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Someone Is Out to Get Us: A Not So Brief History of Cold War Paranoia and Madness
By Brian Brown. 2019
From UFOs to Dr. Strangelove, LSD experiments to Richard Nixon, author Brian Brown investigates the paranoid, panicked history of the…
Cold War.In Someone Is Out to Get Us, Brian T. Brown explores the delusions, absurdities, and best-kept secrets of the Cold War, during which the United States fought an enemy of its own making for over forty years -- and nearly scared itself to death in the process. The nation chose to fear a chimera, a rotting communist empire that couldn't even feed itself, only for it to be revealed that what lay behind the Iron Curtain was only a sad Potemkin village.In fact, one of the greatest threats to our national security may have been our closest ally. The most effective spy cell the Soviets ever had was made up of aristocratic Englishmen schooled at Cambridge. Establishing a communist peril but lacking proof, J. Edgar Hoover became our Big Brother, and Joseph McCarthy went hunting for witches. Richard Nixon stepped into the spotlight as an opportunistic, ruthless Cold Warrior; his criminal cover-up during a dark presidency was exposed by a Deep Throat in a parking garage.Someone Is Out to Get Us is the true and complete account of a long-misunderstood period of history during which lies, conspiracies, and paranoia led Americans into a state of madness and misunderstanding, too distracted by fictions to realize that the real enemy was looking back at them in the mirror the whole time. 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}Nine Lives: My Time As MI6's Top Spy Inside al-Qaeda
By Paul Cruickshank, Tim Lister, Aimen Dean. 2019
As one of al-Qaeda&’s most respected bomb-makers, Aimen Dean rubbed shoulders with the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and swore…
allegiance to Osama bin Laden. As a double agent at the heart of al-Qaeda&’s chemical weapons programme, he foiled attacks on civilians and saved countless lives, brushing with death so often that his handlers began to call him their spy with nine lives. This is the story of how a young Muslim, determined to defend his faith, found himself fighting on the wrong side – and his fateful decision to work undercover for his sworn enemy. From the killing fields of Bosnia to the training camps of Afghanistan, from running money and equipment in Britain to dodging barrel bombs in Syria, we discover what life is like inside the global jihad, and what it will take to stop it once and for all.Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump
By David Corn, Michael Isikoff. 2018
The incredible, harrowing account of how American democracy was hacked by Moscow as part of a covert operation to influence…
the U.S. election and help Donald Trump gain the presidency. RUSSIAN ROULETTE is a story of political skullduggery unprecedented in American history. It weaves together tales of international intrigue, cyber espionage, and superpower rivalry. After U.S.-Russia relations soured, as Vladimir Putin moved to reassert Russian strength on the global stage, Moscow trained its best hackers and trolls on U.S. political targets and exploited WikiLeaks to disseminate information that could affect the 2016 election. The Russians were wildly successful and the great break-in of 2016 was no "third-rate burglary." It was far more sophisticated and sinister -- a brazen act of political espionage designed to interfere with American democracy. At the end of the day, Trump, the candidate who pursued business deals in Russia, won. And millions of Americans were left wondering, what the hell happened? This story of high-tech spying and multiple political feuds is told against the backdrop of Trump's strange relationship with Putin and the curious ties between members of his inner circle -- including Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn -- and Russia. RUSSIAN ROULETTE chronicles and explores this bizarre scandal, explains the stakes, and answers one of the biggest questions in American politics: How and why did a foreign government infiltrate the country's political process and gain influence in Washington? A New York Times BestsellerAN EXPLOSIVE , REVELATORY ASSESSMENT OF THE GREATEST BETRAYAL IN AMERICAN HISTORYWhen former FBI Director Robert Mueller III was assigned…
to the Special Counsel investigation looking into the possibility of Russian interference in the 2016 US election, many Americans felt relieved. But when the report was delivered in April 2019, it was clear that the case was far from closed-and pinning Trump down on conspiracy charges was going to be a lot more difficult than it had first seemed. In The Plot to Betray America, Malcolm Nance, New York Times bestselling author and renowned intelligence expert, reveals exactly how Trump and his inner circle conspired, coordinated, communicated, and eventually strategized to commit the greatest act of treachery in the history of the United States: compromising the presidential oath of office in exchange for power and personal enrichment. Seduced by the promises of riches dangled in front of them by Vladimir Putin, the Trump administration eagerly decided to reap the rewards of the plan to put a Kremlin-friendly crony in the Oval Office. And instead of interfering, the Republican Party's faithful William Barr, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Mitch McConnell, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, and Jeff Sessions among others did everything they could to facilitate Trump's