underlined with exclamation marks: ABLY WRITTEN! By a MATURE Person!

There is no index nor bibliography in this book. I absorbed it at face value, as a first-person narrative of a patriot who joined the intelligence community for the right reasons, and left the sinking ship after honorably pointing out the flaws to his bosses, who remain typical not invested here lifers (this is generally the case across the IC).

+ Analysts segregated, no inter-regional, issue, or agency integration and interaction.

+ High turnover (for the last decade more analysts quit FBI every month than can be recruited--the best and the brightest do NOT like idiot bosses). This results in an inexperienced middle management as the dead-beats move up.

+ Products rarely reached the intended audience, and products finally reaching Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff never ever resembled what actually started out as an honest pessimistic assessment.

+ Months of indiscriminate editiing resulted in drastic differences. I can attest from experience and the literature that CIA is just as ineffectual).

+ Many patriotic intelligence analysts as well as career military felt that the Administration and the flag officers took their eye off the ball, invading Iraq and creating infuriated nationalists, instead of focusing on a handful of terrorists.

+ Supervisors lied regularly to everyone.

+ Iraq was dust, mosquitos, heat, and constant organizational chaos and reorganization with virtually no real production that was actionable. The one exception was the "track and whack" group in which the author was fortunate to serve.

+ DIA failed to coordinate with the in-country Combined Intelligence Operations Center (CIOC) before it sent its single most significant contingent to Iraq. For that one right there I would hope Director of DIA figured out who embarrassed his agency and counseled the individual.

* Institutional knowledge (retained knowledge that outlives turnover) is virtually non-existent.

+ The tactical units in the field could not handle Top Secret or Top Secret communications and computing technology. I have this image in my head of an elephant trying to blow his nose down a straw to a gnat.

+ "Disaster continued to be perpetuated by failed leadership and the absence of a coherent intelligence or military strategy."

+ Inter-agency choas in Iraq.

+ DIA complained about its analysts in Iraq working too hard because their overtime came out of its budget. This reminds of the message from CIA complaining about my asking to be reimbursed for hotel rooms when I had to go underground in El Salvador after an explicit by-name assassination threat from the Colonels running the country (they confused my effort5s to penetrate the extreme left with sympathy for the extreme left--I did not have it then, I certainly do now). The message said that since I was receiving a housing allowance, I could not have the hotel rooms approved. I had a very very good Chief of Station, a real talent, and as I like to recall the story, he sent back a one-liner: "What part of assassination do you not understand?" The DC-based officers tend to be pasty-faced overwight prima donnas with no real commitment to those in the field. This is true across all agencies, and especially FBI and DEA.

+ The author has the grace to include a snapshot of a more typical person in Iraq, a military reservist whose life has been essentially ruined by the cavalier manner in which Cheney and Rumsfeld decided to lie to the public, invade Iraq, let the contractors steal billions without doing the reconstruction, and now he comes back to a recession with no job.

+ The author says that many in Iraq, realizing they could neither complain nor repair their lot, "checked out mentally." This breaks my heart.

+ A very important part of his book discusses how units sent to capture targets would often come back with 50 people they snapped up in the general area, each of them presumed guilty, each sent to "Abu G" for three months. The author is morally shaken by this, as I have been shaken by Mike Hayden's two impeachable offenses (warrantless wiretapping and rendition plus torture).

+ The author posits that Iraq is not an insurgency, but rather a unique mix of a failed state (remember, Rumsfeld would not allow the troops necessary to keep good order while reconstruction proceeded apace), criminal opportunism, especially kidnapping for ransom, a few fanatics, and a majority of outraged anti-occupation nationalists in three flavors (Sunni, Shi'ite, Kurd).

+ While in Iraq, occasionally commuting by helicopter to the Green Zone, an oasis in the desert, the author comments that US leaders, both in DC and in Iraq itself, were totally oblivious to the "turmoil and dissatisfaction in daily Iraqi life." I am reminded of the exposes of how Blackwater and others have indiscriminately killed civilians, rammed cars driven by old men off the road, and so on.

+ DIA's Office of Iraq Analysis "had a veneer of control, under which minor anarchy raged."

+ The DIA Way: Kiss Up, Kick Down (as the author experienced it--those I know in the JMITC, PGIP, and now the NDIC are a breed apart in a most positive way).

+ Idiocy of DoD priorities--too many flat screen TV's, not enough desktop computer terminals and screens.

+ In Iraq, US officers and media both seduced by English-speaking Iraqis, and totally oblivious to the deeper nuances available in indigenous language about domestic views, concerns, and links.

