Military Intelligence Blunders

In this controversial, eye-opening book, a long-serving professional military intelligence officer examines and analyzes the mistakes in military judgment that have resulted in some of the major catastrophes in the air, at sea, and on the battlefield since the crushing defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815.Colonel John Hughes-Wilson not only explores how events have conspired to cause disasters in modern military history but also demonstrates why — and the reason more often than not lies in the failure of politicians and seasoned generals alike to understand and appreciate fully the value of crucial intelligence information. Hughes-Wilson shows how, for one instance, American bureaucratic bungling and inter-service rivalries collaborated with the Japanese in their devastating attack on Pearl Harbor — despite the fact that the US was monitoring Japan's top-secret radio traffic — and he reveals why, for another, the Viet Cong's Tet Offensive of 1968 took the world's most technologically advanced army completely by surprise. In Hitler's Berlin as in Saddam Hussein's Baghdad, this book discloses the lapses, errors, miscalculations, and under-estimations of military intelligence that have shaped our wars and defined our times.