The Moscow Rules: The Secret CIA Tactics That Helped America Win the Cold War


Antonio J. Méndez - 2019
    Soviets kept files on all foreigners, studied their patterns, tapped their phones, and even planted listening devices within the US Embassy. In short, intelligence work was effectively impossible. The Soviet threat loomed larger than ever. The Moscow Rules tells the story of the intelligence breakthrough that turned the odds in America's favor. As Chief of Disguise and Authentication, Mendez was instrumental in creating and honing a series of tactics that allowed officers to finally get one step ahead of the KGB. These techniques included everything from elaborate, Hollywood-inspired identity swaps, to deception or evasion techniques, to more mundane document forgery. With these new guidelines in place, and with an armory of new gadgets perfected by the Office of Technical Services including miniature cameras, suitcase release body doubles, and wall repelling mechanisms, the CIA managed to gain a foothold in Moscow and pull off some of the greatest intelligence operations in the history of espionage. As America is again confronted by the threat of Russian disinformation, the dramatic inside story of how we defeated our once-and-future enemy is as timely as ever.

The Greatest Traitor: The Secret Lives of Agent George Blake


Roger Hermiston - 2013
    At the time few details of his crimes were made known. By his own confession he was a Soviet spy and rumours later circulated that his actions had endangered British agents, but the reasons for such a severe punishment were never revealed. To the public, Blake was simply the greatest traitor of the Cold War. Yet, as Roger Hermiston reveals in this thrilling new biography, his story touches not only the depths of treachery, but also the heights of heroism. In WWII the teenage Blake performed sterling deeds for the Dutch resistance, before making a dramatic bid for freedom across Nazi-occupied Europe. Later recruited by British Intelligence, he quickly earned an exemplary reputation and was entrusted with building up the Service's networks behind the Iron Curtain. And, following a posting to Seoul, he also suffered for his adopted country, when captured by North Korean soldiers at the height of their brutal war with the South. By the time of his release in 1953, Blake was a hero, one of the Service's brightest and best officers. But unbeknownst to SIS they were harbouring a mole. Week after week, year after year, Blake was assiduously gathering all the important documents he could lay his hands on and passing them to the KGB. Drawing on hitherto unpublished records from his trial, new revelations about his dramatic jailbreak from Wormwood Scrubs, and original interviews with former spies, friends and the man himself, 'The Greatest Traitor' sheds new light on this most complex of characters and presents a fascinating shadow history of the Cold War.

A Spy In Vienna: A Paul Muller Novel of Political Intrigue


William N. Walker - 2018
    It is the second Paul Muller novel set in Europe before World War II. Muller is recruited to become a spy to resist Hitler's campaign to absorb Austria into the German Reich and, from his perch in Vienna, finds himself at the epicenter of the desperate struggle to preserve Austrian independence. Muller plays a dangerous game in helping Austria oppose Hitler's demands and he hatches a bold plan to divert Austria's gold reserves so they stay out of Hitler's grasp. The novel captures this gripping drama in rich and vivid detail as political pressures mount and the threat of war looms. A Spy in Vienna re-creates for readers the fraught atmosphere of 1930's, when the threat of Nazi violence hung over Europe. Aficionados of that epoch will relish the authenticity of the novel, which reawakens the tensions and turbulence of the era, with its undercurrent of violence and fear. The narrative recaptures the urgency of the crisis as repeated confrontations escalated to an explosive conclusion. Today, sitting at the safe remove of eighty years, we know the outcome. Hitler's bald aggression prevailed; his takeover of Austria became a crucial stepping stone leading to World War II. But the characters in the novel know none of this; for them, the events they are caught up in are frightening and bewildering, confronting them with dire choices and fearful consequences. The novel transports the reader into that contemporary maelstrom of intrigue and danger—combining real history with a compelling story. Admirers of Paul Muller in Danzig will revel in his new adventures in Vienna, as once again he confronts Nazi tyranny.

