Reddit mentions: The best political intelligence books

>I mean, aside from being very good friends with Boris Nemtsov, who Putin murdered...

1. Uh huh, so every friend of Boris Nemtsov is a political expert now?
   
   
2. Where is your source for saying Putin murdered Nemtsov? Nemtsov had been prominent in the disastrous 1990s, which saw the birth of the massive corruption for which he now blames Putin, but he had become very marginal. His Republican Party of Russia – the People's Freedom Party - shows no national representatives. One representative in a Regional Parliament and two more in another. Putin had little reason to be bothered by him, whose support was not very significant. You'd think if Putin wants to assassinate someone, he would have chosen a more significant person. Who may have had a larger interest in the killing are Russian right-wingers.
   
   >But fine, here's Schindler and Nichols saying the exact same thing. Or you can read The Snowden Operation, by another long-time intelligence veteran, which makes the same case.
   
   If the sole argument is that Russia has an interest in promoting or leaking stuff to Wikileaks and that makes them "useful idiots" as the author said, no one is doubting that there is a common interest there. But we've yet to see any evidence that it goes beyond that.

It's been fun. Spent too much time this week trying to fix my oven, but otherwise . . .

Book's set and out, print and Kindle, managed to get all the Amazon-related problems fixed, and am running a small ad campaign on Facebook and a giveaway on Amazon. Also offered some free copies to people in the field if they're so inclined.

As you asked me to let you know, here's the link to the book, the sweepstakes, and the website respectively.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1542791030/
https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/76b49f6ced7452cb
http://betweentheborders.com/

I'm beginning to think books stop being work about six minutes after the author's heart stops. ;)

It is fine I enjoy etymologies, though when I was looking up the actual language/source for those 'latin' words it turned out there were more than a few references to the same copypasta. Sort of a lesson in being careful with information even when it agrees with your ideology.

Ditto for this V bullshit (quoting wikipedia):
>In Latin, a stemless variant shape of the upsilon was borrowed in early times as V—either directly from the Western Greek alphabet or from the Etruscan alphabet as an intermediary—to represent the same /u/ sound, as well as the consonantal /w/. Thus, 'num' — originally spelled 'NVM' — was pronounced /num/ and 'via' was pronounced [ˈwia]. From the 1st century AD on, depending on Vulgar Latin dialect, consonantal /w/ developed into /β/ (kept in Spanish), then later to /v/.

Both B and V are very present.

>Garry Kasparov is not a very good source, he has virtually no political base except for ancedotes

I mean, aside from being very good friends with Boris Nemtsov, who Putin murdered...

But fine, here's Schindler and Nichols saying the exact same thing. Or you can read The Snowden Operation, by another long-time intelligence veteran, which makes the same case.

human factor. rather dry read, but still good insight into the functional problems of the cia. also it is very applicible if your in management or bussiness oriented profession. it was my laundry book, I read it an hour at a time over 3 months. in the end it made me every more cynical about government and coporations in general. as I could very much appreciate what it is like to try and get things done and have nothing but roadblocks.

http://www.amazon.com/Human-Factor-Dysfunctional-Intelligence-Culture/dp/1594032238/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249675627&sr=8-1

You're probably right. I started reading this the other day. Dude is not a fan of contracting out intelligence gathering.

Read an interesting book that came to two conclusions about Snowden. A journalist that writes a lot about East-West espionage wrote a book that basically says either 1) Snowden acted as a spy willingly or 2) Snowden acted as spy unwittingly (to your point).

There's a book that makes the case that Snowden was likely tricked by the Russians into doing it. It's written by an editor of the Economist and is an interesting read, although I can't say I completely agree with some of his conclusions.

http://www.amazon.com/BLOND-GHOST-David-Corn/dp/0671695258

Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare

Project Chameleo.

https://www.amazon.com/Chameleo-Invisible-Addiction-Homeland-Security/dp/1522608214

CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture

This book goes a long way toward hilariously debunking Snowden's view. The CIA appears to be just as flawed as the rest one would expect of a government entity.

Here is the mobile version of your link

I can recommend Nelson McAvoy's Coded Messages: How the CIA and the NSA Hoodwink Congress and the People. The author was a former NSA employee. The book covers crypto starting in the Civil War, covering Enigma machines, and ending with the CIA and the NSA, with particular attention paid to the effect that public key cryptography, and PGP in particular, had upon the NSA. There are plenty of examples aimed at the lay reader, but understanding them is not crucial to understanding the book. The author's thesis is that public key cryptography fundamentally changed the mission of the NSA, from code breaking to communications monitoring and traffic analysis, and that the new NSA should be subject to Congressional oversight.

Disclaimer: I knew the author.

This, basically: https://www.amazon.com/Snowden-Operation-Greatest-Intelligence-Disaster-ebook/dp/B00I0W61OY

I haven't read this book, but basically, the assertion by many spooks/former spooks is that Snowden was a Russian operation from start to finish. Now, there's still an argument wrt whether or not Snowden was a knowing agent.

I even have the CIA manual on how to be a terrorist. Quite enlightening with modern terrorism. Pretty much most tactics used by modern terrorists were from our trainers and training manuals.

http://www.amazon.com/Cia-PSYCHOLOGICAL-OPERATIONS-GUERRILLA-WARFARE/dp/1466238356/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1416698737&sr=8-1&keywords=psychological+operations+in+guerrilla+warfare