damage to national security to fill his own pockets. Through in-depth research and interviews with intelligence experts and insiders, Nance charts Trump's deep financial ties to Russia through his family's investments, including those of Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner, and the corrupt behavior of his other double-crossing pro-Moscow associates. Only by untangling the spider web of personal and financial relationships linking the White House to the Kremlin can we start to free ourselves from the constricting clutches of our foreign adversaries and work to rebuild our fractured nation. In this geopolitical page-turner, The Plot to Betray America ultimately sketches the tracks and blueprint of the Trump administration's conspiracy against our country-and how we can still fight to defend democracy, protect our national security, and save the Constitution. A New York Times BestsellerBritish Clandestine Activities in Romania during the Second World War
By Dennis Deletant. 2016
British Clandestine Activities in Romania during the Second World War is the first monograph to examine the activity throughout the…
entire war of SOE and MI6. It was generally believed in Britain's War Office, after Hitler's occupation of Austria in March 1938, that Germany would seek to impose its will on South-East Europe before turning its attention towards Western Europe. Given Romania's geographical position, there was little Britain could offer her. The brutal fact of British-Romanian relations was that Germany was inconveniently in the way: opportunity, proximity of manufacture and the logistics of supply all told in favour of the Third Reich. This held, of course, for military as well as economic matters. In these circumstances the British concluded that their only weapon against German ambitions in countries which fell into Hitler's orbit were military subversive operations and a concomitant attempt to draw Romania out of her alliance with Germany.When, early in 1940, an important Soviet defector provided hints to British Intelligence about spies within the country's institutions, MI5's…
report was intercepted by a Soviet agent in the Home Office. She alerted her sometime lover, Isaiah Berlin, and Berlin's friend, Guy Burgess, whereupon the pair initiated a rapid counter-attack. Burgess contrived a reason for the two of them to visit the Soviet Union, which was then an ally of Nazi Germany, in order to alert his bosses of the threat and protect the infamous 'Cambridge Spies'. The story of this extraordinary escapade, hitherto ignored by the historians, lies at the heart of a thorough and scholarly expose of MI5's constitutional inability to resist communist infiltration of Britain's corridors of power and its later attempt to cover up its negligence. Guy Burgess's involvement in intelligence during WWII has been conveniently airbrushed out of existence in the official histories and the activities of his collaborator, Isaiah Berlin, disclosed in the latter's letters, have been strangely ignored by historians. Yet Burgess, fortified by the generous view of Marxism emanating from Oxbridge, contrived to effect a change in culture in MI5, whereby the established expert in communist counter-espionage was sidelined and Burgess's cronies were recruited into the Security Service itself.Using the threat of a Nazi Fifth Column as a diversion, Burgess succeeded in minimising the communist threat and placing Red sympathisers elsewhere in government. The outcome of this strategy was far-reaching. When the Soviet Union was invaded by Hitler's troops in June 1941, Churchill declared his support for Stalin in defeating the Nazi aggressor. But British policy-makers had all too quickly forgotten that the Communists would still be an enduring threat when the war was won and appeasement of Hitler was quickly replaced by appeasement of Stalin. Moreover, an indulgence towards communist scientists meant that the atom secrets shared by the US and the UK were betrayed. When this espionage was detected, MI5's officers engaged in an extensive cover-up to conceal their misdeeds. Exploiting recently declassified material and a broad range of historical and biographical sources, Antony Percy reveals that MI5 showed an embarrassing lack of leadership, discipline and tradecraft in its mission of `Defending the Realm'. This book will be of interest to all students of history, international relations, espionage and civil, national and international security.The astonishing true story of the Berlin Tunnel, one of the West’s greatest espionage operations of the Cold War—and the…
dangerous Soviet mole who betrayed it.Its code name was “Operation Gold,” a wildly audacious CIA plan to construct a clandestine tunnel into East Berlin to tap into critical KGB and Soviet military telecommunication lines. The tunnel, crossing the border between the American and Soviet sectors, would have to be 1,500 feet (the length of the Empire State Building) with state-of-the-art equipment, built and operated literally under the feet of their Cold War adversaries. Success would provide the CIA and the British Secret Intelligence Service access to a vast treasure of intelligence. Exposure might spark a dangerous confrontation with the Soviets. Yet as the Allies were burrowing into the German soil, a traitor, code-named Agent Diamond by his Soviet handlers, was burrowing into the operation itself. . . Betrayal in Berlin is Steve Vogel’s heart pounding account of the operation. He vividly recreates post-war Berlin, a scarred, shadowy snake pit with thousands of spies and innumerable cover stories. It is also the most vivid account of George Blake, perhaps the most damaging mole of the Cold War. Drawing upon years of archival research, secret documents, and rare interviews with Blake himself, Vogel has crafted a true-life spy story as thrilling as the novels of John le Carré and Len Deighton.Betrayal in Berlin includes 24 photos and two maps.Lincoln's Spies: Their Secret War to Save a Nation
