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The CIA World Factbook 2020-2021
By Central Intelligence Agency. 2020
From the world&’s most sophisticated intelligence gathering organization, here is the CIA&’s official country-by-country data on nations around the world.From…
Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, The CIA World Factbook 2020-2021 offers complete and up-to-date information on the world's nations. This comprehensive guide is packed with data on the politics, populations, military expenditures, and economics of 2020 and looks ahead to 2021.For each country, The CIA World Factbook 2020-2021 includes:Detailed maps with new geopolitical dataStatistics on the population of each country, with details on literacy rates, HIV prevalence, and age structureNew data on military expenditures and capabilitiesInformation on each country's climate and natural hazardsDetails on prominent political parties and contact information for diplomatic consultationFacts on transportation and communication infrastructureAlso included are appendixes with useful abbreviations, international environmental agreements, international organizations and groups, weight and measure conversions, and more. Originally intended for use by government officials, this is a must-have resource for students, travelers, journalists, and business people with a desire to know more about their world.Code Name Madeleine: A Sufi Spy In Nazi-occupied Paris
By Arthur J. Magida. 2020
A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Book of 2020 The captivating story of the valiant Noor Inayat Khan, daughter of an Indian…
Sufi mystic and unlikely World War II heroine. Raised in a lush suburb of 1920s Paris, Noor Inayat Khan was an introspective musician and writer, dedicated to her family and to her father’s spiritual values of harmony, beauty, and tolerance. She did not seem destined for wartime heroism. Yet, faced with the evils of Nazi violence and the German occupation of France, Noor joined the British Special Operations Executive and trained in espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance. She returned to Paris under an assumed identity immediately before the Germans mopped up the Allies’ largest communications network in France. For crucial months of the war, Noor was the only wireless operator there sending critical information to London, significantly aiding the success of the Allied landing on D-Day. Code-named Madeleine, she became a high-value target for the Gestapo. When she was eventually captured, Noor attempted two daring escapes before she was sent to Dachau and killed just months before the end of the war. Carefully distilled from dozens of interviews, newly discovered manuscripts, official documents, and personal letters, Code Name Madeleine is both a compelling, deeply researched history and a thrilling tribute to Noor Inayat Khan, whose courage and faith guided her through the most brutal regime in history.Informer 001: The Myth of Pavlik Morozov
By Yuri Druzhnikov. 1996
When Russia was in the throes of Joseph Stalin's campaign for the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, a young boy…
named Pavlik Morozov informed the OGPU (later called the KGB) that his father was an enemy of the regime. As a result, Pavlik's father was arrested and disappeared in a Soviet concentration camp. Enemies of the party later killed the boy, whereupon people proclaimed him a hero. After that, Pavlik Morozov's glory surpassed the fame of many Russian heroes. Hundreds of works have been published about the boy in various genres; his portrait has graced galleries, postcards, and postage stamps; ships and libraries have been dedicated in his honor.Informer 001 is the first independent study of the Morozov affair. Yuri Druzhnikov examined documents, visited museums, and interviewed everyone who knew Morozov during his short lifetime. In book after book, he discovered inconsistencies in every fact, from where Morozov was born to how old he was at the time of his death.As Druzhnikov pieced together the story about Morozov's life, death, and legacy, it became clear that the campaign to keep Morozov a hero was centrally directed. Informer hero number 001 remained a fearful reminder to all; to those who inform, and those who become the victims of denunciations. Informer 001 offers Western readers a unique glimpse into the behind-the-scenes operations of Soviet political history and will be fascinating for the general public, as well as for sociologists, historians, and Russian studies specialists.Their Trade is Treachery
By Chapman Pincher. 1982
Their Trade is Treachery was originally the title of a booklet prepared in 1964 by the Security Service (MI5) for…
restricted circulation among Whitehall officials with access to secret information. I decided then that, one day, I would produce my own version of Their Trade is Treachery, giving the general public the fullest possible details of the appalling penetration of Whitehall, including the security and intelligence services, by Soviet spies and saboteurs.Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference
By David Shimer. 2020
"This pioneering and judicious history of foreign intervention in elections should be read by everyone who wants to defend democracy…
