Telling It Like It Is
BOOK REVIEW: PROFESSIONAL COURAGE: My Journey in Military Intelligence Through Peace, Crisis, and War
By: Major General Jack Leide, US Army (Ret.)
Reviewed by: Bill Harlow
The Reviewer — Bill Harlow served as chief spokesman for the CIA from 1997 to 2004 and was Assistant White House Press Secretary for National Security from 1988 to 1992. A retired Navy captain, Harlow is the co-author of four New York Times bestsellers on intelligence and is the author of Circle William: A Novel.
REVIEW — There is much to learn from MGEN Jack Leide’s self-published book Professional Courage: My Journey in Military Intelligence Through Peace, Crisis, and War and one of the biggest things is that the path to success in the military and in life is often not a straight one. Leide recounts the many twists and turns during his very successful life. How successful? He was eventually inducted into the US Military Attaché Hall of Fame, the US Military Intelligence Hall of Fame, the Defense Intelligence Agency’s “Torch Bearers Hall of Fame” and the Army Foreign Area Officer Hall of Fame.
None of that was preordained. In high school he wanted to attend Georgetown but missed the application deadline. After a year at Marquette, he successfully managed a transfer to Georgetown and prospered in their ROTC program. He really wanted to serve in the infantry after graduating – but the Army offered a chance to serve in artillery – or go home after just six months. So, he left the Army and attended law school at Syracuse – and shortly after receiving his law degree convinced the Army to take him back on active duty – not as a JAG Corps officer – but in the infantry that had always been his goal.
In the book Leide describes an action-packed career with four combat tours, three as an airborne company commander, and the fourth as Director of Intelligence, J-2 for the U.S. Central Command under General Norman Schwarzkopf during Desert Storm.
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Leide seems to have had a penchant for being where the action was and largely blessed with good bosses, mentors and subordinates. He says the book originally started out as a historical picture book of his military career for his grandkids – but eventually evolved into a very detailed memoir. His recounting of his combat tours in Vietnam is exceptionally gritty and confirmed (in my mind at least) the wisdom of my decision to join the Navy.
While clearly enormously proud of the work he and his colleagues did – Leide does not sugarcoat the institutional shortcomings and failings that he encountered along the way. He is particularly critical of the U.S. obsession during Vietnam with “body counts.” Gauging mission success in any war can be challenging. But the desire on the behalf of leadership to measure success based on a near-impossible-to-obtain body count statistic proved misleading. He cites examples of firefights this his unit participated in in which he knew the number of enemy dead that they had seen – but was later ordered to look for the number of blood trails – evidence that other wounded enemy fighters had either crawled or been carried away from the battlefield. It seemed, he said, that some far-off numbers cruncher would have a formula for later attributing some fraction of the blood trails as killed in action. Leide says he had a hard and fast rule: “Do not count a dead enemy body unless you can put a warm hand on a cold ass.”
One theme he stresses throughout is that historically, the United States does not end wars well. “Maybe it’s because of our desire to get the unpleasantness over as soon as possible, or we have faith that our enemies (and allies) will do what is right in the aftermath,” he writes.
As his career progressed, Leide transferred to the Military Intelligence Branch of the Army and subsequently spent considerable time studying the Chinese language, attending the Republic of China’s Command and General Staff College
There followed a series of increasingly demanding assignments, oftentimes requiring finding ways to make sure that highly sensitive intelligence not be locked away behind “a green door” – but be made useful and usable by decision-makers and warfighters alike.
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One of the more compelling parts of the book is his telling of his time as Defense Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. His assignment there included the period in 1989 of the Tiananmen Square uprising. He and his staff helped organize the evacuation of hundreds of American citizens. He also describes how the US Defense Attache’s Office was the primary on-the-ground intelligence collection, analysis and reporting asset available to the national decision-makers during the crisis. Leide’s telling of the diplomatic compound coming under sniper fire including armor piercing rounds is absorbing.
Perhaps the most consequential assignment in his career was as the Director of Intelligence (J2) for the U.S. Central Command during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. General Schwarzkopf reputation as a very demanding boss was well-earned. He didn’t suffer fools gladly and by some accounts his definition of “fools” was a broad one. But Leide clearly served him well and they developed a mutual respect.
Among the fierce combat described in the “Professional Courage” is not just that between armies but between parts of the bureaucracy. He writes of competing views of Gulf War battle damage assessments setting his J2 staff at odds with CIA and other analysts back in Washington.
A central theme in the book – from his earliest assignments to the last – is the importance of developing the moral courage to tell your boss what they need to know and not what they want to hear.
The other recurring theme that stands out to me is how often Leide calls out by name very junior non-commissioned officer and junior officers for thanks and praise and the credit he heaps on his wife Ann and their three children – whose service and sacrifice enabled his own.
Professional Courage earns a prestigious 4 out of 4 trench coats
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