Pick up the latest issue of Foreign Affairs at your local newsstand, and check out this article by the author of "The Codebreakers."

Modern militaries' obsession with intelligence gathering and evaluation would have bemused Caesar and Napoleon, since such behavior was rarely engaged in until recently. In the war on terrorism, intelligence is playing its greatest role yet, but even today, espionage and intelligence analysis will not be the decisive factors.

If you think that GWOT rarely requires "boots on the ground", think again.

For previous David Kahn threads, check out:

The Reader of Gentlemen's Mail
How Good Intelligence Falls on Deaf Ears
When Navajos Fought Japanese for Ne-He-Mah
The Atlantic | February 2002 | Losing the Code War | Budiansky
The Literature of Secrets