now." --Timothy Snyder, author of On TyrannyThe definitive account of covert operations to influence elections from the Cold War to 2016, why the threat to American democracy is greater than ever in 2020, and what we can do about it.Russia's interference in 2016 marked only the latest chapter of a hidden and revelatory history. In Rigged, David Shimer tells the sweeping story of covert electoral interference past and present. He exposes decades of secret operations--by the KGB, the CIA, and Vladimir Putin's Russia--to shape electoral outcomes, melding deep historical research with groundbreaking interviews with more than 130 key players, from leading officials in both the Trump and Obama administrations, to CIA and NSA directors, to a former KGB general.What Americans should make of Russia's attack in 2016 is still hotly debated, even after the Mueller report and years of media coverage. Shimer shows that Putin's operation was, in fact, a continuation of an ongoing struggle, using familiar weapons radically enhanced by new technology. Throughout history and in 2016, both Russian and American operations achieved their greatest success by influencing the way voters think, rather than tampering with actual vote tallies.Casting aside partisanship and sensationalism, Rigged reveals new details about what Russia achieved in 2016, how the Obama administration responded, and why Putin has also been interfering covertly in elections across the globe in recent years, while American presidents have largely refrained from doing so. Shimer also makes disturbingly clear that this type of intrusion can be used to harm Democrats and Republicans alike. Russia's central aim is to undermine and disrupt our democracy, to the detriment of all Americans.Understanding 2016 as one battle in a much longer war is essential to understanding the critical threat currently posed to America's electoral sovereignty and how to defend against it. Illuminating how the lessons of the past can be used to protect our democracy in the future, Rigged is an essential book for readers of every political persuasion.The Golden Thread: The Cold War and the Mysterious Death of Dag Hammarskj¿ld
By Ravi Somaiya. 2020
A true story of spies and intrigue surrounding one of the most enduring unsolved mysteries of the 20th century, investigative…
reporter Ravi Somaiya uncovers the story behind the death of renowned diplomat and UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld.On September 17, 1961, Dag Hammarskjöld boarded a Douglas DC6 propeller plane on the sweltering tarmac of the airport in Leopoldville, the capital of the Congo. Hours later, he would be found dead in an African jungle with an ace of spades playing card placed on his body.Hammarskjöld had been the head of the United Nations for nine years. He was legendary for his dedication to peace on earth. But dark forces circled him: Powerful and connected groups from an array of nations and organizations -- including the CIA, the KGB, underground militant groups, business tycoons, and others -- were determined to see Hammarskjöld fail. A riveting work of investigative journalism based on never-before-seen evidence, recently revealed firsthand accounts, and groundbreaking new interviews, The Golden Thread reveals the truth behind one of the great murder mysteries of the Cold War. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15.0px}The Divine Miss Marble: A Life of Tennis, Fame, and Mystery
By Robert Weintraub. 2020
The story of 1930s tennis icon Alice Marble, and her life of sports, celebrity, and incredible mystery. Who was…
Alice Marble? In her public life, she was the biggest tennis star of the pre-war era, a household name like Joe DiMaggio and Joe Louis. She was famous for overcoming serious illness to win the biggest tournaments, including Wimbledon. She was also a fashion designer and trendsetter, a contributor to a pioneering new comic called Wonder Woman—and friend to the biggest names in Hollywood and society, like Carole Lombard and Clark Gable, William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies, and members of families named Bloomingdale, Loew, and du Pont. She helped integrate tennis with her support of Althea Gibson, and even coached two young women who became stars in their own right: Billie Jean King and Sally Ride. Yet her private life provoked constant speculation while she was alive, and her own memoirs added layers of legend upon stories. According to Alice, she married a man who was killed in the skies over Europe during World War II. But who was the man she loved, and had he even existed? She was widely known for her patriotism during World War II. Had she really nearly given her life for her country as a spy, shot during a wild car chase fleeing foreign espionage agents? In The Divine Miss Marble, bestselling author Robert Weintraub traveled the country to uncover her fascinating story. And the more he learned about her, the more her mysteries and contradictions deepened. Alice was a powerful woman who knew her worth, demanding equal pay to men decades earlier than other female athletes; yet she was held in sway by a domineering, highly successful coach with whom she had a volatile relationship. She was renowned for her California style, and had a brilliant mind and the guts to overcome a lifetime of physical trauma. For the first time here, we come closer than ever before to the truths of this unforgettable life, and somehow it&’s a story even more extraordinary than everything we already know about the divine Alice Marble.ASEAN and the Security of South-East Asia (Routledge Revivals)
By Michael Leifer. 1989
Problems of internal and external security in South-East Asia have persisted as one set of competing global alignments has been…
