A history of Americans who spied against their country and what their stories reveal about national security

What's your secret?

American Spies presents the stunning histories of more than forty Americans who spied against their country during the past six decades. Michael Sulick, former head of the CIA's clandestine service, illustrates through these stories—some familiar, others much less well known—the common threads in the spy cases and the evolution of American attitudes toward espionage since the onset of the Cold War. After highlighting the accounts of many who have spied for traditional adversaries such as Russian and Chinese intelligence services, Sulick shows how spy hunters today confront a far broader spectrum of threats not only from hostile states but also substate groups, including those conducting cyberespionage.

Sulick reveals six fundamental elements of espionage in these stories: the motivations that drove them to spy; their access and the secrets they betrayed; their tradecraft, or the techniques of concealing their espionage; their exposure; their punishment; and, finally, the damage they inflicted on America's national security.

The book is the sequel to Sulick's popular Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War. Together they serve as a basic introduction to understanding America's vulnerability to espionage, which has oscillated between peacetime complacency and wartime vigilance, and continues to be shaped by the inherent conflict between our nation's security needs and our commitment to the preservation of civil liberties. Now available in paperback, with a new preface that brings the conversation up to the present, American Spies is as insightful and relevant as ever.

Analyzing Intelligence, now in a revised and extensively updated second edition, assesses the state of the profession of intelligence analysis from the practitioner's point of view. The contributors—most of whom have held senior positions in the US intelligence community—review the evolution of the field, the rise of new challenges, pitfalls in analysis, and the lessons from new training and techniques designed to deal with 21st century national security problems. This second edition updates this indispensable book with new chapters that highlight advances in applying more analytic rigor to analysis, along with expertise-building, training, and professional development. New chapters by practitioners broaden the original volume’s discussion of the analyst-policymaker relationship by addressing analytic support to the military customer as well as by demonstrating how structured analysis can benefit military commanders on the battlefield.

Analyzing Intelligence is written for national security practitioners such as producers and users of intelligence, as well as for scholars and students seeking to understand the nature and role of intelligence analysis, its strengths and weaknesses, and steps that can improve it and lead it to a more recognizable profession.

The most comprehensive and up-to-date volume on professional intelligence analysis as practiced in the US Government, Analyzing Intelligence is essential reading for practitioners and users of intelligence analysis, as well as for students and scholars in security studies and related fields.

Drawing on the individual and collective experience of recognized intelligence experts and scholars in the field, Analyzing Intelligence provides the first comprehensive assessment of the state of intelligence analysis since 9/11. Its in-depth and balanced evaluation of more than fifty years of U.S. analysis includes a critique of why it has under-performed at times. It provides insights regarding the enduring obstacles as well as new challenges of analysis in the post-9/11 world, and suggests innovative ideas for improved analytical methods, training, and structured approaches.

The book's six sections present a coherent plan for improving analysis. Early chapters examine how intelligence analysis has evolved since its origins in the mid-20th century, focusing on traditions, culture, successes, and failures. The middle sections examine how analysis supports the most senior national security and military policymakers and strategists, and how analysts must deal with the perennial challenges of collection, politicization, analytical bias, knowledge building and denial and deception. The final sections of the book propose new ways to address enduring issues in warning analysis, methodology (or "analytical tradecraft") and emerging analytic issues like homeland defense. The book suggests new forms of analytic collaboration in a global intelligence environment, and imperatives for the development of a new profession of intelligence analysis.

Analyzing Intelligence is written for the national security expert who needs to understand the role of intelligence and its strengths and weaknesses. Practicing and future analysts will also find that its attention to the enduring challenges provides useful lessons-learned to guide their own efforts. The innovations section will provoke senior intelligence managers to consider major changes in the way analysis is currently organized and conducted, and the way that analysts are trained and perform.

An in-depth analysis of why COVID-19 warnings failed and how to avert the next disaster

Epidemiologists and national security agencies warned for years about the potential for a deadly pandemic, but in the end global surveillance and warning systems were not enough to avert the COVID-19 disaster. In The COVID-19 Intelligence Failure, Erik J. Dahl demonstrates that understanding how intelligence warnings work—and how they fail—shows why the years of predictions were not enough.

