Today, the CIA lies at the center of a vast complex of eighteen intelligence agencies. The so-called “intelligence community” boasts a combined budget of more than $100 billion annually. That’s one million dollars 100,000 times over. And though the Central Intelligence Agency commands only a fraction of that money and a small slice of the one million people who work for the eighteen agencies and their private sector contractors, the public tends to identify them all as “the CIA.” The Agency has become notorious both domestically and abroad, blamed for its high-profile blunders but only rarely recognized for its successes. What you’ll find below are the best books I’ve read about the CIA. They help explain why, and how.
Over the past fifteen years I’ve read hundreds of books about spies and spying, both fiction and nonfiction. The titles listed here represent the best of them. They’re contained in three lists. At the top are those, all nonfiction, that I found to be most revealing. The second list contains other nonfiction books that might be considered runners-up. In the third are the most outstanding spy novels about the CIA, every one of them solidly based on deep research.
This post was updated on August 14, 2024.
Best books about the CIA
The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War by Scott Anderson (2020) 702 pages ★★★★★—Four CIA spies who helped set US policy in the 1940s and 50s
Investigative journalist Scott Anderson illuminates the formative years of the CIA through the lives and work of four veterans of the wartime OSS. Two—Frank Wisner and Edward Lansdale—remain familiar today. Two aren’t. But all four played pivotal roles in the newly formed CIA in the years immediately following World War II. And, each in his own way, they all came to grief.
Spymaster: Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB Chief by Tennent H. Bagley (2013) 320 pages ★★★★★—Startling revelations from a top KGB spymaster
The long-time chief of counterintelligence in the CIA’s Soviet division wades into the controversy about a Soviet mole in the Agency in this eye-opening book. Twenty years after his retirement, Tennent Bagley interviewed his opposite number in the KGB, Lieutenant General Sergey Aleksandrovich Kondrashev. Speaking as an old friend, although they’d never met, Kondrashev revealed to him details about key episodes in CIA history from the Soviet perspective. And he confirmed the widespread suspicion about a spy within the Agency by revealing that the Soviet Union had planted not one but several moles who operated undetected for many years.
The Spy Who Knew Too Much: An Ex-CIA Officer’s Quest Through a Legacy of Betrayal by Howard Blum (2022) 352 pages ★★★★★—Unmasking the mole in the CIA
Nonfiction author Howard Blum chronicles the quest of counterintelligence officer Tennent Bagley [see above] to expose a mole in the CIA. And in the end, digging through Bagley’s discoveries, he reveals the name of a highly placed CIA officer who delivered some of the agency’s most closely guarded secrets to the Soviet Union year after year without being detected. Blum’s book reads like the best of the spy novels I’ve included below, featuring suicides that weren’t suicides and other crimes.
The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book by Peter Finn and Petra Couvée (2014) 385 pages ★★★★★—How a novel helped speed the collapse of the Soviet Union
Here is an intriguing inquiry into the role that ideas may have played in the collapse of the Soviet Union. In hopes of stirring discontent among the Russian people, the CIA conspired to publish Boris Pasternak’s masterpiece, Dr. Zhivago, in Russian in the West and smuggle copies into the Soviet Union. Perhaps the book made a difference. Perhaps not. But the story of how it reached readers in the USSR is fascinating.
Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA by Amaryllis Fox (2019) 229 pages ★★★★★—Life undercover in the CIA chasing suitcase nukes
Many former CIA officers write memoirs, while others turn to fiction. But all too often they write to air grievances and settle scores. One of the best books I’ve come across that does neither is Amaryllis Fox’s gripping story of her life as an undercover officer in sixteen countries pursuing timely information about terrorists seeking to acquire nuclear materials. Her story reached frightening dimensions in Pakistan when she recruited agents among terrorists there who were on the verge of exploding a nuclear dirty bomb in one of the world’s largest cities.
The Spy in Moscow Station: A Counterspy’s Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat by Eric Haseltine (2019) 288 pages ★★★★★—“The Spy in Moscow Station”
During the critical years of the Cold War from 1978 to 1984, the KGB operated a massive surveillance scheme that allowed the Kremlin to read all the correspondence and cable traffic between the US Embassy and CIA Station and their headquarters in Washington, DC. and Langley, Virginia. An NSA counterspy discovered the scheme, but the CIA and the State Department fiercely denied the truth for years on end, using the opportunity to undermine the NSA official’s career. And all because they refused to believe that Soviet technology could possibly be better than the Americans’s.
The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal by David E. Hoffman (2015) 310 pages★★★★★—Spycraft as it was actually practiced in this true-life tale of Cold War espionage
Here is the story of one extraordinary Russian spy for the US and his CIA handlers. It’s truly eye-opening. The man’s name is little known today, yet he delivered a prodigious volume of technical data about the USSR’s military capabilities from 1977 to 1985. This, despite the fact that upper-level bureaucrats in the Agency repeatedly denied his handlers the resources they needed to support their agent. The author, David Hoffman, paints a convincing picture of how dramatically their day-to-day experiences in the field diverged from the romanticized portrayal of espionage operations in so many spy novels.
Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace by Peter Janney (2012) 636 pages ★★★★★—The CIA, the mistress, and JFK’s assassination: an astonishing but true story
Mary Pinchot Meyer was the former wife of Cord Meyer, one of the most highly placed officials in the CIA. And she was the beloved great-aunt of my friend Gifford Pinchot III, who brought this book to my attention. Mary’s murder eleven months after the assassination of JFK was never solved. And her affair with the President as well as her death raised troubling questions about the involvement of the CIA in his murder. Those questions are among many that reveal how little the Warren Commission revealed about the truth behind the assassination.
