The Best Intelligence & Espionage Political Books 2025

1. Pre-Owned, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, (Hardcover)

Pre-Owned - New York Times bestseller The former Director of National Intelligence's candid and compelling account of the intelligence community's successes--and failures--in facing some of the greatest threats to America When he stepped down in January 2017 as the fourth United States director of national intelligence, James Clapper had been President Obama's senior intelligence adviser for six and a half years, longer than his three predecessors combined. He led the U.S. intelligence community through a period that included the raid on Osama bin Laden, the Benghazi attack, the leaks of Edward Snowden, and Russia's influence operation during the 2016 U.S. election campaign. In Facts and Fears, Clapper traces his career through the growing threat of cyberattacks, his relationships with presidents and Congress, and the truth about Russia's role in the presidential election. He describes, in the wake of Snowden and WikiLeaks, his efforts to make intelligence more transparent and to push back against the suspicion that Americans' private lives are subject to surveillance. Finally, it was living through Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and seeing how the foundations of American democracy were--and continue to be--undermined by a foreign power that led him to break with his instincts honed through more than five decades in the intelligence profession to share his inside experience. Clapper considers such controversial questions as, Is intelligence ethical? Is it moral to intercept communications or to photograph closed societies from orbit? What are the limits of what we should be allowed to do? What protections should we give to the private citizens of the world, not to mention our fellow Americans? Are there times when intelligence officers can lose credibility as unbiased reporters of hard truths by inserting themselves into policy decisions? Facts and Fears offers a privileged look inside the U.S. intelligence community and, with the frankness and professionalism for which James Clapper is known, addresses some of the most difficult challenges in our nation's history.

Title: Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence Book Format: Hardcover ISBN10: 0525558640 EAN: 9780525558644 Author: Clapper, James R.; Brown, Trey CONDITION - GOOD - Pre-Owned - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include 'From the library of' labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included.

2. Pre-Owned Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991 (Hardcover) 0060171170 9780060171179

Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991 by Crozier, Brian

Title: Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941-1991 ISBN10: 0060171170 EAN: 9780060171179 Author: Crozier, Brian CONDITION - GOOD - Pre-Owned - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include 'From the library of' labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included.

3. Pre-Owned The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence (Paperback) 0700616535 9780700616534

As the world prepared for war in the 1930s, the United States discovered that it faced the real threat of foreign spies stealing military and industrial secrets-and that it had no established means to combat them. Into that breach stepped J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Although the FBI's expanded role in World War II has been well documented, few have examined the crucial period before Pearl Harbor when the Bureau's powers secretly expanded to face the developing international emergency. Former FBI agent Raymond Batvinis now tells how the Bureau grew from a small law enforcement unit into America's first organized counterespionage and counterintelligence service. Batvinis examines the FBI's emerging new roles during the two decades leading up to America's entry into World War II to show how it cooperated and competed with other federal agencies. He takes readers behind the scenes, as the State Department and Hoover fought fiercely over the control of counterintelligence, and tells how the agency combined its crime-fighting expertise with its new wiretapping authority to spy on foreign agents. Based on newly declassified documents and interviews with former agents, Batvinis's account reconstructs and greatly expands our understanding of the FBI's achievements and failures during this period. Among these were the Bureau's mishandling of the 1938 Rumrich/Griebl spy case, which Hoover slyly used to broaden his agency's powers; its cracking of the Duquesne Espionage Case in 1941, which enabled Hoover to boost public and congressional support to new heights; and its failure to understand the value of Soviet agent Walter Krivitsky, which slowed Bureau efforts to combat Soviet espionage in America. In addition, Batvinis offers a new view of the relationship between the FBI and the military, cites the crucial contributions of British intelligence to the FBI's counterintelligence education, and reveals the agency's ultra-secret role in mining financial records for the Treasury Department. He also reviews the early days of the top-secret Special Intelligence Service, which quietly dispatched FBI agents posing as businessmen to South America to spy on their governments. With an insider's knowledge and a storyteller's skill, Batvinis provides a page-turning history narrative that greatly revises our views of the FBI--and also resonates powerfully with our own post-9/11 world.

Title: The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence Book Format: Paperback ISBN10: 0700616535 EAN: 9780700616534 Author: Batvinis, Raymond J. CONDITION - GOOD - Pre-Owned - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include 'From the library of' labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included.

