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World
Factbook 2004: 2004 Edition
In the thirty years since its declassification, The
World Factbook, produced annually by the CIA, has
become the ultimate, authoritative source of
information on all the nations of the world. It
provides current data for more than 250 countries
and territories, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
Brassey’s has published a commercial version of The
World Factbook for more than ten years in order to
extend the limited audience reached by the CIA’s
publication. This current Brassey’s edition is
identified by the year 2004, following the pattern
Brassey’s uses in other annual publications. The CIA
completes its volume late each year, and Brassey’s
republishes it the following year.
Topics addressed include the political climate,
natural resources, environment, population, ethnic
groups, GDP, agriculture, industries, defense
expendi-tures, literacy rate, religion, legal
system, and much more. Key data are grouped under
the headings of geography, people, government,
economy, communications, transportation, military,
and transnational issues. The World Factbook also
contains a multitude of maps—one of each country and
others for key territories. In addition, readers
will find handy appendixes on international
organizations and groups, international
environmental agreements, and a cross-referenced
list of geographic names. The World Factbook
provides the indispensable reference for individuals
possessing a curiosity or concern about the rapidly
changing world in which we live. |
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The
American Agent: My Life in the CIA
Dick Holm joined the Central Intelligence Agency in
the 1960s and rose rapidly through the ranks to
become Bureau Chief in Paris, eventually earning the
Distinguished Intelligence Medal, the CIA's highest
award. His first posting was in Laos, where he
served in the CIA's "Secret War" against the
Communists in the lead-up to the Vietnam War. He was
then sent to the Congo and suffered near-fatal
injuries after a plane crash in a remote jungle.
Healed by local tribesmen, his horrific burns
treated with snake oil and tree bark, he then spent
two years in a U.S. hospital undergoing extensive
surgery. Holm also worked in Hong Kong and Paris and
was instrumental in anti-terrorism operations during
Carlos the Jackal's international terror campaign.
Having served under 13 CIA directors, Holm has firm,
highly informed views on the policies—past and
present, national and international—that determine
how, where, and why the CIA works. |
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Inside
the CIA
Kessler ( Escape from the CIA ), who is the first
journalist to be accorded the full cooperation of
the CIA, here reveals more about the agency's
structure, policies and key personnel than any
previous writer has. He defines the missions of the
agency's five components--the director and the
directorates of operations, science and technology,
intelligence, and administration. Kessler explores
such diverse subjects as the agency's employment
policies (the CIA, he maintains, prefers aggressive,
manipulative recruits willing to lie and to break
the laws of foreign countries), the director's daily
presidential briefing, the CIA's counter-narcotics
efforts, the physical plant itself ("The CIA
compound is indeed a spooky place") and the agency's
struggle to create a viable public-relations policy.
As to the agency's mandate, given the diminution of
the Soviet threat, Kessler reports that the CIA is
intensifying its effort to track nuclear
proliferation, international drug trafficking and
terrorism. A largely objective, evenhanded, highly
informative survey.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable
edition of this title. |
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The CIA
at War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror
From Publishers Weekly
The war on terror is a sideshow to the larger
struggle for the CIA's soul in this illuminating but
partisan book. Investigative journalist Kessler
gives a warts-and-all account of the CIA's checkered
past up to the despondent 1990s, when the demise of
Communism, official disparagement of human
intelligence-gathering in favor of high-tech spying,
and humiliations like the Aldrich Ames spy case,
left the agency rudderless and demoralized. Kessler
ties these lapses to a dysfunctional institutional
culture that oscillated, he says, between paranoia
and slackness, bureaucratic sclerosis and "cowboy"
adventurism, and arrogant unaccountability and
prissy human rights regulations. Kessler gives an
absorbing and critical, if somewhat rambling,
history of the agency and its problems, based on
extensive interviews with past and present CIA
officials and leavened with intriguing secret-agent
lore. But when current CIA director George Tenet-a
"gracious" and "politically savvy" leader whose
"integrity and outspokenness" started a "healing
process" that made the agency "focused, aggressive
and effective"-arrives on the scene, Kessler's
objectivity departs. He dismisses criticisms of the
CIA's pre-Sept. 11 performance and the controversy
over intelligence claims about Iraq (Tenet, he
huffs, "would never tolerate any attempts to
influence the CIA's conclusions"). Instead, Kessler
extols the agency's successes in "rolling up"
terrorists and laying the clandestine groundwork for
the invasion of Iraq, while downplaying awkward
loose threads like the failure to find the weapons
of mass destruction the CIA insisted were in Iraq.
Kessler's uncritical endorsement of Tenet-and of
President Bush, another "focused" leader who "gets"
intelligence, unlike the inattentive Clinton-lacks
the insight displayed in the rest of the book.
Photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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CIA, Inc: Espionage & the Craft of Business
Intelligence
From Library Journal
Rustmann's title is a good summing up of this book.
A former CIA officer and founder of the business
intelligence company CTC International Group,
Rustmann recounts many of his CIA activities as
examples for business. His story of how he
infiltrated an apartment building next to a foreign
embassy and drilled through the common walls to
plant microphones is riveting. He warns that foreign
nations use such methods to steal proprietary
information from American businesses at an estimated
value of $100-$435 billion in 1997 alone. After
explaining many of the techniques of the
intelligence trade, Rustmann tells how businesses
can fight back using such simple measures as
thoroughly screening new employees and business
partners. Unfortunately, covering the gamut of
business intelligence and security, including the
September 11 attacks, leaves little room for depth.
Still, the book serves as a good introduction, and
the many CIA anecdotes along with its clear writing
style would keep even a general reader happy.
Recommended for business collections in all
libraries and for anyone interested in spying and
the CIA. Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ., Erie, PA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Inside CIA's Private World: Declassified Articles
from the Agency`s Internal Journal, 1955-1992
Amazon.com
In 32 essays originally written for the Central
Intelligence Agency's internal journal, Studies in
Intelligence, authors, most of whom are CIA agents,
talk shop. These recently declassified articles,
written between 1955 and 1992, provide an offbeat
internal history of CIA operations. Some delve into
arcane areas of tradecraft, and could be considered
essential reading for historians as well as spy
buffs: CIA operatives detail secret operations,
offer practical how-to advice, and critique
themselves and their work. |
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