Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

A CIA reading list

As you compile your resolutions for the new year, Best Defense is offering three different reading lists to help you. Here is a list from CIA veteran Hayden Peake. One reason I don’t write much about intelligence is that I don’t know much about it — as this list reminds me — I haven’t read ...

Flickr/iBjorn
Flickr/iBjorn
Flickr/iBjorn

As you compile your resolutions for the new year, Best Defense is offering three different reading lists to help you. Here is a list from CIA veteran Hayden Peake. One reason I don't write much about intelligence is that I don't know much about it -- as this list reminds me -- I haven't read any of them. But he does.

As you compile your resolutions for the new year, Best Defense is offering three different reading lists to help you. Here is a list from CIA veteran Hayden Peake. One reason I don’t write much about intelligence is that I don’t know much about it — as this list reminds me — I haven’t read any of them. But he does.

Current Topics
Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance: Acquisitions, Policies and Defense Oversight, by Johanna A. Montgomery (ed.).

General
The Dictionary of Espionage: Spyspeak into English, by Joseph C. Goulden.

Historical
Black Ops Vietnam: The Operational History of MACVSOG, by Robert M. Gillespie.

Classical Spies: American Archaeologists with the OSS in World War II Greece, by Susan Heuck Allen.

Dealing With the Devil: Anglo-Soviet Intelligence Cooperation During the Second World War, by Dónal O’Sullivan.

Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies, by Ben Macintyre

Enemies: A History of the FBI, by Tim Weiner.

Franco’s Friends: How British Intelligence Helped Bring Franco To Power In Spain, by Peter Day.

Gentleman Spymaster: How Lt. Col. Tommy ‘Tar’ Robertson Double-crossed the Nazis, by Geoffrey Elliott.

The Ideal Man: The Tragedy of Jim Thompson and the American Way of War, by Joshua Kurlantzick.

Joe Rochefort’s War: The Odyssey of the Codebreaker Who Outwitted Yamamoto at Midway, by Elliot Carlson, with a foreword by RAdm. Donald "Mac" Showers, USN (Ret.).

Memoir
Malayan Spymaster: Memoirs of a Rubber Planter Bandit Fighter and Spy, by Boris Hembry.

Intelligence Abroad
Historical Dictionary of Chinese Intelligence, by I.C. Smith and Nigel West.

Israel’s Silent Defender: An Inside Look at Sixty Years of Israeli Intelligence, by Amos Gilboa and Ephraim Lapid (eds.).

Learning from the Secret Past: Cases in British Intelligence History, by Robert Dover and Michael S. Goodman (eds.).

Main Intelligence Outfits of Pakistan, by P.C. Joshi.

The Politics of Counterterrorism in India: Strategic Intelligence and National Security in South Asia, by Prem Mahadevan.

Stalin’s Man in Canada: Fred Rose and Soviet Espionage, by David Levy.

Stasi Decorations and Memorabilia: Volume II, by Ralph Pickard, with a foreword by Ambassador Hugh Montgomery.

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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