Book picks similar to
The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA & Mind Control by John D. Marks
history
non-fiction
psychology
politics
Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring
Alexander Rose - 2006
For the first time, Rose takes us beyond the battlefront and into the shadowy underworld of double agents and triple crosses, covert operations and code breaking, and unmasks the courageous, flawed individuals who inhabited this wilderness of mirrors—including the spymaster at the heart of it all, George Washington. Previously published as Washington’s Spies
In the Enemy's House: The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who Caught the Russian Spies
Howard Blum - 2018
Over the course of the next decade, he and young FBI supervisor Bob Lamphere worked together on Venona, a top-secret mission to uncover the Soviet agents and protect the Holy Grail of Cold War espionage—the atomic bomb.Opposites in nearly every way, Lamphere and Gardner relentlessly followed a trail of clues that helped them identify and take down these Soviet agents one by one, including Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But at the center of this spy ring, seemingly beyond the American agents’ grasp, was the mysterious master spy who pulled the strings of the KGB’s extensive campaign, dubbed Operation Enormoz by Russian Intelligence headquarters. Lamphere and Gardner began to suspect that a mole buried deep in the American intelligence community was feeding Moscow Center information on Venona. They raced to unmask the traitor and prevent the Soviets from fulfilling Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s threat: "We shall bury you!"A breathtaking chapter of American history and a page-turning mystery that plays out against the tense, life-and-death gamesmanship of the Cold War, this twisting thriller begins at the end of World War II and leads all the way to the execution of the Rosenbergs—a result that haunted both Gardner and Lamphere to the end of their lives.
The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters
Frances Stonor Saunders - 1999
In The Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor Saunders reveals the extraordinary efforts of a secret campaign in which some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West were working for or subsidized by the CIA—whether they knew it or not.Called “the most comprehensive account yet of the [CIA’s] activities between 1947 and 1967” by the New York Times, the book presents shocking evidence of the CIA’s undercover program of cultural interventions in Western Europe and at home, drawing together declassified documents and exclusive interviews to expose the CIA’s astonishing campaign to deploy the likes of Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Lowell, George Orwell, and Jackson Pollock as weapons in the Cold War. Translated into ten languages, this classic work—now with a new preface by the author—is “a real contribution to popular understanding of the postwar period” (The Wall Street Journal), and its story of covert cultural efforts to win hearts and minds continues to be relevant today.
The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government
David K. Johnson - 2004
But while the famous question, "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" resonated in the halls of Congress, security officials were posing another question at least as frequently, if more discreetly: "Information has come to the attention of the Civil Service Commission that you are a homosexual. What comment do you care to make?"Historian David K. Johnson here relates the frightening, untold story of how, during the Cold War, homosexuals were considered as dangerous a threat to national security as Communists. Charges that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were havens for homosexuals proved a potent political weapon, sparking a "Lavender Scare" more vehement and long-lasting than McCarthy's Red Scare. Relying on newly declassified documents, years of research in the records of the National Archives and the FBI, and interviews with former civil servants, Johnson recreates the vibrant gay subculture that flourished in New Deal-era Washington and takes us inside the security interrogation rooms where thousands of Americans were questioned about their sex lives. The homosexual purges ended promising careers, ruined lives, and pushed many to suicide. But, as Johnson also shows, the purges brought victims together to protest their treatment, helping launch a new civil rights struggle.The Lavender Scare shatters the myth that homosexuality has only recently become a national political issue, changing the way we think about both the McCarthy era and the origins of the gay rights movement. And perhaps just as importantly, this book is a cautionary tale, reminding us of how acts taken by the government in the name of "national security" during the Cold War resulted in the infringement of the civil liberties of thousands of Americans.
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.
Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover
Anthony Summers - 1993
Edgar Hoover. At last, readers will learn of the late FBI chief's menacing abuse of power and public trust--from his closet homosexuality to his manipulation by the Mafia to his subversion of the Warren Commission's probe into the assassination of JFK. An 8-week NYT bestseller from the author of Conspiracy and Goddess.
Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War
Giles Whittell - 2010
He reveals the dramatic lives of men drawn into the nadir of the Cold War by duty and curiosity, and the tragicomedy of errors that eventually induced Khrushchev to send missiles to Castro. Two of his subjects — the spy and the pilot — were the original seekers of weapons of mass destruction. The third, an intellectual, fluent in German, unencumbered by dependents, and researching a Ph.D. thesis on the foreign trade system of the Soviet bloc, seemed to the Stasi precisely the sort of person the CIA should have been recruiting. He was not. In over his head in the world capital of spying, he was wrongly charged with espionage and thus came to the Agency’s notice by a more roundabout route. The three men were rescued against daunting odds by fate and by their families, and then all but forgotten. Yet they laid bare the pathological mistrust that fueled the arms race for the next 30 years. Drawing on new interviews conducted in the United States, Europe and Russia with key players in the exchange and the events leading to it, among them Frederic Pryor himself and the man who shot down Gary Powers, Bridge of Spies captures a time when the fate of the world really did depend on coded messages on microdots and brave young men in pressure suits. The exchange that frigid day at two of the most sensitive points along the Iron Curtain represented the first step back from where the superpowers had stood since the building of the Berlin Wall the previous summer – on the brink of World War III.
Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment
Stephen E. Ambrose - 1981
Eisenhower's public image was that of a wide-grinning Daddy Warbucks who preferred the golf course over the cabinet room. He was perceived as a military bureaucrat who never held a combat command. A Republican sandwiched between two Democratic administrations, he lacked the political vigor of his predecessor Harry S. Truman and the star quality of his successor JFK.Yet behind the placid image he was a sly fox who ran the most efficient espionage establishment in the world. His goal was to keep the Free World free. To do so, he fostered the growth of the CIA, overthrew governments, flew spy flights, and hatched assassination plots. At the top of the intelligence pyramid, Ike shouldered some of the greatest coups in espionage history, as well as some of its most ignominious failures.Among Ike's successes: The "Man Who Never Was" strategem, the ULTRA-guided ambush of the German counterattack at Mortain, which opened the Allies' way to the Rhine, the 1954 overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman's government of Guatemala, Operation AJAX, which toppled Iran's Mossadegh, and the U-2 flights over Russia. But Ike can be credited likewise for miscalculations: the failure to predict the German attack during the Battle of the Bulge, the Francis Gary Powers fiasco, and the tragic and irresponsible encouragement of freedom fighters in Hungary, Indonesia, and Cuba.In writing this revealing probe into the 1950s spy world, Stephen E. Ambrose, the author of the most acclaimed full-scale biography of Eisenhower, interviewed the president and many of his agents and had access to much previously unpublished archival material. "The story he tells," said the New York Review of Books in 1981 when the book was first published, "is one of some very low deeds done in the name of high moral principles."Stephen E. Ambrose was Director Emeritus of the Eisenhower Center, Boyd Professor of History at the University of New Orleans, and president of the National D- Day Museum. He was the author of many books, most recently The Mississippi and the Making of a Nation: From the Louisana Purchase to Today. His compilation of 1,400 oral histories from American veterans and authorship of over 20 books established him as one of the foremost historians of the Second World War in Europe. He died October 13, 2002, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House
Valerie Plame Wilson - 2007
A week later, conservative pundit Robert Novak revealed in his newspaper column that Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA operative. The public disclosure of that secret information spurred a federal investigation and led to the trial and conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and the Wilsons' civil suit against top officials of the Bush administration. Much has been written about the "Valerie Plame" story, but Valerie herself has been silent, until now. Some of what has been reported about her has been frighteningly accurate, serving as a pungent reminder to the Wilsons that their lives are no longer private. And some has been completely false -- distorted characterizations of Valerie and her husband and their shared integrity. Valerie Wilson retired from the CIA in January 2006, and now, not only as a citizen but as a wife and mother, the daughter of an Air Force colonel, and the sister of a U.S. marine, she sets the record straight, providing an extraordinary account of her training and experiences, and answers many questions that have been asked about her covert status, her responsibilities, and her life. As readers will see, the CIA still deems much of the detail of Valerie's story to be classified. As a service to readers, an afterword by national security reporter Laura Rozen provides a context for Valerie's own story. Fair Game is the historic and unvarnished account of the personal and international consequences of speaking truth to power.
