Top 11 Books About The Cia Updated 04 /2024

People who write, study, and work with the CIA have chosen some of the best CIA books for you to read. As well as why they think they're good books.

Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World's Best Writers By Joel Whitney

After World War II, Whitney adds a literary ending to the cloak-and-dagger. He shows how the nests of spies and agencies that were set up afterward changed and grew into the Cold War. The CIA took over where the OSS had left off, Greene and Philby ran the nightlife in Lisbon, and then young writers George Plimpton and Peter Matthiessen were pushed to start the Paris Review in Paris. The CIA kept up its literary operations into the 1960s, when it started a whispering campaign to stop Pablo Neruda from getting a Nobel Prize, and it started Mundo Nuevo to talk to people who speak Spanish. ... show more.

The best books about spies and espionage in World War II that you should read

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Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 By Steve Coll

People in Afghanistan say that the United States and Pakistan made the Taliban. This is part of the truth. It's a good book if you want to know both the big picture and the hidden parts. You can find the CIA and KGB and the ISI and the stinger missiles and the Soviet Army and wealthy Arabs and Osama Bin Laden and drones and democracy and Islamic fundamentalism all there.

Afghanistan and life in the land of the Taliban are some of the best books out there.

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Irreparable Harm: A Firsthand Account of How One Agent Took on the CIA in an Epic Battle Over Free Speech By Frank Snepp

When the United States left Vietnam in 1975, CIA officer Frank Snepp was one of the last people to leave. But when he wrote a book critical of the U.S. war effort called "A Decent Interval," it caused a lot of attention in the press and led to a debate that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Snepp was charged with causing "irreparable harm" to national security, and he was ordered to give up all of the money he made from the magazine. They are, of course, his own thoughts. But they still show a big problem with the First Amendment: Freedom isn't always what it's cracked up to be. ... show more.

The best books about the culture of U.S. national security and how secrets are revealed are these.

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Air America By Christopher Robbins

US government started a secret war against communism in Laos in 1965. While the CIA built a secret hill tribe army, Air America, a private airline owned by the CIA, provided the air support for these troops. A lot of opium was grown by the mercenaries the US hired. The spotter planes flew to 100s of airstrips across Laos to distribute troops, aid, and weapons while collecting a lot of opium that would later be turned into heroin and sold to US troops in Vietnam. Robbins' book, which is a little bit changed, is still very good at telling the history of the airline from its beginnings. ... show more.

Best books about Laos

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A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam By Lewis Sorley

From mid-68 to 1974, General Abrams was in charge of the MACV. This is the best military history of the war from that time. It is very important to know how the U.S. troop withdrawal period and the combat performance of the South Vietnamese Army changed. Sorley, who served in Vietnam, worked for the CIA, and has a Ph.D. in history, has a unique way of looking at those years that have been overlooked and misunderstood.

Nonfiction books about the Vietnam War that are good are those about the Vietnam War.

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Agents of Innocence By David Ignatius

It doesn't matter that Ignatius doesn't know the world of espionage better than anyone else, because he writes about it better than anyone else. Agents of Innocence is such a good picture of what it's like to be a CIA case officer that each new person who comes to Camp Peary, the CIA's training center, gets a copy of it. When he goes to Beirut to try to get inside the PLO, he learns a lot of hard things, the most important of which is that when people's lives are at stake, idealism takes a back seat. ... show more.

The Art of War by Sun Zi (also written in English as Sun Tzu)

When Sun Tzu, a Chinese general, told us that if we know our enemies and ourselves, we can win a hundred battles without having to lose one. That is the goal of intelligence. If you want to know your enemy, you have to talk to him in his own language. We can build all the billion dollar spy satellites we want, and we do. That is what spies do, and that is what The Art of War talks about.

Chapter seven talks about the risks of direct conflict. It's Sun Tzu's advice: "Subdue the enemy without fighting." How does this work?

As a result of being smart. Intelligence is the art of war without having to use any weapons at all.

Black ops?

It's not clear what that is. A lot of different things could be going on. These things could be called "black ops." Is it possible that it could be propaganda? It could also mean having a spy in the enemy camp. Is it possible for an Iranian nuclear scientist's car to be bombed from under the hood? The word "black operations" covers a lot of bad things.

All of them were done by US intelligence?

This was the last one I talked about. It was done by the Israeli people.

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