Yes, I love to watch Covert Affairs every week, but the spies in these books are real.
**SOLD**
Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games, by Tennent H. Bagley (HC, 2007, $3)
Bagley was the CIA's chief of Soviet bloc counter-intelligence in 1964 when KGB officer Yuri Nosenko defected. Was his information on Lee Harvey Oswald's stay in Russia true, or a KGB deception? This is the story of the CIA and KGB spy wars as told by an insider,
The U.S. Intelligence Community, by Jeffrey T. Richelson (TPB, 1985, $2)
Read here "what intelligence is, who it is done by, and how it is perpetuated, interpreted, and used". More than 30 organizations made up the intelligence community in 1985. Richelson uses The Freedom of Information Act, interviews, and research to gather together the thirty year tale of this secret community.
Why Spy? Espionage in an Age of Uncertainty, by Frederick P. Hitz, former Inspector General of the CIA (small TPB, 2007, $1.50 )
Which agency does what? What do we need from the intelligence community? How can they recruit spies to infiltrate Islamic fundamentalist groups? Who would want to be a spy in the first place? The cold war is over, and 9/11 happened. How has the world of the spy changed?
The Secret History of the CIA, by Joseph J. Trento (HC, 2001, 542 pages, $2.50)
The CIA was founded to battle the Soviets during the Cold War. Things did not always go as planned.
The Assassination Business:A History of State-Sponsored Murder, by Richard Belfiend (TPB, 2005, $1.50)
Belfiend has investigated everything from the death of Princess Diana, to the first human case of mad cow disease. (The man certainly has diverse interests!) This is his report on assassinations ordered by the heads of countries, ours included. "For terrorist now, the weapons of choice are the bullet and the bomb; for first-world states it is the laser-guided missile, remote and deadly." The newspapers are full of reports of terrorists and bombs. This is a report on the killing done by the other side.
The Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, by George Tenet (HC, 2007, 549 pages, $3)
Tenet was Director of the CIA from 1997 to 2004. Wow, those are years no one will soon forget! What would it have been like to have had his job? I had enough problems just getting myself through those times!
Look for these books on the new non-fiction table.
