Richelson, Jeffrey T. Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea. New York: Norton, 2006. Richelson, Jeffrey T. Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea. New York: Norton, 2006.
Peake, Studies 50.3 (Sep. 2006) and Intelligencer 15.2 (Fall/Winter 2006-2007), finds that the author "reviews the Intelligence Community's track record for monitoring the nuclear programs of 11 other nations, beginning with Nazi Germany.... In effect, he is asking whether the Intelligence Community's historical experience is prologue to predicting the outcome of future programs. Overall, the results are mixed; the story is fascinating."
For Graczewski, DIJ 15.2 (2006), Richelson's "book is an outstanding open-source reference manual on the IC's 50-year history of tracking the nuclear activities and intentions of over a dozen nations." However, the reviewer is disappointed that the author offers no "assessments or lessons learned from the half century of American engagement in nuclear espionage."
Freedman, FA 86.2 (Mar.-Apr. 2007), comments that the author "has a gift for following clues and picking up disparate pieces of information from a variety of sources and pulling them together to form an account that makes sense even while acknowledging what remains unknown."
To Mattox, Parameters 37.1 (Spring 2007), the author "fills a huge gap in our understanding of the dynamics of the Cold War with this monumental work.... Spying on the Bomb is essential reading for anyone concerned with perhaps the most challenging security issue of our time."
In his review, Katz, IJI&C 20.3 (Fall 2007), is not so much negative about Spying on the Bomb as wishing that a physicist with a background in intelligence had written it. He believes that the text lacks "the nuance and insight that inside experience would give." The author "makes no major mistakes, but his book is short on the technical background necessary to put intelligence in context."
Brown, I&NS 23.4 (Aug. 2008), sees this as "an excellent and well-researched work" the "primary flaw" of which is "the usage of highly technical jargon concerning nuclear physics and collection methods."
Richelson, Jeffrey T. The U.S. Intelligence Community. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1985. [pb] 2d ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1989. 3d ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995. 4th ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999. 5th rev. ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2007.
Clark Comment: This work is used in several intelligence or intelligence-related courses at U.S. colleges and universities. (See Fontaine, Teaching Intelligence in the 1990s.) When looking for a "nuts-and-bolts," organization-oriented text for an intelligence course, the choice is really between Richelson and Mark Lowenthal's U.S. Intelligence: Evolution and Anatomy (2d ed., 1992). The former is richer in detail, but the latter provides a better outline for teaching.
With regard to the third edition, Proceedings, Oct. 1995, suggests that this book "might be considered an order of battle of the U.S. intelligence community, in which the missions and organizational structures of its various components are described. Included are the more familiar organizations ... as well as the lesser-known components."
Friedman, Parameters, Summer 1997, agrees, noting that Richelson's work is "worth having as a reference even though some of the information was ... out of date even before the volume was printed.... [W]hile Richelson's approach may contain some errors, it nevertheless provides the user with a comprehensive overview of the topic. The author's bibliographic and specific notes will remain useful until the next revision."
Slightly less satisfied is Lowenthal, who comments that the author "is a dogged but somewhat indiscriminate researcher, when greater selectivity of sources might be useful."
Commenting on the fifth edition, Aftergood, Secrecy News (from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy), 13 Aug. 2007, says: "When I encounter an unfamiliar intelligence term, an odd acronym or a reference to an obscure office somewhere in the bowels of U.S. intelligence, I find that Richelson's book more often than not -- more often than Google -- provides the explanation and the needed background, typically with a footnote to an official source."
Peake, Studies 51.4 (2007), comments that this book "is mainly a descriptive rather than a critical account of operations and organizations, though the final chapter does discuss 'issues concerning recent intelligence performance.' ... Overall, the fifth edition of The US Intelligence Community is well organized and written to make a complex topic understandable. It is a valuable reference work."
Steele, Robert David. Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time -- The New Semantics of War & Peace, Wealth and Democracy. Oakton, VA: OSS Internaitonal Press, 2006.
According to Steele, IJI&C 2.1 (Spring 2007), 173/fn.1, a "50-slide briefing on th[is] book, with words in Notes format, is at http://www.oss.net/IO."
Steele, Robert David. "The New Craft of Intelligence: Reconstruction & Globalization." Sep. 2000. [http://www.oss.net]
Steele,
Robert David. On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World.
Fairfax, VA: AFCEA International Press, 2000.
From "Publisher's Foreword": "[T]his compendium of material on understanding the power of open sources [is offered] in the hope it will help chart the new course -- a new model -- for the future of intelligence."
Clark comment: This work brings together many of the thoughts on the state of U.S. intelligence and proposals for reform that have animated Steele's activities for the past decade. The author's hypothetical Senate Bill S.2001 makes hamburger of many sacred cows, but Congress has refused to act on much less radical measures. A terminology quibble: While I fully understand the need for breaking old molds, the title Director-General (as in, Director-General of National Intelligence) sounds more French than American.
While acknowledging that the author and his views remain controversial, Jonkers, AFIO WIN 19-00, 12 May 2000, finds that Steele's book "contains ideas to which we should pay attention. His vision, leading up to the 'virtual intelligence community' is worth consideration."
Steele provides the following thoughts on his work: "With a foreword by Senator David L. Boren, sponsor of the 1992 intelligence reform legislation, and blurbs from Alvin Toffler, Bruce Sterling, former DDCI Dick Kerr, and flag officers from Russia, Germany and the United Kingdom, this book is unique in that it provides an itemized list of U.S. Intelligence Community budget cuts totalling $11.6 billion dollars a year; and completely outlines 14 major new initiatives for restructuring, enhancing, and considerably expanding our concept of 'national intelligence'. With a 50-page annotated bibliography that integrates Silicon Valley, Internet, management, and hacking books with the more traditional literature; a 62-page index; and 30 pages of proposed legislation, the National Security Act of 2001, this is a reference work."
Stevenson, Charles A. "Underlying Assumptions of the National Security Act of 1947." Joint Force Quarterly 48 (1st Quarter 2008): 129-133.
This well-done article points out that: "The National Security Act of 1947 was a compromise -- between advocates and opponents of a highly centralized military establishment, between supporters of a regularized process for interagency policymaking and defenders of Presidential prerogatives, and between an executive branch needing new legal authorities to deal with a postwar world and a Congress determined to maintain its special powers over the Armed Forces."
Treverton, Gregory F. Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. [pb] 2003.
Berkowitz, IJI&C 15.1, notes that the author believes that "U.S. intelligence needs to make radical changes.... [T]he essence of Treverton's many arguments [is]: Focus government intelligence collection efforts on those targets only government agencies can penetrate."
Turner, Michael A. Why Secret Intelligence Fails. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2005.
From publisher: The author "argues that the root causes of failures in American intelligence can be found in the way it is organized and in the intelligence process itself.... Rather than focusing on case studies, the book takes a holistic approach, beginning with structural issues and all dysfunctions that emanate from them."
Peake, Studies 49.4 (2005), says that the author provides "a good summary of the elements of the intelligence profession and [raises] a number of issues that should stimulate thinking. But we never learn just why secret intelligence fails."
Return to U.S. Overviews Table of Contents