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Old Canaan in a New World: Native Americans and the Lost Tribes of Israel (North American Religions)
By Elizabeth Fenton. 2020
Were indigenous Americans descendants of the lost tribes of Israel?From the moment Europeans realized Columbus had landed in a place…
unknown to them in 1492, they began speculating about how the Americas and their inhabitants fit into the Bible. For many, the most compelling explanation was the Hebraic Indian theory, which proposed that indigenous Americans were the descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel. For its proponents, the theory neatly explained why this giant land and its inhabitants were not mentioned in the Biblical record. In Old Canaan in a New World, Elizabeth Fenton shows that though the Hebraic Indian theory may seem far-fetched today, it had a great deal of currency and significant influence over a very long period of American history. Indeed, at different times the idea that indigenous Americans were descended from the lost tribes of Israel was taken up to support political and religious positions on diverse issues including Christian millennialism, national expansion, trade policies, Jewish rights, sovereignty in the Americas, and scientific exploration. Through analysis of a wide collection of writings—from religious texts to novels—Fenton sheds light on a rarely explored but important part of religious discourse in early America. As the Hebraic Indian theory evolved over the course of two centuries, it revealed how religious belief and national interest intersected in early American history.In Deep: The FBI, The CIA, And The Truth About America's Deep State
By David Rohde. 2020
A two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist’s investigation of the "deep state." Three-quarters of Americans believe that a group of unelected government…
and military officials secretly manipulate or direct national policy in the United States. President Trump blames the "deep state" for his impeachment. But what is the American "deep state" and does it really exist? To conservatives, the “deep state” is an ever-growing government bureaucracy, an "administrative state" that relentlessly encroaches on the individual rights of Americans. Liberals fear the "military-industrial complex"—a cabal of generals and defense contractors who they believe routinely push the country into endless wars. Every modern American president—from Carter to Trump—has engaged in power struggles with Congress, the CIA, and the FBI. Every CIA and FBI director has suspected White House aides of members of Congress of leaking secrets for political gain. Frustrated Americans increasingly distrust the politicians, unelected officials, and journalists who they believe unilaterally set the country’s political agenda. American democracy faces its biggest crisis of legitimacy in a half century. This sweeping exploration examines the CIA and FBI scandals of the past fifty years—from the Church Committee’s exposure of Cold War abuses, to Abscam, to false intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, to NSA mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden. It then investigates the claims and counterclaims of the Trump era, and the relentless spread of conspiracy theories online and on-air. While Trump says he is the victim of the "deep state," Democrats accuse the president and his allies of running a de facto "deep state" of their own that operates outside official government channels and smears rivals, both real and perceived. The feverish debate over the "deep state" raises core questions about the future of American democracy. Is it possible for career government officials to be politically neutral? Was Congress’s impeachment of Donald Trump conducted properly? How vast should the power of a president be? Based on dozens of interviews with career CIA operatives and FBI agents, In Deep answers whether the FBI, CIA, or politicians are protecting or abusing the public’s trust.No Shadows in the Desert: Murder, Vengeance, and Espionage in the War Against ISIS
By Samuel M. Katz. 2020
The inside story of the covert operation that took down the heads of ISISNo Shadows in the Desert reveals the…
untold story of the behind-the-scenes fight against ISIS—one coordinated by heads of state and ultimately fought in the alleyways and open deserts of the Middle Eastern battlefield by spies and soldiers. Samuel M. Katz draws upon his sources within the global intelligence and counterterrorism community, as well as the international special operations and espionage fraternity, to tell the story of the covert campaign against ISIS by the operatives who ventured deeply and secretly into enemy territory.In this first-ever look at the secret inner workings of an Arab secret service, Katz tells the story of Jordan’s GID, the masters of human intelligence on the espionage battlefields of the Middle East, who proved pivotal and crucial go-to allies of the CIA and America’s other intelligence agencies in the war against ISIS and the war on terror. With the revealing and intimate insight of the intelligence officers who fought ISIS, No Shadows in the Desert is a rare glimpse into how a strategic partnership helped change how terrorism is fought in the Middle East and beyond.Native America: A History (Wiley Desktop Editions Ser.)