The Beria Papers


Alan Williams - 1973
    He was Stalin’s closest henchman. At one time he had a million armed men under his direct personal command. He was a sadist and a mass murderer. And he was also a vicious rapist with a compulsive appetite for young girls. This is possible: Beria may have kept a private diary in which he lovingly recorded his sexual activities, his murders, various scandals involving men now highly placed in the Soviet hierarchy — and the true facts of Stalin’s death. This is certain: The publication of Beria’s diary would cause the greatest political scandal the world has ever known — and set off a deadly manhunt for those responsible for its release … The private diaries of Beria — Stalin’s notorious chief of secret police — are a lurid, shattering indictment of Russian political methods and contain a new account of what really happened at Stalin’s death. They confirm Beria as one of the greatest human monsters of our time, both in his personal life and in his political manipulations of top Soviet politicians, some of whom are in power today. The Beria Papers are sold to an American publisher for three million dollars. On publication they are an immediate, sensational bestseller. They cause panic in Moscow and outrage everywhere — even in the upper echelons of the U.S. government, where there is fear that such revelations will create a dangerous precedent in smear campaigns against world leaders. So the world’s two most powerful secret services — the Soviet KGB and the American CIA — are ordered to track down the book’s origin. Their investigations range from New York to Washington, to London, Moscow, Munich, Budapest, Vienna and finally to a small island in the Indian Ocean where the activities of the two secret agencies come horrifically together. But can The Beria Papers possibly be a hoax? Praise for The Beria Papers: ‘Intriguing and gripping … compulsively exciting’ - Sunday Express ‘Both exciting and really convincing … fascinating. Part adventure, part thriller, part a documentary of might-have-been history, The Beria Papers is the best thing of its kind for a long time.’ - Sunday Times ‘The most interesting and original thriller since The Odessa File … a sharp and intelligent thriller that cries out for filming.’ - Daily Mail ‘Intriguing and gripping … not merely compulsively exciting entertainment, it is also so well researched and the background appears so absolutely authentic that the whole fantastic story could just be true.’ - Sunday Express Alan Emlyn Williams(born 1935) is an ex-foreign correspondent, novelist and writer of thrillers. He was educated at Stowe, Grenoble and Heidelberg Universities, and at King's College, Cambridge where he graduated in 1957 with a B.A. in modern languages. His father was the actor and writer Emlyn Williams.

How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft


Edward Jay Epstein - 2017
    After details of American government surveillance were published in 2013, Edward Snowden, formerly a subcontracted IT analyst for the NSA, became the center of an international controversy: Was he a hero, traitor, whistle-blower, spy? Was his theft legitimized by the nature of the information he exposed? When is it necessary for governmental transparency to give way to subterfuge? Edward Jay Epstein brings a lifetime of journalistic and investigative acumen to bear on these and other questions, delving into both how our secrets were taken and the man who took them. He makes clear that by outsourcing parts of our security apparatus, the government has made classified information far more vulnerable; how Snowden sought employment precisely where he could most easily gain access to the most sensitive classified material; and how, though he claims to have acted to serve his country, Snowden is treated as a prized intelligence asset in Moscow, his new home."

An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey


Robert Meeropol - 2003
    It is the story of how he tried to balance a strong desire to live a normal life and raise a family, with a growing need to create something useful out of his nightmare childhood. It is also a poignant account of how, at age forty-three, he finally found a way to honor his parents and also be true to himself.

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers


Andy Greenberg - 2019
    Targeting American utility companies, NATO, and electric grids in Eastern Europe, the strikes became ever more brazen, eventually leading to the first-ever blackouts triggered by hackers. They culminated in the summer of 2017 when malware known as NotPetya was unleashed, compromising, disrupting, and paralyzing some of the world's largest companies. At the attack's epicenter in Ukraine, ATMs froze. The railway and postal systems shut down. NotPetya spread around the world, inflicting an unprecedented ten billions of dollars in damage--the largest, most penetrating cyberattack the world had ever seen.The hackers behind these attacks are quickly gaining a reputation as the most dangerous team of cyberwarriors in the internet's history: Sandworm. Believed to be working in the service of Russia's military intelligence agency, they represent a persistent, highly skilled, state-sponsored hacking force, one whose talents are matched by their willingness to launch broad, unrestrained attacks on the most critical infrastructure of their adversaries. They target government and private sector, military and civilians alike.From WIRED senior writer Andy Greenberg comes Sandworm, the true story of the desperate hunt to identify and track those attackers. It considers the danger this force poses to our national stability and security. And as the Kremlin's role in manipulating foreign governments and sparking chaos globally comes into greater focus, Sandworm reveals the realities not just of Russia's global digital offensive, but of an era where warfare ceases to be waged on the battlefield--where the line between digital and physical conflict begins to blur, with world-shaking implications.

