Reddit mentions of A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century

There's a lot of wrong information in this thread. First, the KGB was not superior to western spies during the cold war. Both had some great success and failures. The KGB's biggest examples would be stuff like Robert Hanssen, Aldrich Ames, or the Cambridge Spy Ring. The US and UK also had many notable successes. Unfortunately I am at work right now and can't remember specific names or spellings (I am horrible with Russian names). The KGB never succeeded in penetrating any US intelligence agency but they did have success recruiting persons already in US intelligence. The same is true of the US in regards to Soviet intelligence. There was a lot of paranoia by both sides when it came to trying to recruit spies from within the respective enemy. Aldrich Ames was originally turned away by the Soviets be cause they thought he was a trap.

Here are some great books on the subject:

[The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB] (http://www.amazon.com/Main-Enemy-Inside-Story-Showdown-ebook/dp/B000QCS8Y2/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394466382&sr=1-1&keywords=the+main+enemy) is a book by Milt Bearden, a former CIA case officer and one time head of the Soviet desk at the CIA. It covers the CIA and KGB shadow war during the 80s and 90s and is told from Bearden's perspective as a mid level and high ranking CIA officer during that time period. This book also covers the CIA activity in Afghanistan from 1985-89 when Bearden was in charge of CIA operations there.

[Spy Handler: Memoir of a KGB Officer: The True Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames] (http://www.amazon.com/Spy-Handler-Officer-Recruited-Hanssen-ebook/dp/B0095XKFZ8/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1394466382&sr=1-12&keywords=the+main+enemy) by Victor Cherkashin is exactly what the tile says. It is a book told from a KGB officer's perspective about the recruting and running of Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. I highly recommend reading this book after reading the book by Bearden. They compliment each other well and together provide a pretty comprehensive overview of the spy war part of the Cold War.

For a more historical look at spies and intelligence operations during the entire 20th century, including the cold war I recommend reading A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century by Jeffrey Richelson. This book covers all major intelligence programs and operations from all disciplines not just HUMINT, though.

HUMINT is the abbreviation for Human Intelligence which includes spy craft and is one of the largest disciplines in intelligence. The other disciplines are Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), Imagery Intelligence (IMINT), Measures and Signal Intelligence (MASINT), Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), and Counter Intelligence (CI).

EDIT-Fixed link formatting

Chinese Inteligence Operations by Nicholas Eftimiades also [the author did an ama] (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/zchnb/ive_appeared_on_nbc_abc_bbc_npr_and_testified/).

And if you are more interested in inteligence history [A Century of Spies:Intelligence in the Twentieth Century. Richelson, Jeffery T.] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00716PVR8/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title)