The book the CIA wanted to keep off the bookshelves! In the murky world of espionage, where shadowy intelligence operatives struggle against one another to gain tactical advantage, things can often go very, very wrong. This is one such story. Told by a former master CIA spy, truth is woven with fiction to create a gripping yet authentic action packed tale of real intelligence operatives at war.
“Broman’s true tales of putting his life on the line recruiting and running spies in a dozen countries are the stuff of action movies.” —Peter Arnett, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Live from the Battlefield Joining the CIA after fighting in Vietnam as a Marine, Barry Broman’s first posting was war-torn Cambodia. He was present at the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, escaping just before the Khmer Rouge took power. During his career, he was twice chief of station, once a deputy chief of station, and he supervised an international paramilitary project in support of the Cambodian resistance to Vietnamese invaders. He was actively involved in several assignments in counter-narcotics operations in Southeast Asia including a major bust that yielded 551 kilograms of high-grade heroin from a major drug trafficker. His favorite agent against a variety of hard targets was a fellow whose only demand was that his assignments be “life threatening.” (He survived them all.) As amazing as the characters Broman has met are the places he’s been, with visits to little-known and rarely seen places like the Naga Hills on the India–Burma border, the world-famous but off-limits jade and ruby mines of Burma, and the isolated Banda Islands of Indonesia, the home of nutmeg. Broman’s engaging tone is complemented by photographs taken throughout his career, many of them his own, made using the skills he learned as a teenager working for the Associated Press in Southeast Asia—including Marines in action in Vietnam, the ravages of war in Cambodia, and opium buyers forcing growers to sell in Burma. “[A] remarkable life story.” —Booklist
Data are an organization's sole, non-depletable, non-degrading, durable asset. Engineered right, data's value increases over time because the added dimensions of time, geography, and precision. To achieve data's full organizational value, there must be dedicated individual to leverage data as assets - a Chief Data Officer or CDO who's three job pillars are: - Dedication solely to leveraging data assets, - Unconstrained by an IT project mindset, and - Reports directly to the business Once these three pillars are set into place, organizations can leverage their data assets. Data possesses properties worthy of additional investment. Many existing CDOs are fatally crippled, however, because they lack one or more of these three pillars. Often organizations have some or all pillars already in place but are not operating in a coordinated manner. The overall objective of this book is to present these pillars in an understandable way, why each is necessary (but insufficient), and what do to about it. - Uncovers that almost all organizations need sophisticated, comprehensive data management education and strategies. - Delivery of organization-wide data success requires a highly focused, full time Chief Data Officer. - Engineers organization-wide data advantage which enables success in the marketplace
Left of Boom is the explosive New York Times bestselling memoir by a young CIA operative on the front lines in Afghanistan. On September 11, 2001, Douglas Laux was a freshman in college, on the path to becoming a doctor. But with the fall of the Twin Towers came a turning point in his life. After graduating he joined the Central Intelligence Agency, determined to get himself to Afghanistan and into the center of the action. Through persistence and hard work he was fast-tracked to a clandestine operations position overseas. Dropped into a remote region of Afghanistan, he received his baptism by fire. Frustrated by bureaucratic red tape, a widespread lack of knowledge of the local customs and culture and an attitude of complacency that hindered his ability to combat the local Taliban, Doug confounded his peers by dressing like a native and mastering the local dialect, making contact and building sources within several deadly terrorist networks. His new approach resulted in unprecedented successes for the CIA, including the uncovering the largest IED network in the world, responsible for killing hundreds of US soldiers. Meanwhile, Doug had to keep up false pretenses with his family, girlfriend and friends--nobody could know what he did for a living--and deal with the emotional turbulence of constantly living a lie. His double life was building to an explosive resolution, with repercussions that would have far reaching consequences. Left of Boom tells his story.
Call me naïve, but when I was a girl-watching James Bond and devouring Harriet the Spy-all I wanted was to grow up to be a spy. Unlike most kids, I didn't lose my secret-agent aspirations. So as a bright-eyed, idealistic college grad, I sent my resume to the CIA. Getting in was a story in itself. I peed in more cups than you could imagine, and was nearly condemned as a sexual deviant by the staff psychologist. My roommates were getting freaked out by government investigators lurking around, asking questions about my past. Finally, the CIA was training me to crash cars into barriers at 60 mph. Jump out of airplanes with cargo attached to my body. Survive interrogation, travel in alias, lose a tail. One thing they didn't teach us was how to date a guy while lying to him about what you do for a living. That I had to figure out for myself. Then I was posted overseas. And that's when the real fun began.
