Class 11
My Story Inside the CIA's First Post-9/11 Spy Class
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A gripping insider?s look at the post-9/11 CIA
In the weeks following the attacks of 9/11, the Central Intelligence Agency received over 150,000 résumés from people wanting to serve their nation. T. J. Waters became one of more than a hundred students admitted into the CIA's Clandestine Service to become Class 11, the first post- 9/11 training class. Filled with more information about the CIA's Clandestine Service Training Program than has ever been allowed into the public domain, Waters takes readers behind closed doors, where the trainees learned methods of subterfuge, mastering disguises, how to withstand interrogations, and how to cross into hostile territory undetected—and provides a moving portrait of ordinary Americans with the courage and determination to go to any lengths to protect their country.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the surge of patriotism following 9/11, Waters joined the CIA's elite clandestine service program, whose grueling, year-long training course the first-time 37-year-old author and former private consultant for intelligence collection describes (with some details omitted or changed) in this lively account. Deployed in Washington, D.C., he and hundreds of colleagues practiced surveillance detection and rehearsed secret drop-offs and techniques for meeting foreign agents without attracting attention. In realistic simulations, they learned to assume a false identity, then withstand interrogation designed to trip them up, how to pick out amenable foreigners at diplomatic parties and persuade them to betray their country. Waters mixes these details with sketches of classmates and their hijinks, portraits (not always flattering) of instructors, grumbling about CIA politics and ongoing difficulties with his new wife, who supported his career choice but chafed at his long absences. Publication of this book is proceeding despite Waters's unresolved lawsuit against the CIA Review Board, which approved the book then reversed itself under the Porter Goss administration. The CIA scandals that the patriotic author mentions in passing are public knowledge, and his criticism of the Agency is outweighed by praise. The end result is only mildly controversial but rarely dull.
