Human Intelligence, Counterterrorism, and National Leadership: A Practical Guide | 
 enlarge | Author: Gary Berntsen
Creator: Seth G. Jones
Publisher: Potomac Books Inc.
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 9785
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 154
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 1597972541
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.1273
EAN: 9781597972543
ASIN: 1597972541
Publication Date: October 30, 2008
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Product Description
The next president of the United States faces innumerable complex problems, from a possible prolonged recession to climate change. An immediate difficulty for the president will be the global conflict between the West and Islamic jihadists and state sponsors of terrorism. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission notwithstanding, the administration needs to be armed and ready to tackle much more in the areas of intelligence and counterterrorism. The president can and must assume a hands-on, informed leadership role if the United States wants to make progress in the war on terror. Gary Berntsen has written this book as a guide for an incoming president and White House staff so that they may master current human intelligence and counterterrorism operations. After reading its highly specific recommendations and policy prescriptions, the president and his or her staff will be able to draft a First Directive for the leadership of the intelligence and national security communities outlining how the administration wants those communities to proceed and to defend the nation's interests. Human Intelligence, Counterterrorism, and National Leadership will be of interest to legislators, policymakers, and anyone concerned about intelligence and terrorism policy. With a foreword by Seth G. Jones, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation and Adjunct Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is the author of In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan and The Rise of European Security Cooperation.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Reality not rehearsal January 7, 2009
When addressing the public in matters intelligence, the greatest obstacle is keeping reined in. GB keeps this issue in focus, not easy as the public does TV and cinema flashbacks in seconds. When explaining complex matters simplicity id best. GB excels in this. Point by point, candor without contempt ,no-fringe detailing and recommendations are just put out there. Training, languages, leadership, languages, risk, languages - please note - Language Training!
With my A+ or 100% affirmative, I hold one reservation.
Can the Freedom Corps function, no just above regions and ethnicities with indiginous people, but will the fighters against islamic fanaticism be able to give loyalty to us when there is a call for religious dominance or caliphate.
Could taqiya suborn and oath to us?
And that question is what makes this book dynamic.
Risk is an sidehick to intelligence opertions.
A truly "practical" guide! December 7, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Mr. Bernsten wrote this book to share what he has learned both right, wrong and otherwise in his illustrious and decorated career. These kinds of books are not written to make money. They are written for the love of the profession and how to make the entire genre better. The book is "A Practical Guide." It is clear and concise.
I am quite sorry that Mr. Steele feels the way he does. Perhaps there is a tinge of jealousy there.
Mr.Bernsten had a home run with his work "Jaw Breaker" and his most recent "The Walk-In." Crossing over to write "Human Intelligence.." only shows he loved his work and the agency he worked for. What came out of his career is how to make HUMIT, CT and leadership better.
A clear and concise book November 17, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Fascinating book. Berntsen provides some interesting insights and recommendations on how we should fix problems at the CIA and in the national security apparatus. At a time when most critics want to destroy the Agency, Berntsen provides some plain spoken sanity. Human Intelligence, Counterterrorism and National Leadership needs to be read by anyone entering into defense, foreign affairs or intelligence - and anyone else with an interest in how the CIA works.
It is a fast and enjoyable read.
 Skimming the Surface October 30, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The essence of this book is to succinctly explain the role of CIA's National Clandestine Service (Directorate of Operations) in formulating and more importantly executing a coherent counter-terrorism strategy. Gary Berntsen is a retired CIA intelligence officer (clandestine service) with an impressive record of field assignments to his credit. He also clearly knows the ways of Washington D.C. in that this book is designed for those suffering from attention deficit disorder. While he raises several interesting point in the book, he also reveals an astonishing narrowness of view and tendency to reduce everything to its simplest terms.
In his introductory `background' chapter Berntsen makes the dubious claim that the collection of intelligence from human sources (HUMINT) is the "primary mission of CIA." Apparently he is unaware that CIA was originally founded to produce all source finished intelligence and that the National Intelligence Council (NIC), until recently under CIA, was the final word in the U.S. Intelligence System. Nothing reveals the sorry state of CIA's Directorate of Intelligence better than this claim. In the same manner Berntsen is apparently oblivious to the availability and uses of intelligence collected by technical means. To his credit he does recognize that the best intelligence is more often available from open (non-classified) sources than from secret sources. Yet he neither expands nor follows up this observation.
