★★★★★ 4
Skimming the Surface
Format: Hardcover
The essence of this book is to succinctly explain the role of CIA's National Clandestine Service (Directorate of Operations) in formulating and more importantly executing a coherent counter-terrorism strategy. Gary Berntsen is a retired CIA intelligence officer (clandestine service) with an impressive record of field assignments to his credit. He also clearly knows the ways of Washington D.C. in that this book is designed for those suffering from attention deficit disorder. While he raises several interesting point in the book, he also reveals an astonishing narrowness of view and tendency to reduce everything to its simplest terms.
In his introductory `background' chapter Berntsen makes the dubious claim that the collection of intelligence from human sources (HUMINT) is the "primary mission of CIA." Apparently he is unaware that CIA was originally founded to produce all source finished intelligence and that the National Intelligence Council (NIC), until recently under CIA, was the final word in the U.S. Intelligence System. Nothing reveals the sorry state of CIA's Directorate of Intelligence better than this claim. In the same manner Berntsen is apparently oblivious to the availability and uses of intelligence collected by technical means. To his credit he does recognize that the best intelligence is more often available from open (non-classified) sources than from secret sources. Yet he neither expands nor follows up this observation.
Berntsen more or less follows this pattern through out this book. For example he provides a brief discussion of the traditional Islamic Banking System called Hawalla, but is apparently unaware that the system is based on a recognized credit not cash and that money does not move across international borders. The system is widely trusted and is widely used by Muslim expatriates in the West and Saudi Arabia to send money home. For this reason Hawalla credit transfers providing money to terrorists are easily lost in a world wide mass of transactions. Yet it is possible to track Hawalla transactions and it has been done without "intensive manpower" allocations.
Berntsen deserves a good deal of respect and credit for his obvious service to the U. S. and his dedication to the cause of clandestine intelligence operations and its hand maiden covert operations. Yet this book is a terminally superficial and ill-considered work by someone who not only should know better, but could have produced a first rate `practical guide' to a counter-terrorism strategy.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2008
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