As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been doing a bit of research on the US Central Intelligence Agency for a book. Okay, maybe more than a bit:

Thank you, libraries!

Class 11 was actually not on my list to check out from the library, but like a good little researcher, I looked at all the books with similar call numbers to the ones I’d researched. Voila. By chance, I picked up Class 11 because I figured there might be some relevant info, and it was probably one of the most recent looks at CIA training.

On that same logic, I cracked this book first when I got home—and I only stopped reading for a quick dinner break before I finished the whole book.

Class 11: My Story Inside the CIA’s First Post-9/11 Spy Class (aff) details the training of the first class of CIA officers hired after September 11, 2001. The worst attacks on US soil prompted a lot of people to apply to the agency—military, civilians, professionals, single moms, even a former pro athlete. Author TJ Waters was among that class.

As with the last CIA memoir I reviewed, several reviewers found Waters’s self-description and overall attitude grating. I honestly didn’t notice, but I was kind of mining the book for information as I read, so my focus could have been very different than those readers’. (Plus I’m kinda of the opinion that pretty much all autobiographies tread a fine line between self-congratulatory and totally depressing.)

Having studied a few other CIA memoirs now, I think this is probably one of the most recent, in-depth reviews of several of the tradecraft techniques taught at the Agency. That alone made it worth reading for me. I was disappointed to not get to see the tradecraft in action in the field (and like the author I was sad they didn’t get to do the paramilitary course, which seems to be far shorter than it was in decades past), but it seemed that Waters didn’t serve as a case officer in the field, and frankly, the subject of the book was the CIA class’s training, not their time on the ground.

What do you think? How do you research?