By Douglas Waller. 2019
A major addition to the history of the Civil War, Lincoln’s Spies is a riveting account of the secret battles…
waged by Union agents to save a nation. Filled with espionage, sabotage, and intrigue, it is also a striking portrait of a shrewd president who valued what his operatives uncovered. Veteran journalist Douglas Waller, who has written ground-breaking intelligence histories, turns his sights on the shadow war of four secret agents for the North—three men and one woman. From the tense days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration in 1861 to the surrender at Appomattox four years later, Waller delivers a fast-paced narrative of the heroes—and scoundrels—who informed Lincoln’s generals on the enemy positions for crucial battles and busted up clandestine Rebel networks. Famed detective Allan Pinkerton mounted a successful covert operation to slip Lincoln through Baltimore before his inauguration to foil an assassination attempt. But he failed as General George McClellan’s spymaster, delivering faulty intelligence reports that overestimated Confederate strength. George Sharpe, an erudite New York lawyer, succeeded Pinkerton as spymaster for the Union’s Army of the Potomac. Recruiting skilled operatives, some of whom dressed in Rebel uniforms, Sharpe ran highly successful intelligence operations that outpaced anything the enemy could field. Elizabeth Van Lew, a Virginia heiress who hated slavery and disapproved of secession, was one of Sharpe’s most successful agents. She ran a Union spy ring in Richmond out of her mansion, with dozens of agents feeding her military and political secrets she funneled to General Ulysses S. Grant as his army closed in on the Confederate capital. Van Lew became one of the unsung heroes of the war. Lafayette Baker was a handsome Union officer with a controversial past, whose agents clashed with Pinkerton’s operatives. The unscrupulous Baker assembled a retinue of disreputable spies, thieves, and prostitutes to root out traitors in Washington, D.C. But he failed at his most important mission: uncovering the threat to Lincoln from John Wilkes Booth and his gang. Behind these secret operatives was a president, one of our greatest, who was an avid consumer of intelligence and a ruthless aficionado of clandestine warfare, willing to take chances to win the war. Lincoln’s Spies, as Waller vividly depicts in his excellent new book, set the template for the dark arts the CIA would practice in the future.The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
By Ben Macintyre. 2018
The celebrated author of A Spy Among Friends and Rogue Heroes returns with his greatest spy story yet, a thrilling…
Cold War-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union.If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States's nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky's name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain's obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets. Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky's nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre's latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man's hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.A journalist's twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to shocking new revelations about the FBI's involvement in this riveting…
reassessment of an infamous case in American history.Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With no mercy and seemingly no motive, the Manson Family followed their leader's every order-their crimes lit a flame of paranoia across the nation, spelling the end of the sixties. Manson became one of history's most infamous criminals, his name forever attached to an era when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia-or dystopia-was just an acid trip away. Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O'Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up behind the "official" story, including police carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents. When a tense interview with Vincent Bugliosi-prosecutor of the Manson Family, and author of Helter Skelter-turned a friendly source into a nemesis, O'Neill knew he was onto something. But every discovery brought more questions:Who were Manson's real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties?Why didn't law enforcement, including Manson's own parole officer, act on their many chances to stop him?And how did Manson-an illiterate ex-con-turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers? O'Neill's quest for the truth led him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from San Francisco's summer of love to the shadowy sites of the CIA's mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with shady cover-ups and suspicious coincidences. The product of two decades of reporting, hundreds of new interviews, and dozens of never-before-seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, CHAOS mounts an argument that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Steven Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. This is a book that overturns our understanding of a pivotal time in American history.Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy
By Mark M. Lowenthal. 2020
Mark M. Lowenthal’s trusted guide is the go-to resource for understanding how the intelligence community’s history, structure, procedures, and functions…
affect policy decisions. In the fully updated Eighth Edition of Intelligence, the author addresses cyber security and cyber intelligence throughout, expands the coverage of collection, comprehensively updates the chapters on nation-state issues and transnational issues, and looks at foreign intelligence services, both large and small.Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy
By Mark M. Lowenthal. 2020
Mark M. Lowenthal’s trusted guide is the go-to resource for understanding how the intelligence community’s history, structure, procedures, and functions…
affect policy decisions. In the fully updated Eighth Edition of Intelligence, the author addresses cyber security and cyber intelligence throughout, expands the coverage of collection, comprehensively updates the chapters on nation-state issues and transnational issues, and looks at foreign intelligence services, both large and small.From national bestselling author and retired Navy SEAL Clint Emerson comes the essential guide for surviving today's emergencies--from navigating in…
the wild to staying alive in any disaster.These 100 skills, adapted for civilians from actual field experiences of special forces operations, offer a complete hands-on and practical guide to help you survive in the wild no matter the climate or terrain; be prepared for any crisis; and have the critical life-saving knowledge for staying safe in any hostile environment or disaster. Yesterday's survival guide is no longer relevant. 100 Deadly Skills: Survival Edition is what you need for today's world, combining survival hacks developed on the battlefield with the low-tech tools you have on hand. This book is your essential prep manual, from securing shelter, building fire, finding food, and navigating back to civilization no matter the environment to thinking like a special forces solider so that you can survive a hostage situation, an active shooter, a suicide bomber, or a terrorist threat on the subway, and even apply trauma medicine as a first responder. Full of specific scenarios to help you get in the mindset of survival, 100 Deadly Skills: Survival Edition is better than a Swiss Army knife whether you're lost at sea, forced to land a plane, fighting off a bear, or deciding whether to run, hide, or fight. Next to each skill are easy-to-grasp detailed illustrations, because when you need to survive the apocalypse, you don't have time for complicated instructions.The astonishing story of the British spies who set out to draw America into World War IIAs World War II…
raged into its second year, Britain sought a powerful ally to join its cause-but the American public was sharply divided on the subject. Canadian-born MI6 officer William Stephenson, with his knowledge and influence in North America, was chosen to change their minds by any means necessary.In this extraordinary tale of foreign influence on American shores, Henry Hemming shows how Stephenson came to New York--hiring Canadian staffers to keep his operations secret--and flooded the American market with propaganda supporting Franklin Roosevelt and decrying Nazism. His chief opponent was Charles Lindbergh, an insurgent populist who campaigned under the slogan "America First" and had no interest in the war. This set up a shadow duel between Lindbergh and Stephenson, each trying to turn public opinion his way, with the lives of millions potentially on the line.Stakeknife: Britain's Secret Agents in Ireland (History Of Ireland And The Irish Diaspora Ser.)
By Greg Harkin, Ian Hurst. 2004
BESTSELLER An explosive exposé of how British military intelligence really works, from the inside. The stories of two undercover agents…
-- Brian Nelson, who worked for the Force Research Unit (FRU), aiding loyalist terrorists and murderers in their bloody work; and the man known as Stakeknife, deputy head of the IRA's infamous ‘Nutting Squad', the internal security force which tortured and killed suspected informers.Unwanted Spy: The Persecution of an American Whistleblower
By Jeffrey Sterling. 2019
The powerful story of a CIA whistleblower and political prisoner who refused to give up on his American dreamIn 2015,…
Jeffrey Sterling was sentenced to prison, convicted of violating the Espionage Act. Sterling, it is now clear, was another victim of our government's draconian crackdown on alleged leakers and whistleblowers.Sterling grew up in a small, segregated town in Missouri and jumped at the chance to broaden his world and serve his country, first in law school and later in the CIA. After an impressive career, Sterling's progress came to a sudden halt: he was denied opportunities because of his race and was pushed out of the Agency. Later, Sterling courageously blew the whistle on the CIA's botched covert operation in Iran to Senate investigators. After a few quiet years in Missouri with his wife, he was arrested suddenly and charged with espionage. Unwanted Spy is an inspiring account of one man's uncompromising commitment to the truth and a reminder of the principles of justice and integrity that should define America.Agent Jack: The True Story of MI5's Secret Nazi Hunter
By Robert Hutton. 2019
The never-before-told story of Eric Roberts, who infiltrated a network of Nazi sympathizers in Great Britain in order to protect…