In the first in-depth analysis of the topic, Dahl examines the roles that both traditional intelligence services and medical intelligence and surveillance systems play in providing advance warning against public health threats—and how these systems must be improved for the future. For intelligence to effectively mitigate threats, specific, tactical-level warnings must be collected and shared in real time with receptive decision makers who will take appropriate action. Dahl shows how a combination of late and insufficient warnings about COVID-19, the Trump administration’s political aversion to scientific advice, and decentralized public health systems all exacerbated the pandemic in the United States. Dahl’s analysis draws parallels to other warning failures that preceded major catastrophes from Pearl Harbor to 9/11, placing current events in context.

The COVID-19 Intelligence Failure is a wake-up call for the United States and the international community to improve their national security, medical, and public health intelligence systems and capabilities.

The 1970s revealed a number of infamous and sometimes illegal practices used by federal law enforcement agencies to monitor political dissent in the United States. In the aftermath of Watergate the revelation of serious abuses created distrust of virtually all domestic intelligence operations and led to vigorous efforts at reform.

Richard E. Morgan emphasizes the importance of guarding against an overreaction to the disclosures of the mid-1970s. While acknowledging the need for many of the recent reforms that seek to establish accountability, guarantee privacy, and protect dissent, he cautions against limitations on domestic intelligence gathering that could seriously hamper government's ability to prevent crime, particularly terrorism.

Domestic Intelligence has several major objectives: to trace the way in which government agencies became involved with domestic intelligence gathering; to review the controversies and abuses associated with these agencies, especially the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA; to discuss the constitutionality of domestic intelligence collection; to review intelligence reforms adopted; and to suggest additional reforms.

This volume is concerned with the tension between the need to protect privacy and political dissent and the need for the government to protect the community. Morgan concludes that intelligence operations aimed at anticipating criminal activity are necessary in a complex, highly vulnerable society, and that these operations can be conducted responsibly with proper guidelines and oversight mechanisms.

In December 1974, a front-page story in the New York Times revealed the explosive details of illegal domestic spying by the Central Intelligence Agency. This included political surveillance, eavesdropping, detention, and interrogation. The revelation of illegal activities over many years shocked the American public and led to investigations of the CIA by a presidential commission and committees in both houses of Congress, which found evidence of more abuse, even CIA plans for assassinations. Investigators and the public soon discovered that the CIA abuses were described in a top-secret document agency insiders dubbed the “Family Jewels.” That document became ground zero for a political firestorm that lasted more than a year. The “Family Jewels” debacle ultimately brought about greater congressional oversight of the CIA, but excesses such as those uncovered in the 1970s continue to come to light.

The Family Jewels probes the deepest secrets of the CIA and its attempts to avoid scrutiny. John Prados recounts the secret operations that constituted “Jewels” and investigators’ pursuit of the truth, plus the strenuous efforts—by the agency, the executive branch, and even presidents—to evade accountability. Prados reveals how Vice President Richard Cheney played a leading role in intelligence abuses and demonstrates that every type of “Jewel” has been replicated since, especially during the post-9/11 war on terror. The Family Jewels masterfully illuminates why these abuses are endemic to spying, shows that proper relationships are vital to control of intelligence, and advocates a system for handling “Family Jewels” crises in a democratic society.

With a new epilogue that discusses former CIA employee Edward Snowden’s revelation of massive covert surveillance by the NSA, this powerful accounting of intelligence abuses committed by the CIA from the Cold War through the war on terror reveals why such abuses and attempts to conceal them are endemic to spying and proposes how a democratic nation can rein in its spymasters.

A riveting introduction to the complex and evolving field of geospatial intelligence.

Although geospatial intelligence is a term of recent origin, its underpinnings have a long and interesting history. Geospatial Intelligence: Origins and Evolution shows how the current age of geospatial knowledge evolved from its ancient origins to become ubiquitous in daily life across the globe. Within that framework, the book weaves a tapestry of stories about the people, events, ideas, and technologies that affected the trajectory of what has become known as GEOINT.

Author Robert M. Clark explores the historical background and subsequent influence of fields such as geography, cartography, remote sensing, photogrammetry, geopolitics, geophysics, and geographic information systems on GEOINT. Although its modern use began in national security communities, Clark shows how GEOINT has rapidly extended its reach to other government agencies, NGOs, and corporations. This global explosion in the use of geospatial intelligence has far-reaching implications not only for the scientific, academic, and commercial communities but for a society increasingly reliant upon emerging technologies. Drones, the Internet of things, and cellular devices transform how we gather information and how others can collect that information, to our benefit or detriment.

