Customer Rating: 
Summary: Tradecraft Secrets Galore
Comment: Reading this book is like having a long conversation with "Q" from the James Bond movies. Because of the author's security clearance the CIA only approved the first 3 chapters of SPYCRAFT. After a legal battle they caved and allowed almost the entire book to be published...all 25 chapters, almost 600 pages! Chapters 20-25 are worth 10 times the price of the book, and could have been a book in themselves. These chapters contain the real secrets of spying and espionage. I can easily understand why the CIA didn't want this published, it's just too good. 75% of this book contains all the gimmicks, gadgets, devices, schemes, and dirty tricks ever created by the CIA. Much of which is almost too fantastic. As an example: Operation Skyhook. If you saw the recent movie, The Dark Knight, then you remember how Batman kidnapped that guy from a Hong Kong skyscraper (airplane hooked the rope as it flew over). Well, the CIA really did that! It's completely illustrated with three pages of text just on this one secret extraction method. I could go on and on, but I don't want to ruin the ride for you. By all means get this book, it's one of the most amazing books I've ever read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Spycraft: Superb and Fascinating History!
Comment: For anyone fascinated by the true world of espionage, Spycraft is a fabulous book, rich in detail, history, and gadgetry! Wonderfully written and superbly researched, Spycraft is an astonishing history of the tools of the trade. There are insights and surprises on nearly every page, even for the most well-read historian of the intelligence world. Having dozens of books on the world of espionage in my library, this is one of my favorites. If you love the gadgetry of "Q" from the world of 007, this book is a tour de force. Readers will know that Spycraft was a labor of love by authors who have actual first-hand knowledge of ingenious clandestine intelligence gathering-efforts. I can't wait to read the sequel!
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Histriography of Spycraft
Comment: Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton with Henry R. Schlesinger, foreword by George J. Tenet. Dutton, $29.95 (576p) ISBN 978-0-525-94980-0
Robert Wallace and H. Keith Melton wrote Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spycraft is a great book that depicts the collective historiography of the CIA's Office of Technical Service (OTS) department. Wallace and Melton both have a wealth of information concerning clandestine work in relationship to technology, and its impact on the tradecraft profession globally. The book historically illustrates audio devices, miniature cameras, disguises, codes, and dead drops that are major elements in the profession of national security and espionage. Spycraft covers the epoch of secret intelligence devices from World War II, The Cold War, and Al-Qaeda Terrorism, which is well written for any laymen to discern. I recommend Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA to academic and public libraries.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: lacks technical aspects
Comment: I was hoping for a lot with a 5 star amzn rating but unfortunately I only got through half of the book because it failed to meet those expectations. I was hoping for a technical presentation of clandestine affairs. If the author was going to describe a particular stakeout and audio operation I was hoping it would be presented with maps, technical layouts, and diagrams of devices such that the detail would justify another book in this area. What I got was a shallow examination of multiple operations where little information was divulged and most of the drama centered around the departments lack of preparation and eventual overcoming of their technical shortfalls through private industry or industrious tech.
I was hoping to read a book about the technicalities of the operation not a book where i had to flip back and forth to the appendix to look up the abundant acronyms used and where I would go pages just reading about the cia's lack of preparation. occasional stories were interesting but would likely not be new to anyone versed in the subject.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sometimes riveting, sometimes bone dry
Comment: I skimread this book, I admit it. Sections were so dry, I just couldn't deal with it. I needed a good mix of the technical and the real-world.
It broke my heart that so much time and effort was needed to get to a place where our Soviet informants could share info, only to be ruined by Hanssen.
Meantime, I roared at the stories of the agents desperately experimenting with inflatable sex-toy women as possible "doubles" for car passengers who had bailed from a car moments before.... and the stories of what was involved in trying to buy bulk numbers of inflatable person-shaped anythings for experimentation as body doubles. THAT tickled me enormously. The ultimate details of why this double was needed, the misery of what the real human would be doing in the meantime, grim grim stuff. James Bond movies have done us all a big disservice. The real spy world is anything but glamorous stuff.
I am in awe and forever grateful to those who stuck it out to get a few seconds of eavesdropped conversation, a page of forbidden blueprints. Thank you guys. I get what you did, what years you sacrified.
Oh, and, yeah, I will no longer be impressed by people who think it's clever and antidisestablishment to sneak over and hang out in Cuba as tourists, having read the detail of the Cuba prison system. Horrific stuff.
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