Book picks similar to
Chinese Espionage : Operations and Tactics by Nicholas Eftimiades
china
intelligence
national-security
análisis
The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government
David Talbot - 2015
Drawing on revelatory new materials—including newly discovered U.S. government documents, U.S. and European intelligence sources, the personal correspondence and journals of Allen Dulles’s wife and mistress, and exclusive interviews with the children of prominent CIA officials—Talbot reveals the underside of one of America’s most powerful and influential figures.Dulles’s decade as the director of the CIA—which he used to further his public and private agendas—were dark times in American politics. Calling himself “the secretary of state of unfriendly countries,” Dulles saw himself as above the elected law, manipulating and subverting American presidents in the pursuit of his personal interests and those of the wealthy elite he counted as his friends and clients—colluding with Nazi-controlled cartels, German war criminals, and Mafiosi in the process. Targeting foreign leaders for assassination and overthrowing nationalist governments not in line with his political aims, Dulles employed those same tactics to further his goals at home, Talbot charges, offering shocking new evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.An exposé of American power that is as disturbing as it is timely, The Devil’s Chessboard is a provocative and gripping story of the rise of the national security state—and the battle for America’s soul.
Leadership and Crisis
Bobby Jindal - 2010
And from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster to Hurricane Katrina, he’s shown an astounding ability to beat the odds (and beat the bureaucrats) to get things done.Then again, Jindal is not your typical politician. The son of Indian immigrants, a Christian convert from Hinduism, and a Rhodes Scholar, Jindal presided over Louisiana’s healthcare system at age 24, headed the University of Louisiana system at 27, became a U.S. congressman at 33, and was elected governor of Louisiana at 36.Throughout his meteoric career, Jindal has dealt with some of the worst crises of our times, from natural disasters in his home state to out-of-control spending in Washington, D.C. His secret: the common sense solutions that bureaucrats (and politicians) ignore in favor of government–as–usual.In Leadership and Crisis, Jindal reveals: How the Obama administration spent too much time worrying about public perception and not enough on actually fighting the oil How the federal government actually impeded Louisiana’s efforts to stem the flood of oil Why the bureaucratic incompetence during Hurricane Katrina was even worse than you know How Bobby Jindal took on Louisiana’s infamous culture of corruption His own journey from Hinduism to Christianity, from student at Oxford to Governor of Louisiana, from policy wonk to instant midwife when he had to deliver his third child himself Filled with behind–the–scenes stories from the oil–slicked beaches of Louisiana to the corridors of power in the U.S. Capitol, Leadership and Crisis offers an insider’s view into one of the worst environmental disasters our nation has suffered—and into one of the most unique success stories of American politics.
Trevanian: Four Complete Novels: The Eiger Sanction / The Loo Sanction / The Main / Shibumi
Trevanian - 1984
As he weaves his tales of death and danger, of action and mystery, he generates an explosive edge-of-the-seat excitement that few writers can match.In The Eiger Sanction, Trevanian's highly acclaimed first novel, Jonathan Hemlock, mountain climber and professional assassin, is tricked into a most hazardous assignment that involves an attempt to conquer and scale one of the most treacherous mountain peaks in the Swiss Alps, the Eiger.Hemlock's highly skilled services are required in The Loo Sanction to recover a set of films incriminating high-ranking British officials. Drawn into a labyrinthine network of intrigue, he must attempt one of the most daring escapes ever conceived. In another masterful achievement in suspense, police lieutenant Claude LaPinte must solve a grotesque murder as he undertakes a strange journey through The Main, Montreal's dangerous immigrant district.In Shibumi, Nicholai Hel uses his nearly superhuman mental and physical prowess to destroy political terrorists. His wild series of globe-spanning adventures demonstrates why he is considered the world's most dangerous man.Rich and thoroughly entertaining, these four superbly written novels prove Trevanian to be one of the most compelling writers of suspense today.
The Finish: The Killing of Osama Bin Laden
Mark Bowden - 2012
With access to key sources, Bowden takes us inside the rooms where decisions were made and on the ground where the action unfolded.After masterminding the attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden managed to vanish. Over the next ten years, as Bowden shows, America found that its war with al Qaeda—a scattered group of individuals who were almost impossible to track—demanded an innovative approach. Step by step, Bowden describes the development of a new tactical strategy to fight this war—the fusion of intel from various agencies and on-the-ground special ops. After thousands of special forces missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the right weapon to go after bin Laden had finally evolved. By Spring 2011, intelligence pointed to a compound in Abbottabad; it was estimated that there was a 50/50 chance that Osama was there. Bowden shows how three strategies were mooted: a drone strike, a precision bombing, or an assault by Navy SEALs. In the end, the President had to make the final decision. It was time for the finish.
