Political Memes

Recommend the book Safe for Democracy by John Prados. It's a damn doorstop and gets pretty dry at parts (think a full outline of the obtuse bureaucratic names various covert working groups gave themselves), but it's an exhaustive record of the CIA from their founding up to their adventures in Afghanistan.

It mostly focuses on armed conflict rather than the cloak and dagger spy games, but still shows the lengths the agency has gone to just because a world leader leaned a little too far left for their liking.