No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
Glenn Greenwald - 2014
That source turned out to be the twenty-nine-year-old NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and his revelations about the agency's widespread, systemic overreach proved to be some of the most explosive and consequential news in recent history, triggering a fierce debate over national security and information privacy.Now Greenwald fits all the pieces together, recounting his high-intensity eleven-day trip to Hong Kong, examining the broader implications of the surveillance detailed in his reporting for The Guardian, and revealing fresh information on the NSA's unprecedented abuse of power with documents from the Snowden archive. Fearless and incisive, No Place to Hide has already sparked outrage around the globe and been hailed by voices across the political spectrum as an essential contribution to our understanding of the U.S. surveillance state.
How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America
Heather Cox Richardson - 2020
The system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and there established a foothold. It was a natural fit. Settlers from the East had for decades been pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican-American War and treatment of Native Americans cemented racial hierarchies. The South and West equally depended on extractive industries-cotton in the former and mining, cattle, and oil in the latter-giving rise a new birth of white male oligarchy, despite the guarantees provided by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and the economic opportunities afforded by expansion.To reveal why this happened, How the South Won the Civil War traces the story of the American paradox, the competing claims of equality and subordination woven into the nation's fabric and identity. At the nation's founding, it was the Eastern "yeoman farmer" who galvanized and symbolized the American Revolution. After the Civil War, that mantle was assumed by the Western cowboy, singlehandedly defending his land against barbarians and savages as well as from a rapacious government. New states entered the Union in the late nineteenth century and western and southern leaders found yet more common ground. As resources and people streamed into the West during the New Deal and World War II, the region's influence grew. "Movement Conservatives," led by westerners Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, claimed to embody cowboy individualism and worked with Dixiecrats to embrace the ideology of the Confederacy.Richardson's searing book seizes upon the soul of the country and its ongoing struggle to provide equal opportunity to all. Debunking the myth that the Civil War released the nation from the grip of oligarchy, expunging the sins of the Founding, it reveals how and why the Old South not only survived in the West, but thrived.
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War
Ben Macintyre - 2018
In his grey suit and tie, he looked like any other Soviet citizen. The bag alone was mildly conspicuous, printed with the red logo of Safeway, the British supermarket.The man was a spy for MI6. A senior KGB officer, for more than a decade he had supplied his British spymasters with a stream of priceless secrets from deep within the Soviet intelligence machine. No spy had done more to damage the KGB. The Safeway bag was a signal: to activate his escape plan to be smuggled out of Soviet Russia. So began one of the boldest and most extraordinary episodes in the history of spying. Ben Macintyre reveals a tale of espionage, betrayal and raw courage that changed the course of the Cold War forever...
Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad (Updated)
Gordon Thomas - 1999
Gordon Thomas's 1999 publication of Gideon's Spies, resulting from closed-door interviews with Mossad agents, informants, and spymasters as well as from classified documents and top-secret sources, revealed previously untold truths about the Israeli intelligence agency. And now, in this edition, Thomas updates his classic text and shows the Mossad as it truly is: brilliant, ruthless, and flawed, but ultimately awesome.Three all-new chapters cover topics including:- How the Mossad planned to assassinate Saddam Hussein- Saddam's food-testing ritual, and the surprising "source" within his government- China's U.S.-based front-companies, and its relationship with bin Laden- Mossad's untold role in the events before and after 9/11- Mossad and revelations about Princess Diana's death- The disappearance of the millions transferred from the Vatican Bank to the Polish Solidarity movement- How extremists recruit suicide bombers, including women- Mossad's untold role in the Iraq war and the hunts for Saddam and bin Laden- Saddam's plans for trial
Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America
Peter Dale Scott - 1991
Broad in scope and extensively documented, Cocaine Politics shows that under the cover of national security and covert operations, the U.S. government has repeatedly collaborated with and protected major international drug traffickers. A new preface discusses developments of the last six years, including the Mercury News stories and the public reaction they provoked.
The Fifties
David Halberstam - 1993
Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon, but also of Harley Earl, who put fins on cars; Dick and Mac McDonald and Ray Kroc, who mass-produced the American hamburger; Kemmons Wilson, who placed his Holiday Inns along the nation's roadsides; U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers; Grace Metalious, who wrote Peyton Place; and "Goody" Pincus, who led the team that invented the Pill.A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER