Crisply written, knowledgeable, and cant-free, [Posner's] Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform combines common sense and the more uncommon insights of 'organizational theory' to describe the way intelligence works—and sometimes doesn't.
- James Murphy, Times Literary Supplement
Posner's continued study of reforms in our Intelligence structure since 9/11 is illuminating and constructive. Uncertain Shield makes a major contribution to the debate over how best to insure America's security.
- Henry Kissinger,
If anyone wants to understand why the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 is largely misguided and what steps might actually improve the Intelligence Community’s performance, Judge Posner’s Uncertain Shield is required reading. A first-rate analysis of an arcane and difficult subject.
- William E. Odom, Lieutenant General, USA, Retired, and former Director of the National Security Agency,
Relentlessly lucid and insightful, Uncertain Shield is easily the best contemporary analysis of the U.S. Intelligence community available. Judge Posner's book should be read by all who are concerned with state of America's intelligence community, and his advice should be heeded by all who are responsible for it.
- Richard A. Falkenrath, The Brookings Institution, and former White House Deputy Homeland Security Advisor,
There he goes again: Irrepressible Judge Richard Posner’s lambasting of the Bush administration’s intelligence reorganization is getting a lot of attention, including at the CIA, which invited the chief of the 7th Circuit to lead a seminar on his latest book, Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform.
- Jeff Stein, National Security Editor, CQ Staff,
As Judge Posner demonstrates - in an arresting book that is effective because the analyst is an authoritative but agenda-free outsider whose writing style is crystal-clear and whose principal tool is sober analysis - this caution-to-the-wind approach to something as imperative to our security as competent intelligence has potentially left us even more vulnerable to attack than we were before September 11.
- Andrew C. McCarthy, bestselling author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad and The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the West Sabotage America, The New York Sun