by Bruce Hoffman

About the author: Bruce Hoffman, founding director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, is director of the RAND Corporation’s Washington, D.C., office, editor-in-chief of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and author of Inside Terrorism.

“Intelligence is capital,” Colonel Yves Godard liked to say. And Godard undeniably knew what he was talking about. He had fought both as a guerrilla in the French Resistance during World War II and against guerrillas in Indochina, as the commander of a covert special-operations unit. As the chief of staff of the elite 10th Para Division, Godard was one of the architects of the French counterterrorist strategy that won the Battle of Algiers, in 1957. To him, information...