Intelligence agencies spend huge sums of money to collect and analyze vast quantities of national security data for their political leaders. How well is this intelligence analyzed, how often is it acted on by policymakers, and does it have a positive or negative effect on decision making? Drawing on declassified documents, interviews with intelligence veterans and policymakers, and other sources, The Image of the Enemy breaks new ground as it examines how seven countries analyzed and used intelligence to shape their understanding of their main adversary. The cases in the book include the Soviet Union's analysis of the United States (and vice versa), East Germany's analysis of West Germany (and vice versa), British intelligence in the early years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Israeli intelligence about the Palestinians, Pakistani intelligence on India, and US intelligence about Islamist terrorists.

These rivalries provide rich case studies for scholars and offer today’s analysts and policymakers the opportunity to closely evaluate past successes and failures in intelligence analysis and the best ways to give information support to policymakers. Using these lessons from the past, they can move forward to improve analysis of current adversaries and future threats.

How can the United States avoid a future surprise attack on the scale of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, in an era when such devastating attacks can come not only from nation states, but also from terrorist groups or cyber enemies?

Intelligence and Surprise Attack examines why surprise attacks often succeed even though, in most cases, warnings had been available beforehand. Erik J. Dahl challenges the conventional wisdom about intelligence failure, which holds that attacks succeed because important warnings get lost amid noise or because intelligence officials lack the imagination and collaboration to “connect the dots” of available information. Comparing cases of intelligence failure with intelligence success, Dahl finds that the key to success is not more imagination or better analysis, but better acquisition of precise, tactical-level intelligence combined with the presence of decision makers who are willing to listen to and act on the warnings they receive from their intelligence staff.

The book offers a new understanding of classic cases of conventional and terrorist attacks such as Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, and the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The book also presents a comprehensive analysis of the intelligence picture before the 9/11 attacks, making use of new information available since the publication of the 9/11 Commission Report and challenging some of that report’s findings.

Spying, the “world’s second oldest profession,” is hardly limited to the traditional great power countries. Intelligence Elsewhere, nevertheless, is the first scholarly volume to deal exclusively with the comparative study of national intelligence outside of the anglosphere and European mainstream. Past studies of intelligence and counterintelligence have tended to focus on countries such as the United States, Great Britain, and Russia, as well as, to a lesser extent, Canada, Australia, France, and Germany. This volume examines the deep historical and cultural origins of intelligence in several countries of critical importance today: India, China, the Arab world, and indeed, Russia, the latter examined from a fresh perspective. The authors then delve into modern intelligence practice in countries with organizations significantly different from the mainstream: Iran, Pakistan, Japan, Finland, Sweden, Indonesia, Argentina, and Ghana.

With contributions by leading intelligence experts for each country, the chapters give the reader important insights into intelligence culture, current practice, and security sector reform. As the world morphs into an increasingly multi-polar system, it is more important than ever to understand the national intelligence systems of rising powers and regional powers that differ significantly from those of the US, its NATO allies, and its traditional opponents. This fascinating book shines new light into intelligence practices in regions that, until now, have eluded our understanding.

This textbook introduces students to the critical role of the US intelligence community within the wider national security decision-making and political process. Intelligence in the National Security Enterprise defines what intelligence is and what intelligence agencies do, but the emphasis is on showing how intelligence serves the policymaker. Roger Z. George draws on his thirty-year CIA career and more than a decade of teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate level to reveal the real world of intelligence. Intelligence support is examined from a variety of perspectives to include providing strategic intelligence, warning, daily tactical support to policy actions as well as covert action. The book includes useful features for students and instructors such as excerpts and links to primary-source documents, suggestions for further reading, and a glossary.

Incisive insights into the distinctive nature of Japanese foreign intelligence and grand strategy, its underlying norms, and how they have changed over time

Japanese foreign intelligence is an outlier in many ways. Unlike many states, Japan does not possess a centralized foreign intelligence agency that dispatches agents abroad to engage in espionage. Japan is also notable for civilian control over key capabilities in human and signals intelligence. Japanese Foreign Intelligence and Grand Strategy probes the unique makeup of Japan's foreign intelligence institutions, practices, and capabilities across the economic, political, and military domains and shows how they have changed over time.