succeeded by another, with major impact on regional relationships. This book, first published in 1989, examines how the states of The Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have attempted to confront the problems of regional security. It considers the nature and role of the Association - intended to promote economic growth, social progress and cultural development - traces its institutional development from 1967 and identifies a basic structural weakness arising from the differing strategic perspectives held by member governments. Leifer explores in particular ASEAN’s response to conflicts over Kampuchea, renamed Cambodia in 1990, which was critical in exposing those differing perspectives and the limited role of a diplomatic community in coping with regional security problems. This comprehensive work will be of particular value to students and academics with an interest in South-East Asian diplomacy, history and regional security.Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act
By Nicholson Baker. 2020
A major new work, a hybrid of history, journalism, and memoir, about the modern Freedom of Information Act – FOIA…
– and the horrifying, decades-old government misdeeds that it is unable to demystify, from one of America's most celebrated writers Eight years ago, while investigating the possibility that the United States had used biological weapons in the Korean War, Nicholson Baker requested a series of Air Force documents from the early 1950s under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Years went by, and he got no response. Rather than wait forever, Baker set out to keep a personal journal of what it feels like to try to write about major historical events in a world of pervasive redactions, witheld records, and glacially slow governmental responses. The result is one of the most original and daring works of nonfiction in recent memory, a singular and mesmerizing narrative that tunnels into the history of some of the darkest and most shameful plans and projects of the CIA, the Air Force, and the presidencies of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. In his lucid and unassuming style, Baker assembles what he learns, piece by piece, about Project Baseless, a crash Pentagon program begun in the early fifties that aimed to achieve "an Air Force-wide combat capability in biological and chemical warfare at the earliest possible date." Along the way, he unearths stories of balloons carrying crop disease, leaflet bombs filled with feathers, suicidal scientists, leaky centrifuges, paranoid political-warfare tacticians, insane experiments on animals and humans, weaponized ticks, ferocious propaganda battles with China, and cover and deception plans meant to trick the Kremlin into ramping up its germ-warfare program. At the same time, Baker tells the stories of the heroic journalists and lawyers who have devoted their energies to wresting documentary evidence from goverment repositories, and he shares anecdotes from his daily life in Maine feeding his dogs and watching the morning light gather on the horizon. The result is an astonishing and utterly disarming story about waiting, bureaucracy, the horrors of war, and, above all, the cruel secrets that the United States government seems determined to keep forever from its citizens.This chapter analyzes the July 7, 2005 suicide bomb attacks against four London transportation targets that killed over 50 people…
and injured hundreds others. It was among the most important operations directed by core al Qaeda leaders in years following the events of September 11th 2001. Initially, the incident was dismissed by the authorities, pundits and the media alike as the work of amateur terrorists——untrained, self-selected and self-radicalized, "bunches of guys" acting entirely on their own with no links to any terrorist organization. Evidence presented here, however, reveals a clear link between the bombers and the highest levels of the al Qaeda senior command, then based in the lawless border area separating Afghanistan and Pakistan.This book examines terrorist and insurgent organisations and seeks to understand how such groups persist for so long, while introducing…
a new strategic doctrine for countering these organisations. The work discusses whether familial or meritocratic insurgencies are more resilient to counterinsurgency pressures. It argues that it is not the type of organization that determines resilience, but rather the efficiency functions of social capital and trust, which have different natures and forms, within them. It finds that while familial insurgencies can challenge incumbents from the start, they weaken over time, whereas meritocracies will generally strengthen. The book examines four of the most enduring and lethal insurgent organizations: the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia, and the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. The author breaks down each group into its formative strengths and vulnerabilities and presents a bespoke model of strategic counterintelligence that can be used to manipulate, degrade and destroy each organization. This book will be of much interest to students of counterinsurgency, terrorism, intelligence, security and defence studies in general.The riveting story of the American scientists, tinkerers, and nerds who solved one of the biggest puzzles of World War…
