To Catch a Spy
The Art of Counterintelligence
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Narrated by:
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John McLain
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By:
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James M. Olson
About this listen
The United States is losing the counterintelligence war. Foreign intelligence services, particularly those of China, Russia, and Cuba, are recruiting spies in our midst and stealing our secrets and cutting-edge technologies.
In To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence, James M. Olson, former chief of CIA counterintelligence, offers a wake-up call for the American public and also a guide for how our country can do a better job of protecting its national security and trade secrets. Olson takes the listener into the arcane world of counterintelligence as he lived it during his 30-year career in the CIA.
After an overview of what the Chinese, Russian, and Cuban spy services are doing to the United States, Olson explains the nitty-gritty of the principles and methods of counterintelligence. Listeners will learn about specific aspects of counterintelligence such as running double-agent operations and surveillance. The book also analyzes 12 actual case studies to illustrate why people spy against their country, the tradecraft of counterintelligence, and where counterintelligence breaks down or succeeds.
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Grounded in extensive research and reporting, Spy Schools reveals how academia has emerged as a frontline in the global spy game. In a knowledge-based economy, universities are repositories of valuable information and research, where brilliant minds of all nationalities mingle freely with few questions asked. Intelligence agencies have always recruited bright undergraduates, but now, in an era when espionage increasingly requires specialized scientific or technological expertise, they're wooing higher-level academics.
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R3
- By Roxroy A Reid on 04-15-18
By: Daniel Golden
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The Skripal Files
- The Life and Near Death of a Russian Spy
- By: Mark Urban
- Narrated by: Mark Urban
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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The Skripal Files is a remarkable and definitive account of Sergei Skripal’s story, which lays bare the new spy war between Russia and the West. Mark Urban, the diplomatic and defense editor for the BBC, met with Skripal in the months before his poisoning, learning about his career in Russian military intelligence, how he became a British agent, his imprisonment in Russia, and the events that led to his release. Skripal’s first-hand accounts and experiences reveal the high stakes of a new spy game that harks back to the chilliest days of the Cold War.
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Facinating story and very relevant
- By Sheri on 06-25-24
By: Mark Urban
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American Spy
- Wry Reflections on My Life in the CIA
- By: H. K. Roy
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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This candid and darkly witty memoir recounts an exhilarating life - and a few close brushes with death. With remarkable sangfroid and a humorist's eye for absurdity, H. K. Roy describes his many strange and risky exploits in his long career with the CIA. Whether he was pursuing Soviet and Cuban spies, running "denied area" operations in Eastern Europe, hunting Bosnian War criminals, or providing actionable intelligence to US government and coalition forces in Iraq, Roy usually found himself at the right place at the right time.
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To political
- By Amazon Customer on 11-29-19
By: H. K. Roy
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Poisoner in Chief
- Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control
- By: Stephen Kinzer
- Narrated by: James Linkin
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The visionary chemist Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s master magician and gentlehearted torturer - the agency’s “poisoner in chief.” As head of the MK-ULTRA mind control project, he directed brutal experiments at secret prisons on three continents. He made pills, powders, and potions that could kill or maim without a trace - including some intended for Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders. He paid prostitutes to lure clients to CIA-run bordellos, where they were secretly dosed with mind-altering drugs. His experiments spread LSD across the United States.
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Narration not great
- By VelvetLedbetter on 09-20-19
By: Stephen Kinzer
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The Secrets of the FBI
- By: Ronald Kessler
- Narrated by: Michael Bybee
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The Secrets of the FBI by New York Times best-selling author Ronald Kessler reveals the FBIs most closely guarded secrets and the secrets of celebrities, politicians, and movie stars uncovered by agents during their investigations.
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Even-handed; an interesting history of the FBI
- By G-Man on 08-08-11
By: Ronald Kessler
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The Fall of the FBI
- How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy
- By: Thomas J. Baker
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Americans have lost faith in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an institution they once regarded as the world’s greatest law-enforcement agency. Thomas Baker spent many years with the FBI and is deeply troubled by this loss of faith. Specific lapses have come to light and each is thoroughly discussed in this book: Why did they happen? What changed? The answer begins days after the 9/11 attacks when the FBI underwent a significant change in culture.
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We have to stop them
- By E B. on 07-01-23
By: Thomas J. Baker
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The Phoenix Program: America's Use of Terror in Vietnam
- By: Douglas Valentine
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 17 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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A shocking expos of the covert CIA program of widespread torture, rape, and murder of civilians during America’s war in Vietnam, with a new introduction by the author. In the darkest days of the Vietnam War, America’s Central Intelligence Agency secretly initiated a sweeping program of kidnap, torture, and assassination devised to destabilize the infrastructure of the National Liberation Front (NLF) of South Vietnam, commonly known as the “Viet Cong.”
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An Answer To My Unanswered Questions
- By JustBill on 08-27-19
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At the Center of the Storm
- My Years at the CIA
- By: George Tenet
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
In the whirlwind of accusations and recriminations that has attended the post 9/11 world, one man's vital testimony has been conspicuously absent. Candid and compelling, At the Center of the Storm is George Tenet's memoir of his life at the CIA - a revelatory look at the inner workings of America's top intelligence agency and its dealings with national leaders at home and abroad.
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Brilliant!
- By Karen on 05-05-07
By: George Tenet
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Wise Gals
- The Spies Who Built the CIA and Changed the Future of Espionage
- By: Nathalia Holt
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of World War II, four agents were critical in helping build a new organization that we now know as the CIA. Adelaide Hawkins, Mary Hutchison, Eloise Page, and Elizabeth Sudmeier, called the “wise gals” by their male colleagues because of their sharp sense of humor and even quicker intelligence, were not the stereotypical femme fatale of spy novels.
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Intriguing untold history
- By Andrea Guzman on 12-15-22
By: Nathalia Holt
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The Watchers
- The Rise of America's Surveillance State
- By: Shane Harris
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 15 hrs
- Unabridged
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Our surveillance state was born in the brain of Admiral John Poindexter in 1983. Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, realized that the United States might have prevented the terrorist massacre of 241 Marines in Beirut if only intelligence agencies had been able to analyze in real time data they had on the attackers. Poindexter poured government know-how and funds into his dream---a system that would sift reams of data for signs of terrorist activity.
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Important context for privacy debate
- By Keefer on 09-17-11
By: Shane Harris
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Flawed Superpatriot
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R3
- By Roxroy A Reid on 04-15-18
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The Ghosts of Langley
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The Ghosts of Langley is a provocative and panoramic new history of the Central Intelligence Agency that relates the agency's current predicament to its founding and earlier years, telling the story of the agency through the eyes of key figures in CIA history, including some of its most troubling covert actions around the world. It reveals how the agency, over seven decades, has resisted government accountability, going rogue in a series of highly questionable ventures that reach their apotheosis with secret overseas prisons and torture programs.
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Slanted
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Comrade J
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Overall
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Performance
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Spymaster, defector, double agent....Here is the remarkable true story of the man who ran Russia's post-cold-war spy program in America. The revelations are stunning. Many spies have told their stories. None has the astonishing immediacy, relevance, and cautionary warnings of Comrade J.
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Some Inaccuracies, but still good
- By Shopaholic on 09-21-08
By: Pete Earley
What listeners say about To Catch a Spy
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Stephen
- 03-31-21
Fantastic overview
I’m a fiction author with an ongoing Spy thriller x sci-fi series, (total fiction), but this book gives some great overviews about real counter-intelligence. I would highly recommend it as mandatory reading (listening) for any author!
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- Adam
- 11-17-20
Excellent background and tactics
Mr Olsen worked at an agency where family of mine worked. He is very interesting and intelligent. I enjoyed this and I encourage anyone working in internal affairs in any capacity to read this work.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Anonymous User
- 08-30-21
Excelente.
Este es un buen libro para quien quiere conocer más sobre la labor de la contrainteligencia con casos reales y excelentes consejos.
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- Dave
- 01-15-24
A Good History of CI but a Little Too Repetitive
I think Olsen provided a good history of counterespionage in the Cold War and modern era, but he was a little too repetitive at times with pronouncements of what's good and bad tradecraft. A good editor would have made these passages more concise after introducing his general views about tradecraft, or could have reorganized the cases to fit under common themes. Additionally, Olsen could have devoted fewer sentences to expressing his disgust with traitors. We all agree that they are bad, no need to waste the reader's time with those assertions. So to sum up my review, Olsen wrote a good history of CI but should have made it more concise.
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- C.W.O.
- 10-10-19
Learn about counterintelligence success and failures from an expert.
Ok, this book is not a how to manual on tradecraft, but if the subject of counterintelligence is of interest to you, you’ll enjoy it. The author begins with a brief survey of the counterintelligence threat. He then discusses his 10 commandments of counter intelligence. He next uses case studies (12 I think) based on real world spy cases to highlight the application of those commandments in action. He does this in a lessons learned fashion. Given the authors career in CI, the lessons of his book would be of interest to anyone considering service in the intelligence world. The book was well organized and the narration solid.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Gaetano
- 01-19-23
Interesting and practical
General observations backed up by real cases. It would be interesting to read an extension into the cyber era. Highly recommended book.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-23-23
Great book
Very informative and I learned a lot about the field my husband was in. USMC
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- Michael Scharf
- 05-12-24
Informative, Educational, and Worrisome
I doubt that any reader drawn to this sort of book will be surprised by the concerning state of American counterintelligence, but by the time they get done listening to this, they'll be both appalled and worried. Our country's deepest secrets and the lives of our agents are basically in the hands of people with butterfingers. This book is somewhat dated, but I absolutely believe the concerns expressed by the author are not only still relevant, but most likely exponentially worse. If you are interested in American history, be it military, political, criminal, or espionage, this is an excellent book to illuminate some of the shady back corners of our country's recent past. Occasionally the author does come across a bit self-aggrandizing and this is magnified by the reader's somewhat arrogant intonations, but the information and case studies herein are fascinating.
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- Christopher T
- 04-23-20
Incredible story by a man with a big ego
I have the utmost respect for anyone in our military, Federal law enforcement and the CIA. They are putting their lives on the line every day for the USA. The stories in this book are proof. I also appreciate the author's expertise in the field of counterintelligence.
If you like this topic, even a little, you'll really enjoy this book. However, I couldn't give it 5 stars because of the author's braggadocio in the way he talks of his experiences. Half way through I was convinced that he thinks of himself as the greatest spy hunter who ever lived. That may or may not be true but I've listened to or read many books by people who were accomplished in their field and most of them present the material in a more, shall we say, humble manner. Their purpose was to inform. I think this author had the same purpose but also to stroke his own ego.
Listen or read it but know this going un so it is hopefully less distracting when it first happens and going forward.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 06-23-21
Very accessible
This is a very accessible book that focuses on practical elements of CI work. The principles espoused herein are applicable outside the intelligence sector and could be used in organizations such as banks and IT firms. It was satisfying to observe that the 10 rules of Counterintelligence if applied properly would probably have averted some of the biggest cases of treachery in the United States. Full marks to Prof Olson.
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