S2 Actual reading list

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Lawrence Wright

Knopf · 2006

A sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas, the terrorist plans and the Western intelligence failures that culminated in the assault on America. Lawrence Wright's remarkable book is based on five years of research and hundreds of interviews that he conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, England, France, Germany, Spain, and the United States. The Looming Tower achieves an unprecedented level of intimacy and insight by telling the story through the interweaving lives of four men: the two leaders of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri; the FBI's counterterrorism chief, John O'Neill; and the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal. As these lives unfold, we see revealed: the crosscurrents of modern Islam that helped to radicalize Zawahiri and bin Laden . . . the birth of al-Qaeda and its unsteady development into an organization capable of the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole . . . O'Neill's heroic efforts to track al-Qaeda before 9/11, and his tragic death in the World Trade towers . . . Prince Turki's transformation from bin Laden's ally to his enemy . . . the failures of the FBI, CIA, and NSA to share intelligence that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks. The Looming Tower broadens and deepens our knowledge of these signal events by taking us behind the scenes. Here is Sayyid Qutb, founder of the modern Islamist movement, lonely and despairing as he meets Western culture up close in 1940s America; the privileged childhoods of bin Laden and Zawahiri; family life in the al-Qaeda compounds of Sudan and Afghanistan; O'Neill's high-wire act in balancing his all-consuming career with his equally entangling personal life--he was living with three women, each of them unaware of the others' existence--and the nitty-gritty of turf battles among U.S. intelligence agencies. Brilliantly conceived and written, The Looming Tower draws all elements of the story into a galvanizing narrative that adds immeasurably to our understanding of how we arrived at September 11, 2001. The richness of its new information, and the depth of its perceptions, can help us deal more wisely and effectively with the continuing terrorist threat.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (George Smiley, #5; Karla Trilogy, #1)

John le Carré

A modern classic in which John le Carré expertly creates a total vision of a secret world, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy begins George Smiley's chess match of wills and wits with Karla, his Soviet counterpart. It is now beyond a doubt that a mole, implanted decades ago by Moscow Centre, has burrowed his way into the highest echelons of British Intelligence. His treachery has already blown some of its most vital operations and its best networks. It is clear that the double agent is one of its own kind. But which one? George Smiley is assigned to identify him. And once identified, the traitor must be destroyed.

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

Joby Warrick

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Joby Warrick reveals how the strain of militant Islam now raising its banner across Iraq and Syria spread from a remote Jordanian prison with the unwitting aid of American military intervention.      When he succeeded his father in 1999, King Abdullah of Jordan released a batch of political prisoners in the hopes of smoothing his transition to power. Little did he know that among those released was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a man who would go on to become a terrorist mastermind too dangerous even for al-Qaeda and give rise to an Islamist movement bent on dominating the Middle East.      Zarqawi began by directing hotel bombings and assassinations in Jordan from a base in northern Iraq, but it was the American invasion of that country in 2003 that catapulted him to the head of a vast insurgency. By identifying him as the link between Saddam and bin Laden, the CIA inadvertently created a monster. Like-minded radicals saw him as a hero resisting the infidel occupiers and rallied to his cause. Their wave of brutal beheadings and suicide bombings continued for years until Jordanian intelligence provided the Americans with the crucial intelligence needed to eliminate Zarqawi in a 2006 airstrike.      But his movement endured, first called al-Qaeda in Iraq, then renamed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, seeking refuge in unstable, ungoverned pockets on the Iraq-Syria border. And as the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011, ISIS seized its chance to pursue Zarqawi's dream of a sweeping, ultra-conservative Islamic caliphate.       Drawing on unique access to CIA and Jordanian sources, Joby Warrick weaves together heart-pounding, moment-by-moment operational details with overarching historical perspectives to reveal the long trajectory of today's most dangerous Islamic extremist threat. From the Hardcover edition.

Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Tim Weiner

Doubleday · 2007

For the last sixty years, the CIA has managed to maintain a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, burying its blunders in top-secret archives. Its mission was to know the world. When it did not succeed, it set out to change the world. Its failures have handed us, in the words of President Eisenhower, “a legacy of ashes.” Now Pulitzer Prize–winning author Tim Weiner offers the first definitive history of the CIA—and everything is on the record. LEGACY OF ASHES is based on more than 50,000 documents, primarily from the archives of the CIA itself, and hundreds of interviews with CIA veterans, including ten Directors of Central Intelligence. It takes the CIA from its creation after World War II, through its battles in the cold war and the war on terror, to its near-collapse after September 11th, 2001. Tim Weiner’s past work on the CIA and American intelligence was hailed as “impressively reported” and “immensely entertaining” in The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal called it “truly extraordinary . . . the best book ever written on a case of espionage.” Here is the hidden history of the CIA: why eleven presidents and three generations of CIA officers have been unable to understand the world; why nearly every CIA director has left the agency in worse shape than he found it; and how these failures have profoundly jeopardized our national security.

Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex

Yasha Levine

PublicAffairs · 2018

The internet is the most effective weapon the government has ever built. In this fascinating book, investigative reporter Yasha Levine uncovers the secret origins of the internet, tracing it back to a Pentagon counterinsurgency surveillance project. A visionary intelligence officer, William Godel, realized that the key to winning the war in Vietnam was not outgunning the enemy, but using new information technology to understand their motives and anticipate their movements. This idea--using computers to spy on people and groups perceived as a threat, both at home and abroad--drove ARPA to develop the internet in the 1960s, and continues to be at the heart of the modern internet we all know and use today. As Levine shows, surveillance wasn't something that suddenly appeared on the internet; it was woven into the fabric of the technology. But this isn't just a story about the NSA or other domestic programs run by the government. As the book spins forward in time, Levine examines the private surveillance business that powers tech-industry giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, revealing how these companies spy on their users for profit, all while doing double duty as military and intelligence contractors. Levine shows that the military and Silicon Valley are effectively inseparable: a military-digital complex that permeates everything connected to the internet, even coopting and weaponizing the antigovernment privacy movement that sprang up in the wake of Edward Snowden. With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news--and the device on which you read it.

Behind the battle: Intelligence in the war with Germany, 1939-45

Ralph Bennett

By the end of 1942, Ultra had become the richest and most reliable of the many different sources of intelligence, however, the relation between their individual contributions requires analysis. Ralph Bennett's study aims to present a succinct survey and analysis of the military intelligence available to Britain and her allies during World War II. When war began, Britain was as ill-prepared in intelligence as in armaments. Civilian scientists had discovered the principle of radar in the mid-1930s, but everything else had to be learned from scratch in the heat of emergency. In 1939, all three armed services lacked staff trained to appraise and distribute intelligence. Because it had so often been unreliable in the past, field commanders were reluctant to accept it and had to learn new ways. First signs of improvement came in mid-1941, when Ultra targeted naval vessels and bomber aircraft onto so many of Rommel's supply ships that the Afrika Korps almost withered on the vine. From then on intelligence played an increasingly indispensable part in final victory. Ultra won the Battle of the Atlantic, driving the U-boats back to coastal waters by June 1943. A lower grade code gave Montgomery the vital first news of the whereabouts of the German tanks as he planned the breakthrough at Alamein. Only "Bomber" Harris refused to give intelligence the credit it deserved, for reasons investigated in "Behind the Battle".

Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence In World War II

David Kahn

Da Capo Press · 2000

A German patrol wiggles through Russian lines to return with details of Soviet defenses. An expert Luftwaffe interrogator teases secret information from downed Allied airmen. Two spies steal ashore in Maine and make their way into New York City. Filled with episodes of intrigue and adventure, Hitler's Spies reveals the workings of German intelligence—the famed Abwehr, the dreaded SD, the codebreakers, the spies, and the intelligence gatherers of the Foreign Office—and explains its failure to best the Allies. Draws on original documents and extensive interviews.

