Media Information and Appearances
For press kit material, media review copies, or to schedule an interview with Steven O’Hern, please contact Prometheus Books publicity at 800-853-7545 or publicity@prometheusbooks.com.
Reporters on a deadline can also contact Steven O’Hern via email at IntelWars@gmail.com.
Recent mentions of Steven O’Hern or The Intelligence Wars:
March 2010: Quoted by the Salt Lake Tribune’s national security writer in an article about the draw down of forces in Iraq:
Although nothing has been set in stone, members of at least one Utah National Guard helicopter unit have been told to expect orders into Iraq in 2012.
All of that means units like the 729th will continue to be important — and will likely continue to have to have a footprint in Iraq even after the 2011 deadline.
“The expertise that these airmen provide, on a tactical level, is impossible to duplicate,” said Col. Anthony Shaw, deputy commander of the 552nd Air Control Group, which oversees the 729th. “The training put into each and every one of these individuals is extensive.”
And the Iraqi military hasn’t even gotten started on providing that sort of sophisticated training.
“The Iraqi military is going to take years and years and years to try to build up these kinds of capabilities,” said Steven O’Hern, former head of the Multi-National Force-Iraq counterinsurgency effort and the author of The Intelligence Wars: Lessons from Baghdad . “Air power is going to be a critical component that they’re going to be missing.”
O’Hern doesn’t like it when military and administration officials promise to have all “combat troops” out of Iraq by August — he said all military members should be considered combat troops “because all those guys are carrying a gun and they’re all targets at some point in time.”
He believes the U.S. mission in Iraq is long from over.
June 2009: Quoted in a several part series by Matt Schofield of the Kansas City Star that was published in several other newspapers. Here’s a link to the Cleveland Plain Dealer with this quote -
The military tradition in Iraq wasn’t a meritocracy. It has to become one to be a truly professional force,” said Steven K. O’Hern, a retired Air Force colonel, a Kansas City author on Iraq and a former head of the Multi-National Force-Iraq counterinsurgency effort.
“The development of an NCO (non-commissioned officers) corps is essential to that, and right now it doesn’t exist.”
The quote is accurate but I was the head of the Strategic Counterintelligence Directorate, which was part of the MNFI counterinsurgency effort, not the head of the entire effort.
March 2009: Interviewed by Scott Canon of the Kansas City Star.
