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Mark Riebling
File:Mark b.jpg
EducationDartmouth College
University of California, Berkeley
Columbia University
SubjectNational Security of the United States
Notable worksPersonal Responsibility at the Founding Churchill’s Finest HourConservatism Turned Upside Down Wedge - The Secret War between the FBI and CIA

Mark Riebling (born 1963) is a U.S. historian, essayist, and policy analyst. He has written about the National Security of the United States, Conservatism in the United States, and Vatican foreign policy during the Second World War. He did graduate work in political philosophy at Columbia University, studied English Literature at Dartmouth College, and majored in philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley. From 2001 to 2010 he directed the Book Program at the Manhattan Institute and served as its Editorial Director. Previously he had worked as a book editor in the Adult Trade Division at Random House.[1] From 2002 to 2006 Riebling served as Research Director for the Center for Policing Terrorism. His analysis of security failures influenced post-9/11 intelligence reforms, and his ideas have been discussed or debated in more than 1,000 books.[2] A separate Wikipedia entry exists for his book Wedge - The Secret War between the FBI and CIA.

Writings on national security and foreign policy

  • Riebling's book Wedge (Knopf, 1994; Simon & Schuster, 2002) traces the conflict between U.S. law enforcement and intelligence, from World War Two through the War on Terror. Using documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with former agents, Riebling presents FBI-CIA rivalry through the prism of national traumas -- including the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, and 9/11 -- in which he finds the agencies failed to fully cooperate. Discussing the paperback edition in The Washington Post, Vernon Loeb wrote: "If Riebling's thesis -- that the FBI-CIA rivalry had 'damaged the national security and, to that extent, imperiled the Republic' -- was provocative at the time, it seems prescient now, with missed communications between the two agencies looming as the principal cause of intelligence failures related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.[3]
  • Building on the ideas of political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, Riebling suggested in a 2007 essay that because the military mind is more conservative and realistic than the civilian mind, Pentagon intelligence judgments have tended to be better than CIA’s.[7]
  • From declassified files in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Riebling has reconstructed aspects of the partnership between Reagan and Pope John Paul II. According to Riebling, the documents reveal "a continuous scurrying to shore up Vatican support for U.S. policies. Perhaps most surprisingly, the papers show that that, as late as 1984, the pope did not believe the Communist Polish government could be changed." [8]

Criticism of his work

Riebling’s ideas have drawn criticism from both the political left and right. Writing in Reason Magazine, Michael W. Lynch criticized Riebling from a libertarian perspective, alleging that his arguments have been used to broaden the FBI's ability to collect political information on Americans and people living in the United States.[10] Left-wing journalist Robert Scheer disputed Riebling's assertion that the FBI and CIA were rivals, and suggested that Riebling's critique evinced a lack of concern about federal surveillance of the Black Panther Party and the Vietnam antiwar movement.[11] Some 9/11 Truthers contend that Riebling provided the cover story for an alleged U.S. government conspiracy behind the events of September 11, 2001. Thus one blogger attacks The Nation for its "embrace of a disingenuous book by Mark Riebling," alleging that U.S. Deputy Attorney General and 9/11 Commission member "Jamie Gorelick, who learned so much from this book," adapted Riebling's concept of a "tragic wedge" into the 9/11 Commission's criticism of a "wall between the CIA and FBI.”[12]

Policy influence

Riebling's analysis of security failures influenced post-911 intelligence reforms. Andrew C. McCarthy, the deputy U.S. attorney who prosecuted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2006 that "Riebling’s analysis has now become conventional wisdom, accepted on all sides. Such, indeed, is the reasoning behind virtually all of the proposals now under consideration by no fewer than seven assorted congressional committees, internal evaluators, and blue-ribbon panels charged with remedying the intelligence situation."[13] In his January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush announced an initiative to close what he termed the "seam" between FBI and CIA coverage of foreign threats, as Riebling recommended in Wedge.[14]

Counter-terrorist practitioner

From 2002 to 2006 Riebling served as Research Director for the Center for Policing Terrorism, helping law-enforcement agencies build regional fusion centers and intelligence networks.[15] The Center partnered with LAPD Chief William Bratton to create and administer the National Counter Terrorism Academy. [16] The academy teaches a doctrine of intelligence-led policing that Riebling articulated in the Center’s publications.[17] In his 2008 book, Crush the Cell, NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Counter Terrorrism Michael A. Sheehan wrote that the Center "provided a team of intelligence analysts that supported our work with timely and accurate reports on fast-breaking issues."[18]

Family background and personal Life

  • Mark Riebling is a descendant of the colonial explorer Stephen Holston, who in 1746 followed what is now the Holston River by canoe from Virginia to Mississippi as far as Natchez.[19]

By Mark Riebling

About Mark Riebling

References

  1. ^ Michael R. Beschloss, "Such Bad Friends," The New York Times Book Review, November 6, 1994
  2. ^ http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Mark+Riebling%22&hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks:1&ei=8TVzTLy-GMH_lgfo362HAQ&start=30&sa=N
  3. ^ Vernon Loeb, "From the 'Hanssen Effect' to Sept. 11," The Washington Post, October 21, 2002.
  4. ^ Mark Riebling, "Uncuff the FBI," The Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2002.
  5. ^ Mark Riebling, “Uncuff the FBI. Congress Must Un-do the Church Committee's Damage”, The Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2002; Breglio, Nola K. “Leaving FISA Behind: The Need to Return to Warrantless Surveillance.” Yale Law Journal, September 24, 2003; Manget, Fred. "Intelligence and the Criminal Law System." Stanford Law and Policy Review, 17: 415, 2006; McCarthy, M.T. “USA Patriot Act.” Harvard Journal on Legislation, 2002, 39: 435; Robinson, Gerald. "We're Listening-Electronic Eavesdropping, Fisa, and the Secret Court." Willamette Law Review, 2000, 36: 51
  6. ^ "Court Affirms Wiretapping Without Warrants," New York Times, January 15, 2009.
  7. ^ “Litany of Blunders: Tim Weiner's vital but flawed book about a vital but flawed agency,” City Journal, October 2, 2007
  8. ^ Mark Riebling, “Reagan’s Pope: The Cold War Alliance of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II.” National Review, April 7, 2005.
  9. ^ “Report: Vatican to post secret WWII documents online,” Jerusalem Post, February 15, 2010.
  10. ^ Michael W. Lynch, “Secret Agent Scam: The FBI Leverages it Failures,” Reason, June 6, 2002
  11. ^ Wikquote page for Wedge - The Secret War between the CIA and FBI
  12. ^ "Failure and Crime Are Not The Same: 9-11's Limited Hangouts," 2003
  13. ^ Andrew C. McCarthy, "The Intelligence Mess," The Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2006.
  14. ^ President George W. Bush, Address on the State of the Nation, January 28, 2003.
  15. ^ Center for Policing Terrorism Home Page.
  16. ^ Los Angeles Police Department News Release, March 7, 2008
  17. ^ Mark Riebling, The New Paradigm: Merging Law Enforcement and Intelligence Strategies, Center for Policing Terrorism, January 2006.
  18. ^ Michael A. Sheehan, ISBN 978-0-307-38217-7.
  19. ^ Douglas Summers Brown, "Stephen Holston – Frontiersman, Adventurer, Revolutionary Soldier, Discoverer of the Holston-Tennessee River." Historical Society of Washington County, VA. Bulletin, Series II, No 27, 1990, excerpted by Stephen Holston Chapter, Tennessee State Society Sons of the American Revolution.
  20. ^ Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road (ISBN 1-550-22548-0).

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Mark Riebling.
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