Brad Williams begins by exploring how Japan’s experiences of the Second World War and its new role as a major US ally influenced its adoption of bilateralism, developmentalism, technonationalism, and antimilitarism as key norms. As a result, Japanese intelligence-gathering resources centered primarily around improving its position in the global economy throughout the Cold War. Williams then brings his analysis up to the Abe Era, examining how shifts in the international, regional, and domestic policy environments in the twenty-first century have caused a gradual reassessment of national security strategy under former prime minister Shinzo Abe. As Japan reevaluates its old norms in light of regional security challenges, the book concludes by detailing how the country is beginning to rethink the size, shape, and purpose of its intelligence community.

Anyone interested in Japanese intelligence, security, or international relations will welcome this important contribution to our understanding of the country's intelligence capabilities and strategy.

Identifying “lessons learned” is not new—the military has been doing it for decades. However, members of the worldwide intelligence community have been slow to extract wider lessons gathered from the past and apply them to contemporary challenges. Learning from the Secret Past is a collection of ten carefully selected cases from post-World War II British intelligence history. Some of the cases include the Malayan Emergency, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Northern Ireland, and the lead up to the Iraq War. Each case, accompanied by authentic documents, illuminates important lessons that today's intelligence officers and policymakers—in Britain and elsewhere—should heed.

Written by former and current intelligence officers, high-ranking government officials, and scholars, the case studies in this book detail intelligence successes and failures, discuss effective structuring of the intelligence community, examine the effective use of intelligence in counterinsurgency, explore the ethical dilemmas and practical gains of interrogation, and highlight the value of human intelligence and the dangers of the politicization of intelligence. The lessons learned from this book stress the value of past experience and point the way toward running effective intelligence agencies in a democratic society.

Scholars and professionals worldwide who specialize in intelligence, defense and security studies, and international relations will find this book to be extremely valuable.

In 1967 the magazine Ramparts ran an exposé revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency had been secretly funding and managing a wide range of citizen front groups intended to counter communist influence around the world. In addition to embarrassing prominent individuals caught up, wittingly or unwittingly, in the secret superpower struggle for hearts and minds, the revelations of 1967 were one of the worst operational disasters in the history of American intelligence and presaged a series of public scandals from which the CIA's reputation has arguably never recovered.

CIA official Frank Wisner called the operation his "mighty Wurlitzer," on which he could play any propaganda tune. In this illuminating book, Hugh Wilford provides the first comprehensive account of the clandestine relationship between the CIA and its front organizations. Using an unprecedented wealth of sources, he traces the rise and fall of America's Cold War front network from its origins in the 1940s to its Third World expansion during the 1950s and ultimate collapse in the 1960s.

Covering the intelligence officers who masterminded the CIA's fronts as well as the involved citizen groups--émigrés, labor, intellectuals, artists, students, women, Catholics, African Americans, and journalists--Wilford provides a surprising analysis of Cold War society that contains valuable lessons for our own age of global conflict.

John Rodden cuts this tall tale down to its authentic pint size, refusing to indulge the public relations myth promoted by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. In Of G-Men and Eggheads, Rodden portrays federal agents’ hilarious obsession with monitoring that ever-present threat to national security, the American literary intellectual. Drawing on government dossiers and archives, Rodden focuses on the onetime members of a radical political sect of ex-Trotskyists (barely numbering a thousand at its height), the so-called New York intellectuals. He describes the nonsensical decades-long pursuit of this group of intellectuals, especially Lionel Trilling, Dwight Macdonald, and Irving Howe. The Keystone Cops style of numerous FBI agents is documented carefully in Rodden's meticulous case studies of how Hoover's men recruited informants to snoop on the "Commies," opened their personal mail, tracked their movements, and reported on their wives and friends.

In a rich and stimulating epilogue, Rodden shows how his Cold War research possesses thought-provoking implications for us today, in our post-9/11 era of debates about data collection, privacy invasion, personal dignity, and the use and abuse of government and corporate power.