+ In the Pentagon, personally witnessed the politicization of analysis that continues to this day. Senior officers including the Navy J-2 Admiral now heading to CENTCOM J-2 as I understand it, always deleting pessimism and squelching reports on how badly reconstruction was going.

+ The real star in this book--but I totally respect this author and his good judgment in leaving the ship of fools--is DISL Rick MacKenzie. SecDef Gates and DNI McConnell would do well to read pages 176-177 of this book. For the rest of you, here are the highlights from MacKenzie's parting note to all that began with the underlying insanity quote above:

- Unified honest warning works, edited disparate warning is idiocy

- Human behavior is predictable, yet we like to count things and ignore the human factors

- We have no clue how alien we are to other cultures

- The indicators are never wrong. If we are true to the evidence (we are not) we will be right more often than not.

- Analysis is not the same as synthesis, diagnosis, or prognosis (nor would I add, is propaganda, deception, active lies to the public, or fabrication)

- Intelligence analysis is a profession in its own right. I am reminded of Jack Davis (search for <analytic tradecraft>.

The author concludes his book by dismissing most of what the US Intelligence Community accesses, and states that he has found useful truths in non-traditional online media, which he calls a "true meritocracy."

I put this book down enormously impressed with this author's intelligence, balance, gifted writing, relevant observation, and total honesty. This is precisely the kind of patriotic committed person we are recruiting, and sadly, he is one of the few with the courage to leave. Those he left behind, absent a remarkable turning of the secret world right-side up and right-side in (search for <Forbes Reinventing Intelligence>) will, if they do not leave now, become the very bitter, narrow, inept, egotistical fools they now report to.

WOW. See also (I am limited to ten links, see my own books and the lists of hundreds of intelligence books I have reviewed, most of which support both my original 1988-2000 reclama, and this author's current reclama. NOTHING HAS CHANGED--WE'VE JUST POURED GASOLINE ON THE FIRE.

These books are intelligence books. I have an entire other list on political and falg officer malfeasance, high crimes, and misdemeanors. the first two books on the list below was not widely disseminated, but precisely matche the author's book, only for the CIA.

Lost Promise
Informing Statecraft
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars
War Without Windows: A True Accout of a a Young Army Officer Trapped in an Intelligence Cover-Up in Vietnam.
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
Denial and Deception: An Insider's View of the CIA
Creating the Secret State: The Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943-1947
Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency

The last book, after summarizing all that NSA is trying to do, spending tens of billions of dollars very foolishly, ends by hoping the might one day achieve the ultimate computing device, weighing virtually nothing, powered by a tiny battery, able to make petaflops of calculations per nanosecond: "the human brain."

Our government, and our secret intelligence community, are so totally screwewd up as to defy belief. I certainly would like to have a chance to restore the honor and intelligence of the secret world, but the chances of either (me or them) happening is right up there with the Second Coming. Our Nation will go down in flames because our government is clinically insane. See Running on Empty for why 2008 needs to break the backs of the two branches of legalized organized crime in this country, namely the Republican and Democratic parties. INDEPENDENCE!

See the images I have loaded above, the tell the story in pictures.

A.J. Rossmiller's book recounts his brief experience working as an Intelligence Analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency. It is split into two major "acts," specifically his brief Iraq deployment and his brief, subsequent assignment to the Pentagon. In short, Rossmiller claims the DIA's management and modus operandi are fatally flawed when it comes to providing our military leadership accurate, timely, and unbiased intelligence analysis in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

As an avid reader of books dealing with the U.S. Intelligence Community and with Iraq, I picked up Rossmiller's book with high hopes - hopes that were soon dashed by the time I was about a quarter way through his story. Where to begin?

First, Rossmiller's tenure with DIA was so brief (less than two years), it makes one wonder why he sees himself fit to pass judgment on his previous employer. As I read Rossmiller's story, I was reminded of equally ridiculous books by other novices of the intelligence profession, such as Lindsay Moran's Blowing My Cover and T.J. Waters' Class 11. While Rossmiller gave his DIA career a fair chance before he decided it wasn't for him, it still wasn't long enough to justify his public critique of the entire agency, its leadership, and its operations. Since Rossmiller was a tiny cog in a large machine for a brief iteration, I cannot fathom why we, as readers, should want to hear his opinions and observations about an organization which he clearly holds in contempt and which he only briefly experienced before resigning.