The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton by Jefferson Morley (2017) 325 pages ★★★★★—James Jesus Angleton, the man who nearly destroyed the CIA
Yale-educated and a prominent veteran of the OSS, James Jesus Angleton quickly rose to head of counterintelligence in the early days of the CIA. He remained there for two decades until his blunders came to light in Congressional hearings. By all accounts, however, Angleton did a brilliant job until 1963. Then, his best friend, Kim Philby of MI6, defected to the Soviet Union—and Angleton descended into paranoia, seeing “Soviet moles” under every bush. Ironically, as other books listed here confirm, he was right. But they were never caught. And Angleton’s efforts to find them turned the CIA upside down, dramatically lessening its effectiveness for a decade.
The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA by Liza Mundy (2023) 480 pages ★★★★★—A deep dive into the history of women at the CIA
Until the feminist revolution began taking hold in the 1970s, precious few women reached positions of any prominence and influence in the CIA. Gradually, then, a handful of individuals rose to heads of departments. And author Liza Mundy tells the painful story of their continuing struggle for recognition and advancement in the face of blatant sexism and sexual harassment. “The Sisterhood” she writes about took shape slowly, but over time succeeded in helping a new generation of women claim well-deserved places in roles of significance in the Agency.
Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism by Karen M. Paget (2015) 550 pages ★★★★★—How the CIA infiltrated the National Student Association
It didn’t take the CIA long to expand the boundaries of its mission to gather and analyze foreign intelligence. Within a few years of its establishment, newly formed offices within the Agency were meddling in counterinsurgency, regime change, propaganda, psychological warfare—and domestic affairs. Karen Paget’s brilliantly researched book, fourteen years in the making, delves deeply into one highly visible aspect of the CIA’s domestic role: its infiltration of the US National Student Association. But there were parallel efforts in the labor movement, on university campuses, and in publishing.
Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin (2011) 320 pages ★★★★★—The shocking reality behind America’s war on “terror”
Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin published an explosive story in 2010 detailing the hitherto unknown dimensions of the American intelligence community. In this book, they expanded on their findings, emphasizing that official activities undertaken by the eighteen known US intelligence agencies are only part of the picture. Because thousands of private companies, from high-tech firms and research organizations to businesses selling the services of mercenaries, have gotten into the game as well.
The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot (2015) 652 pages ★★★★★—When America’s secret government ran amok
Investigative journalist David Talbot’s contrarian biography of long-time CIA Director Allen Dulles lifts the lid from the secrecy surrounding America’s practice of regime change and assassination during the 1950s and 60s. Although the orders for these operations came directly from the White House, they were the brainchild of Dulles himself and the tiny coterie of Cold Warriors in key positions around him in the CIA. And Talbot cites persuasive evidence that Dulles may have been involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, too.
Also of great interest
The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames by Kai Bird (2014) 464 pages ★★★★☆—A true story of the PLO, Miss Universe, and the CIA
The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen (2012) 270 pages ★★★★★—The amazing story of America’s Banana King
The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth by Mark Mazzetti ★★★★☆—Drones, mercenaries, and targeted murder: the new strategy of the CIA
Six Car Lengths Behind an Elephant: Undercover & Overwhelmed as a CIA Wife and Mother by Lillian McCloy (2016) 250 pages ★★★★☆—Under deep cover in the CIA during the Cold War
From Warsaw With Love: Polish Spies, the CIA, and the Forging of an Unlikely Alliance by John Pomfret (2021) 276 pages ★★★★☆—The long-lasting alliance between Polish spies and the CIA
The five most outstanding spy novels about the CIA
The Quiet American by Graham Greene (1955) 232 pages ★★★★★—The classic Vietnam novel by Graham Greene
This is the classic novel of the CIA’s role in Vietnam, published a decade before the United States began to build its massive military intervention in the country.
Siro by David Ignatius (1991) 625 pages ★★★★★—The most intelligent spy novel I’ve read in many years
The Washington Post foreign affairs columnist, who is also a top-flight espionage novelist, writes here about the CIA following the revelations of its scandalous activities in the 1950s and 1960s that had weakened the Agency.
The Berlin Exchange by Joseph Kanon (2022) 320 pages ★★★★★—An ingenious tale about a spy swap in East Berlin
In this gripping story of the CIA in action, the brilliant spy novelist Joseph Kanon chronicles a complex and fraught prisoner exchange between the Agency and the East German Stasi during the peak of the Cold War.
Harsh Times by Mario Vargas Llosa—When the CIA overthrew the Guatemalan government
This novel by the Nobel Prize-winner relates the story of the 1954 CIA-driven coup that ended the country’s experiment with democracy.
The Coldest Warrior by Paul Vidich (2020) 222 pages ★★★★★—Project MK-Ultra and the scientist who fell to his death
During the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency operated in almost total secrecy, its activities shrouded by the hysterical anti-Communism that drove American foreign policy. One of the most distasteful of the many scandals that plagued the Agency during that decade involved its reckless experiments with LSD. This is the subject of Vidich’s superb novel.
For related reading
You’ll find lots of other great reading about the CIA and other spy agencies at:
- 30 good nonfiction books about espionage
- The 15 best espionage novels
- Good nonfiction books about national security
- Top 20 popular books for understanding American history
And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.
