Book Review: "The Craft of Intelligence"

"The Craft of Intelligence: America's Legendary Spy Master on the Fundamentals of Intelligence Gathering for a Free World" by Allen Dulles is a critical piece on American intelligence services. Part biography, part early American intelligence doctrine, this book helps establish why it is essential for democratic states to partake in intelligence collection, and how it should be lawfully done. Allen states learning through case-law, or examples of people doing the job, is one of the best ways to learn a new profession, and thus the book is loaded with historical accounts of esspionage and trade-craft. I like how Dulles frames American intelligence as necessary to protect the free people from growing foriegn political powers, like those we saw rise out of WWII. The book goes on to talks about how multiple intelligence agencies naturally formed over time, and their various different strategies and approaches to esspionage. I listened to the book on Audible for ~12 hours at ~$20, which was very informative and entertaining, resulting in multiple repeated listens. Ultimately, I give it 7 out of 10 stars, for being dated but an excellent historical account of the early American IC. I recommend it to anyone into intelligence, American history, or information security in general, as its an important piece of history that should not be overlooked. The book talks about the qualifications of an intelligence officer, how to get a job as an intelligence officer, and how to excel at this position. Dulles strongly advocates for the need an advanced knowledge of diabolical plots to the threat of freedom and democracy, and thus a strong need for an intelligence arm within The United States. The following are the chapters of the book, in my typical fashion, as I think they present a good high level overview into the contents of the book:

Chapter 1: The Historical Setting
Chapter 2: The Evolution of American Intelligence
Chapter 3: America's Intelligence Requirements
Chapter 4: The Task of Collection
Chapter 5: Collection - Enter the Machine
Chapter 6: Planning and Guidance
Chapter 7: The Main Opponent - The Communist Intelligence Services
Chapter 8: Counterintelligence
Chapter 9: Volunteers
Chapter 10: Confusing the Adversary
Chapter 11: How Intelligence Is Put to Use
Chapter 12: The on the Job
Chapter 13: Myths, Mishaps and Mischief-Makers
Chapter 14: The Tole of Intelligence in the Cold War
Chapter 15: Security in a Free Society
Chapter 16: The Intelligence Service and Our Freedoms

The book is heavily layered in examples and stories of espionage and tradecraft, such that in between each important lesson, Allen gives multiple examples to follow it up. "The Craft of Intelligence" talks extensively about the separation of military and political intelligence, and the formation of the CIA as a result of this. He talks about prejudice in intelligence analysis and this being a large region to have the CIA separated from any single political group at home. Dulles calls this a separation between policy and intelligence, creating objective intelligence. The book focuses heavily on Russian intelligence operations, or in general, communist espionage techniques. While it's a theme that is largely played out in many intelligence books, it is more relevant again today as we see these well studied tactics starting to resurface. Allen also draws from Sun Tzu as one of the earliest examples of esspionage, and discuses how Sun Tzu was on to something in his  many different roles of spies, each with different levels of expendability. The book talks heavily about penetration agents and the actual work of spying, including many tips and tricks for old fashioned spying. Its also a great book on many of Dulles influences, relationships, and wide social circle as a spymaster. It's really interesting to see all of his connections, those he knew personally, and those he looked up to. Ultimately, men of high character through history laid out the lessons that Dulles followed, resulting in many campaigns of deception and espionage following. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to get into the world of espionage.