Next, Rossmiller is also uniquely unqualified to offer commentary on the conduct of the Iraq war, but that does not stop him from doing so - constantly - in spite of his lack of military training and experience. Rossmiller, who hails from a purely academic background, spent a comparatively brief 180 days in Iraq (I personally have 18 months cumulative experience in Iraq, but I don't consider that a substantial amount of time considering we've been there for over five years). He also spent his deployment living and working at Camp Slayer, which is among the most sheltered of operating bases in which to be stationed and is by no means representative of the standard of living or degree of safety experienced by most of our forces in Iraq. Rossmiller writes that during a portion of his deployment, while assigned to a Direct Action Cell, his analysis and targeting packages led to the capture of insurgents by an action arm. I sincerely thank Rossmiller for his contributions here and it demonstrates something Rossmiller himself seems hesitant to admit. More specifically, in spite of the extensive chaos that is historically inherent to ALL military operations (and not just inherent to U.S. military operations in Iraq), little "diamonds" of success can always eventually be squeezed from the coal. Although this never happens as often as we would all like, and although we see tangible results only after what feels like an inordinate amount of time, effort, frustration, and energy have been expended at the micro level, it's how wars are eventually won at the macro level.

Rossmiller got a small taste of this, but didn't stick around in Iraq or in the Department of Defense long enough to realize that the system, for all its waste, insanity, and imperfections, does eventually produce results at a strategic level. Rossmiller basically failed to realize though his short tenure that although the U.S. government (including the U.S. military and the U.S. intelligence community) is a bloated, inefficient, and, yes, broken mess, it can strike with the power of a broadsword once the effort is made to swing it hard enough in the right direction. Rossmiller, a low-level employee from an ivory tower background in the midst of all this, only saw long hours, bad bosses, incessant paperwork, stifling bureaucracy, and imagined political conspiracies before he walked away and declared the whole system bankrupt. In short, although there is plenty wrong with the intelligence community with plenty of room for improvement, I would still argue Rossmiller never really saw the forest for the trees.

Next, the most repetitive theme in Rossmiller's book is the persistent diatribe that many of the frustrations he experienced both in Iraq and in the Pentagon were the direct fault of George Bush. Not enough computers in his shop? Blame Bush. Not happy with the changes his superiors made to his reports? Blame Bush. His supervisor was a moron? Blame Bush. I lost track of the number of times he hurls direct blame at the Chief Executive for his job frustrations, as if Rossmiller and his analytical office should warrant even an iota of direct attention from the White House. On a related note, since Rossmiller is so fond of accusing his entire chain of command of being politically biased in favor of the Bush Administration, he seems to have neglected to conceal his own strong biases against the same throughout the course of writing his book. This lends his whole story an air of imbalance and leaves the reader feeling that Rossmiller, instead of offering an exacting and neutral analytical assessment of what ills the DIA, is merely perched on a soapbox and grinding an axe for 236 pages.

Finally, although Rossmiller hands out copious amounts of blame, he at no point accepts fault for anything himself. Rossmiller also inserted copies of his DIA performance evaluations in the book's appendix, I guess to demonstrate he was a competent employee. Again, being a new to the U.S. military, Rossmiller is apparently unaware that the only thing required to receive a glowing performance evaluation is a pulse.

In closing, avoid this book at all costs. If you want to read a much better, well-balanced critique of the U.S. intelligence community, please read Ishmael Jones' The Human Factor.

This is a book you will not want to put down, and once you're done you won't be able to look at our "intelligence" community in the same way. Independent of your political views, you will find this book to be a very revealing look inside the most controversial war of this generation. You will get both a "ground level" view of the war in Iraq and an insightful look into the intelligence process from the pentagon itself.

Bottom line: if you have even a passing interest in the subject, you owe it to yourself to pick up this book - you will not regret it.

Mr. Rossmiller came to DIA as a junior analyst fresh out of college with a bachelor's degree in political science. He spend two years at DIA (including six months in Iraq). His criticisms of DIA and the intelligence community can be grouped into three categories: (1) general grousing about government bureaucracy and inefficiency, (2) politicization of intelligence analysis to fit policymakers' biases and (3) condemnation of various GWB political appointees.

The first is an age-old problem that has always been characteristic of bureaucracies. The second, alas, is also not new at all - maybe Rossmiller needs to read a bit more twentieth century history. The third, while deserved, is also well-traveled territory. In sum, while his complaints may be valid, there is little new here.

The tone of this book is one of youthful inpatience and impulsiveness. There is an air of "if only those middle-aged bureaucrats and politicians would get out of our way" that pervades it. Unfortunately, life (and politics) are not that simple and the author doesn't have enough professional or life experience to really be credible. His conclusions and insight contribute nothing significant to this ongoing discussion.