By Michael Leroy Oberg. 2012
This history of Native Americans, from the period of first contact to the present day, offers an important variation to…
existing studies by placing the lives and experiences of Native American communities at the center of the narrative. Presents an innovative approach to Native American history by placing individual native communities and their experiences at the center of the study Following a first chapter that deals with creation myths, the remainder of the narrative is structured chronologically, covering over 600 years from the point of first contact to the present day Illustrates the great diversity in American Indian culture and emphasizes the importance of Native Americans in the history of North America Provides an excellent survey for courses in Native American history Includes maps, photographs, a timeline, questions for discussion, and “A Closer Focus” textboxes that provide biographies of individuals and that elaborate on the text, exposing students to issues of race, class, and genderUS Defence Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom examines the thirty-year transformation in American military thought and defence strategy…
that spanned from 1973 through 2003. During these three decades, new technology and operational practices helped form what observers dubbed a 'Revolution in Military Affairs' in the 1990s and a 'New American Way of War' in the 2000s. Robert R. Tomes tells for the first time the story of how innovative approaches to solving battlefield challenges gave rise to non-nuclear strategic strike, the quest to apply information technology to offset Soviet military advantages, and the rise of 'decisive operations' in American military strategy. He details an innovation process that began in the shadow of Vietnam, matured in the 1980s as Pentagon planners sought an integrated nuclear-conventional deterrent, and culminated with battles fought during blinding sandstorms on the road to Baghdad in 2003. An important contribution to military innovation studies, the book also presents an innovation framework applicable to current defence transformation efforts. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, US defence policy and US politics in general.India, Pakistan and the Secret Jihad explores the history of jihadist violence in Kashmir, and argues that the violent conflict which exploded…
after 1990 was not a historical discontinuity, but, rather, an escalation of what was by then a five-decade old secret war. Praveen Swami addresses three key issues: the history of jihadist violence in Jammu and Kashmir, which is examined as it evolved from 1947-48 onwards the impact of the secret jihad on Indian policy-making on Jammu and Kashmir, and its influence on political life within the state why the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir acquired such intensity in 1990. This new work will be of much interest to students of the India-Pakistan conflict, South Asian politics and security studies in general.This fascinating new collection of essays on Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) explores the ‘non-military’ aspects of British special operations…
in the Second World War. It details how SOE was established in the summer of 1940 to ‘set Europe ablaze’, as Churchill memorably put it. This was a task it was meant to achieve by detonating popular resistance against Axis rule, and nurturing ‘secret armies’, which might be capable of providing military and other forms of assistance for British forces when they were once again able to return to the offensive and conduct land operations in Europe. The importance of the collection, however, goes beyond merely illuminating aspects of SOE’s work which have largely been overlooked in previous scholarship. More significantly, by situating SOE within the context of Britain’s broader political needs, the essays demonstrate the extent to which SOE came to epitomise and embody the range of skills that are found in today’s secret service organisations. SOE showed itself capable of operating on a global scale and developing the necessary expertise, equipment and personnel to conduct activities across the whole spectrum of what we have come to know as ‘covert operations’. By bringing SOE’s activities into sharper focus and exposing the scale of its involvement in Britain’s wartime external relations, the essays echo current thinking on the place of the so-called ‘secret world’ in international politics.Intelligence and Strategy: Selected Essays (Studies in Intelligence)
By John Ferris. 2005
John Ferris' work in strategic and intelligence history is widely praised for its originality and the breadth of its research. At…
last his major pioneering articles are now available in this one single volume. In Intelligence and Strategy these essential articles have been fundamentally revised to incorporate new evidence and information withheld by governments when they were first published. This volume reshapes the study of communications intelligence by tracing Britain's development of cipher machines providing the context to Ultra and Enigma, and by explaining how British and German signals intelligence shaped the desert war. The author also explains how intelligence affected British strategy and diplomacy from 1874 to 1940 and world diplomacy during the 1930s and the Second World War. Finally he traces the roots for contemporary intelligence, and analyzes intelligence and the RMA as well as the role of intelligence in the 2003 Gulf War.This volume ultimately brings new light to our understanding of the relations between intelligence, strategy and diplomacy between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 21st century.Space Warfare: Strategy, Principles and Policy (Space Power and Politics)
