Intelligence From Secrets To Policy

Details how the intelligence community's history, structure, procedures, and functions affect policy decisions. This edition highlights: changes in the management of US intelligence and the fourth DNI in five years; Obama administration policies; developments in collection and analysis; and the killing of Bin Laden.

Mark M. Lowenthal’s trusted guide is the go-to resource for understanding how the intelligence community’s history, structure, procedures, and functions affect policy decisions. In the fully updated Ninth Edition of Intelligence, the author addresses cyber security and cyber intelligence throughout, expands the coverage of collection, comprehensively updates the chapters on nation-state issues and transnational issues, and looks at foreign intelligence services, both large and small.

Explains the complete intelligence process from requirements to finished intelligence for policy decisions.

Mark M. Lowenthal’s trusted guide is the go-to resource for understanding how the intelligence community’s history, structure, procedures, and functions affect policy decisions. In this Seventh Edition, Lowenthal examines cyber space and the issues it presents to the intelligence community such as defining cyber as a new collection discipline; the implications of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s staff report on enhanced interrogation techniques; the rise of the Islamic State; and the issues surrounding the nuclear agreement with Iran. New sections have been added offering a brief summary of the major laws governing U.S. intelligence today such as domestic intelligence collection, whistleblowers vs. leakers, and the growing field of financial intelligence.

Winner of the 2020 McGuffey Longevity Award from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association (TAA) "[The text is] one of the most useful, one-volume, introductory works on intelligence today. [Intelligence] does an excellent job of working through the intricacies of U.S. intelligence." —Richard J. Norton, United States Naval War College Mark M. Lowenthal’s trusted guide is the go-to resource for understanding how the intelligence community’s history, structure, procedures, and functions affect policy decisions. In the fully updated Eighth Edition of Intelligence, the author addresses cyber security and cyber intelligence throughout, expands the coverage of collection, comprehensively updates the chapters on nation-state issues and transnational issues, and looks at foreign intelligence services, both large and small.

Every president has had a unique and complicated relationship with the intelligence community. While some have been coolly distant, even adversarial, others have found their intelligence agencies to be among the most valuable instruments of policy and power. Since John F. Kennedy's presidency, this relationship has been distilled into a personalized daily report: a short summary of what the intelligence apparatus considers the most crucial information for the president to know that day about global threats and opportunities. This top–secret document is known as the President's Daily Brief, or, within national security circles, simply “the Book.” Presidents have spent anywhere from a few moments (Richard Nixon) to a healthy part of their day (George W. Bush) consumed by its contents; some (Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush) consider it far and away the most important document they saw on a regular basis while commander in chief. The details of most PDBs are highly classified, and will remain so for many years. But the process by which the intelligence community develops and presents the Book is a fascinating look into the operation of power at the highest levels. David Priess, a former intelligence officer and daily briefer, has interviewed every living president and vice president as well as more than one hundred others intimately involved with the production and delivery of the president's book of secrets. He offers an unprecedented window into the decision making of every president from Kennedy to Obama, with many character–rich stories revealed here for the first time.

Mark M. Lowenthal’s trusted guide is the go-to resource for understanding how the intelligence community’s history, structure, procedures, and functions affect policy decisions. In this Seventh Edition, Lowenthal examines cyber space and the issues it presents to the intelligence community such as defining cyber as a new collection discipline; the implications of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s staff report on enhanced interrogation techniques; the rise of the Islamic State; and the issues surrounding the nuclear agreement with Iran. New sections have been added offering a brief summary of the major laws governing U.S. intelligence today such as domestic intelligence collection, whistleblowers vs. leakers, and the growing field of financial intelligence.

Intelligence is, by definition, a shadowy business. Yet many aspects of this secret world are now more openly analyzed and discussed, a trend which has inevitably prompted lively debate about intelligence gathering and analysis: what should be allowed? What boundaries, if any, should be drawn? And what changes and challenges lie ahead for intelligence activities and agencies? In this compelling book, leading intelligence scholar Mark Lowenthal explores the future of intelligence. There are, he argues, three broad areas – information technology and intelligence collection; analysis; and governance – that indicate the potential for rather dramatic change in the world of intelligence. But whether these important vectors for change will improve how intelligence works or make it more difficult remains to be seen. The only certainty is that intelligence will remain an essential feature of statecraft in our increasingly dangerous world. Drawing on the author's forty years' experience in U.S. intelligence, The Future of Intelligence offers a broad and authoritative starting point for the ongoing debate about what intelligence could be and how it may function in the years ahead.