Intelligence agencies provide critical information to national security and foreign policy decision makers, but spying also poses inherent dilemmas for liberty, privacy, human rights, and diplomacy. Principled Spying explores how to strike a balance between necessary intelligence activities and protecting democratic values by developing a new framework of ethics.

David Omand and Mark Phythian structure this book as an engaging debate between a former national security practitioner and an intelligence scholar. Rather than simply presenting their positions, throughout the book they pose key questions to each other and to the reader and offer contrasting perspectives to stimulate further discussion. They demonstrate the value for both practitioners and the public of weighing the dilemmas of secret intelligence through ethics. The chapters in the book cover key areas including human intelligence, surveillance, acting on intelligence, and oversight and accountability. The authors disagree on some key questions, but in the course of their debate they demonstrate that it is possible to find a balance between liberty and security. This book is accessible reading for concerned citizens, but it also delivers the sophisticated insights of a high-ranking former practitioner and a distinguished scholar.

These days, it's rare to pick up a newspaper and not see a story related to intelligence. From the investigations of the 9/11 commission, to accusations of illegal wiretapping, to debates on whether it's acceptable to torture prisoners for information, intelligence—both accurate and not—is driving domestic and foreign policy. And yet, in part because of its inherently secretive nature, intelligence has received very little scholarly study. Into this void comes Reforming Intelligence, a timely collection of case studies written by intelligence experts, and sponsored by the Center for Civil-Military Relations (CCMR) at the Naval Postgraduate School, that collectively outline the best practices for intelligence services in the United States and other democratic states.

Reforming Intelligence suggests that intelligence is best conceptualized as a subfield of civil-military relations, and is best compared through institutions. The authors examine intelligence practices in the United States, United Kingdom, and France, as well as such developing democracies as Brazil, Taiwan, Argentina, and Russia. While there is much more data related to established democracies, there are lessons to be learned from states that have created (or re-created) intelligence institutions in the contemporary political climate. In the end, reading about the successes of Brazil and Taiwan, the failures of Argentina and Russia, and the ongoing reforms in the United States yields a handful of hard truths. In the murky world of intelligence, that's an unqualified achievement.

Researchers in the rapidly growing field of intelligence studies face unique and difficult challenges ranging from finding and accessing data on secret activities, to sorting through the politics of intelligence successes and failures, to making sense of complex socio-organizational or psychological phenomena. The contributing authors to Researching National Security Intelligence survey the state of the field and demonstrate how incorporating multiple disciplines helps to generate high-quality, policy-relevant research. Following this approach, the volume provides a conceptual, empirical, and methodological toolkit for scholars and students informed by many disciplines: history, political science, public administration, psychology, communications, and journalism. This collection of essays written by an international group of scholars and practitioners propels intelligence studies forward by demonstrating its growing depth, by suggesting new pathways to the creation of knowledge, and by identifying how scholarship can enhance practice and accountability.

This sweeping history of the development of professional, institutionalized intelligence examines the implications of the fall of the state monopoly on espionage today and beyond.

During the Cold War, only the alliances clustered around the two superpowers maintained viable intelligence endeavors, whereas a century ago, many states could aspire to be competitive at these dark arts. Today, larger states have lost their monopoly on intelligence skills and capabilities as technological and sociopolitical changes have made it possible for private organizations and even individuals to unearth secrets and influence global events.

Historian Michael Warner addresses the birth of professional intelligence in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century and the subsequent rise of US intelligence during the Cold War. He brings this history up to the present day as intelligence agencies used the struggle against terrorism and the digital revolution to improve capabilities in the 2000s. Throughout, the book examines how states and other entities use intelligence to create, exploit, and protect secret advantages against others, and emphasizes how technological advancement and ideological competition drive intelligence, improving its techniques and creating a need for intelligence and counterintelligence activities to serve and protect policymakers and commanders.

The world changes intelligence and intelligence changes the world. This sweeping history of espionage and intelligence will be a welcomed by practitioners, students, and scholars of security studies, international affairs, and intelligence, as well as general audiences interested in the evolution of espionage and technology.

During the Cold War, the political leadership of the Soviet Union avidly sought intelligence about its main adversary, the United States. Although effective on an operational level, Soviet leaders and their intelligence chiefs fell short when it came to analyzing intelligence. Soviet leaders were often not receptive to intelligence that conflicted with their existing beliefs, and analysts were reluctant to put forward assessments that challenged ideological orthodoxy.