Daily Life in North Korea


Andrei Lankov - 2015
    Andrei Lankov is in a unique position to interpret North Korea's culture and society to a foreign audience. Accepted into the prestigious faculty of Oriental Studies at Leningrad State university during the declining days of the Soviet Union, Lankov had originally hoped to study Chinese. Instead, he found himself specialising in North Korean studies, an eccentric option even within the Soviet Bloc.The Faculty of Oriental Studies was world apart from the daily life of the average Soviet citizen, in which well-paid Professors avoided their students as much as they possibly could and took refuge from current political troubles in obscure corners of classical philology. Even within this world, North Korean studies were a minority interest. As Lankov himself put it: “Most of the time, Korean departments played host to undergraduates deemed not good enough to be accepted to more prestigious and competitive majors like, say, Japanese and Arab studies. This meant that interest in things Korean was present but not necessarily enthusiastic. It did not help, of course, that North Korea, with its bizarre political system, hysterical propaganda and crazy personality cult was seen as a laughing stock in the entire socialist bloc of the time.”Despite this, Lankov pursued his studies and was eventually dispatched to Pyongyang to study at Kim Il Sung University. Here he gained first-hand experience of life in North Korea: restrictions on movement, ideological proselitizing, corruption and black-market trading. After graduating he taught Korean history and language at his alma mater before moving on to the Australian National University and Kookmin University in Seoul and bringing his knowledge of the closed world of North Korea to a wider audience via a variety of media outlets, including NK News.In this volume we bring together a selection of Andrei Lankov's most popular columns for NK News, illustrated with luminous photographs by Eric Lafforgue.

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race


Nicole Perlroth - 2021
    One of the most coveted tools in a spy's arsenal, a zero day has the power to silently spy on your iPhone, dismantle the safety controls at a chemical plant, alter an election, and shut down the electric grid (just ask Ukraine).For decades, under cover of classification levels and non-disclosure agreements, the United States government became the world's dominant hoarder of zero days. U.S. government agents paid top dollar-first thousands, and later millions of dollars- to hackers willing to sell their lock-picking code and their silence. Then the United States lost control of its hoard and the market. Now those zero days are in the hands of hostile nations and mercenaries who do not care if your vote goes missing, your clean water is contaminated, or our nuclear plants melt down.Filled with spies, hackers, arms dealers, and a few unsung heroes, written like a thriller and a reference, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is an astonishing feat of journalism. Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, The New York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth lifts the curtain on a market in shadow, revealing the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyber arms race to heel.

Cyberspies: The Secret History of Surveillance, Hacking, and Digital Espionage


Gordon Corera - 2015
    The book is rich with historical detail and characters, as well as astonishing revelations about espionage carried out in recent times by the UK, US, and China. Using unique access to the National Security Agency, GCHQ, Chinese officials, and senior executives from some of the most powerful global technology companies, Gordon Corera has gathered compelling stories from heads of state, hackers and spies of all stripes.Cyberspies is a ground-breaking exploration of the new space in which the worlds of espionage, diplomacy, international business, science, and technology collide.

John Le Carre Value Collection: Tailor of Panama, Our Game, and Night Manager


John le Carré - 2000
    Includes: Night Manager, Tailor of Panama, and Our GameNight ManagerEnter the new world of post Cold War espionage. Penetrate the secret world of ruthless arms dealers and drug smugglers who have risen to unthinkable power and wealth. The sinister master of them all is an untouchable Englishman named Roper. Slipping into this maze of peril is a former British soldier, Jonathan Pine, who knows Roper well enough to hate him more than any man on earth. Now Personal vengeance is only part of why Pine is willing to help the men at Whitehall try to bring Roper down....A Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month ClubOur GameWith the Cold War fought and won, British spymaster Tim Cranmer accepts early retirement to rural England and a new life with his alluring young mistress Emma. But when both Emma and Cranmer's star double agent and lifelong rival, Larry Pettifer, disappear, Cranmer is suddenly on the run, searching for his brilliant protégé, desperately eluding his former colleagues, in a frantic journey across Europe and into the lawless, battered landscapes of Moscow and southern Russia, to save whatever of his life he has left....Tailor of PanamaLe Carre's Panama is a Casablanca without heroes, a hotbed of drugs, laundered money and corruption. It is also the country which on December 31, 1999, will gain full control of the Panama Canal. Seldom has the weight of politics descended so heavily on such a tiny and unprepared nation. And seldom has the hidden eye of the British Intelligence selected such an unlikely champion as Harry Pendel - a charmer, a dreamer, an evader, a fabulist and presiding genius to the house of Pendel & Braithwaite Co. Limitada, Tailors to Royalty, formerly of London and presently of Panama City. Yet there is a logic to the spies' choice, for everybody who is anybody in Cental America passes through Pendel's doors. He dresses politicos and crooks and conmen. His fitting room hears more confidences than the priest's confessional. And when Harry Pendel doesn't hear things as such - well, he hears them anyway, by other means. In a thrilling, hilarious AudioBook, le Carre once again effortlessly expands the borders of the spy story to bring us a magnificent entertainment straight out of the pages of tomorrow's history.

Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News


Clint Watts - 2018
    In Messing with the Enemy, the cyber and homeland security expert introduces us to a frightening world in which terrorists and cyber criminals don’t hack your computer, they hack your mind. Watts reveals how these malefactors use your information and that of your friends and family to work for them through social media, which they use to map your social networks, scour your world affiliations, and master your fears and preferences.Thanks to the schemes engineered by social media manipulators using you and your information, business executives have coughed up millions in fraudulent wire transfers, seemingly good kids have joined the Islamic State, and staunch anti-communist Reagan Republicans have cheered the Russian government’s hacking of a Democratic presidential candidate’s e-mails. Watts knows how they do it because he’s mirrored their methods to understand their intentions, combat their actions, and coopt their efforts.Watts examines a particular social media platform—from Twitter to internet Forums to Facebook to LinkedIn—and a specific bad actor—from al Qaeda to the Islamic State to the Russian and Syrian governments—to illuminate exactly how social media tracking is used for nefarious purposes. He explains how he’s learned, through his successes and his failures, to engage with hackers, terrorists, and even the Russians—and how these interactions have generated methods of fighting back. Shocking, funny, and eye-opening, Messing with the Enemy is a deeply urgent guide for living safe and smart in a super-connected world.

Love Letter to America


Tomas Schuman - 1984
    I am what you may call a "defector" from the USSR, and I have a message for you: I love you very much. I love all of you-- liberals and conservatives, "decadent capitalists" and "oppressed masses," blacks and whites and browns and yellows, rednecks and intellectuals. For me you are the people who created a unique nation, country and society in the history of mankind,-- by no means a perfect one, but, let's face it-- the most free, affluent and just in today's world.I am not alone in this love. People all over the Earth, whether they praise America or bitterly criticize her, look upon you as the only hope for mankind's survival and the last stronghold of freedom. Some may not think in these idealistic terms, but they certainly enjoy the fruits of your civilization, often forgetting to be grateful for them. Millions of people in the so-called "socialist camp" or in the "Third World" literally owe their lives to America.

The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace


Alexander Klimburg - 2017
    Alexander Klimburg was a member of the generation for whom it was a utopian ideal turned reality: a place where ideas, information, and knowledge could be shared and new freedoms found and enjoyed. Two decades later, the future isn't so bright any more: increasingly, the Internet is used as a weapon and a means of domination by states eager to exploit or curtail global connectivity in order to further their national interests. Klimburg is a leading voice in the conversation on the implications of this dangerous shift, and in The Darkening Web, he explains why we underestimate the consequences of states' ambitions to project power in cyberspace at our peril: Not only have hacking and cyber operations fundamentally changed the nature of political conflict--ensnaring states in a struggle to maintain a precarious peace that could rapidly collapse into all-out war--but the rise of covert influencing and information warfare has enabled these same global powers to create and disseminate their own distorted versions of reality in which anything is possible. At stake are not only our personal data or the electrical grid, but the Internet as we know it today--and with it the very existence of open and democratic societies. Blending anecdote with argument, Klimburg brings us face-to-face with the range of threats the struggle for cyberspace presents, from an apocalyptic scenario of debilitated civilian infrastructure to a 1984-like erosion of privacy and freedom of expression. Focusing on different approaches to cyber-conflict in the US, Russia and China, he reveals the extent to which the battle for control of the Internet is as complex and perilous as the one surrounding nuclear weapons during the Cold War--and quite possibly as dangerous for humanity as a whole. Authoritative, thought-provoking, and compellingly argued, The Darkening Web makes clear that the debate about the different aspirations for cyberspace is nothing short of a war over our global values.

Code Warriors: NSA's Code Breakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union


Stephen Budiansky - 2016
    The National Security Agency grew out of the legendary codebreaking programs of World War II that turned the tide of Allied victory by cracking the famed Enigma machine and other seemingly impenetrable German and Japanese codes. But things became murky in the postwar years, when our intelligence community found itself targeting not battlefield enemies, but suspected spies, foreign leaders, and even American citizens. Now Stephen Budiansky--a longtime expert in cryptology--tells the fascinating story of how the NSA came to be, and of its central, often fraught and controversial role in the major events of the Cold War, from the Korean War to the Cuban Missile Crisis to Vietnam and beyond. He also guides us through the fascinating challenges faced by cryptanalysts, and how they broke some of the most complicated codes of the twentieth century. A riveting, essential history of the underbelly of the Cold War.