Wilson Boinnet memoir: Former spy chief lifts the lid on intelligence reform
A career soldier who once served as aide-de-camp to President Daniel Arap Moi, Boinnet is perhaps best remembered for his 2002 warning to the president that Uhuru Kenyatta's presidential candidacy lacked popular support.
Kenya's former intelligence czar, Brigadier (Rtd) Wilson Boinnet, has released a rare memoir chronicling his efforts to modernise the country's shadowy security services.
Fixing Spy Craft to Serve National Interests in Kenya, launched in Nairobi on Thursday, provides an insider's account of Kenya's evolution from colonial-era surveillance to a professional intelligence apparatus.
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Boinnet, flanked by a cadre of former and serving intelligence heavyweights, including ex-NIS chiefs Michael Gichangi and Philip Kameru, and current NIS boss Noordin Haji, recounted his decade-long mission to transform the notoriously opaque Special Branch into the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS), now the National Intelligence Service (NIS).
Fixing Spy Craft to Serve National Interests in Kenya, was launched in Nairobi on Thursday. (X/Kipchumba Murkomen)
A career soldier who once served as aide-de-camp to President Daniel Arap Moi, Boinnet is perhaps best remembered for his 2002 warning to the president that Uhuru Kenyatta's presidential candidacy lacked popular support.
His book offers candid reflections on the structural strengths and institutional frailties that have defined Kenya's security state.
A declassified CIA assessment cited by the author credits Boinnet with professionalising the country's civilian intelligence arm, steering it away from political repression and towards counter-terrorism and strategic forecasting.
The reforms he led laid the groundwork for what is now NIS, a key player in Kenya's domestic and regional security architecture.
Brigadier (Rtd) Wilson Boinett had an illustrious career in the military before being tapped to head our country's intelligence agency.
— KIPCHUMBA MURKOMEN, E.G.H (@kipmurkomen) July 3, 2025
Pleased to attend the launch of Brigadier Boinett's memoir ‘Fixing Spy Craft To Serve National Interests in Kenya: From the Colonial Special… pic.twitter.com/G7TpeNi94x
Military intelligence was also represented at the launch, with Major General (Rtd) Charles Mwanzia in attendance, alongside Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen—underscoring the cross-sector weight of the occasion.
Once a shadowy footnote in Kenya's political history, Boinnet now joins the small club of African intelligence insiders documenting their work in public.
His memoir is both a historical record and a rare attempt at institutional introspection in a region where such candour remains elusive.
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