II—and developed one of the most powerful weapons of the war 12 Seconds of Silence is the remarkable, lost story of how a ragtag group of American scientists overcame one of the toughest problems of World War II: shooting things out of the sky. Working in a secretive organization known as Section T, a team of physicists, engineers, and everyday Joes and Janes took on a devilish challenge. To help the Allies knock airplanes out of the air, they created one of the world&’s first &“smart weapons.&” Against overwhelming odds and in a race against time, mustering every scrap of resource, ingenuity, and insight, the scientists of Section T would eventually save countless lives, rescue the city of London from the onslaught of a Nazi superweapon, and help bring about the Axis defeat. A holy grail sought after by Allied and Axis powers alike, their unlikely innovation ranks with the atomic bomb as one of the most revolutionary technologies of the Second World War. Until now, their tale was largely untold. For fans of Erik Larson and Ben Macintyre, set amidst the fog of espionage, dueling spies, and the dawn of an age when science would determine the fate of the world, 12 Seconds of Silence is a tribute to the extraordinary wartime mobilization of American science and the ultimate can-do story.The little-known true story of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, the woman who headed the largest spy network in occupied France during World…
War II, from the bestselling author of Citizens of London and Last Hope Island In 1941 a thirty-one-year-old Frenchwoman, a young mother born to privilege and known for her beauty and glamour, became the leader of a vast intelligence organization—the only woman to serve as a chef de résistance during the war. Strong-willed, independent, and a lifelong rebel against her country’s conservative, patriarchal society, Marie-Madeleine Fourcade was temperamentally made for the job. Her group’s name was Alliance, but the Gestapo dubbed it Noah’s Ark because its agents used the names of animals as their aliases. The name Marie-Madeleine chose for herself was Hedgehog: a tough little animal, unthreatening in appearance, that, as a colleague of hers put it, “even a lion would hesitate to bite.” No other French spy network lasted as long or supplied as much crucial intelligence—including providing American and British military commanders with a 55-foot-long map of the beaches and roads on which the Allies would land on D-Day—as Alliance. The Gestapo pursued them relentlessly, capturing, torturing, and executing hundreds of its three thousand agents, including Fourcade’s own lover and many of her key spies. Although Fourcade, the mother of two young children, moved her headquarters every few weeks, constantly changing her hair color, clothing, and identity, she was captured twice by the Nazis. Both times she managed to escape—once by slipping naked through the bars of her jail cell—and continued to hold her network together even as it repeatedly threatened to crumble around her. Now, in this dramatic account of the war that split France in two and forced its people to live side by side with their hated German occupiers, Lynne Olson tells the fascinating story of a woman who stood up for her nation, her fellow citizens, and herself. A New York Times BestsellerOmar Khadr, Oh Canada
By Janice Williamson. 2010
In 2002 a fifteen-year-old Canadian citizen was captured in Afghanistan for allegedly killing an American soldier. A badly wounded Omar…
Khadr was transferred to the US Bagram Air Force base and then Guantánamo Bay detention camp. He would remain there without trial until October 2010, when a military commission admitted evidence considered tainted by Canadian courts. A plea bargain and guilty plea initiated his promised return to Canada a year later. Some Canadians see Khadr as a symbol of terrorism in action. For others he is the victim of a jihadist father and Canadian complicity in the unjust excesses, including torture, of the US "war on terror." The youngest prisoner held at Guantánamo and the only citizen of a Western country not repatriated, Khadr was formally identified by the United Nations as a child soldier. In Omar Khadr, Oh Canada, over thirty contributors analyze Khadr's background, his incarceration, the actions of Canadian authorities, and the implications raised by his legal case. This multi-genre book includes essays, articles, poems, a play, extended excerpts from the documentary film You Don't Like the Truth, and other texts produced by distinguished contributors such as Sherene Razack, General Roméo Dallaire, Charles Foran, Kim Echlin, Judith Thompson, Audrey Macklin, Shadia Drury, George Elliott Clarke, Maher Arar, Rick Salutin, and Sheema Khan. While they sometimes disagree on issues such as radical Islam and Canadian multiculturalism, they all write from the conviction that Khadr's treatment has been - and continues to be - shamefully unjust and shaped by post 9/11 Islamophobia that continues to distort the views of many Canadians. Many Canadians are dismayed by the government's behaviour toward Omar Khadr. Adding strong and articulate voices to the debate, Omar Khadr, Oh Canada will educate and inform readers as his story continues to unfold. Contributors include: - Maher Arar, human rights activist and journalist. - Craig Kielburger, child labour activist and co-founder of "Free the Children Foundation." - George Elliott Clarke, poet, playright and English professor at the University of Toronto. - Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez, screenwriters, directors, cinematographers, and producers of the documentary "You Don't Like the Truth - 4 Days Inside Guantánamo." - LGen Roméo A. Dallaire commanded the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda in 1994 and was appointed to the Senate of Canada in 2005. - Gail Davidson, executive director, Lawyer's Rights Watch Canada. - Nathalie des Rosiers, General Counsel, Canadian Civil Liberties Association. - Robert Diab, lawyer and faculty member of Capilano University. - Alnoor Gova, broadcaster and PhD student, Simon Fraser University. - Shadia Drury, CRC Chair in Social Justice, University of Regina. - Kim