Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy

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Summary: Primer for Presidents, Congress, Media, and Public
Review:

Mark Lowenthal, who today is the Associate Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production (ADCI/A&P), was briefly (for a year) the President of OSS USA (I created OSS Inc., the global version). So much for disclosure and "conflicts of interest". The previous review, after a year of being irritatingly present, needs to be corrected. Dr. Lowenthal was for many years the Senior Executive Service reviewer of intelligence affairs for the Congressional Research Service, then he went on to be Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence & Research (Analysis), and then he became the Staff Director for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he supervised one of the two really serious really excellent studies on all that is wrong with intelligence and what needs to be fixed. OSS was lucky to have him contribute to its development for a year before he moved on to another corporation and then to the #5 position in the US Intelligence Community. He needs no help from me in either articulating his ideas or doing good work.

What the previous reviewer fails to understand is that Dr. Lowenthal's book represents the *only* available "primer" on intelligence that can be understood by Presidents, Congressmen, the media, and the public. While my own book (The New Craft of Intelligence) strives to discuss the over-all threats around the world in terms meaningful to the local neighborhoods of America, Dr. Lowenthal's book focuses on the U.S. Intelligence Community itself--the good, the bad, and the ugly. He is strongest on analysis and the politics of intelligence, somewhat weaker on collection and counterintelligence covert action. There is no other book that meets the need for this particular primer, and so I recommend it with enthusiasm. It is on the OSS.NET list of the top 15 books on intelligence reform every written.

Rating:
Summary: A good basic text on the subject
Review: I had to buy and read this book for class, i was not that impressed. Some parts of the book were full of interesting stories that would help you understand intelligence concepts and definitions, other sections were boring and seemed unimportant.

Don't buy this if you dont have to.

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Summary: A Highly Recommended Introductory Text
Review: I highly recommend this book for those interested in gaining an understanding of the world of intelligence, counterintelligence and covert action. The text is used extensively for my course on American intelligence at a local college (I formerly used Shulsky's "Silent Warfare" which is another good book on the topic). Mr. Lowenthal has a great deal of experience in intelligence from a wide variety of perspectives. He has worked as an intelligence staffer on the Hill, and a contractor providing open source intelligence support to the Intelligence Community. He is currently the Assistant Director for Analysis and Production at CIA. While the book has more of an emphasis on policmakers and Congress, it still provides by far the most detailed and easy to understand explanation of the world of intelligence.

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Summary: Book Review
Review: Mark does it again. He hit a home run with this updated version of his 1992 work. Once again Mark puts a very difficult and most classified subject and turns it into a straight forward, easy to read and to understand volume. This will be the new text book for the graduate and undergraduate students at the Joint Military Intelligence College in the subject of Intelligence Community and will aid in the understanding of the Intelligence arm of the National Security Structure and Process. Well done, Mark!

Rating:
Summary: A good basic text on the subject
Review: Mark Lowenthal knows the intelligence community and the process of producing intelligence. His works are recommended reading and occupy shelf space throughout the government.

My only caution is to take the review written by Mr. Steele with a grain of salt. Mr. Steele is the CEO of Open Source Solutions, the same company that Lowenthal is the COO for. Can you say conflict of interest?

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Summary: A readable, well balanced treatise on the subject
Review: Mark's latest book is a well-written, accurate depiction of the US intelligence business and various areas of intelligence tradecraft. His section on the US intelligence community will become outdated in time, but in it he develops an interesting functional view of the community. The book is very readable for newcomers while still being of interest to veterans of the business. It is intended to have broad coverage rather than depth. It would be admirably suited as a textbook for a short course on intelligence.

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Summary: A new standard elementary text
Review: This is an excellent elementary text for the average college student. Over-all it is strong on issues of analysis, policy, and oversight, and weak on collection, covert action, and counterintelligence. The chapter on collection has a useful figure comparing the advantages and disadvantages of the five collection disciplines, and but does not get into the detail that this aspect of the intelligence community-80% of the annual expense-merits.

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Summary: The book used by the Research Intelligence Analyst Program
Review: This is the book we use at Mercyhurst College to train both undergraduates and graduates in preperation for future work as an intelligence analysts. Highly recommended. The only college granting a degree in intelligence thinks you should read it. So do I.

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Summary: Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy
Review: This is the one book you should read if you want to understand how the complex process of producing intelligence for the U.S. Government really works. The work is clearly intended to be used as a textbook for college level courses on intelligence, but I strongly reccommend it to anyone interested in the subject. You get a lot for your money including a very good reading list at the end of each chapter which is very helpful if a particular chapter topic interests you. Also, rather surprisingly, the author, Mark M Lowenthal, is quite a good writer and stylist so that the book is not only informative, it is a good read.

I do have one caveat about this book. Lowenthal has spent his career fairly far up the intelligence food chain which has good and bad effects on his book. The good effect is that he understands and explains with wonderful clarity the complete intelligence process from requirements to finished intelligence for policy decisions. The bad effect is that he is not that well informed on the specifics of collection, processing and exploitation which are at the heart of the process. Indeed he is guilty of some mistatements on this aspect of the process. On the other hand he is fair and accurate in his overall treatment of collection and processing, which for this book, is probably more important.

In sum, this is an excellent book which which I think even old hands in the intelligence world would benefit from reading.

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Summary: A significant contribution to intelligence literature
Review: This valuable and recent contribution to the intelligence bookshelf promises to become a classic text for any practitioner and student of intelligence. Understanding how the intelligence process can work efficiently, how consumers of intelligence can best utilize the process, and how essential it is for producers of intelligence to receive feedback by consumers (a critical and often lacking element), are among some of the major themes discussed. Perhaps one of the most valuable sections of the book is the chapter on the analysis process itself, considered to be the most difficult process in the intelligence cycle. The author clearly provides the reader with exceptional comments regarding analyst training, politicized intelligence, and mirror imaging, and offers many unique insights into the process itself. Intelligence: From Secrets To Policy, contains well developed chapters on Counterintelligence, Covert Action, and Ethical and Moral Issues. Mr. Lowenthall also provides the reader with unique appendices that include excerpts from the National Security Act, Executive Order 12333, and a listing of intelligence related web sites. Comprehensive and yet easy to understand, this publication is highly recommended for those of us wishing to examine, or reexamine, the crucial roles of consumer, producer, and analyst, and the ever-increasing importance of feedback in the intelligence cycle.