Piggott, F.S.G. "Intelligence at an Army Headquarters on the Western Front during the Last Phase of the Great War." Army Quarterly (1925): 234-244.
[Petersen]
Piggott, F.S.G. "Intelligence at an Army Headquarters on the Western Front during the Last Phase of the Great War." Army Quarterly (1925): 234-244.
[Petersen]
[WWI/U.S.]
Pike, Christopher
Anson. "CANYON, RHYOLITE, and AQUACADE: U.S. Signals Intelligence Satellites
in the 1970s." Spaceflight 37, no. 11 (Nov. 1995): 381-383.
[NSA/Sigint; Recon/Sats/Arts]
Pilat,
Oliver Ramsey. The Atom Spies. New York: Putnam, 1952.
Pforzheimer terms this an "excellent account of the Soviet atomic espionage rings operating in the U.S. during the 1940s and 1950s." Constantinides agrees, noting that "the book stands up amazing well.... It is penetrating in its analysis of motives and actions of the main figures and captures the mood of time." On the other hand, much more has become known about the "atom spies" than Pilat had access to. Pilat is not careful about giving the sources for his narrative. He is also inconsistent in his estimate of Julius Rosenberg's work as a Soviet agent.
[SpyCases/U.S./Bomb]
Pilkington,
Edward. "A Lesson In Incompetence." The Guardian, 9 Mar.
2000. [http:// www.newsunlimited.co.uk]
"The disclosure of the leaking of NATO's bombing list exposes a mind-boggling incompetence on the part of those entrusted with prosecuting Europe's first war since 1945.... The Pentagon will no doubt jump on the spy revelations to press its objections to NATO's structure." However, it "was not NATO's constitution that was at fault, but the bungling of its high command."
[MI/Ops/Kosovo/NATOSpies]
Pillar, Paul R. "Counterintelligence After Al Qaeda." Washington Quarterly 27, no. 3 (Summer 2004): 101-113.
[CI/00s/04]
Pillar, Paul R. "Fighting International Terrorism: Beyond September 11th." Defense Intelligence Journal 11, no. 1 (Winter 2002): 17-26.
"[U]nlike ... most other wars the United States has waged," the war on terrorism "will not have a clear end.... If history is a guide, even the currrent enthusiasm for counterterrorism ... will slacken over time.... Americans will ... need much patience and persistence, into an indefinite future."
[Terrorism/02/Gen]
Pillar, Paul R. "Good Literature and Bad History: The 9/11 Commission's Tale of Strategic Intelligence." Intelligence and National Security 21, no. 6 (Dec. 2006): 1022-1044.
Clark comment: There are only a few articles among the many dealing with diverse aspects of intelligence that I wish I had written. This is one of them.
Pillar calls the 9/11 Commission's report a "detailed and well-crafted account of the terrorist plot" behind the 9/11 attacks. However, he views "other parts of the account" as "not only wrong but willfully wrong." In addition, there were and are "serious flaws in the commission's reorganization plan" for U.S. intelligence.
As it related to the performance of the intelligence community, the commission's report "was advocacy of a particular proposal, and an effort to manipulate public opinion in support of that proposal." There were "a large number of factual errors and omissions in the commission staff's draft statement on intelligence." Although the intelligence community had the opportunity to point out those mistakes, the corrections were largely ignored; and "[m]ost of the errors in the staff statement on intelligence were repeated in the report." In contrast, the Silberman-Robb Commission (WMD Commission) was much more willing to listen to and heed "the observations of officers who were not only experts on the events and subject matter at hand but also at least as committed as anyone else to trying to make intelligence better."
[GenPostCW/9/11Commission/04 & Report; Reform/00s/06]
Pillar, Paul R. "Inside Track: Sometimes the CIA Is Right." National Interest, 6 Jun. 2007. "The Right Stuff." National Interest, 29 Aug. 2007. [http://www.nationalinterest.org]
The author was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005. Here, he notes that the much excoriated "estimate was one of only three classified, community-coordinated assessments about Iraq that the intelligence community produced in the months prior to the war." The other two estimates "addressed the principal challenges that Iraq likely would present during the first several years after Saddam’s removal, as well as likely repercussions in the surrounding region." These estimates present a different view of "how the intelligence community really did perform on Iraq." They "offered judgments on the issues that turned out to be most important in the war..., even though those judgments conspicuously contradicted the administration’s rosy vision for Iraq. And for the most part, those judgments were correct."
[Analysis/Est; CIA/00s/07; MI/Ops/Iraq]
Pillar, Paul R. "Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq." Foreign Affairs 85, no. 2 (Mar.-Apr. 2006): 15-27.
The NIO for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005 argues that, with regard to the Iraq war, "official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized."
[GenPostCW/00s/WMD/05; MI/Ops/Iraq]
Pillar, Paul R. "Intelligent Design? The Unending Saga of Intelligence Reform." Foreign Affairs 87, no. 2 (Mar.-Apr. 2008): 138-144.
The author, NIO for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, reviews Weiner, Legacy of Ashes (2007); Zegart, Spying Blind (2007); and Betts, Enemies of Intelligence (2007). In the process, however, Pillar has much to say about intelligence reform and the intelligence business. One, among many, telling observation is that "reforms that pander to psychological needs and political agendas encourage changes that are more disruptive than productive." This article should be mandatory reading for those who cry incessantly for intelligence reform.
[Reform/00s]
Pillar,
Paul R. Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2001. 2d ed. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2004.
Powers, NYRB, 17 Jan. 2002, notes that the author, a former deputy director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, "argues persuasively that overexcitement is the enemy of sound counterterror practice." Although the book was published in April 2001, "most of what Pillar says holds up well."
For Moore, Studies 46.1, this work is a "persuasive, policy-oriented primer ... [and] a valuable resource for policy-makers and scholars.... Seen through the prism of the 11 September attacks, Pillar's book holds up quite well."
Turner, IJI&C 16.4, calls Pillar's work "a major contribution to understanding the terrorism phenomenon and the tepid American policy response to it."
Commenting on the second edition, Peake, Studies 49.1 (2005), finds that a "43-page introduction ... addresses post-9/11 questions.... Overall, this book presents a temperate and discerning analysis with practical insights aimed at dealing with" the problem of terrorism.
[Terrorism/00s/Gen]
Pimlott, Ben,
ed. The Second World War Diaries of Hugh Dalton, 1940-1945. London:
Jonathan Cape, 1986.
Foot, I&NS 2.1, finds the self-absorption of the man who was the minister responsible for SOE until February 1942 annoying. Nevertheless, the diaries contain "quite a few snippets ... of interest to [intelligence] experts ... as well as to ordinary readers."
[UK/WWII/Services/SOE]
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