Books like The company we keep by Robert Baer

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.

A revealing portrait of Allen Dulles, the CIA’s longest‑serving director, uncovering his influence over U.S. policy, covert operations, and alleged links to assassinations and global intrigue.

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.

Valerie Plame Wilson recounts her work as a covert CIA officer, the 2010 leak scandal that exposed her identity, and her journey to protect her family and confront the nation’s political fallout.

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.

Henry A. Crumpton, a former CIA counterterrorism officer, recounts his leadership during the Afghanistan campaign that dismantled al Qaeda and the Taliban after 9/11, revealing how the operation reshaped U.S. warfare.

By day, he taught spycraft at the CIA's clandestine training center, The Farm. By night, he was a minivan-driving single father racing home to have dinner with his kids. But for more than two years, Jim Nicholson met covertly with agents of Russia's foreign intelligence service and turned over troves of classified documents. In 1997 Nicholson became the highest ranking CIA officer ever convicted of espionage. But while behind the bars of a federal prison, he groomed the one person he trusted most to serve as his stand-in: his youngest son, Nathan.

Drawing on extensive interviews with Ames' widow and quotes from his private letters, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer presents a brilliant narrative of the making of America's most influential and effective intelligence officer in the Middle East. The Good Spy is Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Kai Bird's compelling portrait of the remarkable life and death of one of the most important operatives in CIA history - a man who, had he lived, might have helped heal the rift between Arabs and the West. On April 18, 1983, a bomb exploded outside the American Embassy in Beirut, killing 63 people. The attack was a geopolitical turning point. It marked the beginning of Hezbollah as a political force, but even more important, it eliminated America's most influential and effective intelligence officer in the Middle East - CIA operative Robert Ames. What set Ames apart from his peers was his extraordinary ability to form deep, meaningful connections with key Arab intelligence figures. Some operatives relied on threats and subterfuge, but Ames worked by building friendships and emphasizing shared values - never more notably than with Yasir Arafat's charismatic intelligence chief and heir apparent Ali Hassan Salameh (aka "The Red Prince"). Ames' deepening relationship with Salameh held the potential for a lasting peace. Within a few years, though, both men were killed by assassins, and America's relations with the Arab world began heading down a path that culminated in 9/11, the War on Terror, and the current fog of mistrust. Bird, who as a child lived in the Beirut Embassy and knew Ames as a neighbor when he was twelve years old, spent years researching The Good Spy. Not only does the book draw on hours of interviews with Ames' widow, and quotes from hundreds of Ames' private letters, it's woven from interviews with scores of current and former American, Israeli, and Palestinian intelligence officers as well as other players in the Middle East "Great Game." What emerges is a masterpiece-level narrative of the making of a CIA officer, a uniquely insightful history of twentieth-century conflict in the Middle East, and an absorbing hour-by-hour account of the Beirut Embassy bombing. Even more impressive, Bird draws on his reporter's skills to deliver a full dossier on the bombers and expose the shocking truth of where the attack's mastermind resides today. -- Publisher description

He reveals how the elder Scott ran hundreds of covert espionage operations from his headquarters in the U.S. Embassy while keeping three Mexican presidents on the agency's payroll, participating in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and, most intriguingly, overseeing the surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald during his visit to the Mexican capital just weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy." "Morley reveals the previously unknown scope of the agency's interest in Oswald in late 1963, identifying for the first time the code names of Scott's surveillance programs that monitored Oswald's movements. He shows that CIA headquarters cut Scott out of the loop of the agency's latest reporting on Oswald before Kennedy was killed. He documents why Scott came to reject a key finding of the Warren Report on the assassination and how his disillusionment with the agency came to worry his longtime friend James Jesus Angleton, legendary chief of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton not only covered up the agency's interest in Oswald but also, after Scott died, absconded with the only copies of his unpublished memoir." "Interweaving Win Scott's personal and professional lives, Morley has crafted a real-life thriller of Cold War intrigue - a compelling saga of espionage that uncovers another chapter in the CIA's history.