Download or read book Military Intelligence Blunders written by John Hughes-Wilson and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2023-03-30 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A cracking good read... I will recommend this book to anyone' - Professor Richard Holmes, CBE 'The Falklands, Yom Kippur, Tet and Pearl Harbor? Avoidable intelligence blunders or much worse? Altogether a compelling read from someone who knows the business' - Nigel West This book is a professional military-intelligence officer's - and controversial insider's - view of some of the greatest intelligence blunders of recent history. It includes the serious developments in government misuse of intelligence in the US-led coalition's 2003 war with Iraq, as well as failures of intelligence in Ukraine following Russia's invasion in February 2022. Colonel John Hughes-Wilson analyses not just the events that conspire to cause disaster, but why crucial intelligence is so often ignored, misunderstood or spun by politicians and seasoned generals alike. This book analyses: how Hitler's intelligence staff misled him in a bid to outfox their Nazi Party rivals; the bureaucratic bungling behind Pearl Harbor; how in-fighting within American intelligence ensured they were taken off guard by the Viet Cong's 1968 Tet Offensive; how overconfidence, political interference and deception facilitated Egypt and Syria's 1973 surprise attack on Israel; why a handful of marines and a London taxicab were all Britain had to defend the Falklands; the mistaken intelligence that allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power until the second Iraq War of 2003; the truth behind the US failure to run a terrorist warning system before the 9/11 WTC bombing; and how governments are increasingly pressurising intelligence agencies to 'spin' a party-political line.
Download or read book Military Intelligence Blunders and Cover Ups written by John Hughes-Wilson and published by Constable. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a professional military-intelligence officer's and a controversial insider's view of some of the greatest intelligence blunders of recent history. It includes the serious developments in government misuse of intelligence in the recent war with Iraq. Colonel John Hughes-Wilson analyses not just the events that conspire to cause disaster, but why crucial intelligence is so often ignored, misunderstood or spun by politicians and seasoned generals alike. This book analyses: how Hitler's intelligence staff misled him in a bid to outfox their Nazi Party rivals; the bureaucratic bungling behind Pearl Harbor; how in-fighting within American intelligence ensured they were taken off guard by the Viet Cong's 1968 Tet Offensive; how over confidence, political interference and deception facilitated Egypt and Syria's 1973 surprise attack on Israel; why a handful of marines and a London taxicab were all Britain had to defend the Falklands; the mistaken intelligence that allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power until the second Iraq War of 2003; the truth behind the US failure to run a terrorist warning system before the 9/11 WTC bombing; and how governments are increasingly pressurising intelligence agencies to 'spin' the party-political line.
Download or read book Military Intelligence Blunders and Coverups written by Colonel John Hughes-Wilson and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2004-04-15 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The events of 9/11 and the war on terrorism and the daily crises in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—behind them lie some of the most shocking failures and misuse of military intelligence in history. In this updated edition of Colonel Hughes-Wilson's controversial book, the long-serving professional military intelligence officer explores and exposes the often disastrous misunderstanding and mishandling of crucial intelligence by politicians and seasoned generals in recent times. Modern military history records major catastrophes in the air, at sea, and on the battlefield that originate in lapses of military judgment—from the crushing defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo to Stalin's Operation Barbarossa to Yom Kippur. The reason frequently lies in the failure of the decision makers in power to understand and appreciate fully intelligence information. So it was that American bureaucratic bungling and interservice rivalries collaborated with the Japanese in their devastating attack on Pearl Harbor—despite the fact that the U.S. was monitoring Japan's top-secret radio traffic. So, too, the Viet Cong's Tet Offensive of 1968 took the world's most technologically advanced army completely by surprise. This book discloses the lapses, errors, miscalculations, and underestimations of military intelligence that have shaped our wars and defined our times.
Download or read book Senseless Secrets written by Michael Lee Lanning and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the War for Independence to the War on Terror, American military intelligence has often failed, costing needless casualties and squandering money and materiel as well as prestige – and all too often it has failed to learn from its mistakes. Senseless Secrets covers more than 200 years of intelligence breakdowns in every American war, including not only how intelligence has been wrong, but also how good intel has failed to make it to battlefield commanders, how spies and traitors have infiltrated the military intelligence community, and more. Here are stories of Benedict Arnold’s turn in the Revolution, George McClellan’s reliance on the Pinkertons’ inflated estimates of enemy strengths in the Civil War, Custer’s flawed intelligence prior to the Little Bighorn, the controversy over Pearl Harbor, the surprise German attack that started the Battle of the Bulge, the failure to convey useful intelligence to small-unit commanders in Vietnam, overestimates of Iraqi strength during Operation Desert Storm, the bad intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s supposed nuclear arsenal in 2002-03, and the chaos surrounding the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Senseless Secrets is a military history of the United States through its intelligence operations. It should be required reading inside the U.S. military and beyond.
