On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World

This is the second edition of the book, identical in all respects to the first but with the addition of a single page detailing the six intelligence and counterintelligence failures that allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur. This book is about the reinvention of national, defense and business intelligence within the larger context of an open world--a world where "Evil Empires" and the Berlin Wall have fallen--but also a world where transportation, power, financial, and communications infrastructures are so open as to dramatically increase the vulnerability of America to trans-continental epidemics, anonymous information terrorism, and nation-wide power black-outs and financial melt-downs. As the world enters the Information Century, and simultaneously confronts the fragmentation of many nation-states and the emergence of widespread ethnic, tribal and criminal gang terrorism and confrontation, no topic can be more important to federal, state, and local governments--and to international, national, and local businesses than the topic of "intelligence". Thankfully, there are many positive lessons and methods to be drawn from the U.S. Intelligence Community, and there are a wealth of open sources and services that can be drawn upon to make both government and business "smarter" about their environment, their customers, and their competitors. This book is a primer on the role of intelligence qua sources, methods, and community at the dawn of the 21st century.

Robert David Steele was born in New York in 1952. The son of a petroleum engineer, he spent most of his life in Latin America and Asia, including four years in Viet-Nam (1964-1967). Married to Kathy Lynette Steele, he is the father of Patrick James, Matthew Brian, and Sean Joseph. The family lives and votes in Virginia.

Steele, featured in The Year in Computers (2000), has been twice named to the Microtimes 100: Industry leaders and unsung heroes...who created the future, has been featured in the chapter on the "The Future of the Spy" in Alvin and Heidi Toffler's book, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century, among other publications, and was the first recipient of the "Sages of the Ages" intelligence award from SOURCES eJournal.

Steele has been a Marine Corps infantry officer serving in a variety of command & staff positions, a military intelligence officer with responsibility for the tactical exploitation of national capabilities, and the senior civilian responsible for creating and managing the USMC Intelligence Center, our Nation's newest intelligence production facility. He has also been a spy, serving three-back-to-back tours as a clandestine case officer, one of them in a combat environment. Unusually for a case officer, he has served in three of the four Directorates of the Central Intelligence Agency, with Washington-based roles in determining future intelligence collection requirements and capabilities; the application of advanced information technology to global operations; and global counterintelligence operations against a denied area country.

Steele is a graduate of Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he earned an AB in Political Science with a thesis on multinational corporations and home-host country issues pertaining to capital and technology transfers. He earned his first graduate degree, a Masters in International Politics, from Lehigh University, with a thesis on predicting revolution; and his second graduate degree, a Masters in Public Administration, from the University of Oklahoma, with a thesis on strategic and tactical information management for national security. He is a distinguished graduate of the Naval War College, and completed the Harvard Executive Seminar in Intelligence Policy.