Ever wondered what a spy reads? Wonder no more. The CIA is very open about what it considers required reading for the spy-set. It regularly publishes recommended reading lists on its website, with the most recent update including a series of titles related to Edward Snowden and one detailing potential abuses at Guantanamo Bay.
The list includes both current titles and a number of very interesting historial books. It’s a great place to start for college students interested in pursuing an intelligence career or professionals looking to expand their knowledge of IC history. See the full list, below, and click here for excerpts and descriptions.
Current
No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State, by Glenn Greenwald.The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, by Luke Harding.
The Snowden Operation: Inside the West’s Greatest Intelligence Disaster, by Edward Lucas.
The Terror Courts: Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay, by Jess Bravin.
Historical
“A” Force: The Origins of British Deception During the Second World War, by Whitney T. Bendeck.The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI, by Betty Medsger.
Dark Invasion: 1915—Germany’s Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America, by Howard Blum.
Dr. Benjamin Church, Spy: A Case of Espionage on the Eve of the American Revolution, by John A. Nagy.
Fool’s Mate: A True Story of Espionage at the National Security Agency, by John W. Whiteside III.
Historical Dictionary of World War I Intelligence, by Nigel West.
Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence, by Nigel West.
James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right?, by Edward Jay Epstein.
Meeting the Challenge: The Hexagon KH-9 Reconnaissance Satellite, by Phil Pressel.
Moles, Defectors, and Deceptions: James Angleton and His Influence on US Counterintelligence, edited by Bruce Hoffman and Christian Ostermann.
Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, by Allen Weinstein.
Proceed to Peshawar: The Story of a U.S. Navy Intelligence Mission on the Afghan Border, 1943, by George J. Hill
Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies: The Story of Invisible Ink from Herodotus to al-Qaeda, by Kristie Macrakis
SIGINT: The Secret History of Signals Intelligence 1914–45, by Peter Matthews.
TOP SECRET: Images from the Archives of the Stasi, by Simon Menner.
Unlikely Warriors: The Army Security Agency’s Secret War in Vietnam 1961–1973, by Lonnie M. Long and Gary B. Blackburn.
Memoirs
Chapman Pincher: Dangerous To Know—A Life, by Chapman Pincher.How Long Till Dawn: Memoirs of one of the Charter Members and Original Founders of the Resistance Movement in Algiers and a Member of OSS during World War II, by Daphne Joan Fry (Tuyl) Knox.