the country from the grips of fascismJune 1940: Europe has fallen to Adolf Hitler’s army, and Britain is his next target. Winston Churchill exhorts the country to resist the Nazis, and the nation seems to rally behind him. But in secret, some British citizens are plotting to hasten an invasion. Agent Jack tells the incredible true story of Eric Roberts, a seemingly inconsequential bank clerk who, in the guise of “Jack King”, helped uncover and neutralize the invisible threat of fascism on British shores. Gifted with an extraordinary ability to make people trust him, Eric Roberts penetrated the Communist Party and the British Union of Fascists before playing his greatest role for MI5: Hitler's man in London. Pretending to be an agent of the Gestapo, Roberts single-handedly built a network of hundreds of British Nazi sympathizers—factory workers, office clerks, shopkeepers —who shared their secrets with him. It was work so secret and so sensitive that it was kept out of the reports MI5 sent to Winston Churchill. In a gripping real-world thriller, Robert Hutton tells the fascinating story of an operation whose existence has only recently come to light with the opening of MI5’s WWII files. Drawing on these newly declassified documents and private family archives, Agent Jack shatters the comforting notion that Britain could never have succumbed to fascism and, consequently, that the world could never have fallen to Hitler. Agent Jack is the story of one man who loved his country so much that he risked everything to stand against a rising tide of hate.Beaulieu: Finishing School for Secret Agents
By Cyril Cunningham. 2005
This book is the outcome of a difficult investigation, and a very remarkable story it is too. It was at…
Beaulieu that a large number of agents from Britain and the Nazi-occupied countries of Europe were trained in the delicate arts of secret inks, coding, clandestine communications and black propoganda, along with such nefarious skills as silent killing, housebreaking, safe-blowing, forgery, unattributable sabotage and survival techniques. And they were taught by some extraordinary characters including former spies, a professional burglar and the infamous Kim Philby, who played a significant role in the design of the curriculum.Cold War Counterfeit Spies: Tales of Espionage: Genuine or Bogus?
By Nigel West. 2016
The Cold War, with its air of mutual fear and distrust and the shadowy world of spies and secret agents,…
gave publishers the chance to produce countless stories of espionage, treachery and deception. What Nigel West has discovered is that the most egregious deceptions were in fact the stories themselves. In this remarkable investigation into the claims of many who portrayed themselves as key players in clandestine operations, the author has exposed a catalogue of misrepresentations and falsehoods. Did Greville Wynne really exfiltrate a GRU defector from Odessa? Was the frogman Buster Crabb abducted during a mission in Portsmouth Harbour? Did the KGB run a close-guarded training facility, as described by J. Bernard Hutton in School for Spies, which was modelled on a typical town in the American mid-west, so agents could be acclimatised to a non-Soviet environment? With the help of witnesses with first-hand experience, and recently declassified documents, Nigel West answers these and other fascinating questions from a time when secrecy and suspicion allowed the truth to be concealed.Crossfire Hurricane: Inside Donald Trump's War on the FBI
By Josh Campbell. 2019
“An indispensable and riveting insider’s account of one of the most dramatic and controversial periods in the history of the…
FBI. Crossfire Hurricane is a must-read for all Americans.” —Daniel Silva, New York Times bestselling author “Campbell speaks both from the heart and experience. A dynamite read.” —Dan Rather, former anchor of CBS Evening News and bestselling author of What Unites UsIt is January 6, 2017, two weeks before the inauguration. Only a handful of people know about the Steele dossier, and the nation is bitterly divided by the election results. As rumors begin to circulate that something might be brewing with the newly elected president and Russia, FBI special agent Josh Campbell joins the heads of the US intelligence community on a briefing visit to Trump Tower in New York City. He does not yet know that this meeting will eventually lead to the firing of his boss, James Comey, or that within weeks his former boss Robert Mueller will be appointed to investigate collusion and obstruction of justice at the highest level. He does not yet know that the FBI will come under years of sustained attacks from the commander in chief of the very nation its agents have sworn to protect. But, from his unique position within the FBI, he will watch it occur.In this gripping fly-on-the-wall narrative, Campbell takes readers behind the scenes of the earliest days of the Russia investigation—codename: Crossfire Hurricane—up to the present. Using both firsthand experience and reporting, he reveals fresh details about this tumultuous period; explains how the FBI goes about its work and its historic independence from partisan forces; and describes the increasing dismay inside the bureau as the president and his allies escalate their attacks on the agency. Appalled by Trump’s assault on the bureau’s credibility, Campbell left the FBI in 2018 to sound the alarm about unfair political attacks on the institutions that keep America safe.Smart, clear, passionate, Crossfire Hurricane will captivate readers struggling to make sense of a news cycle careening out of control.