Echlin, novelist, essayist, film producer. - Dennis Edney, former lawyer of Omar Khadr. - Charles Foran novelist, biographer. - Deborah Gorham history professor, Carleton University. - Yasmin Jiwani, associate professor in the department of Communication Studies at Concordia University. - Hasnain Khan, graduate student in political economy of international development at the University of Toronto. - Andy Knight, chair of the department of political science and professor of international relations at the University of Alberta. - John McCoy, PhD candidate in political science at the University of Alberta. - Sheema Khan, Globe & Mail columnist and author of Of Hockey & Hijabs - Audrey Macklin, member of the law faculty at the University of Toronto. - Monia Mazigh, human rights activist and author. - Marina Nemat, human rights activist and memoirist, author of Prisoner of Tehran and After Tehran. - Gar Pardy former diplomat, commentator and writer, served in Canada's foreign service from 1967 to 2003. - Sheila Pratt, Edmonton Journal journalist and author. - Sherene Razack, professor of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education, OISE, University of Toronto. - RicFallout: Nuclear Bribes, Russian Spies, and the Washington Lies that Enriched the Clinton and Biden Dynasties
By John Solomon, Seamus Bruner. 2020
In 2015, a major story broke exposing Hillary Clinton’s role in approving the sale of an American uranium company to…
the Russian state nuclear agency, Rosatom. Not only did the sale of Uranium One put 20 percent of America’s domestic uranium supply under the control of Vladimir Putin, there was also evidence that the Clintons themselves had hugely profited from the deal. When presidential candidate Donald Trump made Uranium One the centerpiece of his “Crooked Hillary” attacks, the Clinton team feared its potential to damage Hillary’s campaign. Others in the Obama-Biden camp worried that if elected, Trump would expose their role in selling out America’s security to Putin. Their desperate need to neutralize the issue led them to launch an unprecedented investigation into the Trump campaign’s purported ties to Russia. The infamous Steele dossier, produced by Clinton-connected Fusion GPS, sparked an investigation under FBI director James Comey. Instead of ending after the election, the investigation grew bigger, eventually leading to Comey’s firing and the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. When Mueller failed to find grounds for impeachment, Democrats seized on an ambiguous phone call with the Ukrainian president as a pretext to remove Trump from office. This gambit blew up in their faces when it exposed the secrets that Democrats tried hard to keep buried. An indispensable guide to the hidden background of recent events, Fallout shows how Putin’s bid for nuclear dominance produced a series of political scandals that ultimately posed one of the greatest threats to our democracy in modern American history.The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago
By Alison Mountz. 2020
Investigating the global system of detention centers that imprison asylum seekers and conceal persistent human rights violations Remote detention centers…
confine tens of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants around the world, operating in a legal gray area that hides terrible human rights abuses from the international community. Built to temporarily house eight hundred migrants in transit, the immigrant &“reception center&” on the Italian island of Lampedusa has held thousands of North African refugees under inhumane conditions for weeks on end. Australia&’s use of Christmas Island as a detention center for asylum seekers has enabled successive governments to imprison migrants from Asia and Africa, including the Sudanese human rights activist Abdul Aziz Muhamat, held there for five years. In The Death of Asylum, Alison Mountz traces the global chain of remote sites used by states of the Global North to confine migrants fleeing violence and poverty, using cruel measures that, if unchecked, will lead to the death of asylum as an ethical ideal. Through unprecedented access to offshore detention centers and immigrant-processing facilities, Mountz illustrates how authorities in the United States, the European Union, and Australia have created a new and shadowy geopolitical formation allowing them to externalize their borders to distant islands where harsh treatment and deadly force deprive migrants of basic human rights.Mountz details how states use the geographic inaccessibility of places like Christmas Island, almost a thousand miles off the Australian mainland, to isolate asylum seekers far from the scrutiny of humanitarian NGOs, human rights groups, journalists, and their own citizens. By focusing on borderlands and spaces of transit between regions, The Death of Asylum shows how remote detention centers effectively curtail the basic human right to seek asylum, forcing refugees to take more dangerous risks to escape war, famine, and oppression.KNOW YOUR ENEMY Perhaps the most intense military work we did was for Desert Storm. There was hardly a move…
made by Saddam Hussein and his troops that we had not predicted and passed up the chain of command the day before it happened. My major tasking throughout the war was to access Hussein and learn of his plans and intentions for the coming day. In the daily process of accessing him, I learned one thing very quickly. He is not what I would call a "bad" man. He is absolutely what I would call a totally crazy man. His craziness, though, does not take the form of irrationality or erratic behavior. It stems from a delusional conviction on his part that God wants him to rule the world...The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War -- a Tragedy in Three Acts