There were, however, important changes over time. Ultimately the views of an enlightened Soviet leader, Gorbachev, trumped the ideological blinders of his predecessors and the intelligence service’s dedication to an endless duel with their ideologically spawned “main adversary," making it possible to end the Cold War.

Raymond Garthoff draws on over five decades of personal contact with Soviet diplomats, intelligence officers, military leaders, and scholars during his remarkable career as an analyst, senior diplomat, and historian. He also builds on previous scholarship and examines documents from Soviet and Western archives. Soviet Leaders and Intelligence offers an informed and highly readable assessment of how the Soviets understood—and misunderstood—the intentions and objectives of their Cold War adversary.

In literature and film the spy chief is an all-knowing, all-powerful figure who masterfully moves spies into action like pieces on a chessboard. How close to reality is that depiction, and what does it really take to be an effective leader in the world of intelligence?

This first volume of Spy Chiefs broadens and deepens our understanding of the role of intelligence leaders in foreign affairs and national security in the United States and United Kingdom from the early 1940s to the present. The figures profiled range from famous spy chiefs such as William Donovan, Richard Helms, and Stewart Menzies to little-known figures such as John Grombach, who ran an intelligence organization so secret that not even President Truman knew of it. The volume tries to answer six questions arising from the spy-chief profiles: how do intelligence leaders operate in different national, institutional, and historical contexts? What role have they played in the conduct of international relations and the making of national security policy? How much power do they possess? What qualities make an effective intelligence leader? How secretive and accountable to the public have they been? Finally, does popular culture (including the media) distort or improve our understanding of them? Many of those profiled in the book served at times of turbulent change, were faced with foreign penetrations of their intelligence service, and wrestled with matters of transparency, accountability to democratically elected overseers, and adherence to the rule of law. This book will appeal to both intelligence specialists and general readers with an interest in the intelligence history of the United States and United Kingdom.

Throughout history and across cultures, the spy chief has been a leader of the state security apparatus and an essential adviser to heads of state. In democracies, the spy chief has become a public figure, and intelligence activities have been brought under the rule of law. In authoritarian regimes, however, the spy chief was and remains a frightening and opaque figure who exercises secret influence abroad and engages in repression at home. 

This second volume of Spy Chiefs goes beyond the commonly studied spy chiefs of the United States and the United Kingdom to examine leaders from Renaissance Venice to the Soviet Union, Germany, India, Egypt, and Lebanon in the twentieth century. It provides a close-up look at intelligence leaders, good and bad, in the different political contexts of the regimes they served. The contributors to the volume try to answer the following questions: how do intelligence leaders operate in these different national, institutional and historical contexts? What role have they played in the conduct of domestic affairs and international relations? How much power have they possessed? How have they led their agencies and what qualities make an effective intelligence leader? How has their role differed according to the political character of the regime they have served? The profiles in this book range from some of the most notorious figures in modern history, such as Feliks Dzerzhinsky and Erich Mielke, to spy chiefs in democratic West Germany and India.

John A. Gentry and Joseph S. Gordon update our understanding of strategic warning intelligence analysis for the twenty-first century. Strategic warning—the process of long-range analysis to alert senior leaders to trending threats and opportunities that require action—is a critical intelligence function. It also is frequently misunderstood and underappreciated. Gentry and Gordon draw on both their practitioner and academic backgrounds to present a history of the strategic warning function in the US intelligence community. In doing so, they outline the capabilities of analytic methods, explain why strategic warning analysis is so hard, and discuss the special challenges strategic warning encounters from senior decision-makers. They also compare how strategic warning functions in other countries, evaluate why the United States has in recent years emphasized current intelligence instead of strategic warning, and recommend warning-related structural and procedural improvements in the US intelligence community. The authors examine historical case studies, including postmortems of warning failures, to provide examples of the analytic points they make. Strategic Warning Intelligence will interest scholars and practitioners and will be an ideal teaching text for intermediate and advanced students.

A Classic in Counterintelligence—Now Back in Print

Originally published in 1987, Thwarting Enemies at Home and Abroad is a unique primer that teaches the principles, strategy, and tradecraft of counterintelligence (CI). CI is often misunderstood and narrowly equated with security and catching spies, which are only part of the picture. As William R. Johnson explains, CI is the art of actively protecting secrets but also aggressively thwarting, penetrating, and deceiving hostile intelligence organizations to neutralize or even manipulate their operations.

