The BLUF with the FBI AIA - Episode 2

Episode 2 (June 2025) featured FBI AIA Member Michael Coyne and a discussion around an article he wrote for the Cipher Brief in April 2025, titled "Facing Threats in the ‘Fourth Era’ of American Counterintelligence." Read the full article here: www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/facing-threats-in-the-fourth-era-of-american-counterintelligence

BLUF from Michael Coyne: First, we should understand counterintelligence through the lens of history and how we got where we are, and second, the kinds of intelligence threats we now face are WAY bigger and broader than the U.S. Government alone is designed to handle.

Michael Coyne is a retired career FBI counterintelligence (CI) analyst, now a Visiting Fellow with George Mason University’s National Security Institute and an incoming Adjunct Lecturer for the University of Maryland’s Fellows Program. He was formerly the FBI’s Senior National Intelligence Officer for Counterintelligence, the National Intelligence Officer for Counterintelligence at the National Intelligence Council, and acting National Intelligence Manager for Counterintelligence at the National Counterintelligence and Security Center.

This blog also features a list of intelligence- and counterintelligence-themed books recommended by Michael. Special thanks to Michael for his insights in this BLUF episode as well as his phenomenal book list and notes.

Check out the full episode below, and stay tuned for new episodes:

The article (www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/facing-threats-in-the-fourth-era-of-american-counterintelligence) discussed in Episode 2 completed FBI Pre-Publication Review. The observations expressed here are solely those of the author and are not the official views of the FBI or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. This article benefits from the thoughtful observations of former National Counterintelligence and Security Center Directors The Honorable William Evanina and Michael Casey; Anne Valentino, Ph.D.; and several esteemed former FBI, NCSC, and IC colleagues.

Six Good Books on Intelligence and Counterintelligence 

Authored by FBI AIA Member Michael Coyne

Note: This list underwent Pre-Publication Review with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  The observations expressed here are solely those of the author and are not the official views of the FBI or ODNI.

To Catch a Spy:  The Art of Counterintelligence.  James M. Olson, published 2019

James Olson is a storied CIA CI practitioner who later was an intelligence scholar at Texas A&M University.  In a relatively slim volume (just over 200 pages), Olson revisits the Ten Commandments of Counterintelligence (his 2001 work), discussed the why and how of double-agent operations, and provides 12 brief studies of major espionage cases.  He ends with the appendix “The Counterintelligence Officer’s Bookshelf,” a good list of 25 additional works for this in the CI business.  Olson knows what he’s talking about and has been out of the business long enough to provide an unvarnished perspective.  His extensive anecdotes and obvious regard for both the CIA and FBI make this an engaging read that bundles a lot of good stuff in one place.  Take the time (which won’t be too much) to look at this book and Olson’s suggested reading.  It will stead you well.

The Spy Who Got Away: The Inside Story of Edward Lee Howard, the CIA Agent Who Betrayed His Country’s Secrets and Escaped to Moscow.  David Wise, published 1988

This was a very enlightening and engaging read.  I discovered a kindred soul in former FBI Counterintelligence Division Assistant Director Jim Geer who, more than 30 years before me, highlighted Eric Ambler’s great quote about the sort who run counterintelligence departments from Light of Day (reviewed below) on the wall of his office at the Hoov.  Noted intelligence author Wise’s considerable research shows in this thorough study of the Howard spy case including interviews with Howard himself. Why and how Howard did what he did combined with the challenges the CIA and FBI faced in finding (and losing) him make for a riveting read.  The interviews with Howard yielded the sort of pallid self-justification one might expect from a spy whose actions caused the death of others (notably one of the United States’ best intelligence sources, Adolf Tolkachev).  This is a worthy study of a less-famous spy (compared to Ames and Hanssen), and a splendid look at how the CI Community worked in the 1980s.

Wilderness of Mirrors:  Intrigue, Deception, and the Secrets That Destroyed Two of the Cold War’s Most Important Agents.  David C. Martin, published 1980

Despite the fact that this took me a long time to finish (catching a few pages here and there during my Daughter’s field hockey practices), this is any easy and worthwhile read for those interested in World War II- and Cold War-era counterintelligence.  Martin, the longtime CBS News correspondent, wrote this in the late 1970s in the aftermath of the Church-Pike hearings which revealed sensational details about the Intelligence Community’s inner-workings.  This is a split biography of two CI professionals who were internally famous, ultimately thwarted, and who detested each other.  William King Harvey (also the subject of Bayard Stockton’s Flawed Patriot) was a charismatic and swaggering ex-FBI Special Agent who took his Word War II Soviet spy hunting expertise to the CIA after he was forced out for the alcoholism that would eventually cost him his CIA job, too.  Harvey’s agent-running and technical operations in Cold War Berlin are the stuff of legend, even when compromised by the Cambridge Five Soviet spies.  Office of Strategic Services veteran James Jesus Angleton became the legendary leader of CIA’s CI Staff in the 1960s until his firing in the early 1970s after his paranoia of Soviet penetrations caused him to ruin the career of many a good case officer (it didn’t help that he was also good friends with Kim Philby of the same Cambridge spy ring).  Readers will take away just how smart and methodical our forebears were in creating the contemporary discipline of CI, but also how unruly (and boozy) they were again an adversary that made excellent use of its penetrations of the Intelligence Community.

The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945.  J.C. Masterman, published 1972

This is a must-read for anyone thinking of running double-agent operations (DAOPs).  Masterman, an Oxbridge academic who joined British intelligence in World War II, published this in the 1970s partly to boost beleaguered intelligence colleagues (dealing with the lingering aftermath of the Cambridge spy ring) and partly to convey what he and his compatriots learned during the War.  DAOPs have seven main purposes:  1) control enemy intelligence systems; 2) catch fresh spies; 3) gain knowledge of adversary methods and personalities; 4) learn of enemy codes and ciphers; 5) assess plans and intentions; 6) influence enemy planning; and 7) deceive the enemy regarding our own plans and intentions.  This the  British did amazingly well, flipping or otherwise neutralizing apparently all (120-plus) Nazi spied sent to the United Kingdom in the late 1930s and early 1940s.  Masterman provides sketches of many of these DAOPs (including “Cato,” as discussed in Sefton Delmer’s The Counterfeit Spy) and, importantly, discuses the inter-agency processes the British put in place to coordinate and deconflict operations while ensuring passage material had the maximum impact.  While the technology we use has changed, the underlying philosophy guiding the tradecraft has not, making this an invaluable primer.

Thwarting Enemies at Home and Abroad:  How to Be a Counterintelligence Officer.  William R. Johnson, published 2009.

This is a nifty little book that should be required reading for CI personnel:  it nicely augments classroom learning about operational and analytic rubric.  Johnson, a former military and CIA official, lays out not only the mechanics of CI, but also the philosophy of why we do it in the first place.  His easy-going narrative makes for quick reading and the anecdotes (sometimes veiled for security reasons) suggest some serious CI introspection. 

The Light of Day.  Eric Ambler, published 1962

Arthur Simpson is having a bad day which makes him grouchy about CI types, yielding this, my favorite quote:

“I think that if I were asked to single out one specific group of men, one type, one category, as being the most suspicious, unbelieving, unreasonable, petty, inhuman, sadistic, double-crossing set of bastards in any language, I would say without any hesitation: ‘the people who run counter-espionage departments.’”

This is a great spy-mystery-heist story (later made into the movie Topkapi) and much of the tradecraft it details rings true decades later.