This book examines the realities of living in the United States after the events of September 11th, 2001, and evaluates the challenges in gathering internal intelligence without severely compromising personal liberties. In the United States, there are a staggering number of agents of the CIA, FBI, and state, local, and tribal police, all authorized and empowered to collect intelligence. But is there a way to use these vast resources to gather intelligence in a socially tolerable fashion and still maintain our cherished civil liberties? This book presents a thorough investigation of intelligence collection in the United States that examines the delicate balance of civil liberties with the effectiveness of intelligence collection. It contains a history of domestic intelligence in America, a description of the various threats against our nation, and a discussion of the complexities of deciding what kind of information needs to be collected— and against whom. The conclusion succinctly states the author's opinions on what needs to be done to best address the issue.

In this pathbreaking book, Amy Zegart provides the first scholarly examination of the intelligence failures that preceded September 11. Until now, those failures have been attributed largely to individual mistakes. But Zegart shows how and why the intelligence system itself left us vulnerable. Zegart argues that after the Cold War ended, the CIA and FBI failed to adapt to the rise of terrorism. She makes the case by conducting painstaking analysis of more than three hundred intelligence reform recommendations and tracing the history of CIA and FBI counterterrorism efforts from 1991 to 2001, drawing extensively from declassified government documents and interviews with more than seventy high-ranking government officials. She finds that political leaders were well aware of the emerging terrorist danger and the urgent need for intelligence reform, but failed to achieve the changes they sought. The same forces that have stymied intelligence reform for decades are to blame: resistance inside U.S. intelligence agencies, the rational interests of politicians and career bureaucrats, and core aspects of our democracy such as the fragmented structure of the federal government. Ultimately failures of adaptation led to failures of performance. Zegart reveals how longstanding organizational weaknesses left unaddressed during the 1990s prevented the CIA and FBI from capitalizing on twenty-three opportunities to disrupt the September 11 plot. Spying Blind is a sobering account of why two of America's most important intelligence agencies failed to adjust to new threats after the Cold War, and why they are unlikely to adapt in the future.

'The History of Espionage' recounts the fascinating story of spies and spying from the cloak-and-dagger machinations of the ancient Greeks and Romans to the high-tech surveillance operations of the post 9/11 world.

James Bamford has been the preeminent expert on the National Security Agency since his reporting revealed the agency’s existence in the 1980s. Now Bamford describes the transformation of the NSA since 9/11, as the agency increasingly turns its high-tech ears on the American public. The Shadow Factory reconstructs how the NSA missed a chance to thwart the 9/11 hijackers and details how this mistake has led to a heightening of domestic surveillance. In disturbing detail, Bamford describes exactly how every American’s data is being mined and what is being done with it. Any reader who thinks America’s liberties are being protected by Congress will be shocked and appalled at what is revealed here.

The government is spying on us. Here's how, and what we can do about it.

"A thorough, often provocative, assessment of the US domestic intelligence enterprise since 9/11"--

Two Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists take an unbridled look into one of the most sensitive post-9/11 national security investigations—a breathtaking race to stop a second devastating terrorist attack on American soil. In Enemies Within, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman “reveal how New York really works” (James Risen, author of State of War) and lay bare the complex and often contradictory state of counterterrorism and intelligence in America through the pursuit of Najibullah Zazi, a terrorist bomber who trained under one of bin Laden’s most trusted deputies. Zazi and his co-conspirators represented America’s greatest fear: a terrorist cell operating inside America. This real-life spy story—uncovered in previously unpublished secret NYPD documents and interviews with intelligence sources—shows that while many of our counterterrorism programs are more invasive than ever, they are often counterproductive at best. After 9/11, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly initiated an audacious plan for the Big Apple: dispatch a vast network of plainclothes officers and paid informants—called “rakers” and “mosque crawlers”—into Muslim neighborhoods to infiltrate religious communities and eavesdrop on college campuses. Police amassed data on innocent people, often for their religious and political beliefs. But when it mattered most, these strategies failed to identify the most imminent threats. In Enemies Within, Appuzo and Goldman tackle the tough questions about the measures that we take to protect ourselves from real and perceived threats. They take you inside America’s sprawling counterterrorism machine while it operates at full throttle. They reveal what works, what doesn’t, and what Americans have unknowingly given up. “Did the Snowden leaks trouble you? You ain’t seen nothing yet” (Dan Bigman, Forbes editor).