4. Pre-Owned Zero Fail : The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service 9780399589010

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "This is one of those books that will go down as the seminal work--the determinative work--in this field. . . . Terrifying."--Rachel Maddow The first definitive account of the rise and fall of the Secret Service, from the Kennedy assassination to the alarming mismanagement of the Obama and Trump years, right up to the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6--by the Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of A Very Stable Genius and I Alone Can Fix It NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST Carol Leonnig has been reporting on the Secret Service for The Washington Post for most of the last decade, bringing to light the secrets, scandals, and shortcomings that plague the agency today--from a toxic work culture to dangerously outdated equipment to the deep resentment within the ranks at key agency leaders, who put protecting the agency's once-hallowed image before fixing its flaws. But the Secret Service wasn't always so troubled. The Secret Service was born in 1865, in the wake of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but its story begins in earnest in 1963, with the death of John F. Kennedy. Shocked into reform by its failure to protect the president on that fateful day in Dallas, this once-sleepy agency was radically transformed into an elite, highly trained unit that would redeem itself several times, most famously in 1981 by thwarting an assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan. But this reputation for courage and excellence would not last forever. By Barack Obama's presidency, the once-proud Secret Service was running on fumes and beset by mistakes and alarming lapses in judgment: break-ins at the White House, an armed gunman firing into the windows of the residence while confused agents stood by, and a massive prostitution scandal among agents in Cartagena, to name just a few. With Donald Trump's arrival, a series of promised reforms were cast aside, as a president disdainful of public service instead abused the Secret Service to rack up political and personal gains. To explore these problems in the ranks, Leonnig interviewed dozens of current and former agents, government officials, and whistleblowers who put their jobs on the line to speak out about a hobbled agency that's in desperate need of reform. "I will be forever grateful to them for risking their careers," she writes, "not because they wanted to share tantalizing gossip about presidents and their families, but because they know that the Service is broken and needs fixing. By telling their story, they hope to revive the Service they love."

Title: Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service Book Format: Hardcover ISBN10: 0399589015 EAN: 9780399589010 Author: Leonnig, Carol CONDITION - GOOD - Pre-Owned - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include 'From the library of' labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included.

5. The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence, (Paperback)

As the world prepared for war in the 1930s, the United States discovered that it faced the real threat of foreign spies stealing military and industrial secrets-and that it had no established means to combat them. Into that breach stepped J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Although the FBI's expanded role in World War II has been well documented, few have examined the crucial period before Pearl Harbor when the Bureau's powers secretly expanded to face the developing international emergency. Former FBI agent Raymond Batvinis now tells how the Bureau grew from a small law enforcement unit into America's first organized counterespionage and counterintelligence service. Batvinis examines the FBI's emerging new roles during the two decades leading up to America's entry into World War II to show how it cooperated and competed with other federal agencies. He takes readers behind the scenes, as the State Department and Hoover fought fiercely over the control of counterintelligence, and tells how the agency combined its crime-fighting expertise with its new wiretapping authority to spy on foreign agents. Based on newly declassified documents and interviews with former agents, Batvinis's account reconstructs and greatly expands our understanding of the FBI's achievements and failures during this period. Among these were the Bureau's mishandling of the 1938 Rumrich/Griebl spy case, which Hoover slyly used to broaden his agency's powers; its cracking of the Duquesne Espionage Case in 1941, which enabled Hoover to boost public and congressional support to new heights; and its failure to understand the value of Soviet agent Walter Krivitsky, which slowed Bureau efforts to combat Soviet espionage in America. In addition, Batvinis offers a new view of the relationship between the FBI and the military, cites the crucial contributions of British intelligence to the FBI's counterintelligence education, and reveals the agency's ultra-secret role in mining financial records for the Treasury Department. He also reviews the early days of the top-secret Special Intelligence Service, which quietly dispatched FBI agents posing as businessmen to South America to spy on their governments. With an insider's knowledge and a storyteller's skill, Batvinis provides a page-turning history narrative that greatly revises our views of the FBI--and also resonates powerfully with our own post-9/11 world.

The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence, (Paperback) Author: University Press of Kansas ISBN: 9780700616534 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2007-03-02 Page Count: 344

6. Pre-Owned The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man Paperback

Now a major motion picture, directed by Oliver Stone and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Edward Snowden was a 29-year-old computer genius working for the National Security Agency when he shocked the world by exposing the near-universal mass surveillance programs of the United States government. His whistleblowing has shaken the leaders of nations worldwide, and generated a passionate public debate on the dangers of global monitoring and the threat to individual privacy. In a tour de force of investigative journalism that reads like a spy novel, award-winning Guardian reporter Luke Harding tells Snowden's astonishing story--from the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Honolulu carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of his secret-spilling in Hong Kong, to his battle for asylum and his exile in Moscow. For the first time, Harding brings together the many sources and strands of the story--touching on everything from concerns about domestic spying to the complicity of the tech sector--while also placing us in the room with Edward Snowden himself. The result is a gripping insider narrative--and a necessary and timely account of what is at stake for all of us in the new digital age.

Title: The Snowden Files Book Format: Import; International Edition ISBN10: 1783350350 EAN: 9781783350353 Author: Luke Harding CONDITION - GOOD - Pre-Owned - Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include 'From the library of' labels or previous owner inscriptions. Accessories such as CD, codes, toys, may not be included.