Fixing Intelligence: For a More Secure America

It usually takes a disaster to create change in large organizations. And no one could possibly consider the terrorist attacks on 9/11 to be anything but a disaster. But what to change and how to change it. ==In this book, William Odom a former director of the National Security Agency looks at how the American intelligence agencies are organized and makes recommendations on how to fix the problems. The roots of the problem go back a long ways. The CIA was organized in 1947 as primarily an organization to collect information about the Soviet Union. With the advent of spy satellites the main thrust of the agency centered on using imagery to track the military forces of the Soviet Union. And as budgets were cut from time to time (under Clinton especially) the agency depended more and more on imagery. The FBI has responsibilities for both law enforcement and counter intelligence. These are very different responsibilities, one leading to arrest and trial after a crime has been committed. In counter intelligence you don't really care if the bad guy goes to jail, you mainly want to stop his actions from hurting you. Regardless of how it happened, it is time for a major overhaul of the Intelligence agencies of the U.S. General Odom has made a number of proposals clearly stating how he would do it. It will be interesting to watch what happens as Congress works on the problem.

General Odom has written an outstanding book, combining a careful explanation of the nature and mission of intelligence with a well-thought out set of suggested reforms. Although the reading can be somewhat dry, General Odom's description of the relationships between different agencies and bureaucracies is succinct and delivered with clarity. Working methodically through the terminology and methods of the intelligence field, he provides necessary background and understanding to enable people to comprehend the need for reform and to assess the suggestions he offers.General Odom writes from the perspective of an insider, a very smart insider, but manages to keep a degree of detachment and objectivity in the process. His thoughtful suggestions regarding how we might go about reforming and improving our intelligence capabilities to cope with 21st century threats should be read carefully by anyone with an interest in these issues. Even if one disagrees with some of the reforms he proposes, this book provides a solid starting point for understanding the complexities of intelligence collection and analysis in the modern world, as well as the problems we face by relying on an intelligence community created fifty years ago to deal with a threat (the Soviet Union) that is now long-gone from the scene.HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

If you want to understand the intelligence world, and the dangerous world of terrorists and sneak attacks we now confront, READ THIS BOOK! Based on what appears to be a lifetime of experience in the secret enclaves of American intelligence gathering, General Odom's penetrating insights challenge accepted wisdom, and force us to question our nation's strategic vision. For anyone who wants a safe world and a free society, this book is a road map to where we must go as a nation.

There are two very important themes running through this book, and they earn the author a solid four stars and a "must read" recommendation. First, the author is correct and compellinging clear when he points out that even the most senior intelligence professionals, including DCIs, simply do not understand the full range of intelligence organizations, capabilities, and problems that exist--just about everyone has spent their entire career in a small niche with its own culture. Second, the author is unique for focusing on an area that is both vital and ignored today: that of creating joint and combined intelligence concepts and doctrine to ensure that minimal common understandings as well as training competency levels are reached across varied jurisdictions; and to enable competent community resource management, also non-existent today.The author is positively instructive in this book, providing both trenchant indictments (for instance, of the National Reconnaisance Office for being oriented toward big budgets and inputs rather than missions and outputs), and many common sense observations that all need to be factored into whatever the Senate finally decides to do about intelligence reform.Among the many important points that he makes, I especially agree with his pointing out the need to fully integrate the management of inputs and outputs within each of the major collection disciplines--as he notes, disconnecting the building of satellites, or aerial imagery vehicles, or unmanned aerial drones, from the actual needs of the end-user and the actual responsibility to produce imagery intelligence, leads to precisely what the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Commission Report of December 1999 noted as the major shortfall in national intelligence--close to a trillion spent on secret satellite collection, and nothing spent on tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination (TPED). The author specifically identifies $6 billion in savings being achievable from the NRO budget over five years--savings that could be applied to enhancing analysis, creating competent clandestine collection capabilities, establishing global open source collection activities in each of the theaters, and creating a new national counterintelligence and homeland security intelligence program.In passing, on page 146 the author "blows the whistle" on the deception imposed on the public by the CIA's clandestine service, which was actually largely incapable in Afghanistan in 2001, and was saved secretly by Russian sources & methods. My own sources tell me that there are some very ugly stories yet to be made public, and the author--whose access and credibility cannot be questioned--is helpful in sharing what he knows on this--America needs a competent clandestine service, not one that pretends that clerks mixed with cowboys, all working from official installations, are anything other than a joke.The author demonstrates a very deep understanding of the shortfalls of the int