Deadly Deceits: The Politics of Lying, Disinformation & the CIA Overthrowing Governments (1983)

In his 1983 book, Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA, McGehee recounts his duties as an intelligence agent. For several decades he was assigned to East Asia, performing in the field and at CIA stations in Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Details of the practices and techniques of a CIA case officer are given. He shows how he gradually changed his opinion of the Agency. He arrived at the view that CIA operations in many cases damage the people affected, and overall results are often negative for America, its allies, or the world. CIA intelligence can be altered or pitched so that political purposes frequently trump the accurate transmission of information. Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair praised it as "one of the outstanding books written by former CIA agents". The book was reissued in 1999 with updates, and reprinted in 2015 with a foreword by David MacMichael, a former CIA analyst.