Berntsen more or less follows this pattern through out this book. For example he provides a brief discussion of the traditional Islamic Banking System called Hawalla, but is apparently unaware that the system is based on a recognized credit not cash and that money does not move across international borders. The system is widely trusted and is widely used by Muslim expatriates in the West and Saudi Arabia to send money home. For this reason Hawalla credit transfers providing money to terrorists are easily lost in a world wide mass of transactions. Yet it is possible to track Hawalla transactions and it has been done without "intensive manpower" allocations.
Berntsen deserves a good deal of respect and credit for his obvious service to the U. S. and his dedication to the cause of clandestine intelligence operations and its hand maiden covert operations. Yet this book is a terminally superficial and ill-considered work by someone who not only should know better, but could have produced a first rate `practical guide' to a counter-terrorism strategy.
 Primer for the Non-Professional October 24, 2008
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
20081214 DEPARTED AMAZON WITH OUTRAGE OVER THE MANIPULATION OF VOTES.
This is a publisher's idea of a quick buck. The author did what he could within the constipated formula. It is recommended for anyone who knows very little about intelligence and wants a useful overview that avoids the nitty-gritty. Indeed, this is a very fine companion to Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy(3rd Edition), which is deficient in the very areas where this book offers a rather gross-level overview to the student new to the intelligence discipline. The price is reasonable, one reason I was tempted.
I tried hard to justify four stars but I just cannot do it. There is nothing wrong with this book, if you want a Middle School reader with a handful of ideas that are good but not unique, while avoiding anything that could have held the book up when being reviewed by the CIA, this is it. It is a small book with 19 brilliantly selected chapter titles each receiving as many as six or as few as two (small) pages.
I tried reading each "chapter's" Core Points a second time, and found little to arrest my attention (or that of a future President). Support Colombia. Spray crops in Afghanistan. Special Ops is under-represented. Hmmm.
The eleven recommended books are an afterthought. Obviously the author is an experienced case officer but he is not broadly read and none of the books deal with the profession of intelligence--a couple by bubbas, a couple on counter-insurgency, a couple on the Islamic mind--you get the idea. In this instance, "practical guide" appears to mean "my personal view, without bothering to look into anything anyone else has recommended...)
All of my books are free online, and of course here on Amazon, so I won't flog them. The core chapters can also be found online, notably "Presidential Leadership" from the first book, "New Rules for the New Craft of Intelligence" from the second, and so on.
I cannot do justice to all the deep books, including the author's own, Jawbreaker: The Attack on bin Laden and al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander which I strongly recommend instead of this book, as well as First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan. See my varied lists, especially the early ones before I started focusing on Earth Intelligence across the board.
Here are the aspects of intelligence as it pertains to national security, and a single recommended book for each, among many others I have read and reviewed here at Amazon:
1) Does it inform policy?
Informing Statecraft
2) Does it avoid doing harm?
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
3) Do policymakers abuse it for their own ends?
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
4) Do we tell ourselves and the public the truth?
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
5) Can intelligence make a difference?
Intelligence Power in Peace and War
6) Can intelligence see the invisible?
Seeing the Invisible: National Security Intelligence in an Uncertain Age
7) Do we do as well as we can analyzing what we collect?
Lost Promise
The author is a good, brave, and talented man in the field. We are losing too many like him now, before their retirement age, because we are allowing contractors to steal them and rent them back to us at twice the price. If anyone were listening to me, which they are not, I would have two policies:
1) Pay for performance at commercial rates
2) Lose your clearances for two years if you leave before retirement age, and start the clearance process over when you come back, but if you get to retirement, we hold your clearances for five to ten years without your having to commit to a vendor (or any single vendor) right away and to allow you to free lance while still having your original agency as "home base."
The US Intelligence Community consists of incredibly good and earnest people trapped in a very bad system with multiple sucking chest wounds from security to acquisition to leadership (no middle, losing the seniors at the directorate levels) to you name it. Nothing in this book is going to fix that, I am sorry to say. We need a firehose, not another Happy Hour menu to throw on the fire.
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