Rossmiller, as M. Rubin reminded us at the Fall 2009 edition of the MEQ, dedicates the first half of Still Broken to his Iraq experience. Analysts worked 14-hour days, processing data and maintaining a database of questionable accuracy. Rossmiller describes catching obvious errors--Sunni insurgents with names like Ali more often used by Shi'a, for example--but having his concerns brushed off because of a lack of seniority. He adds color to the broader narrative of Iraq with descriptions of insurgent in-processing and debriefings and arbitrary and ineffective interrogation and detention. A tendency to recount cartoonish dialogue among U.S. soldiers distracts and raises questions about where and how Rossmiller took notes in the course of processing insurgents and about whether the many conversations Rossmiller recounts are simply fiction with unnamed soldier archetypes from his own imagination.

The second half of Still Broken changes settings to the Pentagon, but the narrative is much the same. Rossmiller conveys the suffocating weight of bureaucracy and dysfunction. He exudes bitterness that no one would heed his warnings that Islamists would win the January 2005 elections although he exaggerates when implying this was either only his or even a minority opinion. He amplifies complaints of his boss's disagreement with his analysis into a broader pattern of political abuse but provides no evidence other than his office director--a career analyst--refusing to sign-off, saying his analysis was too pessimistic.

Indeed, at times it is Rossmiller who appears doctrinaire, refusing out-of-hand to consider that Sunnis and Shi'a can cooperate even though Iranian intelligence has often reached out to secularists, Baathists, and Sunnis. Sunni secularist Yasser Arafat was, for example, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's first foreign guest after the Islamic Revolution; Baathist Syria is perhaps Tehran's closest ally; and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps founded Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Sunni, Islamist group.

While well-written and a quick read, Still Broken offers only limited insight into the lackluster analysis that underlies the intelligence community. Readers who wish more breadth and insight should instead turn to Ishmael Jones's The Human Factor,[1]which tackles much the same problem but with a depth that comes from years rather than months inside the intelligence community.

[1] New York: Encounter Books, 2008.

An inside look on how management and bureaucracy in an intelligence agency can greatly hamper the delivery of accurate intelligence to the administration. AJ shows how in his world at the Pentagon, bad news travels slowly (if at all), good news travels fast, and sometimes good news is, well, made up. It is evident after reading AJ's book that there are more people to blame than the administration--the defense complex is full of career-path-minded individuals who are so risk averse, the management stratigraphy collectively edits intelligence reports until they are "on message", which is a euphemism for optimistic. This behavior is rewarded, and often managers who play this game rise through the ranks, despite their reports lacking accuracy and candor. Hopefully AJ's book awakens US leaders to restructure the management machinery at the DIA and pentagon so they can craft sounder and more mindful policies, and so that the American warfighters overseas are better supported.

I will not try to summarize this book as that has clearly already been done. I will say that this book was the perfect balance for a book about Iraq. Rossmiller does a great job of illustrating how depressing and miserable the situation is in Iraq in all regards. At just that moment when you want to put it down and have a drink, he brings you back with a funny illustration of life that, in some way, everyone can relate to.

This book truly put me through all ranges of emotion. It also showed the underbelly of intelligence. The very intelligence that has blown this war. I came away from reading this book with a much better understanding of the intelligence process, bureaucracy, Iraq, the Iraq war, and Mr. Rossmiller as a person.

My only complaint is that Mr. Rossmiller is not out on a new adventure creating fodder for his next book.

This is an incredibly important account of one DIA analyst's attempt to do good work in the midst of a Bush-politicized environment. More than just required reading for anyone in or contemplating being in this line of work, it also stands as a more broadly applicable case study of navigating one's personal principles and sense of duty to one's country when these clash with dubious policies and directives from authorities. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to engage with such ethical and moral gray areas in doing one's job (whatever it is). This book is an accessible and well-written means of reflecting on one's own line in the sand. It is also another piece of the disaster that was the Bush administration's blatant disregard for experts and academics of all types, whether working directly for them in the Pentagon or elsewhere. A great book that I strongly recommend!

This is an insider's view about the Department of Defense and its propensity to make intelligence fit situations. Just the opposite of the ideal design of intelligence where policy is shaped from gathered information. The writing slows down slightly in the last quarter of the book but...the author writes from real experience and that's worth the read alone. The author was a member of DIA and assigned to Iraq for a 6 month tour and his description of the chaos he encountered is disconcerting at best and his story needed to be told. His story is especially noteworthy in light of the suspicions out there about bogus intelligence and the use of it to get the country behind an invasion of Iraq.