Japanese Intelligence in World War II (General Military)

Ken Kotani

Osprey · 2009

In the eyes of history, Japanese intelligence in World War II has fared very poorly. However, these historians have most often concentrated on the later years of the war, when Japan was fighting a multi-front war against numerous opponents. In this groundbreaking new study, Japanese scholar Ken Kotani re-examines the Japanese Intelligence department, beginning with the early phase of the war. He points out that without the intelligence gathered by the Japanese Army and Navy they would have been unable to achieve their long string of victories against the forces of Russia, China, and Great Britain. Notable in these early campaigns were the successful strikes against both Singapore and Pearl Harbor. Yet as these victories expanded the sphere of Japanese control, they also made it harder for the intelligence services to gather accurate information about their growing list of adversaries. At the battle of Midway in 1942, Japanese intelligence suffered its worst mishap when the Americans broke their code and tricked the Japanese into revealing the target of their attack. It was a mistake from which they would never recover. As the military might of Japan was forced to retreat and her forces deteriorated, so too did her intelligence services.

Secret Channel to Berlin: The Masson-Schellenberg Connection and Swiss Intelligence in World War II

Pierre-Th. Braunschweig

Casemate · 2004

This book focuses on the delicate connection between the head of Swiss Intelligence, Colonel Roger Masson, and the German Chief of Espionage, SS General Walter Schellenberg. The author had access to hitherto inaccessible documents, including newly discovered material in American archives, to fully illuminate this secret connection for the first time. The book also includes surprising new details about the alarming military threats Switzerland faced in March 1943. Masson's extraordinary secret channel to Berlin was not, of course, the only Swiss intelligence operation during the war. Braunschweig outlines in detail the gradual buildup, tasks and functions of Swiss Intelligence during World War II. He furthermore describes conflicts between Swiss Intelligence and the Federal government in Bern and within the Intelligence service itself. During World War II, Switzerland was famous as a center of spies and espionage fielded by Allies and Axis alike. Less has been known, however, about Switzerland's own Intelligence activities, including its secret sources in Hitler's councils and its counterespionage program at home. With this intensely researched, scholarly, yet exciting book, that gap in the history of wartime Intelligence operations has been filled. PIERRE-TH. BRAUNSCHWEIG earned a Ph.D. in history from the University of Bern and later served as an assistant to Hans Senn, the Chief of Staff of the Swiss Army. He is a member of the United States Strategic Institute in Washinton DC, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and the National Intelligence Study Center in Washington.

SIGINT: The Secret History of Signals Intelligence in the World Wars

Peter F. Matthews

The History Press · 2013

From MORSE to ENIGMA, ULTRA to PURPLE, Room 40 to Bletchley—the story of secret signals in both of the World Wars Communicating in the chaos of war is complicated, but vital. Signals intelligence makes it possible. In World War I, a vast network of signals rapidly expanded across the globe, spawning a new breed of spies and intelligence operatives to code, decode, and analyze thousands of messages. Signalers and cryptographers in the Admiralty's famous Room 40 paved the way for the code breakers of Bletchley Park during World War II. In the ensuing war years, the world battled against a web of signals intelligence that gave birth to ENIGMA and ULTRA, and saw agents from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, America, and Japan race to outwit each other through infinitely complex codes. For the first time, the secret history of global signals intelligence in the world wars is revealed.