Download or read book Breakdown written by Bill Gertz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-28 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author Bill Gertz uses his unparalleled access to America's intelligence system to show how this system completely broke down in the years, months, and days leading up to the deadly terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Download or read book The Secret State A History of Intelligence and Espionage written by John Hughes-Wilson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-01-10 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A ground-breaking history of intelligence—from its classical origins to the onset of the surveillance state in the digital age—that lifts the veil of secrecy from this clandestine world. Comprehensive and authoritative, The Secret State skillfully examines the potential pitfalls of the traditional intelligence cycle; the dangerous uncertainties of spies and human intelligence; how the Cold War became an electronic intelligence war; the technical revolution that began with the use of reconnaissance photography in World War I and during the Cuban Missile Crisis; the legacy of Stalin's deliberate ignoring of vital intelligence; how signals intelligence gave America one of its greatest victories; how Wikileaks really happened; and whether 9/11 could have been avoided if America's post-Cold War intelligence agencies had adapted to the new world of international terrorism. Authoritative and analytical, Hughes-Wilson searches for hard answers and scrutinizes why crucial intelligence is so often ignored, misunderstood, or spun by politicians and seasoned generals alike. From yesterday's spies to tomorrow's cyber world, The Secret State is a fascinating and thought-provoking history of this ever-changing and ever-important subject.
Download or read book On Intelligence written by John Hughes-Wilson and published by Constable. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ancient Greek and Roman origins of human intelligence to its use in the Catholic church to Francis Walsingham's Elizabethan secret service to the birth of the surveillance state in today's digital hi-tech age, Colonel John Hughes-Wilson, professional military-intelligence officer and author of the bestselling Military Intelligence Blunders and Cover-Ups, gives an extraordinarily broad and wide-reaching perspective on intelligence, providing an up-to-date analysis of the importance of intelligence historically and in the recent past. Drawing upon a variety of sources, ranging from first-hand accounts to his own personal experience, Hughes-Wilson covers everything from undercover agent handling to photographic reconnaissance to today's much misunderstood cyber welfare. This book stands apart from the rest in that it tells the real inside story from a controversial insider's point of view, lifting the veil on what really happened behind the scenes in the intelligence world during some of the most well-known military events that have shaped our lives. On Intelligence is looking for hard answers - there are some tough lessons to be learned from both intelligence failures and successes - why is crucial intelligence so often ignored, misunderstood or spun by politicians and seasoned generals alike? One of the leading military experts of our time, Colonel John Hughes-Wilson skilfully weaves together an accessible and readable narrative on intelligence, accompanied by his unrivalled professional insight.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Intelligence Failures written by Glenmore S. Trenear-Harvey and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Intelligence failure can be defined where there was intelligence available about a particular event, but either it was not collected or was mishandled later in the assessment cycle, as opposed to the failure of an intelligence operation. The Historical Dictionary of Intelligence Failures covers the history of intelligence failures through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 100 cross-referenced dictionary entries on the Ardennes Offensive, the Six Day War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Prague Spring, the Arab Spring, 9/11. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the intelligence industry.
Download or read book Military Blunders written by Saul David and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Retelling the most spectacular cock-ups in military history, this graphic account has a great deal to say about the psychology of military incompetence and the reasons even the most well-oiled military machines inflict disaster upon themselves. Beginning in AD9 with the massacre of Varus and his legions in the Black Forest all the way up to present day conflict in Afghanistan it analyses why things go wrong on the battlefield and who is to blame.
Download or read book Intelligence Failures and Decent Intervals written by Esquire P. G. Kivett and published by Intelligence Failures. This book was released on 2006 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligence Failures and Decent Intervals provides a look at the truth behind military and diplomatic blunders to which "intelligence failure labels" have been attached that are intended to hide leadership failures responsible for the blunders. From the 1950 Chinese Communist intervention in the Korean War, to the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the so-called surprise attack that began the 1973 Yom Kippur War in the Middle East, the book exposes instance after instance in which this egregious practice has occurred. The detriment thus reaped by the practice inures to the erosion of the Intelligence Community's effectiveness and ultimately that of our national security. The book also offers support in the official position of the U.S. Army's Center of Military History for the author's suspicion that the Vietnam War was "lost" as a result of widespread leadership failures related to the discipline of Signals Intelligence.
Download or read book Soldier Spies written by Samuel M. Katz and published by Presidio Press. This book was released on 1994-05-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Captains Without Eyes written by Lyman B Kirkpatrick Jr and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a former Inspector General and Executive Director of the CIA. It describes the role of the failure in gathering and analyzing intelligence behind Barbarossa (German attack on Russia), Pearl Harbor, the 1942 Allied landing at Dieppe, France, the "Market Garden" assault on Arnhem ("A Bridge Too Far"), and the Battle of the Bulge.
