Why Secret Intelligence Fails

The roots of intelligence failures can be found in specific dysfunctions along the various stages of the intelligence cycle of setting priorities, intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination to policy makers. Turner (a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst) seeks to identify the bureaucratic and organizational cultural dysfunctions at each of these stages for the US intelligence community. He also looks at the role of counterintelligence and covert action in generating intelligence failures and considers some of the specific issues arising from different national security challenges. He concludes with a set of recommendations on how to mitigate the problems identified. Distributed in the US by Books International. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)