Current Events Books

The author was in the unique position to know fully about both positions during key moments in Korea's modern history. The result is a read that is sometimes funny, often insightful, and always interesting.

Perhaps what is best about this book is that while it helps to have a basic understanding of Korea's recent history in advance, it is by no means required. Young's straightforward style makes otherwise complicated issues seem as simple as night and day. It also provides a wealth of information in under 200 pages without overwhelming the reader.

I have spent the better part of my adult life in Korea or working with Koreans. I was surprised and delighted by the things I learned by Eye on Korea. It filled many gaps in my understanding of how things went down in the late 70's and 80's. It was full of names, places and events that I recognized, but had never before had a coherent picture of how they all related. Eye on Korea provides that coherence.

If I am forced to complain about anything, it would be the brevity. I would have enjoyed a couple hundred more pages. It's evident from what Col. Young tells us--and from what he doesn't tell us--that he knows enough to fill volume upon volume.

This is a MUST BUY for anyone interested in Modern Korea or Korean-US relations.

After four years of training in Korean language and culture, Young was a first hand witness and participant as American diplomats convinced South Korean President Park Chung-hee not to develop his own nuclear weapons. The lessons from this experience might well be of use today in dealing with North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

From the perspective of a military attache,Young provides new insights into the intrigue and behind-the-scenes efforts to derail President Jimmy Carter's troop withdrawal policies. His on-the-scene account of the military coup of 1979, and subsequent events, is extraordinarily authoritative and comprehensive, and provides new information for historians. He provides personal observations on the imposition of martial law and the Kwangju incident that followed, when Korean military forces ran amok during protests in the city and killed and wounded hundreds of civilians. For the first time, he details how the United States was caught flat-footed, and how policy makers at the time failed to respond, thus sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism in the years to come.

Additionally, Young's insider account of dealing with the senior leadership in North Korea in both diplomatic negotiations and business settings makes a major contribution to understanding the internal dynamics within this secretive state.

"Eye on Korea" is a great mixture of contemporary military and diplomatic history. It offers stories that are entertaining, provocative, and often humorous. Those interested in the region, the issues, and modern Korea will value this book.

But most importantly (dangers of) disguising of the old Right as New Right. The most likable thing in this book is that it is based on well researched works and intellectually it is very consummable material ! . Althought this book does not contain any Rhetoric whatsoever, yet It will occur to the reader that the Right Wing Extremism is undiminishing threat (just like Virus strain that changes with environments) = As the old right wants to be perceived as New Right.

The Book is (to me) a reference of the Dangers of the Right Wing's Dogmatic, Anti-Democratic Ideology -- It doesn't take long to realize and accept that The Right Wing Extremist are The Domestic Enemy #1 that USA may have.

Some the chapters go to such details to quite eloborate that the core and the base of many right wing groups in USA is very much in contradiction to the traditions, principles of liberty and freedom that are the very basis of succes of this GREAT Nation.

Read it and read into the lines --- !

But most importantly (dangers of) disguising of the old Right as New Right. The most likable thing in this book is that it is based on well researched works and intellectually it is very consummable material ! . Althought this book does not contain any Rhetoric whatsoever, yet It will occur to the reader that the Right Wing Extremism is undiminishing threat (just like Virus strain that changes with environments) = As the old right wants to be perceived as New Right.

The Book is (to me) a reference of the Dangers of the Right Wing's Dogmatic, Anti-Democratic Ideology -- It doesn't take long to realize and accept that The Right Wing Extremist are The Domestic Enemy #1 that USA may have.

Some the chapters go to such details to quite eloborate that the core and the base of many right wing groups in USA is very much in contradiction to the traditions, principles of liberty and freedom that are the very basis of succes of this GREAT Nation.

Read it and read into the lines --- !

Prof. Gerhardt includes excellent signposts for further research into the innumerable Constitutional questions raised. The work is a well-constructed combination of law text and book for the general reader with a scholarly turn of mind. Each section is prefaced by a brief statement of its objective of the sort found at the start of scholarly papers. The annotations and bibliography arewell done.

This interview with Bolivian participant Rodolfo Saldaña reveals the opposite. His captivating description of how fertile the ground was in Bolivia and throughout South America for revolution includes the mass support and financial aid given to the guerrillas by tin miners, peasants, and students. He explains how the U.S. backed the military junta, and the real reasons for the defeat.