Download or read book Why Secret Intelligence Fails written by Michael A. Turner and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-07 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Turner argues that the root causes of failures in American intelligence can be found in the way it is organized and in the intelligence process itself. Intelligence that has gone awry affects national decision making and, ultimately, American national security. Intelligence officials are reluctant to talk about intelligence successes, claiming "the secret of our success is the secret of our success." But these officials also shy away from talking about failures, largely because doing so would expose the failings of American intelligence and have an impact on policy consumers who may become more reluctant to accept and act on the intelligence they receive. Rather than focusing on case studies, the book takes a holistic approach, beginning with structural issues and all dysfunctions that emanate from them. Turner explores each step of the intelligence cycle--priority setting, intelligence collection, analysis, production, and dissemination--to identify the "inflection points" within each stage that contribute to intelligence failures. Finally, he examines a variety of plans that, if implemented, would reduce the likelihood of intelligence failures. While examining the causes of intelligence failures, Turner also explores intelligence as a critical governmental activity, making the book an excellent primer on secret intelligence. Turner writes in jargon-free prose for the informed reader interested in foreign policy and national security policy matters and brings enough depth to his subject that even experts will find this a must-read.
Download or read book Blinders Blunders and Wars written by David C. Gompert and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2014-11-26 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of wars caused by misjudgments, from Napoleon’s invasion of Russia to America’s invasion of Iraq, reveals that leaders relied on cognitive models that were seriously at odds with objective reality. Blinders, Blunders, and Wars analyzes eight historical examples of strategic blunders regarding war and peace and four examples of decisions that turned out well, and then applies those lessons to the current Sino-American case.
Download or read book America s Strategic Blunders written by Willard C. Matthias and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This survey of more than fifty years of national security policy juxtaposes declassified U. S. national intelligence estimates with recently released Soviet documents disclosing the views of Soviet leaders and their Communist allies on the same events. Matthias shows that U. S. intelligence estimates were usually correct but that our political and military leaders generally ignored them&—with sometimes disastrous results. The book begins with a look back at the role of U. S. intelligence during World War II, from Pearl Harbor through the plot against Hitler and the D-day invasion to the &"unconditional surrender&" of Japan, and reveals how better use of the intelligence available could have saved many lives and shortened the war. The following chapters dealing with the Cold War disclose what information and advice U. S. intelligence analysts passed on to policy makers, and also what sometimes bitter policy debates occurred within the Communist camp, concerning Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, the turmoil in Eastern Europe, the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars in the Middle East, and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. In many ways, this is a story of missed opportunities the U. S. government had to conduct a more responsible foreign policy that could have avoided large losses of life and massive expenditures on arms buildups. While not exonerating the CIA for its own mistakes, Matthias casts new light on the contributions that objective intelligence analysis did make during the Cold War and speculates on what might have happened if that analysis and advice had been heeded.
Download or read book Break in the Chain Intelligence Ignored written by W. R. Baker and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2021-07-31 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting combination of war memoir and analysis providing “valuable insights” into the role of military intelligence in Vietnam (International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence). For the first two weeks of the Easter Offensive of 1972, the 571st Military Intelligence Detachment provided the only pertinent collateral intelligence available to American forces. Twice daily, the Detachment provided intelligence to the USS Buchanan (DDG-14), US Navy SEALS, and Special Forces units, including tactical and strategic forecasts of enemy movements, information that was otherwise unavailable to U.S. units and advisors in-country. Bob Baker was an intelligence analyst who was there. In the weeks before the offensive, vital agent reports and verbal warnings by the 571st MI Detachment had been ignored by all the major commands; they were only heeded, and then only very reluctantly, once the offensive began. This refusal to listen to the intelligence explains why no Army or USMC organizations were on-call to recover prisoners discovered or U.S. personnel downed behind enemy lines, as in the BAT-21 incident, as the last two Combat Recon Platoons in Vietnam had been disbanded six weeks before the offensive began. The lessons and experiences of Operation Lam Son 719 in the previous year were ignored, especially with regard to the NVA’s tactical use of tanks and artillery. In his memoir, Baker, the only trained military intelligence analyst with the 571st MI Detachment in 1972, reveals these and other heroics and blunders during a key moment in the Vietnam War.
Download or read book Great Military Blunders written by Geoffrey Regan and published by Madcap. This book was released on 2017-02 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From ancient times to the Bay of Pigs and the Falklands War, military history has been marked as much by misjudgements and incompetence as by gallantry and glory. In this fascinating and entertaining collection, author Geoffrey Regan recounts some of the staggering stories of military blunder. His anecdotes encompass every aspect of warfare from the insanity of commanders to the provision of inadequate supplies."--Back cover.