Johnson, a career CIA intelligence officer, lucidly presents the nuts and bolts of the business of counterintelligence and the characteristics that make a good CI officer. Although written during the late Cold War, this book continues to be useful for intelligence professionals, scholars, and students because the basic principles of CI are largely timeless. General readers will enjoy the lively narrative and detailed descriptions of tradecraft that reveal the real world of intelligence and espionage. A new foreword by former CIA officer and noted author William Hood provides a contemporary perspective on this valuable book and its author.

How the US is losing the counterintelligence war and what the country should do to better protect our national security and trade secrets

The United States is losing the counterintelligence war. Foreign intelligence services, particularly those of China, Russia, and Cuba, are recruiting spies in our midst and stealing our secrets and cutting-edge technologies. In To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence, James M. Olson, former chief of CIA counterintelligence, offers a wake-up call for the American public and also a guide for how our country can do a better job of protecting its national security and trade secrets. Olson takes the reader into the arcane world of counterintelligence as he lived it during his thirty-year career in the CIA. After an overview of what the Chinese, Russian, and Cuban spy services are doing to the United States, Olson explains the nitty-gritty of the principles and methods of counterintelligence. Readers will learn about specific aspects of counterintelligence such as running double-agent operations and surveillance. The book also analyzes twelve real-world case studies to illustrate why people spy against their country, the tradecraft of counterintelligence, and where counterintelligence breaks down or succeeds. A “lessons learned” section follows each case study.

The intelligence failures exposed by the events of 9/11 and the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have made one thing perfectly clear: change is needed in how the U.S. intelligence community operates. Transforming U.S. Intelligence argues that transforming intelligence requires as much a look to the future as to the past and a focus more on the art and practice of intelligence rather than on its bureaucratic arrangements. In fact, while the recent restructuring, including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, may solve some problems, it has also created new ones. The authors of this volume agree that transforming policies and practices will be the most effective way to tackle future challenges facing the nation's security.

This volume's contributors, who have served in intelligence agencies, the Departments of State or Defense, and the staffs of congressional oversight committees, bring their experience as insiders to bear in thoughtful and thought-provoking essays that address what such an overhaul of the system will require. In the first section, contributors discuss twenty-first-century security challenges and how the intelligence community can successfully defend U.S. national interests. The second section focuses on new technologies and modified policies that can increase the effectiveness of intelligence gathering and analysis. Finally, contributors consider management procedures that ensure the implementation of enhanced capabilities in practice.

Transforming U.S. Intelligence supports the mandate of the new director of national intelligence by offering both careful analysis of existing strengths and weaknesses in U.S. intelligence and specific recommendations on how to fix its problems without harming its strengths. These recommendations, based on intimate knowledge of the way U.S. intelligence actually works, include suggestions for the creative mixing of technologies with new missions to bring about the transformation of U.S. intelligence without incurring unnecessary harm or expense. The goal is the creation of an intelligence community that can rapidly respond to developments in international politics, such as the emergence of nimble terrorist networks while reconciling national security requirements with the rights and liberties of American citizens.

Decision makers matching wits with an adversary want intelligence—good, relevant information to help them win. Intelligence can gain these advantages through directed research and analysis, agile collection, and the timely use of guile and theft. Counterintelligence is the art and practice of defeating these endeavors. Its purpose is the same as that of positive intelligence—to gain advantage—but it does so by exploiting, disrupting, denying, or manipulating the intelligence activities of others. The tools of counterintelligence include security systems, deception, and disguise: vaults, mirrors, and masks.

In one indispensable volume, top practitioners and scholars in the field explain the importance of counterintelligence today and explore the causes of—and practical solutions for—U.S. counterintelligence weaknesses. These experts stress the importance of developing a sound strategic vision in order to improve U.S. counterintelligence and emphasize the challenges posed by technological change, confused purposes, political culture, and bureaucratic rigidity. Vaults, Mirrors, and Masks skillfully reveals that robust counterintelligence is vital to ensuring America's security.

Published in cooperation with the Center for Peace and Security Studies and the George T. Kalaris Memorial Fund, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.