A unique book, in the strictest, most literal sense of the word.

Victor Marchetti had a highly successful 14-year career at the CIA.

He rose to the position of executive assistant to the deputy director of the agency, and attended regular planning and intelligence meetings attended by then-CIA director Richard Helms.

He was also a courier for the agency group that approved covert operations, and as such had access to the most carefully guarded CIA information, called Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI).

Such material was distributed strictly on a need-to-know basis.

His positions as executive assistant to the deputy director and secure courier allowed Marchetti an overview of the agency purposely denied to most CIA officers.

Over time, Marchetti became troubled by the agency's role in the overthrow of various governments and by CIA involvement in other nations' internal policies.

He decided to quit the agency age 39, and soon thereafter wrote a novel called "The Rope-Dancer."

Prior to its 1971 publication by Grosset and Dunlap, a CIA officer read the manuscript at Marchetti's home, in keeping with the rules set out in the CIA secrecy contract Marchetti had signed.

The CIA officer found no security breaches, and publication went forward.

Then word got out that Marchetti was preparing a non-fiction book highly critical of the CIA.

Concerned, CIA director Richard Helms himself ordered Marchetti placed under surveillance beginning on March 23, 1972.

Within days, an article written by Marchetti appeared in the April 3 issue of The Nation, under the headline, "CIA: The President's Loyal Tool."

In 1974, the book the CIA feared, by rogue former officer Marchetti, was published, with much of its content deleted by the CIA for reasons of "National Security."

Co-authored with John D. Marks, its title was "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence."

Along with "The Rope-Dancer," it remains surprisingly hard-to-find, though with the internet it's no longer next-to-impossible, as was the case in the 80s.

I first read "The Rope-Dancer" a long time ago, and I return to it, as I just have, every decade or so because of the uncanny sense of versimilitude it offers the reader.

Now, it's not a well-written book: Marchetti has a clunky style, and the narrative is anything but smooth.

But that's small potatoes compared to the scope and depth of the author's knowledge, and the sense you get reading the novel of what it must be like to work in the CIA, called the NIA (National Intelligence Agency) in the book.

The protagonist is executive assistant to the deputy director of the NIA; he's married, with two sons, just like Marchetti was at the time in real life; and he's put under surveillance - or thinks he is - just as Marchetti was to be several months after the novel's publication.

I can't help but believe this is the best look into the hearts and minds of the movers and shakers of the CIA in the 60s and early 70s that will ever exist.

Very worth reading.

I wonder what Marchetti's up to these days.

Let's see... he'd be, what, 72-years-old this year.

Out of curiosity, I just googled him: zero, zilch, nada, ninguna.

Does the phrase "gone to ground" - in either of its senses - ring a bell?