Strategic Intelligence For American National Security
While covert operations grab the headlines, intelligence analysis, carried out by CIA officers and their colleagues who are more professorial than conspiratorial, is more important to America's security. This is a primer to that analytic function, the authors' updating of Sherman Kent's classic of 40 years ago, Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy. Primarily focused on the executive branch, it treats Congress as an overseer and supporter; the real revolution-Congress as a coequal consumer of intelligence-lies just at the edges of its pages.
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The specter of weapons of mass destruction being used against America looms larger today than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis. The World Trade Center bombing scarcely hints at the enormity of the danger. America is prepared only for conventional terrorism, not a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons catastrophe. With the right approach and organization, however, the United States can be ready. Herewith a plan to reorganize the U.S. government to ensure that it can handle the threats of the next century.
The recent troubles of the CIA date back to its early years, when dashing young men toyed with foreign governments. Evan Thomas evokes the time. Jeffrey T. Richelson catalogs the consequences.

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