I DECIDED TO WRITE THIS MEMOIR IN SEPTEMBER 1997, WHEN THE Central Intelligence Agency publicly celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. During three of the Agency’s five decades, which spanned the Cold War years, I served as a professional intelligence officer, creating and deploying many of the most innovative techniques of the espionage trade.
My purpose in writing this book, however, is not to bring credit to myself. I have already received ample recognition in the intelligence community. Vanity is not at stake in this project. Rather, I want this book to describe as accurately as memory permits a few of the operations my colleagues and I conducted. The reader can judge for himself the quality of our
service in the cause of freedom.
Some of those we worked with are no longer alive. Others prefer to celebrate their achievements privately. Others are still actively engaged and must remain in the shadows. I have changed certain details of their identities so that they can remain anonymous. But, willing to err on the side of openness, I chose the potential risks of telling our story. I trust that doing so will also serve the cause of freedom.
Almost since its inception, the American intelligence effort has been either vilified by the world’s news media—sometimes as part of Soviet disinformation operations—or romanticized by spy novelists with only vague notions of the nature of espionage operations.

Master of Disguise