Spying for Wellington: British Military Intelligence in the Peninsular War

Huw J. Davies

University of Oklahoma Press · Nov 08, 2018

Intelligence is often the critical factor in a successful military campaign. This was certainly the case for Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, in the Peninsular War. In this book, author Huw J. Davies offers the first full account of the scope, complexity, and importance of Wellington’s intelligence department, describing a highly organized, multifaceted series of networks of agents and spies throughout Spain and Portugal—an organization that is at once a microcosm of British intelligence at the time and a sophisticated forebear to intelligence developments in the twentieth century. Spying for Wellington shows us an organization that was, in effect, two parallel networks: one made up of Foreign Office agents “run” by British ambassadors in Spain and Portugal, the other comprising military spies controlled by Wellington himself. The network of agents supplied strategic intelligence, giving the British army advance warning of the arrival, destinations, and likely intentions of French reinforcements. The military network supplied operational intelligence, which confirmed the accuracy of the strategic intelligence and provided greater detail on the strengths, arms, and morale of the French forces. Davies reveals how, by integrating these two forms of intelligence, Wellington was able to develop an extremely accurate and reliable estimate of French movements and intentions not only in his own theater of operations but also in other theaters across the Iberian Peninsula. The reliability and accuracy of this intelligence, as Davies demonstrates, was central to Wellington’s decision-making and, ultimately, to his overall success against the French. Correcting past, incomplete accounts, this is the definitive book on Wellington’s use of intelligence. As such, it contributes to a clearer, more comprehensive understanding of Wellington at war and of his place in the history of British military intelligence.

The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War

Thaddeus Holt

Scribner · 2004

A chronological analysis of the use of systematic deception by allied forces during World War II covers the development of deception techniques, explores the groundbreaking work of double agents, and reveals specific tactics that were used at key moments during the war. 30,000 first printing.

The Secret War For The Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War – How Intelligence Shaped Victory, Defeat, and the Decisions of Commanders

Edwin C. Fishel

Mariner Books · June 22, 1998

Most histories of the Civil War explain victory and defeat in terms of the skill of commanders and their troops. Intelligence records disappeared after the war, and thus a critically important element has largely been ignored. Fishel has unearthed substantial collections of such records, and his "intelligence explanation" radically alters history's understanding of the campaigns. The Secret War for the Union is one of the most important Civil War works ever published.

The Spy in Moscow Station: A Counterspy's Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat

Eric Haseltine

Thomas Dunne Books · Apr 30, 2019

The thrilling, true story of the race to find a leak in the United States Embassy in Moscow--before more American assets are rounded up and killed. Foreword by Gen. Michael V. Hayden (Retd.), Former Director of NSA & CIA In the late 1970s, the National Security Agency still did not officially exist--those in the know referred to it dryly as the No Such Agency. So why, when NSA engineer Charles Gandy filed for a visa to visit Moscow, did the Russian Foreign Ministry assert with confidence that he was a spy? Outsmarting honey traps and encroaching deep enough into enemy territory to perform complicated technical investigations, Gandy accomplished his mission in Russia, but discovered more than State and CIA wanted him to know. Eric Haseltine's The Spy in Moscow Station tells of a time when--much like today--Russian spycraft had proven itself far beyond the best technology the U.S. had to offer. The perils of American arrogance mixed with bureaucratic infighting left the country unspeakably vulnerable to ultra-sophisticated Russian electronic surveillance and espionage. This is the true story of unorthodox, underdog intelligence officers who fought an uphill battle against their own government to prove that the KGB had pulled off the most devastating penetration of U.S. national security in history. If you think The Americans isn't riveting enough, you'll love this toe-curling nonfiction thriller.

Unmanned: Drones, Data, and the Illusion of Perfect Warfare

William M. Arkin

Little, Brown and Company · 2015

Unmanned is an in-depth examination of why seemingly successful wars never seem to end. The problem centers on drones, now accumulated in the thousands, the front end of a spying and killing machine that is disconnected from either security or safety. Drones, however, are only part of the problem. William Arkin shows that security is actually undermined by an impulse to gather as much data as possible, the appetite and the theory both skewed towards the notion that no amount is too much. And yet the very endeavor of putting fewer human in potential danger places everyone in greater danger. Wars officially end, but the Data Machine lives on forever. Throughout his career, Arkin has exposed powerful secrets of so-called national security and intelligence. Now he continues that tradition. The most alarming book about warfare in years, Unmanned is essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of mankind.