Intelligence and Surprise Attack: Failure and Success from Pearl Harbor to 9/11 and Beyond

A defining book in understanding intelligence failure. It deserves to be a text studied heavily by students of intelligence, practitioners and policymakers.

A seminal work of original scholarship and should be a part of every community and academic library Security Studies & Intelligence collection.

Dahl’s aforementioned ‘Theory of Preventive Action’, coupled with an elimination of organizational barriers . . . would contribute significantly in reducing future intelligence failures.

Erik Dahl has written a valuable corrective to much of what is mistaken and misguided in previous commentary and analysis on this subject. His book deftly applies the historical record of relevant cases to the question concerning why the targets of surprise attacks are surprised. In doing so, he convincingly demonstrates that some of the major tenets of the conventional wisdom are wrong. . . . This book is an important, cogent, and insightful contribution to the literature on surprise attack.

It encourages the comparison of cases of intelligence failure and success and thus fills an important gap in existing literature on intelligence failures and paves way for future research. Furthermore, it provides a valuable dataset on unsuccessful terrorist attacks against Americans and American targets for future research . . . . It is an important book and in time will find its place among other classic and prominent works on the phenomenon of surprise attacks.

Too many assume failure is inevitable, but [the author] shows that it isn’t and explains how to make intelligence far more reliable to avoid future surprise attacks.

Where this book breaks new ground is in the examination of warning of terrorist attack, an area where there is comparatively (and surprisingly) little in the way of scholarly research and publication . . . . Professor Dahl has produced a well-written and thought provoking book that provides well-researched analysis of what makes warning intelligence work. It is a worthy addition to the scholarly literature on indications and warning and ‘Intelligence failure.’

Erik J. Dahl is an assistant professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is also a faculty member of the Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS) at the Naval Postgraduate School. Previously, he was a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, an instructor of joint military operations at the Naval War College, and served as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy.