Haft of the Spear: Library

If you ever wondered why I have a fixation on think tanks, why I can’t wait to sit in an office filled with books, with my corduroy jacket with the suede elbow patches and calabash pipe*, reading, researching and writing insightful papers that will change the world, its largely because despite all the time I worked as an analyst, ostensibly at a level where I should have had the time to invest in deep research and produce thoughtful analysis, there was never any time to do any such thing.

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• Homeland Security: A Compendium of Public and Private Organizations' Policy Recommendations (PDF)
• Concepts for Enhancing Critical Infrastructure Protection (PDF)

• Understanding the Insider Threat (PDF)
• Intelligence and Security Legislation for Security Sector Reform (PDF)

• Strategic Information Warfare
• Cyber Security in an Era of Technological Change (PDF)
• The Cyber Posture of teh National Information Infrastructure (PDF)
• Network Technologies for Network Terrorists (PDF)
• Concepts for Enhancing Critical Infrastructure Protection (PDF)

• Victims of Terrorism (PDF)
• Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq (PDF)
• Countering the New Terrorism
• Three Years After: Next Steps in the War on Terror (PDF)
• The Radicalization of Diasporas and Terrorism (PDF)
• Trends in Outside Support for Insurgent Movements (PDF)
• The Threat of Nuclear Terrorism (PDF)
• Domestic Terrorism (PDF)
• The Logic of Suicide Terrorism
• Combating Terrorism: In Search of a National Strategy (PDF)
• The Urbanization of Insurgency (PDF)
• Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Insurgency (PDF)
• The Use of the Internet by Islamic Extremists (PDF)
• Combating al-Qaeda and the Militant Islamic Threat (PDF)
• Islam and the West: Searching for Common Ground (PDF)
• Recent Trends and Future Prospects of Iranian-Sponsored International Terrorism (PDF)
• Does our Counter Terrorism Strategy Match the Threat? (PDF)
• Beyond al-Qaeda (PDF)
• Exploring Terrorist Targeting Preferences (PDF)
• Network Technologies for Network Terrorists (PDF)
• Ungoverned Territories: Understanding and Reducing Terrorism Risks (PDF)

I have a degree in computer science but you don’t want me writing code for your mission-critical app. What attracted me to the field (besides the prospect of a fat paycheck upon graduation) was the lack of ambiguity; your code works or it does not, 1 or 0, there is no “sort of.” I don’t deal with ambiguity all that well. When offered the chance to know the gender of each of my children while they were in the womb my answer was definitive and affirmative. My wife? Not so much. Consequently, I got surprised 66% of the time.

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From the guy who led the effort to investigate her espionage activities comes True Believer, the story of DIA analyst Ana Montes. I never had the pleasure of dealing with the "Queen of Cuba" but had two office-mates who did, one who lent a strong hand it making all this happen. Beats reading about old, dead Russians.

Comprehensive and well-researched, Information Warfare & Security is Dr. Dorothy Denning's most popular contribution to the field (unless you are big into the publications of the defense-academic crowd that is). If you only buy one book in this genre make sure it is this one.

From Cynthia Grabo - godmother of warning - comes Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning. Basically the declassified text of the definitive guide to strategic warning that has been taught to generations of watch standers. Highly useful today as both a study in how it should be done, and a resource for dealing with the issues that impede our ability to survive in an age of perpetual warning.

Judge Richard Posner's Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform is quite possibly one of the most readable, well-informed, and clear-headed attempts to address the issues surrounding intelligence reform.

Best Truth: Intelligence in the Information Age has got to be one of my favorite books on intelligence and reform. Written before it was all the rage, it identified problems with process, technology and other factors that would be highlighted by the after action reports of future intelligence failures.

A primer on 'roids, IC maven Mark Lowenthal's Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy has been used as a text for both beginning and advanced instruction in the community. In many ways it is a blueprint for how the nature of work community-wide shifted over the past few years - reflecting a CIA-esque approach - a shift that the author had just a skosh of a role in (insert wry look here). An excellent companion to Silent Warfare.

An excellent primer, Silent Warfare: Understanding the World of Intelligencenis used as a textbook by a number of intelligence instructors. A good place to start if you are new to the field or an aspiring practitioner.

For everyone who lacks a sense of history about when network technology and espionage collided, there is Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg : An informative and entertaining narrative about how a billing error revealed a KGB computer network exploitation operation.

Written by a former (superior) colleague of mine who is now helping lead the charge into cyberspace dominance, Strategic Warfare in Cyberspace is both a dissertation and a projection of a potential future where dominance in the virtual world may come to mean more than dominance in meat-space ever will. If you know the history of "air power" you can skip through most of the first third and get right to work on the balance.