There are two very important themes running through this book, and they earn the author a solid four stars and a "must read" recommendation. First, the author is correct and compellinging clear when he points out that even the most senior intelligence professionals, including DCIs, simply do not understand the full range of intelligence organizations, capabilities, and problems that exist--just about everyone has spent their entire career in a small niche with its own culture. Second, the author is unique for focusing on an area that is both vital and ignored today: that of creating joint and combined intelligence concepts and doctrine to ensure that minimal common understandings as well as training competency levels are reached across varied jurisdictions; and to enable competent community resource management, also non-existent today.

The author is positively instructive in this book, providing both trenchant indictments (for instance, of the National Reconnaisance Office for being oriented toward big budgets and inputs rather than missions and outputs), and many common sense observations that all need to be factored into whatever the Senate finally decides to do about intelligence reform.

Among the many important points that he makes, I especially agree with his pointing out the need to fully integrate the management of inputs and outputs within each of the major collection disciplines--as he notes, disconnecting the building of satellites, or aerial imagery vehicles, or unmanned aerial drones, from the actual needs of the end-user and the actual responsibility to produce imagery intelligence, leads to precisely what the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Commission Report of December 1999 noted as the major shortfall in national intelligence--close to a trillion spent on secret satellite collection, and nothing spent on tasking, processing, exploitation, and dissemination (TPED). The author specifically identifies $6 billion in savings being achievable from the NRO budget over five years--savings that could be applied to enhancing analysis, creating competent clandestine collection capabilities, establishing global open source collection activities in each of the theaters, and creating a new national counterintelligence and homeland security intelligence program.

In passing, on page 146 the author "blows the whistle" on the deception imposed on the public by the CIA's clandestine service, which was actually largely incapable in Afghanistan in 2001, and was saved secretly by Russian sources & methods. My own sources tell me that there are some very ugly stories yet to be made public, and the author--whose access and credibility cannot be questioned--is helpful in sharing what he knows on this--America needs a competent clandestine service, not one that pretends that clerks mixed with cowboys, all working from official installations, are anything other than a joke.

The author demonstrates a very deep understanding of the shortfalls of the intelligence bureaucracy, the intelligence culture, intelligence leadership, and the policymakers that fail to direct or exploit intelligence on behalf of the Nation.

There are a few weaknesses in this book, costing the author one star, and they are mentioned to correct the record, as it were--in no way do these weaknesses reduce the value of the book or the importance of the author's views when we finally get around to fixing U.S. intelligence.

First, he is limited in his understanding of the importance of Global Coverage of lower tier issues that can be addessed by open source intelligence (OSINT), including commercial imagery and Russian military combat charts; and he is equally limited in his understanding of both OSINT, and the urgency of finding new means of supporting multilateral peacekeeping operations that mix both government militaries and government law enforcement missions with non-governmental and other private sector actors.

Second, he continues to have a modest obsession with technical solutions, and neglects to properly address the shortfalls in inter-agency information sharing and processing that could be partially resolved by enhancing the National Security Agency's considerable computational power to that it can become an all-source processing manager--at the same time, the author seriously over-states the availability of both bandwidth and tactical processing, while under-stating the enormous flood of unclassified information, including geospatial information, that must be processed if commanders are to be able to understand their combat environments in near real time.

Lastly, the author comes close to spasms of fury when referring to the Central Intelligence Agency, and to a lesser extent, to the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of State. His anger and disdain with regard to these organizations are recurring He is clear in his view that the "all source analyst" cannot and should not be centralized, that analysts must work for the end-users, and that both CIA and DIA should be abolished. While I disagree with this viewpoint, it is a mature informed viewpoint that CIA and DIA managers must address--they ignore General Odom's concerns at their peril.

The book is based on the 1997 study by the National Institute for Public Policy that was chaired by the author and included such other thoughtful executives as LtGen James Clapper, today the head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. The author has made his own statement in this book, and it is perhaps the most practical and the most focused on the public statements on the need for intelligence reform. This book has been added to the OSS.NET listing of the top books on intelligence reform.

General Odom writes from the perspective of an insider, a very smart insider, but manages to keep a degree of detachment and objectivity in the process. His thoughtful suggestions regarding how we might go about reforming and improving our intelligence capabilities to cope with 21st century threats should be read carefully by anyone with an interest in these issues.

Even if one disagrees with some of the reforms he proposes, this book provides a solid starting point for understanding the complexities of intelligence collection and analysis in the modern world, as well as the problems we face by relying on an intelligence community created fifty years ago to deal with a threat (the Soviet Union) that is now long-gone from the scene.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.