Books like Covert Entry by Andrew Mitrovica

A unique, unprecedented look at the inner workings of our domestic secret service by a leading investigative reporter. An alarming portrait of incompetence -- and worse -- inside the agency that is supposed to protect us from terrorism. Canada’s espionage agency enjoys operating deep in the shadows. Set up as a civilian force in the early eighties after the RCMP spy service was abolished for criminal excesses, no news is good news for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). This country’s spymasters work diligently to prevent journalists, politicians and watchdog agencies from prying into their secret world. Few journalists have come close to rivalling Andrew Mitrovica at unveiling the stories CSIS does not want told. In Covert Entry, the award-winning investigative reporter uncovers a disturbing pattern of corruption, law-breaking and incompetence deep inside the service, and provides readers with a troubling window on its daily operations. At its core, Covert Entry traces the eventful career of a veteran undercover operative who worked on some of the service’s most sensitive cases and was ordered to break the law by senior CSIS officers, in the name of national security. Like Philip Agee’s Inside the Company: CIA Diary, Mitrovica’s book delivers a ground-level, day-to-day look at who is actually running the show in clandestine operations inside Canada. The picture he paints does not fill one with confidence and definitively shatters the myth that CSIS respects the rights and liberties it is charged with protecting. From the Hardcover edition.

First publish date: 2002