By John J. Klein. 2005
This new study considers military space strategy within the context of the land and naval strategies of the past. Explaining…
why and how strategists note the similarities of space operations to those of the air and naval forces, this book shows why many such strategies unintentionally lead to overemphasizing the importance of space-based offensive weaponry and technology. Counter to most U.S. Air Force doctrines, the book argues that space-based weapons don’t imbue superiority. It examines why both air and naval strategic frameworks actually fail to adequately capture the scope of real-world issues regarding current space operations. Yet by expanding a naval strategic framework to include maritime activities—which includes the interaction of land and sea—the breadth of issues and concerns regarding space activities and operations can be fully encompassed. Commander John Klein, United States Navy, uses Sir Julian Corbett’s maritime strategy as a strategic springboard, while observing the salient lessons of other strategists—including Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Jomini, and Mao Tse-tung—to show how a space strategy and associated principles of space warfare can be derived to predict concerns, develop ideas, and suggest policy not currently recognized. This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of military and strategic studies and to those with an interest in space strategy in particular.The Storied Landscape of Iroquoia explores the creation, destruction, appropriation, and enduring legacy of one of early America&’s most important…
places: the homelands of the Haudenosaunees (also known as the Iroquois Six Nations). Throughout the late seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries of European colonization the Haudenosaunees remained the dominant power in their homelands and one of the most important diplomatic players in the struggle for the continent following European settlement of North America by the Dutch, British, French, Spanish, and Russians. Chad L. Anderson offers a significant contribution to understanding colonialism, intercultural conflict, and intercultural interpretations of the Iroquoian landscape during this time in central and western New York. Although American public memory often recalls a nation founded along a frontier wilderness, these lands had long been inhabited in Native American villages, where history had been written on the land through place-names, monuments, and long-remembered settlements. Drawing on a wide range of material spanning more than a century, Anderson uncovers the real stories of the people—Native American and Euro-American—and the places at the center of the contested reinvention of a Native American homeland. These stories about Iroquoia were key to both Euro-American and Haudenosaunee understandings of their peoples&’ pasts and futures.In vibrant, engaging prose, this memoir from inside the belly of US intelligence operations reveals what fundamentally went wrong for…
the US and its allies, and why the Vietnam War was never "winnable." A cautionary tale about the perils of politicizing and manipulating honest intelligence.For political reasons, the Johnson and Nixon administrations wanted to control the narrative about US prospects in Vietnam. In 1965, low level CIA analyst Sam Adams was transferred from the Congo desk to Southeast Asia, where he was charged with assessing enemy morale and counting their ranks. Only the enemy strength estimate he came up with as the CIA's official head counter varied wildly from the official estimates being produced by military intelligence and released by the White House for consumption by Congress, the media, troops in the field and the American electorate. Adams' findings pointed to the conclusion that the war was unwinnable, but when politicians and military leaders failed to release let alone acknowledge his findings, he knew the intelligence was being politicized and embarked on a one man crusade to hold those in power accountable and expose the truth.A Schoolmaster's War: Harry Ree - A British Agent in the French Resistance
By Jonathan Ree. 2020
The wartime adventures of the legendary SOE agent Harry Rée, told in his own words A school teacher at the…
start of the war, Harry Rée renounced his former pacifism with the fall of France in 1940. He was deployed into a secret branch of the British army and parachuted into central France in April 1943. Harry showed a particular talent for winning the confidence of local resisters, and guided them in a series of dramatic sabotage operations, before getting into a hand-to-hand fight with an armed German officer, from which he was lucky to escape. This might seem like a romantic story of heroism and derring-do, but Harry Rée's own war writings, superbly edited and contextualized by his son, the philosopher Jonathan Rée, are far more nuanced, shot through with doubts, regrets, and grief.This work explores the dynamic issues of race and religion within the Cherokee Nation and to look at the role…
of secret societies in shaping these forces during the nineteenth century.The Nuclear Spies: America's Atomic Intelligence Operation against Hitler and Stalin