By Scott Anderson. 2020
From the bestselling author of Lawrence in Arabia, a gripping history of the early years of the Cold War, the…
CIA's covert battles against communism, and the tragic consequences which still affect the world todayAt the end of World War II, the United States dominated the world militarily, economically, and in moral standing--seen as the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear--to some--that the Soviet Union wasalready executing a plan to expand and foment revolution around the world. The American government's strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly-formed CIA.The Quiet Americans chronicles the exploits of four spies--Michael Burke, a charming former football star fallen on hard times; Frank Wisner, the scion of a wealthy Southern family; Peter Sichel, a sophisticated German Jew whoescaped the Nazis; and Edward Lansdale, a brilliant ad executive. The four ran covert operations across the globe, trying to outwit the ruthless KGB in Berlin, parachuting commandos into Eastern Europe, plotting coups, and directingwars against Communist insurgents in Asia. But time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by a combination ofstupidity and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government--and more profoundly, the decision to abandon American ideals. By the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union had a stranglehold on Eastern Europe, the U.S. had begun its disastrous intervention in Vietnam, and America, the beacon of democracy, was overthrowing democratically-elected governments and earning the hatred of much of the world. All of this culminated in an act of betrayal and cowardice that would lock the Cold War into place for decades to come. Anderson brings to the telling of this story all the narrative brio, deep research, skeptical eye, and lively prose that made Lawrence in Arabia a major international bestseller. The intertwined lives of these men began in a common purpose of defending freedom, but the ravages of the Cold War led them to different fates. Two would quit the CIA in despair, stricken by the moral compromises they had to make; one became the archetype of the duplicitous and destructive American spy; and one would be so heartbroken he would take his own life.The Quiet Americans is the story of these four men. It is also the story of how the United States, at the very pinnacle of its power, managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.More Stories from Langley: Another Glimpse inside the CIA
By Edward Mickolus. 2020
Who knew the CIA needed librarians? More Stories from Langley reveals the lesser-known operations of one of the most mysterious…
government agencies in the United States. Edward Mickolus is back with more stories to answer the question, &“What does a career in the CIA look like?&” Advice and anecdotes from both current and former CIA officers provide a look at the side of intelligence operations that is often left out of the movies. What was it like working for the CIA during 9/11? Do only spies get to travel? More Stories from Langley has physicists getting recruited to &“the agency&” during the Cold War, foreign-language majors getting lucky chances, and quests to &“learn by living&” turning into sweaty-palmed calls to the U.S. embassy after being detained by Russian intelligence officers. The world only needs so many suave super spies. More Stories from Langley shows how important academics, retired soldiers, and bilingual nannies can be in preserving the security of our nation.The definitive account of an FBI special agent’s al-Qaeda story, unredacted for the first time. Widely heralded on publication as…
a "must-read" (Military Review) and "important window on America’s battle with al-Qaeda" (Washington Post), Ali Soufan’s revelatory account of the war on terror as seen from its front lines changed the way we understand al-Qaeda and how the United States prosecuted the war—and led to hard questions being asked of our leaders. When The Black Banners was published in 2011, significant portions of the text were redacted. After subsequent review by the Central Intelligence Agency, those redactions have been lifted. Their removal corrects the record on how vital intelligence was obtained from al-Qaeda suspects and brings forth important new details on the controversial use of enhanced interrogation techniques (torture) to extract information from terror suspects. For many years, proponents of the use of these techniques have argued that they produced actionable intelligence in the war on terror. This edition of The Black Banners explodes this myth; it shows Soufan at work using guile and intelligent questioning—not force or violence—to extract some of the most important confessions in the war, and it vividly recounts the failures of the government’s torture program. Drawing on Soufan’s experiences as a lead operative for the FBI and declassified government records, The Black Banners (Declassified) documents the intelligence failures that lead to the tragic attacks on New York and Washington, DC, and subsequently how torture derailed the fight against al-Qaeda. With this edition, eighteen years on from the first sanctioned enhanced interrogation technique, the public can finally read the complete story of what happened in their name after the events of 9/11. The Black Banners (Declassified) includes a new foreword from Ali Soufan that addresses the significance of the CIA’s decision to lift the redactions.