Our tense democracy could lurch from being an illiberal republic to a dictatorship by any other name.

The former officer, who also worked as a contract translator for the F.B.I., provided classified documents to Beijing.

Some current and former officials have said the 2019 F.B.I. analysis sowed doubt within the C.I.A. and parts of the Trump administration about the root causes of the ailments.

In “Prisoner of Lies,” Barry Werth tells the story of a young C.I.A. operative who spent two decades waiting out the postwar era in a Chinese jail cell.