By Vince Houghton. 2019
Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War…
II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi 's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong?Houghton's delightful retelling of this fascinating case of American spy ineffectiveness in the then new field of scientific intelligence provides us with a new look at the early years of the Cold War. During that time, scientific intelligence quickly grew to become a significant portion of the CIA budget as it struggled to contend with the incredible advance in weapons and other scientific discoveries immediately after World War II. As Houghton shows, the abilities of the Soviet Union's scientists, its research facilities and laboratories, and its educational system became a key consideration for the CIA in assessing the threat level of its most potent foe. Sadly, for the CIA scientific intelligence was extremely difficult to do well. For when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949, no one in the American intelligence services saw it coming.Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community
By Richard J. Samuels. 2019
The prewar history of the Japanese intelligence community demonstrates how having power over much, but insight into little can have…
devastating consequences. Its postwar history—one of limited Japanese power despite growing insight—has also been problematic for national security.In Special Duty Richard J. Samuels dissects the fascinating history of the intelligence community in Japan. Looking at the impact of shifts in the strategic environment, technological change, and past failures, he probes the reasons why Japan has endured such a roller-coaster ride when it comes to intelligence gathering and analysis, and concludes that the ups and downs of the past century—combined with growing uncertainties in the regional security environment—have convinced Japanese leaders of the critical importance of striking balance between power and insight. Using examples of excessive hubris and debilitating bureaucratic competition before the Asia-Pacific War, the unavoidable dependence on US assets and popular sensitivity to security issues after World War II, and the tardy adoption of image-processing and cyber technologies, Samuels' bold book highlights the century-long history of Japan's struggles to develop a fully functioning and effective intelligence capability, and makes clear that Japanese leaders have begun to reinvent their nation's intelligence community.The History of the Five Indian Nations Depending on the Province of New-York in America: A Critical Edition
By Cadwallader Colden. 2017
"How should we approach The History of the Five Indian Nations today? The book's information—rich as it is—should be critically…
interrogated and placed in social, political, and cultural context. The book reflects the outlook of a colonial British agent and, in a more general sense, of early modern European and Euro-American culture. Its claims of empirical objectivity should be historicized."—John M. Dixon, "Imperial Politics, Enlightenment Philosophy, and Transatlantic Print Culture""The History of the Five Indian Nations remains an invaluable font of information for understanding the Iroquois during the decades before European invaders began to pour into the Longhouse. Colden’s account of Iroquois military and diplomatic exploits is studded with fascinating details. It illuminates internal and external political dynamics as well as the extent and limits of European colonial power. Colden did not necessarily comprehend the cultural logic that guided Iroquois people, but he appreciated them as agents—remarkably audacious ones—in the affairs of all of eastern North America."—Karim M. Tiro, "Iroquois Ways of War and Peace"Cadwallader Colden’s History of the Five Indian Nations Depending on the Province of New-York in America, originally published in 1727 and revised in 1747, is one of the most important intellectual works published in eighteenth-century British America. Colden was among the most learned American men of his time, and his history of the Iroquois tribes makes fascinating reading. The author discusses the religion, manners, customs, laws, and forms of government of the confederacy of tribes composed of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas (and, later, the Tuscaroras), and gives accounts of battles, treaties, and trade with these Indians up to 1697.Since Cornell University Press first reprinted Colden’s History in 1958, the book has served as an invaluable resource for scholars and students interested in Iroquois history and culture, Enlightenment attitudes toward Native Americans, early American intellectual life, and Anglo-French imperial contests over North America. The new Critical Edition features materials not previously included, such as the 1747 introduction, which contains rich and detailed descriptions of Iroquois culture, government, economy, and society. New essays by John M. Dixon and Karim M. Tiro place The History of the Five Indian Nations Depending on the Province of New-York in America in historical and cultural context and provide a balanced introduction to the historic culture of the Iroquois, as well as their relationship to other Native people.Covert Regime Change: America's Secret Cold War (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)
By Lindsey A. O'Rourke. 2018
States seldom resort to war to overthrow their adversaries. They are more likely to attempt to covertly change the opposing…
