Customer Reviews

Thwarting Enemies at Home and Abroad: How to Be a Counterintelligence Officer

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you are looking for an insight into counterintelligence operations... This Book Is It!

"Thwarting Enemies At Home And Abroad" will give you an inside look at how counterintelligence agents really do their jobs. You will learn how counterintelligence is different from security and different from law enforcement, and you will learn where these areas overlap.

The book explains collection, collation, and indexing, and how to develop counterintelligence databases. It explains how agents are recruited and run, and how they are safeguarded. And... it explains how to manage security of your operations.

Overall this book is very informative and yet still easy to read and understand.

Highly Recommended.

*** Contents ***
1. What Is Counterintelligence?
2. Who Goes Into Counterintelligence, and Why?
3. Conflicting Goals: Law Enforcement versus Manipulation
4. The Support Apparatus
5. Interrogation: How It Really Works
6. How To Manage The Polygraph
7. How To Manage Physical Surveillance
8. How To Manage Technical Surveillance
9. Double Agents: What They Are Good For
10. Double Agents: How To Get And Maintain A Stable
11. Double Agents: Feeding And Care
12. Double Agents: Passing Information to the Enemy
13. Moles in the Enemy's Garden: Your Best Weapon

I have written this for people who want to know what counterintelligence is, not what it ought to be, and for people who may be interested in it as a trade or profession.

The book is about what professional intelligence officers call "tradecraft", specifically the craft used in the trade of counterintelligence. It is not about politics or policy or communism or anticommunism or justice in the Third World or human rights or religion, although these affect the trade of counterintelligence just as they do the trade of stock-brokering or oil exploration or journalism. They will be mentioned occasionally, and my concerns about them will be evident, but only as they are elements of the enviroment in which counterintelligence functions.

My thirty-odd years working in counterintelligence have all been spent as an American official, but I have worked much of that time with the counterintelligence officers of other countries. I believe this book will be useful to readers not only in the United States but also in other countries allied with the U.S. and in some non-allied, non-hostile, where espionage and terrorism occur.

To illustrate various points I have cited many actual cases. Some of these have been written about publicly elsewhere, with varying degrees of accuracy, and some have not. Those which have not yet come to the attention of journalists, historians or writers of fictional documentaries I have altered (in counterintelligence jargon, "sanitized") by changing names, dates and places. I have done this to protect myself and to protect what American law calls "sources and methods" from hostile action. I have made some changes and deleted some material at the request of the American Central Intelligence Agency, which has reviewed the contents patiently, promptly and thoughtfullly. What I know about the spy business I learned as an official under oath to my government, and therefore what facts I know about the spy business are the government's property, not mine. The opinions are my own, and CIA neither endorses nor condemns them.
--- from book's Introduction

People have mistaken ideas about what counterintelligence is all about. This book is the clearest, most direct write-up of the nuts and bolts of spy catching and protecting on-going operations that I have read. I fear that over the last few years many of our intelligence professionals have lost some of the skills described in this book and I urge both current and would-be future intelligence officers to read this text.

Yes, the book is a bit dated. The author was an "Angleton" (not a totally good thing) but he definitely knows how to explain a complex issue in terms anyone can understand. I will be using this book with my undergraduate and graduate intelligence classes.

What a cool little book! I'd subtitle it 'The Case Officer's Primer.' Johnson is an engaging, even teasing writer. It's obvious all you're getting is the surface stuff, but this is still the best book I've come across on the routine management of intelligence work. It focuses on 'double agents' and defectors and how to handle them, but the practical insights into the day-to-day work of a Case Officer, from mundane to occasionally chilling, and from management to spycraft, are only infrequently described elsewhere, and never in such an entertaining style.

"Thwarting Enemies at Home and Abroad" provides a pretty decent overview of counterintelligence work. If you work in the intelligence field (or even if you're just someone who reads on the subject), you might find the book a little boring.

I think the first half of the book flows pretty well and provides the reader a quick overview of several areas of intel work. The second half of the book, however, slows down a bit as it spends an unpleasant amount of time (personal opinion) on recruiting assets and "double agents." Now keep in mind, recruiting assets/agents is one of the areas that makes counterintel different than other types of intel specialties (such as Collections, Analysis, etc.).

Be that as it may, I found the latter half of the book a little dry/tough to get through and found myself saying, "Yeah, yeah, I've got it. Can we please move on?" So unless you're really interested in "recruiting assets," you may want to consider a different book. If you're okay with nearly half the book dealing with recruiting and handling assets, you should be fine.

Other than that, I like how the author touches bases on the polygraph, surveillance, and interrogations. It doesn't go in depth (and definitely stays on the "unclas" side of things), but it's still good to get some insight on the specific topics from someone who has a lot of experience.

If you are interested in learning a little bit about C.I. work, this is a good start. It's not very long and offers decent "bang for your buck." I bought a used copy of it off Amazon and don't regret it. I like it enough that I will keep it in my "library" at home, so I give it a "thumbs up" overall.

I wont get into the details chapter by chapter, however, this is a definite must read for those interested in this field.

I really liked the book overall. It has been republished without editing or updating. The author has passed away and the publisher has not wanted to tamper with the original work. There was some information that should have been cut out becasue technology has made it irrelevant, but overall the depth and examples were well put together. It was an enjoyable read, and really gives the reader a feel for what real CI work is like. Much of the focus is from a cold war context, but it's not hard to see how things like interogations can transfer well into the modern era and the middle east.

I am very disappointed with this book. I thought it might be entertaining at the very least, but became a drudge to get through after only the third chapter. It seems like the author went to [...], typed in spy, and wrote a book from that. A lot of the writing is vague, and I understand that is has to be, but that doesn't make for a good how-to, or a satisfying read.