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1) a generalintroduction
to intelligenceworkwhich,say,
thedirectorof almostany sectionof CentralIntelligencemight
give a new recruitto read on his firstday at the office;2) a
memorandumfroman Old Hand at intelligenceworkwho has
thoughtit all over-like thebirdin Peterand theWolf,froma
safe distance-and has a thingor two to tell those of his colleagueswho have stayedon in Washington;and 3) an attempt
by that same Old Hand to make sense-inter alia forhimself
-out of a greatlyexpandedUnitedStates government
activity
in which,as all who knowit can testify,
sense does not leap to
the eye. Because the book is in part each of thesethreethings,
as any one of them.But it is eviit is not perfectly
satisfactory
dentlynot offeredas a learnedtreatiseon any or all of them:
indeed,the gap in the existingliteraturein the fieldis so great
that one can hardly be surprisedat Mr. Kent's failure to
definehis task withprecision.The greatmeritof his book is
materialwhichwill enable
thatit providesa bodyofdescriptive
seriouspublicdiscussionto beginon therelationof intelligence
to policyin a democraticsystem.Since it is Americanpolicyon
whichthe futureof the freeworld seems to depend,it is high
time forthe public debate to commence.
Moreover,Mr. Kent's book is one fromwhichanyoneinterestedin the relation,past,present,and future,betweenUnited
Statesforeignpolicyand social research,can learnmuch-now
fromits manifestcontent;now,perhapsmoreoftenfromwhat
it takesforgranted,whatit says betweenthe lines,and whatit
mighthave said but did not.Therefore,
let us take a look at the
bookin each ofitsthreecapacities.
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italicsare mine.
If you were directorof an intelligenceagency in France, and wished to know "what
goes on" in the United States, which would you do first:take out an airmail subscription
3
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work" (p. 147).5 But the warningis buriedin a technicaldiscussion in the middle of the book, and has no impact upon
itsgeneralargument.
4. Mr. Kent has otherminorquarrelswith presentintelligencepolicy: he would like a civiliandirectorforCentral Intelligence(p. 100) ; he feelsthat CIA's powersof investigation
vis-a-vis departmental
intelligenceare inadequate (p. 101); he
believesthatWashingtonwould be well-advisedto rethinkthe
relationbetweenresearchpeople in the homeofficeon the one
hand, and "fieldstaff,"includinghere overtas well as covert
collection,on theother(p. 165) ; and so on.
The presentwriterbelievesthat if all of Mr. Kent's reproofs
wereactedupon,and all his proposalsadopted,theresultwould
in UnitedStatesintelligence
be an improvement
operations.But
this improvement
would, like the infantmentionedin Marx's
famousfootnote,
be verysmall.
III
The mostinstructive
passagesin StrategicIntelligenceare,in
the presentwriter'sopinion,those in whichMr. Kent reveals
what we may call the generaltheoryof the intelligencefunctionto whichhisthinkinghas broughthim-plus thosein which
he records,but on his theorydoes not identifyas such, recognizably pathologicalaspects of existingintelligencearrangements.They are instructive
because Mr. Kent's state of mind
on mostof the problemsto whichsuch a theorymust address
itselfreflects
to a remarkabledegreethatof official
Washington
as the presentwritercame to knowit in the courseof his own
tourof dutyas an intelligence
official.And, so faras he knows,
this is the firsttime that that state of mind has, so to speak,
venturedbeyondthesteelcurtainon 26thStreetto subjectitself
to criticism.
When approachedfromthispointofview,Strategic
Intelligencebecomes a book that everysocial scientistshould
lay in his heart and ponder.Let us notice some of the charofthisstateofmind:
acteristics
5 And he says elsewherethat if we are lookingfor "the encouragingelementin departmentalintelligence,"i.e., the departmentsthat have "realized the importanceof the task,"
shown "a decent respectfor full and accurate knowledge,"and "employedthe rightkind
of professionalpeople," it is to Labor, Commerce,and Agriculture(thus, one infers,not
to State and Defense) that we mustgo (p. 115).
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