Insiders
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This is a difficult category which focuses on work by people who were engaged very closely with the espionage they're writing about, in whatever form. It overlaps with Auto/biography to some extent, but also includes roman a clef fiction, journalism which got very deep into the subject matter, and the "disgruntled tell-all" books.
Contents |
[edit] Accounts by practitioners
More-or-less official or non-controversial
James H. Critchfield: Partners at the Creation
Ladislas Farago: Burn After Reading: The Espionage History of World War II
Christopher Felix (James McCargar): A Short Course in the Secret War
David Murphy, Sergei Kondrashev, and George Bailey: Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War
Ephraim Halevy: Man in the Shadows
Roger Hall: You're Stepping On My Cloak and Dagger
John Limond Hart: The CIA's Russians
Richard Helms and William Hood: A Look Over My Shoulder: a Life in the Central Intelligence Agency
Stuart A. Herrington: Traitors Among Us: Inside the Spy Catcher's World
Robert Lamphere and Tom Shachtman: The FBI-KGB War
Gordon Lonsdale: Spy: Twenty Years in Soviet Secret Service
Ron Olive: Capturing Jonathan Pollard - How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice
Theodore Shackley: Spymaster: My Life in the CIA
"Joseph B. Smith" (pseud.): Portrait of a Cold Warrior
Russell Jack Smith: The Unknown CIA: My Three Decades with the Agency
Stansfield Turner: Secrecy and Democracy, Burn Before Reading
Ralph E. Weber: Spymasters: Ten CIA Officers in Their Own Words
Stig Wennerström: Från början till slutet: en spions memoarer
H. Bradford Westerfield: Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency's Internal Journal, 1955-1992
[edit] Traitors/defectors
Pete Earley: Confessions of a Spy: the Real Story of Aldrich Ames
[edit] Whistleblowers
This category includes both fiction and non-fiction, usually by espionage participants (although journalists in a couple of cases), usually some of each by each author. The common thread is basic disgruntlement and/or activism on the authors' parts, publishing in defiance of agency strictures, and in some cases an agency attempt to shut down publication.
CIA
Philip Agee: Inside the Company: A CIA Diary, Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe (co-edited with Louis Wolf), On the Run
Robert Baer: See No Evil, Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, Blow the House Down
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair: Whiteout
William R. Corson: Armies of Ignorance, Betrayal
Burton Hersh: The Nature of the Beast
Victor Marchetti: The Rope Dancer; with John D. Marks: The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence
John D. Marks: The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, "How to Spot a Spook" (in Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe)
Patrick J. McGarvey: CIA: the Myth and the Madness
Ralph W. McGehee: Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA
Frank Snepp: Decent Interval, Irreparable Harm
John Stockwell: In Search of Enemies, The Praetorian Guard
Valerie Plame Wilson: Fair Game; Joseph C. Wilson, IV: The Politics of Truth
David Wise: The Invisible Government, The U-2 Affair, The Politics of Lying, Spectrum, The Children's Game, The Samarkand Dimension
Peter Hounam: The Woman from Mossad
MI-5
Malcolm Turnbull: The Spycatcher Trial
Mossad
Victor Ostrovsky: By Way of Deception, The Other Side of Deception, Lion of Judah
Canadian Secret Service
Ian Adams: S Portrait of a Spy
UN Weapons Inspection
Related novels
An important link
National Security Whistleblowers Coalition
[edit] Journalism
James Bamford: The Puzzle Palace, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, A Pretext for War
Pete Earley: Comrade J, Family of Spies
Burton Hersh: The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA
Seymour Hersh: The Price of Power, The Samson Option, The Target is Destroyed, Chain of Command
William Hood: Mole: the True Story of the First Russian Spy to Become an American Counterspy
Jim Hougan: Spooks, Secret Agenda
Ronald Kessler: Inside the CIA, Escape from the CIA, The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI, The FBI: Inside the World's Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency
Jonathan Kwitny: The Crimes of Patriots, Endless Enemies: the Making of an Unfriendly World
Alfred W. McCoy: A Question of Torture
Thomas Powers: The Man Who Kept the Secrets, The Confirmation
John Prados: Lost Crusader: the Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby
Simon Reeve: One Day in September
Mark Riebling, Wedge: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11 - How the Secret War Between the FBI and CIA Has Endangered National Security
James Risen: State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
Joseph J. Trento: The Secret History of the CIA, Prelude to Terror
David Wise: The Invisible Government, The Espionage Establishment, The Politics of Lying, The American Police State, Molehunt: How the Search for a Phantom Traitor Shattered the CIA, The Spy Who Got Away, Spy: the Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America, Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million
Bob Woodward: Veil, State of Denial
[edit] Other Authors
Other authors who similarly combine insider-insight with masterful writing:
W. T. Tyler (pseudonym for S. J. Hamrick), whose books in this category include The Man Who Lost the War, Rogue's March, The Lion and the Jackal, and Ants of God
Graham Greene, whose books in this category include The Confidential Agent and The Quiet American
James Grady: Six Days of the Condor, Shadow of the Condor, River of Darkness, Thunder
(slightly obliquely, through the medium of science fiction): Paul M. A. Linebarger: Norstrilia, Stardreamer
An atypical recent example: T.H.E. Hill: Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary
[edit] and John le Carré
... who is, not surprisingly, in a class almost by himself - he did not write roman a clef, nor was he "outing" specific peccadillos, or anything else like that ... but whose work achieved results beyond most other insiders' nonetheless, through the sheer power of his fiction.
His books which were most directly influenced by his experiences in the SIS were (I speculate) Call for the Dead, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, A Small Town in Germany, The Looking-Glass War, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
[edit] External links
- [1] An insightful New York Times article by SCOTT SHANE that takes a look at the "swelling library of increasingly candid CIA memoirs reflects a striking cultural change at the agency." Includes novels like Gene Coyle's thriller, The Dream Merchant of Lisbon and Robert Baer's See No Evil which became Syriana on the screen.
