Informing Statecraft

Codevilla knows this subject. Years spent as a working intelligence professional and more years teaching the subject. His thesis, that intelligence is an instrument of conflict, is the most important place to start in understanding this book. As its title suggests, Codevilla wants intelligence server purpose, and that purpose is statecraft. Elsewhere, he enumerates the challenges of statecraft itself. Here, he focuses on a special - and especially important - aspect of statecraft: intelligence. Written before 9/11, Informing Statecraft makes hay from Cold War intelligence experiences. Consequently, the book does not address the complex issues and consequences of pre-9/11 intelligence matters or those matters associated with weapons of mass destruction intelligence Iraq. Those issues Codevilla deals with in other writings. To begin, Codevilla does a fine job of organizing the disciplines of intelligence. Guiding the reader through the thicket of terms and arcana, Codevilla structures his discussion of collection, analysis and production, counterintelligence, and covert action to provide the reader the foundation for the critique of these disciplines, which follows. With respect to the collection disciplines, Codevilla argues that nearly any fact can be of great importance - or of no importance - depending on the use to which an decision maker might put it. It is possible for a political leader or military commander to choose the right course of action with little (or in spite of) information. Whether a fact turns out to be useful or harmful depends on timeliness, volume, intelligibility and inherent relevance. The consequences of poor collection capability are profound: not having a spy in the enemy camp means never knowing for sure about what is being prepared for the future. Not having a spy means relying on observation, with all its invitations to self-deception. Once in a while a fact - a picture, a message, an event - is so clearly important that its value is self-evident. In such cases, an intelligence service may transmit the fact to policymakers without analysis, and the policymakers will see its meaning clearly. But even in such clearly obvious cases the key is knowing the difference between facts that can be treated that way and those that cannot. Consequently, the act of screening information for relevance itself becomes an act of analysis. Codevilla observes that two nemeses lurk behind every analytical process. First, there is rarely enough data to draw an unchallengeable conclusion. Second, since the data concern human struggles, it is likely to have been biased precisely in order to deceive the analyst. Moreover, the analyst, being human, comes fully equipped with bias. Codevilla argues persuasively that serious interest and serious mind are the real prerequisites for quality analysis, and these characteristics distinguish professionals from amateurs. The author quotes Plato in saying that only an expert

Yes, Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century is relentlessly critical of the blundering past performance of various administrations, e.g., "Note well that liberals in America, when in charge of government at any level, of university faculties, or of CIA directorates, take care to hire and award contracts to likeminded folk and to exclude others." P 231. And, yes the aphorisms are authentic, fascinating, and call for radical reformation e.g., "Sound knowledge of a disorderly world, rather than faith in a trouble free, post-end-of-history `new world order,' will best fit nations to thrive in the twenty-first century." P 72. "There is never enough intelligence to guarantee instant success at no cost and never enough to overcome entrenched prejudice." P 213. "It is more important to define what any particular job, e.g., espionage, is to accomplish, how it is to be accomplished, and to hire the right kinds of people to do it, than it is to decide for which bureaucracy these people will work." P 293. But the roots of this work lie deep in lessons that humankind desperately needs to understand now at the beginning of the new millennium: the mystery of foreign lands and the mystery of the language, culture, and people integral to them. o Despite superficial signs of a uniform world culture (cassette recorders, jeans, soda pop, burgers, rock groups), Africans are becoming more African, Asians more Asian, Russians more Russian, etc. The often astonishingly good English spoken by young people from Moscow to Mecca - never mind the Indian subcontinent, where it is the lingua franca - has led many U.S. analysts to the disastrous conclusion that foreigners can be understood in terms of what they say in English. On the contrary, their English words are our symbols, to which they do not necessarily attach the same meaning or convictions we attach. P 239. o The characteristics of the person sent to gather information often make the difference between information that is useful and information that is worse than useless. P 301. o The network is most important. Closed terrorist cells in the Middle East are part of the semiopen entourages of terrorist chieftains who are part of overt Palestinian politics in which Arab governments take major parts. P 311. o Among the most effective forms of propaganda is the propaganda of the deed-the sight of a corpse, and the feeling that one may be next. Nothing so cements a movement for the long run as martyrs, nor changes a government so definitively as killing its members or supporters. P 375. After my first reading of Informing Statecraft, I read it at random, and find that no matter where I pick up the thread, it produces a comprehensively researched and unrivaled account of the intelligence industry. As always, Codevilla navigates the shoals of this information with great skill and dexterity.

Glad it's back in print! The best book on intelliegnce out there, a beautiful sythesis of general principles and historical examples. In particular, Codevilla has grasped James Jesus Angleton's seemingly simple insight -- that our enemies, as thinking, breathing human beings, may actually go out of their way to feed us false intelligence, so that we will believe things that aren't true -- which has been totally lost to CIA for almost 30 years. Instead, it has been replaced with a naive faith that CIA is simply too smart and professional to be fooled. Codevilla, from years as a Senate intelligence staffer, knows otherwise, and he chronicles one blunder after another. The lesson: since few if any of Codevilla's proposals were implemented, when CIA says something does or doesn't exist, you should be very, very skeptical. CIA has secret intelligence right? They know things we don't, right? Wrong.

Admirably writeen, lucid prose, outstanding thought, this book would be the first book I would assign to anyone looking to understand the nature of intelligence. It is interesting to note that Codevilla wrote two of the best introductions on "how to think" about two major subjects- about war in "War, Ends and Means" and "Statecraft". It is a crime that this book is out of print, and one should do everything in ones power to obtain a copy. The only other book in the intelligence field that approaches this level of worth is "The New KGB, Engine of Societ Power", an older 1980's book by Robert Corson. All the other poor books on intelligence either take the character of "The Puzzle Palace" (which is stupid and an insider's pro-old boys network hack job) or one of Noam Chomsky's blithering semi-conspiracy theories. "Informing Statecraft" is the only type of really usefull intellectual companion to intelligence work in all existance. This book is exactly what an intelligence book should be- an attack on the structural inadequacies of the United States intelligence community in the guise of a "how-to" book on how to run things correctly. Flipping through the book, one will wonder at the bales of common sensical yet brilliant realpolitik critiques involved in his analysis of what intelligence should be about.

I'm going to sound like a schoold-girl with an infatuation if I let what I think about this book out. One hears many reviews that begin with "This book should be the first book anyone reads about blah blah blah", but this is a rare case of crystal clear thinking about intelligence that amounts to a genius. Were I to make or run an intelliegence agency, this book would be the first book I would give to my officers and agents. Maybe the reason for Mr. Codevilla's excellence is his devotion to translating Machiavelli (now that's someone I'd like to have in an intelligence agency), or maybe not. What I do know is this book talks first and foremost about the basic questions intelligence operations should be asking about themselves and their work. I've read a lot of books about intelligence agencies, but they all end up being either a) anecdotal, story like intepretations, b) partisan tracts on different aspects of intelligence work, or c) op-ed pieces. I would put this book even above such works as "The Puzzle Palace". The only other book I have read with this caliber material was on Russian intelligence, "The New KGB: Engine of Soviet Power". This book, however, takes the cake, and it restores my faith in looking up obscure intellectuals- this reminds me of the HL Mencken maxim- "There are only two types of books: the kind of books people read and the kinds of books people should read". This book is the latter. Buy it and read it twice.