Inside CIA’s Private World: Declassified Articles from the Agency`s Internal Journal, 1955-1992

For forty years the Central Intelligence Agency has published an in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence , for CIA eyes only. Now the agency has declassified much of this material. This engrossing book, which presents the most interesting articles from the journal, provides revealing insights into CIA strategies and into events in which the organization was involved.

The articles were selected by H. Bradford Westerfield, an independent authority who teaches courses on intelligence operations but has never been affiliated with the CIA. Westerfield’s comprehensive introduction sketches the history and basic structure of the CIA, sets the articles in context, and explains his process of selection. The articles span a wide range of intelligence activities, including intelligence data gathering inside the United States; analysis of data; interaction between analysts and policymakers; the development of economic intelligence targeted at friendly countries as well as at foes; use of double agents (the personal memoir of a CIA officer who pretended to the Russians to be their agent); evaluation of defectors (the Nosenko case); and coercive interrogation techniques and how to resist them.