Stein, Jeff. "Allen’s Wrench at Work on Homeland Intelligence." Congressional Quarterly, 23 Nov. 2005. [http://www.cq.com]
Stein, Jeff. "Allen’s Wrench at Work on Homeland Intelligence." Congressional Quarterly, 23 Nov. 2005. [http://www.cq.com]
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "still does not have a centralized integrated database of its own intelligence.... The man coaxed out of retirement [in September 2005] to hammer together DHS’s intelligence shop ... is Charlie Allen," who spent 47 years at the CIA. " [A]ccording to a senior DHS consultant on intelligence issues, Allen is already bumping up against powerful DHS fiefdoms," particularly "existing intelligence channels" that fall under the Homeland Security Operations Center run by retired Marine Gen. Matthew Broderick.
[DHS/05]
Stein, Jeff.
1. "Bureau Pines for Labors of Hercules." CQ Weekly, 1 May 2006, 1156-1157.
"[D]espite spending hundreds of millions of dollars on an upgrade [of its computer system] that was supposed to allow agents and analysts to share criminal and terrorism files," the FBI still does not have a system to match the CIA's Hercules system. Nonetheless FBI Director Mueller "is dedicated to installing state-of-the-art systems, despite lingering problems." But "for the time being, agents and intelligence analysts are stuck with the present Automated Case Support system, or ACS, which the inspector general calls 'obsolete.'"
2. "FBI Under the Gun." CQ Weekly, 1 May 2006, 1152-1159.
Gary M. Bald's statement in a legal deposition that substantive expertise is not prerequisite for working in the FBI's counterterrorism unit opens this critique of where the FBI is in remaking itself as a domestic intelligence service. Conclusion: "[I]t still has a long way to go"; yet, "[f]or better or worse, counterterrorism is the FBI's game now.... Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI's annual budget has shot up more than 80 percent, from $3.1 billion in fiscal 2000 to $5.7 billion in fiscal 2006.... The FBI's continuing analytical shortcomings have contributed to a number of well-publicized counterterrorism pratfalls."
3. "New Breed of Journeymen G-Men." CQ Weekly, 1 May 2006, 1155.
"New agents now train side by side with budding counterterror analysts."
[FBI/00s/06]
Stein, Jeff. A Murder in Wartime: The Untold Spy Story that Changed the Course of the Vietnam War. New York: St. Martin's, 1992.
Surveillant 2.4 notes that this book concerns the killing of Thai Khac Chuyen by Green Berets and the consequences thereof as argued by the author.
White, I&NS 9.3, comments that A Murder in Wartime was written "by a journalist who provides no footnotes.... [But who] was an insider, an Army intelligence case officer in Vietnam in 1969, and has been through many thousands of pages of ... material."
According to a reviewer in Proceedings, Oct. 1993, this "story ... is neither untold, nor about spies, nor did it change the course of the war. The book's misstatements thus begin on its title page.... The incident has been related before, in Those Gallant Men, a wretched 1984 book by an Army defense counsel in the case. This new telling of the story ... is little better.... The book contains many errors and misstatements.... Most bothersome ... is the author's constant use of lengthy direct quotation of statements he could not possibly have knowledge of.... The book employs neither footnotes nor endnotes ... [and] is unreliable as history and suspect as reportage."
On the other hand, Van Voorst, Time, 19 Oct. 1992, finds that the author has produced a "tautly written volume" that "paints an exhaustively researched and heavily documented history of the murder." The reviewer's bottom line is that "[t]his is the best military morality tale since The Caine Mutiny."
[Vietnam]
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