Vietnam Cauldron: Defense Intelligence in the War for Southeast Asia.

摘要

Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives is designed to provide an understanding of the Defense Intelligence Agency s (DIA s) participation in military and intelligence developments of the last half century. While history does not repeat itself, it does provide context, guideposts, and a framework for understanding the present. In some ways, the challenges confronting today s Intelligence Community personnel are similar to those faced by their cohorts from earlier generations. While they differ in their specifics, the basic questions surrounding the practice of foreign intelligence and the management of large intelligence agencies have not changed. Management challenges such as the definition of missions and roles, and analytic pathologies such as groupthink, mirror-imaging, and status-quo thinking were all problems confronted by analysts in the Cold War and in the 1990s, much as they are in today s global contingency and counterterrorism operations. Examining the ways in which personnel from an earlier period recognized, addressed, and resolved these sorts of problems or failed at all three can inform and hopefully improve current intelligence practices.