Books: How to Spy Without Being Caught Trying

A SHORT COURSE IN THE SECRET WAR (314 pp.)—Christopher Felix—Dutton ($5).

The cold war provides the proper natal temperature at which secret agents are born and flourish. This book, by a pseudonymous author who served the U.S. Government in a variety of intrigues over a 16-year period, aims at—and intelligently succeeds in—explaining the theory and purpose of cloak-and-dagger work. It also argues that every serious U.S. failure, from the U-2 to the Bay of Pigs, "has either been caused or compounded by those responsible ignoring or brushing aside the classic principles of secret operations."

The Code. But the book is less an ex...