In the age of COVID-19, The Cipher Brief reached out to our expert network to ask what they were reading.
Cipher Brief Expert Marc Polymeropoulos served 26 years in the CIA before retiring from the Senior Intelligence Service in June 2019. His positions included field and headquarters operational assignments covering the Middle East, Europe, Eurasia and Counterterrorism.
Here are his recommendations:
Like many CIA operations officers, both current and former, I love to read. My sense is that this is based on the thousands of hours I have travelled on airplanes and trains, waiting in hotel rooms for agents who never showed, stuck for hours at airports with delayed flights, ultimately living a life that is in essence solitary, often boring, and at times lonely. I have read books while sleeping on the tarmac of Baghdad International airport; at a base in eastern Afghanistan under indirect fire; during interminable layovers at Frankfurt International airport; in a dingy safehouse in Sudan; a five-star hotel room in Syria; and at an aging dive resort in Eritrea. My only constant companion was a book, and that was just fine by me. Packing for an extended out of country meeting, with a week of eating alone three meals a day and countless hours on an airplane or in an airport, it was impossible to leave behind a good book. I’m sorry that this revelation is so unglamorous, not dramatized for the movies, no fancy technical spy gear or tricked out concealed weapons in my worn North Face backpack. Just a good book.
I must admit that in this age of quarantine and stories of the American people trying to figure out how to get through a 24-hour cycle with tons of free time on their hands, I fall back on my days as an operations officer. As such, I have had very little difficulty keeping busy. For I still love to read, and thus have devoured several books over the last month of confinement. The following is my current and future reading lists; I suggest a good chair and a tumbler or two of scotch, as there is a world out there to discover.
The Border. The conclusion to Don Winslow’s drug-war trilogy (The Power of the Dog and the Cartel), the protagonist Art Keller, now the DEA boss, continues on his quest to defeat the Mexican drug cartels. It is a lengthy book and I often found difficult to keep track of the machinations of the various cartels. But Winslow writes with an anger and passion that is both beautiful and contagious, and it is worth pondering his strongly held belief that the war on drugs has been futile. I must admit that Keller is personally appealing to me, as he was a CIA officer in Vietnam prior to embarking on his DEA career. A word of caution- Winslow is no fan of the current administration, so if you are part of the MAGA crowd, you may want to skip the book. Or take another sip of scotch. The Border was just released in paperback.
Rise and Kill First. Ronen Bergman’s current best-selling tour d’horizon of Israel’s historic policy of targeted assassinations is a must read for those interested in the middle east. I have particularly enjoyed diving into events that I lived through, having served in the region and at times working with some of the Israeli government officials cited in the book. It is not appropriate for me to comment on the accuracy of some of the more modern operational vignettes, other than to say that his sources in the Israeli security establishment were pretty brave in revealing what must have been highly classified Israeli information. Of most interest to American readers is the obvious question of should the United States intelligence and special operations community, who have dabbled in this arena on occasion, adopt on a large scale such draconian but at times very effective Israeli practices.
Caravans. When all else fails and you need some escapism, James Michener will always deliver. This work of fiction, published in the 1960s, is a magical ride through post World War II Afghanistan through the eyes of a young foreign service officer and a woman he is tasked to rescue. For those of us who have spent considerable time in-country, it is a fascinating look into what once was an exotic locale, where hippies flocked. On a personal level, I first read this book in high school, and it began my path into the CIA as I fell in love with this Lawrence of Arabia type story. Years later as a CIA base chief in eastern Afghanistan during a Key Leader Engagement with tribal elders, I thought back to my time reading Caravans and marveled at my own journey. The book is still available on-line.
What is next for me to read, as this terrible health crisis does not seem to be ending anytime soon, and we remain in our houses with so much time on our hands? I was thinking of trying some recent John LeCarre’, though he is turning quite angry and bitter in his old age, and in particular has no affinity for America. I sadly may pass on reading any more from the true legend of the espionage novel, and simply remember him for bringing us the joys of George Smiley. I am also behind on the more recent David Ignatius novels, so I just bought The Quantum Spy in paperback. Ignatius’s books are so richly detailed he appears to have a blue badge for entry into CIA headquarters, so it’s fun to try and match up his characters with true figures in the intelligence community (I may have served in the same capacity as his hero in Body of Lies, although my life was much less interesting). I confess that Agents of Innocence remains my all-time favorite book on espionage that I heartily recommend, probably because of my career in the Near East (NE) division and the sights, sounds, and smells of Beirut that Ignatius so accurately conveys. When I was Deputy Chief of Operations in NE, I would give this book to new officers as I believed it so accurately reflected life as an operations officer in the middle east. It is that good.
Disclaimer: The Cipher Brief, like other Amazon Affiliate partners, gets paid a small commission based on purchases made via the links provided in this story
Read more Under/Cover book reviews in The Cipher Brief
Read Under/Cover interviews with authors and publishers in The Cipher Brief
Interested in submitting a book review? Check out our guidelines here
Sign up for our free Undercover newsletter to make sure you stay on top of all of the new releases and expert reviews
Read more expert national security perspectives and analysis in The Cipher Brief
