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Want law enforcement that’s really tough on Mexicans? Try Mexico’s. Only seven years until accused there are presumed innocent, and meanwhile the cops aren’t afraid to do what’s needed to get the job done. Like lie under oath.
Roberto and Layda are students in my shop (Roberto is my PhD advisee), and I am over-the-top [...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
October 16th, 2009
Category: Arts and Cultural Policy, Crime Control, Policy Analysis, Politics and Leadership, Prisons and penal policy, Reviews
September 5th, 2009
Category: Policy briefs, Reviews
I came upon a whiteboard marker with a foam eraser on its cap in one of our seminar rooms yesterday and entered a fugue state whose themes were “Wow, this is a big improvement!” and “What took them so long?”. Unfortunately, it’s too late for the most important design choice for these common items, which [...]
January 5th, 2009
A book that purports to be a memoir by a 25-year veteran of the CIA’s clandestine service paints a picture of a bureaucracy without any focus or capability in human intelligence. This suggests intelligence reform requires a thorough refounding rather than rewiring at the top.
March 6th, 2008
Category: Reviews
On Tuesday, my home institution put on a day-long festsprach, or festpotenzpunkt, for Tom Schelling, rounding up a really impressive collection of heavy hitters in economics and related fields (three Nobel Prize winners sprinkled in) to talk about what they’ve been able to see by standing on Schelling’s shoulders. Among them was RBC’s [...]
March 3rd, 2008
Category: Reviews
They say that criticism makes you stronger. So Paul Pillar’s review of my book –Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11– in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs makes me a freakin Terminator.
Pillar, an ex-CIA guy, didn’t like much about my analysis of the CIA’s failure to adapt to terrorism [...]