In See No Evil, one of the CIA’s top field officers of the past quarter century recounts his career running agents in the back alleys of the Middle East. In the process, Robert Baer paints a chilling picture of how terrorism works on the inside and provides compelling evidence about how Washington politics sabotaged the CIA’s efforts to root out the world’s deadliest terrorists. On the morning of September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the terrible result of that intelligence failure with the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the wake of those attacks, Americans were left wondering how such an obviously long-term, globally coordinated plot could have escaped detection by the CIA and taken the nation by surprise. Robert Baer was not surprised. A twenty-one-year veteran of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations who had left the agency in 1997, Baer observed firsthand how an increasingly bureaucratic CIA lost its way in the post–cold war world and refused to adequately acknowledge and neutralize the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalist terror in the Middle East and elsewhere. A throwback to the days when CIA operatives got results by getting their hands dirty and running covert operations, Baer spent his career chasing down leads on suspected terrorists in the world’s most volatile hot spots. As he and his agents risked their lives gathering intelligence, he watched as the CIA reduced drastically its operations overseas, failed to put in place people who knew local languages and customs, and rewarded workers who knew how to play the political games of the agency’s suburban Washington headquarters but not how to recruit agents on the ground. See No Evil is not only a candid memoir of the education and disillusionment of an intelligence operative but also an unprecedented look at the roots of modern terrorism. Baer reveals some of the disturbing details he uncovered in his work, including: * In 1996, Osama bin Laden established a strategic alliance with Iran to coordinate terrorist attacks against the United States. * In 1995, the National Security Council intentionally aborted a military coup d’etat against Saddam Hussein, forgoing the last opportunity to get rid of him. * In 1991, the CIA intentionally shut down its operations in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, and ignored fundamentalists operating there. When Baer left the agency in 1997 he received the Career Intelligence Medal, with a citation that says, “He repeatedly put himself in personal danger, working the hardest targets, in service to his country.” See No Evil is Baer’s frank assessment of an agency that forgot that “service to country” must transcend politics and is a forceful plea for the CIA to return to its original mission—the preservation of our national sovereignty and the American way of life.
A highly entertaining account of a young woman who went straight from her college sorority to the CIA, where she hunted terrorists and WMDs "Reads like the show bible for Homeland only her story is real." —Alison Stewart, WNYC "A thrilling tale...Walder’s fast-paced and intense narrative opens a window into life in two of America’s major intelligence agencies" —Publishers Weekly (starred review) When Tracy Walder enrolled at the University of Southern California, she never thought that one day she would offer her pink beanbag chair in the Delta Gamma house to a CIA recruiter, or that she’d fly to the Middle East under an alias identity. The Unexpected Spy is the riveting story of Walder's tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for Weapons of Mass Destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion. Driven to stop terrorism, Walder debriefed terrorists—men who swore they’d never speak to a woman—until they gave her leads. She followed trails through North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, shutting down multiple chemical attacks. Then Walder moved to the FBI, where she worked in counterintelligence. In a single year, she helped take down one of the most notorious foreign spies ever caught on American soil. Catching the bad guys wasn’t a problem in the FBI, but rampant sexism was. Walder left the FBI to teach young women, encouraging them to find a place in the FBI, CIA, State Department or the Senate—and thus change the world.
This book details the author's experiences, both good and bad, while working as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Officer for over twenty years. The book begins with how the author was hired by the CIA to include the grueling polygraph test. Details on the author's first day at the CIA transports the reader's mind into what it must be like to walk through the halls of the world's premier intelligence agency and one of the most secretive buildings in the world. Insights about living in a foreign country abound throughout the book, as are reflections on what it's like living and working "under cover" and having to lie to friends and family about the true nature of his work. The inner workings of the CIA are detailed from an insider point of view and no punches are pulled in the chapters "Victims of Power" "Leadership (or lack of it)" and "Diversity (or lack of it)". The chapter "Gulf War I – 1991" (Persian Gulf War) finds the author less than a year and a half after being hired immersed in war efforts and becoming a victim of an exploding landmine. In 2003 the author again finds himself in the Middle East in the midst of Gulf War II. Chapter "9/11" details what occurred at the CIA on September 11, 2001 and how the CIA reacted to these terrible events. Poignant stories of the death of friends and colleagues in the chapter "Death Happens" provides an understanding to the reader that being a CIA Officer is oftentimes dangerous and can be deadly. The chapter "Special Project", which was heavily redacted by the CIA, provides the reader an insight into covert operations.Humorous aspects of living overseas, interacting with people of different cultures and eating exotic foods are interspersed throughout the book's twenty-eight chapters. Most other books written by former CIA Officers detail one or two specific events; this book is different in that the author provides insight into a whole career, from hiring to retirement, from the mundane to the exciting, to give the reader the full experience of what it's like to be a CIA Officer.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Fast and thrilling . . . Life Undercover reads as if a John le Carré character landed in Eat Pray Love." —The New York Times Amaryllis Fox's riveting memoir tells the story of her ten years in the most elite clandestine ops unit of the CIA, hunting the world's most dangerous terrorists in sixteen countries while marrying and giving birth to a daughter Amaryllis Fox was in her last year as an undergraduate at Oxford studying theology and international law when her writing mentor Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded. Galvanized by this brutality, Fox applied to a master's program in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, where she created an algorithm that predicted, with uncanny certainty, the likelihood of a terrorist cell arising in any village around the world. At twenty-one, she was recruited by the CIA. Her first assignment was reading and analyzing hundreds of classified cables a day from foreign governments and synthesizing them into daily briefs for the president. Her next assignment was at the Iraq desk in the Counterterrorism center. At twenty-two, she was fast-tracked into advanced operations training, sent from Langley to "the Farm," where she lived for six months in a simulated world learning how to use a Glock, how to get out of flexicuffs while locked in the trunk of a car, how to withstand torture, and the best ways to commit suicide in case of captivity. At the end of this training she was deployed as a spy under non-official cover--the most difficult and coveted job in the field as an art dealer specializing in tribal and indigenous art and sent to infiltrate terrorist networks in remote areas of the Middle East and Asia. Life Undercover is exhilarating, intimate, fiercely intelligent--an impossible to put down record of an extraordinary life, and of Amaryllis Fox's astonishing courage and passion.
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.
