The Craft of Intelligence

What Hacker News says

1. dmixNov 2014
   If you're interested in the (modern) history of spycraft I highly recommend Allen Dulles 'The Craft of Intelligence':

   http://www.amazon.com/Craft-Intelligence-Legendary-Fundament...

   It was written by the first CIA director in the 1950s and is part memoir and part look into the structure of the early intelligence world.

   I find looking back at the beginning of something is necessary to understand the current state and this book lays a good foundation for understanding how the CIA grew and evolved. It's particularly interesting how even back then it started out of paranoia and suspicion of all ideas that were an affront to the American Dream. More than just out of simply the need for a national defense mechanism.

   Famous operations sound quite different from the perspective of the leaders who ran them. Than what you might find in the media or documentaries.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles

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2. HenryKissingerNov 2020
   "Intelligence is probably the least understood and the most misrepresented of the professions. One reason for this was well expressed by President Kennedy when, on November 18, 1961, he came out to inaugurate the new CIA Headquarters Building and to say good-bye to me as Director. He then remarked: 'Your successes are unheralded, your failures are trumpeted.' For obviously you cannot tell of operatives that go along well. Those that go badly generally speak for themselves.

   The President then added a word of encouragement to the several thousand men and women of CIA:

   '...but I am sure you realize how important is your work, how essential it is - and in the long sweep of history how significant your efforts will be judged. So I do want to express my appreciation to you now, and I am confident that in the future you will continue to merit the appreciation of your country, as you have in the past.'

   It is hardly reasonable to expect proper understanding and support for intelligence work in this country if it is only the insiders, a few people within the executive and legislative branches, who know anything whatever about the CIA. Others continue to draw their knowledge from the so-called inside stories by writers who have never been on the inside."

   - Allen W. Dulles, 'The Craft of Intelligence'

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