Class 11: Inside The CIA's First Post-9/11 Spy Class Free Audiobook Download by T. J. Waters

In September of 2001, the CIA tasked a new generation of recruits with their first job after becoming a spy. They had just graduated from college, and were considered the most intelligent students in their class...

The author of this book is T. J. Waters, who was a foreign service officer for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1994 to 2004 and taught at the National War College from 2006 to 2007. This book is about a group of students enrolled in an intensive spy training course that took place after 9/11. The author talks about the class's pedagogy and how it is structured as well as the students' struggles with the material presented. Audible download available at www.audible.com

The CIA's first post-9/11 spy class was a difficult case study for the agents that had to try and learn about terrorist tradecraft in just a few weeks. The class is only seven hours long, so the students are expected to put in a lot of work to complete their assignments. One student, Patrick Lawlor, recounts how his teacher would give him a grade on each assignment as soon as he handed it in. "I know you're all trying your best," she told them, "but if everyone did their best I'd be handing out A's."

The CIA has undergone massive changes since the September 11 attacks nearly seventeen years ago. Class 11 is the first class of students to come in contact with the agency after 9/11 and, as the title suggests, focuses on counterterrorism. The novel opens with a terrorist attack on its own campus, which leads to a frantic search for the perpetrators.

The CIA began to train classes of spies in the wake of 9/11. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the CIA shifted its focus because it had become too politically charged to use their normal recruiting methods. Class 11: Inside The CIA's First Post-9/11 Spy Class is about a class that was trained at the "Farm," which is a covert training facility for spying and sabotage. The class learns all aspects of espionage including how to break into homes, disable surveillance cameras and create fake IDs while they were being trained by covert agents.

At the outset of the book, T.J Waters reveals that he wrote this book from his experience teaching a high school class on the CIA, which he said is more like being an agent than you might think. His students are in eleventh grade and have just finished studying World War II for their AP European History class. He didn't plan to teach them about espionage at first, but after meeting some students who were part of online chats with suspected terrorists, he decided to reschedule his lecture plans.