From a systematic point of view, all intelligence work can be studied on three levels: Acquisition, analysis, and acceptance. The author focuses on the third of these levels, studying the attitudes and behavioural patterns developed by leaders during their political careers, their willingness to consider information and ideas contrary to their own, their ability to admit mistakes and change course in the implementation of a failing policy and their capacity to cooperate.
Michael Handel sets the whole work up with an introductory chapter which provides some interesting conceptual tools and does an excellent job of weaving common threads and drawing major points from the wideranging discussion in the later papers. John Pay, Royal Naval College Greenwich
