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  1. Home
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  3. Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information
  • Cited by 40
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
May 2010
Print publication year:
2001
Online ISBN:
9780511754470
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511754470
Subjects:
Economics, Area Studies, American Studies, Macroeconomics, American Government, Politics and Policy, Politics and International Relations
Series:
RAND Studies in Policy Analysis
Information

Book description

The world of intelligence has been completely transformed by the end of the Cold War and the onset of an age of information. Prior to the 1990s, US government intelligence had one principal target, the Soviet Union; a narrow set of 'customers', the political and military officials of the US government; and a limited set of information from the sources they owned, spy satellites and spies. Today, world intelligence has many targets, numerous consumers - not all of whom are American or in the government - and too much information, most of which is not owned by the U.S. government and is of widely varying reliability. In this bold and penetrating study, Gregory Treverton, former Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council and Senate investigator, offers his insider's views on how intelligence gathering and analysis must change. He suggests why intelligence needs to be both contrarian, leaning against the conventional wisdom, and attentive to the longer term, leaning against the growing shorter time horizons of Washington policy makers. He urges that the solving of intelligence puzzles tap expertise outside government - in the academy, think tanks, and Wall Street - to make these parties colleagues and co-consumers of intelligence, befitting the changed role of government from doer to convener, mediator, and coalition-builder.

Reviews

‘Treverton’s book deals with an extraordinarily sensitive as well as important subject, and it is written by a person who uniquely combines an understanding of the art of intelligence with the imperatives of statesmanship.’

Zbigniew Brzezinski - Former National Security Adviser

‘This is a ‘must-read’ book for every senior official in American intelligence agencies and for their policy and congressional overseers. Provocative and replete with evaluations and recommendations that will be highly controversial among intelligence officers, Reshaping National Intelligence offers a comprehensive blueprint for restructuring U.S. intelligence for the post-cold war world - a restructuring the author persuasively argues is essential as tactical military requirements multiply, decision-makers are inundated with publicly available information of varying reliability, and traditional secret intelligence sources no longer shed light on many contemporary issues of importance.’

Robert M. Gates - Pacific Council on International Policy, Former Deputy Director of CIA

‘As a former White House official, Senate staffer, and high official in the Intelligence Community, Greg Treverton is uniquely qualified to describe and prescribe ways to improve intelligence in the Information Age. He has done so in this wonderfully readable and cogent book.’

Joseph S. Nye, Jr - Dean, Kennedy School of Government

‘Greg Treverton served with great distinction as Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council; while doing so, his creative and restless mind was always searching for how we could do our jobs better in this radically new post-cold-war world. This book, the fruit of that experience, offers a fascinating mixture of proposals for sensible evolution and for radical innovation. No student or even informed observer of today’s intelligence community should miss this one.’

James Woolsey - Former Director of Central Intelligence

‘A ‘must-read’ for anyone who aspires to participate in the creation and execution of national security policy.’

Bob Inman - Admiral, USN (Ret.), Director NSA, Deputy Director of CIA

‘… an elegant addition to intelligence literature … a significant contribution to understanding modern intelligence’s nature and purpose, and should be read on that account …’.

Source: RUSI Journal

'Treverton's monograph is the only serious one studying the world's most powerful spy organization especially in an era characterized by declining state power and the rise of powerful private capital and stateless groups.'

Source: International Studies

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