Used price: $19.00
List price: $16.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $4.34
Collectible price: $7.87
Buy one from zShops for: $9.95
List price: $13.00 (that's 20% off!)
Used price: $7.28
Collectible price: $9.53
Buy one from zShops for: $8.99
Adam's book addresses errors in the National Power Assessment phase which had a negative cascading effect in subsequent decision making. Flawed enemy strength calculations contributed to flawed strategy development which contributed to a gap between policy and means. When Adams identified the flaw, the Johnson Administration was too heavily committed to a war of attrition to tolerate public exposure of the gaps between policy and means. Strategically, telling the truth about the numbers of enemy forces would have required larger commitments of U.S. forces increasing the strain on public support for the war. The strength of Johnson's political will and McNamara's quantitative analysis approach to war deeply affected the way the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, counted the enemy (called, Order of Battle).
MACV kept three sets of books; The first set of OB was the official version sent to Washington. The second set belonged to the OB Analysts themselves, and the third set was a blend of the first two. The first set was an undercount to keep official Washington placated; the second set was the honest count but did not go anywhere, and the third set went to Westmoreland who kept it close hold.
Adams contribution to the intelligence discipline is his description of how he found the flaw in OB accounting and the political correctness that resisted him within the intelligence community. The key to his breakthrough was to have actually gone to Vietnam, worked the Order of Battle issues on the ground, understand the enemy from "the enemy's" perspective and then double check how U.S. reporting of enemy strength matched that of how the enemy was reporting his own strength. This is when Adams discovered that MACV was undercounting troop strength. He performed a validity and reliability check on MACV and found their procedures and results wanting. The technique he used is described in detail and serves as a lesson learned for today's OB analysts.
The second lesson is how Adams' persistence caused a rift between the CIA and MACV over the integrity of the OB counting. The CIA is evenhandedly portrayed in the book. Individual analysts who looked at the numbers invariably sided with Adams; those in responsive political positions and vulnerable to the political influence of the Johnson-McNamara Administration behave in the subtle manner normally associated with behind the scene politics. Adams illustrates how assessments were watered down, reports delayed, egos clashed in the briefing rooms, and all of the suppressive efforts were brought to bear to keep him muffled and how he countered them. Basically, his operating principle was that the truth should be allowed to surface and he describes how he created those opportunities; back channel copies of reports; boot leg copies of reports, analyst to analyst contacts (CIA to DIA, for example), as well as maintaining contact with the honest brokers at MACV.
This is an important book for students of Intelligence Analysis. It serves as a guide on how to double check the validity and reliability of Order of Battle data; it gives insight to how politics heavily filtered ground truth under the Johnson Administration, and it lets the world see that the CIA wasn't evil incarnate. Like every other agency in Washington, it simply surrendered to political pressure from the White House.
Even more disturbing are Adams' insights into the CIA of the middle and late Sixties. Though deeply entrenched in war in Vietnam, they seemed to take an overall cavalier approach to the mission. Adams notes after Tet-1968 there were "considerably less than 6" CIA agent handlers in Vietnam who spoke vietnamese. These same case officers received a grand total of 2 hours orientation on Vietnam and their enemy prior to assignment.
This book is a MUST read for intelligence personnel, policy makers and anyone who wants to learn how, the hard way, not to run an intelligence organization.
Used price: $4.99
Collectible price: $19.06
Buy one from zShops for: $13.25
List price: $10.99 (that's 20% off!)
Used price: $4.99
Collectible price: $12.71
Buy one from zShops for: $3.99
List price: $13.99 (that's 20% off!)
Used price: $3.91
Buy one from zShops for: $4.99
PS AS I said before please note this is a friends e-mail address
List price: $24.99 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $11.76
Buy one from zShops for: $9.44
I wish there was also a good advanced book on GoLive that covered using scripting such as Java and CSS and dynamic content in detail, unfortunately there are none yet that are any good. Maybe Sams can do that too? But for beginners or intermediates with GL 6 who want to start using the software today, this is the book to get!
Used price: $4.99
Buy one from zShops for: $12.15