Books like The secret sentry by Matthew M. Aid

Glenn Greenwald chronicles the landmark 2013 NSA leak by Edward Snowden, revealing the agency’s global surveillance of U.S. citizens and its implications for privacy and national security.

A biography of Oleg Gordievsky, the Soviet double‑agent who, while working undercover in the KGB, supplied MI6 with critical intelligence that accelerated the collapse of the Cold War.

A definitive, document‑rich history of the CIA, revealing why presidents and CIA leaders have struggled to grasp global realities and how repeated failures have threatened U.S. national security.

Commander of the CIA and NSA Michael Hayden tells the inside story of America’s intelligence wars, detailing how his "play to the edge" philosophy shaped the nation’s response to terrorism, technology and surveillance.

During the Second World War, MI5 and British naval intelligence engineer Operation Mincemeat—feigning an invasion of Greece and Sardinia by sending a corpse laced with false documents off the coast of Spain to trick the Nazis and pave the way for the invasion of Sicily.

Henry Crumpton, a former CIA counterterrorism officer, recounts his covert operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban, detailing the agency’s strategic shift in the Afghanistan war and its impact on U.S. national security.

A rigorous exposé of the National Security Agency’s evolution after 9/11, detailing how its expanded electronic surveillance of American citizens has altered civil liberties and national security policy.

A Question of Torture charts the CIA’s fifty‑year development of psychological interrogation techniques, tracing their spread from Vietnam to Iran, Central America, and the post‑9/11 era, and arguing that coerced information is unreliable and harmful to America’s legal and international reputation.

John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen Dulles, key figures in U.S. foreign policy and CIA leadership during the early Cold War, are examined in a joint biography.

Whistleblower Mark Klein tells the story of the illegal government spying apparatus installed at an AT&T office by the National Security Agency, and his battle to bring it to light and protect Americans' 4th Amendment rights. After the *New York Times* revealed in 2005 that the NSA was spying on Americans' phone calls and e-mail without Constitutionally-required court warrants, the Bush administration openly defended this practice which also violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. All details of the highly secret program remained hidden from the public until Klein came forward. A technician for over 22 years at telecom giant AT&T, Klein was working in the Internet room in San Francisco in 2003 and discovered the NSA was vacuuming everyone's communications into a secret room, and he had the documents to prove it (sample pages included). He went to the media in 2006, and then became a witness in a lawsuit brought against the company by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The CIA's hidden manual of magic and deception: How the agency taught its agents to use sleight of hand for espionage and covert operations during the Cold War.

A CIA former officer publishes a wide‑ranging critique of covert operations, questioning U.S. leadership decisions and highlighting alleged manipulation behind the U‑2 Incident, the Kennedy assassination, and Vietnam policy.

During the early Cold War, newly minted Lieutenant James D. Cronley Jr. is recruited by a fledgling intelligence effort that becomes the CIA, tasked with hunting Soviet spies and surviving the perilous world of espionage.

An account of the transformation of the wartime Office of Strategic Services into the Central Intelligence Agency and the growth of America's intelligence community.