John A. Gentry and Joseph S. Gordon update our understanding of strategic warning intelligence analysis for the twenty-first century. Strategic warning—the process of long-range analysis to alert senior leaders to trending threats and opportunities that require action—is a critical intelligence function. It also is frequently misunderstood and underappreciated. Gentry and Gordon draw on both their practitioner and academic backgrounds to present a history of the strategic warning function in the US intelligence community. In doing so, they outline the capabilities of analytic methods, explain why strategic warning analysis is so hard, and discuss the special challenges strategic warning encounters from senior decision-makers. They also compare how strategic warning functions in other countries, evaluate why the United States has in recent years emphasized current intelligence instead of strategic warning, and recommend warning-related structural and procedural improvements in the US intelligence community. The authors examine historical case studies, including postmortems of warning failures, to provide examples of the analytic points they make. Strategic Warning Intelligence will interest scholars and practitioners and will be an ideal teaching text for intermediate and advanced students.

This new and final edition is a follow-up to the author’s first book, Anticipating Surprise (University Press of America, 2002) and the Handbook of Warning Intelligence (Scarecrow Press, 2010). The first book was an abridged version of Grabo’s 1972 manuscript, of which only 200 pages were allowed to be published by the government. The second book was published after it was agreed that the last 10 chapters would remain classified. These final 10 chapters have recently been released by the government and complete the manuscript as it was originally intended to be published by the author in 1972. The Handbook of Warning Intelligence was written during the cold war and was classified for 40 years. Originally written as a manual for training intelligence analysts, it explains the fundamentals of intelligence analysis and forecasting, discusses military analysis, as well as the difficulties in understanding political, civil, and economic analysis and assessing what it means for analysts to have "warning judgment." Much of what Grabo wrote in her book seems to appear in many of the numerous commission reports that emerged after the 9/11 attacks. However, her book was written in response to the "surprise attack" of the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. According to the author, that event was no surprise. And while analysts have to take some of the blame for their failure to strenuously present their case that the threat was real and imminent, what occurred was a failure by policymakers to listen to the warning intelligence reports that were written at the time. In these last chapters, Grabo discusses scenarios where the United States will need to take action, especially describing Soviet indicators of such action. She also talks on how to influence policymakers to take, or not take, action based on intelligence. After the Soviet Union fell, the government was hesitant to release this information—especially considering what's going on with Putin today.

Machine generated contents note: -- Contents -- Introduction -- Part One: The Theoretical Framework -- Chapter I. Surprise Attack: A Framework for Discussion -- Chapter II. Examining the Learning Process -- Part Two: The Empirical Evidence -- The First Dyad: Barbarossa and the Battle for Moscow -- Case Study I: The Failure -- Case Study II: Success: The Battle for Moscow -- The Second Dyad: The USA in the Korean War -- Case study I: Failing to Forecast the War -- Case Study II: Failure II: The Chinese Intervention of Fall 1950 -- The Third Dyad: Intelligence Failure and Success in the War of Yom Kippur -- Case Study I: The Failure -- Case Study II: The Success -- Chapter VI. Conclusions

Part of a three part collection in honour of the teachings of Michael I. Handel, one of the foremost strategists of the late 20th century, this collection explores the paradoxes of intelligence analysis, surprise and deception from both historical and theoretical perspectives.

Handbook of Warning Intelligence: Assessing the Threat to National Security was written during the Cold War and classified for 40 years, this manual is now available to scholars and practitioners interested in both history and intelligence. Cynthia Grabo, author of the abridged version, Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning, goes into detail on the fundamentals of intelligence analysis and forecasting. The book discusses the problems of military analysis, problems of understanding specific problems of political, civil and economic analysis and assessing what it means for analysts to have "warning judgment."