The Craft We Chose: My Life in the CIA
From Baird Maritime
Many books have been written and movies produced about life in the spy business. Few, however, are as simple, straightforward and apparently realistic as this one.
The author was a career CIA man who spent more than 30 years in the agency's Directorate of Operations which was responsible for gathering human intelligence, now called HUMINT.
Working all over the world, the author belies the usual James Bond image. In his photograph he looks instead to be a homely family man. He, nevertheless, provides the reader with an enormously valuable background to the CIA's activities throughout the Vietnam War, the Cold War and beyond.
Of course, like all dedicated public servants, Holm was beset by "administrivia", as he calls it. In other words, bureaucratic obstruction, obfuscation and just plain obduracy. Regrettably, his final assignment in Paris in 1992-93 was badly blighted by just that.
A very valuable explanatory record that is a pleasure to read. A fine lesson in intelligence politics. (Note: Not Political Intelligence)
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