Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning

by Cynthia M. Grabo

Assigned to the National Indications Center, Cynthia Grabo served as a senior researcher and writer for the U.S. Watch Committee throughout its existence (1950 to 1975), and in its successor, the Strategic Warning Staff. During this time she saw the need to capture the institutional memory associated with strategic warning. With three decades of experience in the Intelligence Community, she saw intelligence and warning failures in Korea, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Cuba. In the summer of 1972, the DIA published her "Handbook of Warning Intelligence" as a classified document, followed by two additional classified volumes, one in the fall of 1972 and the last in 1974. These declassified books have now been condensed from the original three volumes into this one. Ms. Grabo’s authoritative interpretation of an appropriate analytic strategy for intelligence-based warning is here presented in a commercial reprint of this classic study. (Originally published by the Joint Military Intelligence College)

186 pages, Paperback

First published August 12, 2012

Reviews

[Kate Pinkerton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and ever relevant despite its age. And interesting to see similarities with current day events and behaviors.

The writer write as I assume I do when I know too much about a topic - with extremely long and complex compound sentences, all portraying too many concepts for a new reader to pick up on the first one or two reads through the sentence. Thus, it took a while to read despite its short length.