Book and Film Recommendations

Kim Hee-won and Heo Myeong-haeng
2025

A global espionage thriller in an original Disney series. The story of Moon Joo (Jun Ji-hyun), who has built an international reputation as a United Nations (UN) ambassador, facing a huge truth threatening the Korean Peninsula alongside a nationality-unknown special agent named Sanho (Gang Dong-won) while tracking the forces behind the assassination attempt on a presidential candidate.

Joey Ortega
Amazon Books, 28 Aug 25

In Beyond the Veil, Joey Ortega draws on more than two decades of investigative and intelligence work to reveal how terror groups, espionage actors, and corrupt political or corporate networks can be tracked and exposed. Using OSINT, HUMINT, SOCINT, and GEOINT, he shows how intelligence disciplines applied in counterterrorism and counterespionage uncover hidden structures, map affiliations, and bring operational blueprints into view.

This book moves beyond theory. Through case studies, forensic workflows, and intelligence mapping, Ortega demonstrates how digital footprints, human sources, social media artifacts, and financial leaks can be fused into a clear picture of motive, method, and organizational structure. Readers learn how to identify patterns others overlook, connect individuals to networks, and expose corruption and covert operations that thrive in the shadows.

Beyond the Veil is written for investigators, intelligence professionals, and serious students of security who want practical methods to uncover threats and hold hidden actors accountable. It is tradecraft made accessible, structured for those who demand results.  

Oliver Lewis
Routledge, 22 Aug 22 

This book examines security cooperation between Western states.

Security cooperation occurs between Western (i.e. European and North American) states as a coping mechanism, as an imperfect substitute for integration. The book investigates the reasons for cooperation, what Aristotle called the ‘final cause’, as well as the material, formal, and efficient causes of cooperation. Such a causal explanation is based on a Critical Realist philosophy of social science. The book is also based on an embedded multiple-case study; the states studied are the United States, France, and Luxembourg. Within each state, the embedded subcases are three types of state security organizations: the armed forces, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies, which have rarely been compared in this way. Comparing different types of states and different types of state security organizations has allowed temporal, spatial, national, and functional variation in cooperation to be identified and theorized. The empirical evidence studied includes participant observations at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and documents such as state policy documents, annual reports by organizations, reports by parliaments and non-governmental organizations, autobiographies, books by investigative journalists, and articles by newspapers and magazines. The book is also based on a score of elite interviews with ambassadors, diplomatic liaisons, ministerial advisors, foreign ministry officials, and military commanders.

This book will be of much interest to students of security studies, intelligence studies, military studies and International Relations in general.

Wayne M. McDonnell
Ancient Wisdom Publications, 24 Feb 24

The Gateway Experience is a training system designed to alter consciousness and escape time and space. The CIA investigated this technique in 1983, focusing on psychic research and remote viewing. The process began with Robert Monroe, a radio broadcasting executive, who discovered sound patterns affecting human capabilities. He established an R&D division within RAM Enterprises, focusing on sleep learning and out-of-body experiences. In 1962, RAM Enterprises expanded into radio station ownership, cable television, and audio cassette production. In 1971, Monroe published Journeys Out of the Body, popularizing the term "out-of-body experience." In 1972, a classified report claimed the Soviet Union funded research into ESP and psychokinesis for espionage purposes. In 1975, Monroe registered patents on audio techniques for stimulating brain functions until the left and right hemispheres synchronize, promoting mental health or causing altered states of consciousness. In 1983, the CIA published "Analysis and Assessment of the Gateway Process," establishing a scientific framework for understanding and expanding human consciousness.