regime, by assassinating a foreign leader, sponsoring a coup d’état, meddling in a democratic election, or secretly aiding foreign dissident groups.In Covert Regime Change, Lindsey A. O’Rourke shows us how states really act when trying to overthrow another state. She argues that conventional focus on overt cases misses the basic causes of regime change. O’Rourke provides substantive evidence of types of security interests that drive states to intervene. Offensive operations aim to overthrow a current military rival or break up a rival alliance. Preventive operations seek to stop a state from taking certain actions, such as joining a rival alliance, that may make them a future security threat. Hegemonic operations try to maintain a hierarchical relationship between the intervening state and the target government. Despite the prevalence of covert attempts at regime change, most operations fail to remain covert and spark blowback in unanticipated ways.Covert Regime Change assembles an original dataset of all American regime change operations during the Cold War. This fund of information shows the United States was ten times more likely to try covert rather than overt regime change during the Cold War. Her dataset allows O’Rourke to address three foundational questions: What motivates states to attempt foreign regime change? Why do states prefer to conduct these operations covertly rather than overtly? How successful are such missions in achieving their foreign policy goals?The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)
By James J. Wirtz. 1994
In this account of one of the worst intelligence failures in Americanhistory, James J. Wirtz explains why U.S. forces were…
surprised by the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive in 1968. Wirtz reconstructs the turning point of the Vietnam War in unprecedented detail. Drawing upon Vietcong and recently declassified U.S. sources, he is able to trace the strategy and unfolding of the Tet campaign as well as the U.S. response.Atomic Spy: The Dark Lives of Klaus Fuchs
By Nancy Thorndike Greenspan. 2020
"Nancy Greenspan dives into the mysteries of the Klaus Fuchs espionage case and emerges with a classic Cold War biography…
of intrigue and torn loyalties. Atomic Spy is a mesmerizing morality tale, told with fresh sources and empathy." --Kai Bird, author of The Good Spy and coauthor of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert OppenheimerThe gripping biography of a notorious Cold War villain--the German-born British scientist who handed the Soviets top-secret American plans for the plutonium bomb--showing a man torn between conventional loyalties and a sense of obligation to a greater good.German by birth, British by naturalization, Communist by conviction, Klaus Fuchs was a fearless Nazi resister, a brilliant scientist, and an infamous spy. He was convicted of espionage by Britain in 1950 for handing over the designs of the plutonium bomb to the Russians, and has gone down in history as one of the most dangerous agents in American and British history. He put an end to America's nuclear hegemony and single-handedly heated up the Cold War. But, was Klaus Fuchs really evil?Using archives long hidden in Germany as well as intimate family correspondence, Nancy Thorndike Greenspan brings into sharp focus the moral and political ambiguity of the times in which Fuchs lived and the ideals with which he struggled. As a university student in Germany, he stood up to Nazi terror without flinching, and joined the Communists largely because they were the only ones resisting the Nazis. After escaping to Britain in 1933, he was arrested as a German émigré--an "enemy alien"--in 1940 and sent to an internment camp in Canada. His mentor at university, renowned physicist Max Born, worked to facilitate his release. After years of struggle and ideological conflict, when Fuchs joined the atomic bomb project, his loyalties were firmly split. He started handing over top secret research to the Soviets in 1941, and continued for years from deep within the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Greenspan's insights into his motivations make us realize how he was driven not just by his Communist convictions but seemingly by a dedication to peace, seeking to level the playing field of the world powers.With thrilling detail from never-before-seen sources, Atomic Spy travels across the Germany of an ascendant Nazi party; the British university classroom of Max Born; a British internment camp in Canada; the secret laboratories of Los Alamos; and Eastern Germany at the height of the Cold War. Atomic Spy shows the real Klaus Fuchs--who he was, what he did, why he did it, and how he was caught. His extraordinary life is a cautionary tale about the ambiguity of morality and loyalty, as pertinent today as in the 1940s.The History of Starved Rock
By Mark Walczynski. 2020
The History of Starved Rock provides a wonderful overview of the famous site in Utica, Illinois, from when European explorers…
first viewed the bluff in 1673 through to 1911, when Starved Rock became the centerpiece of Illinois' second state park. Mark Walczynski pulls together stories and insights from the language, geology, geography, anthropology, archaeology, biology, and agriculture of the park to provide readers with an understanding of both the human and natural history of Starved Rock, and to put it into context with the larger history of the American Midwest.