The Deplorables' Guide to Making America Great Again
Todd Starnes - 2017
Change may start at the White House, but it finishes at your house. In The Deplorables' Guide to Making America Great Again, Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes reports from the front lines of the culture war in America and provides insights on what you can do to bring about real and lasting change in our nation. We've told Washington enough is enough, and we want to change the course of the country. President Obama called us bitter. Hillary Clinton called us irredeemable. The mainstream media called us backwater bigots. We were mocked by Hollywood and dismissed by academics. We were marginalized by the media - bullied and belittled by sex and gender revolutionaries. With the election of Donald Trump, the American people have spoken.
The Secret State: A History of Intelligence and Espionage
John Hughes-Wilson - 2016
Comprehensive and authoritative, The Secret State skillfully examines the potential pitfalls of the traditional intelligence cycle; the dangerous uncertainties of spies and human intelligence; how the Cold War became an electronic intelligence war; the technical revolution that began with the use of reconnaissance photography in World War I and during the Cuban Missile Crisis; the legacy of Stalin's deliberate ignoring of vital intelligence; how signals intelligence gave America one of its greatest victories; how Wikileaks really happened; and whether 9/11 could have been avoided if America's post-Cold War intelligence agencies had adapted to the new world of international terrorism.Authoritative and analytical, Hughes-Wilson searches for hard answers and scrutinizes why crucial intelligence is so often ignored, misunderstood, or spun by politicians and seasoned generals alike.From yesterday's spies to tomorrow's cyber world, The Secret State is a fascinating and thought-provoking history of this ever-changing and ever-important subject.
My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy
Kim Philby - 1968
“Kim” Philby, the ringleader of the legendary Cambridge spies. A member of the British establishment, Philby joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1940, rose to the head of Soviet counterintelligence, and, as MI6’s liaison with the CIA and the FBI, betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians, fatally compromising covert actions to roll back the Iron Curtain in the early years of the Cold War.Written from Moscow in 1967, My Silent War shook the world and introduced a new archetype in fiction: the unrepentant spy. It inspired John le Carré’s Smiley novels and the later espionage novels of Graham Greene. Kim Philby was history’s most successful spy. He was also an exceptional writer who gave us the great iconic story of the Cold War and revolutionized, in the process, the art of espionage writing.
Deep Undercover: My Secret Life and Tangled Allegiances as a KGB Spy in America
Jack Barsky - 2017
. . or lead to unlikely redemption.Millions watched the CBS 60 Minutes special on Jack Barsky in 2015. Now, in this fascinating memoir, the Soviet KGB agent tells his story of gut-wrenching choices, appalling betrayals, his turbulent inner world, and the secret life he lived for years without getting caught.On October 8, 1978, a Canadian national by the name of William Dyson stepped off a plane at O'Hare International Airport and proceeded toward Customs and Immigration.Two days later, William Dyson ceased to exist.The identity was a KGB forgery, used to get one of their own--a young, ambitious East German agent--into the United States.The plan succeeded, and the spy's new identity was born: Jack Barsky. He would work undercover for the next decade, carrying out secret operations during the Cold War years . . . until a surprising shift in his allegiance challenged everything he thought he believed.Deep Undercover will reveal the secret life of this man without a country and tell the story no one ever expected him to tell.
The Return of Christendom: Demography, Politics, and the Coming Christian Majority
Steve Turley - 2019
From politics to the media, from education to the arts, liberals seem to be completely in control. It's no wonder, then, that so many prominent conservative traditionalists are hopelessly pessimistic about the future of Western Civilization. But what if this is just one side of the equation? What if it turns out that brewing beneath the surface, a renewed Christian age is rising? In this thought-provoking book, Dr. Steve Turley argues that there is in fact two revolutions concurrently taking place: a demographic revolution and a political revolution, both of which suggest a significant conservative Christian resurgence. HERE’S A PREVIEW OF WHAT YOU’LL LEARN ……….
Why scholars believe that the fertility discrepancy between conservative Christians and secularists means a far more conservative future
How Europe is already reversing its demographic decline with a nationalist baby boom
How conservative Christianity is on the rise in the US
Why scholars believe there is a resurgence of Christianity in Europe
How these demographic and religious trends are already reshaping much of European society
And much, much more!
Drawing from scholarly studies and current events, Dr. Turley's study will inspire you to reject the naysayers predicting the twilight of the West, and instead embrace a hopeful vision of cultural renewal and the coming Christian majority. Get your copy today!
Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific
Robert D. Kaplan - 2014
Kaplan offers up a vivid snapshot of the nations surrounding the South China Sea, the conflicts brewing in the region at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and their implications for global peace and stability.
Black Site: The CIA in the Post-9/11 World
Philip Mudd - 2019
Almost overnight, an intelligence organization converted itself into a weaponized warfighting machine, one that raised questions about how far America would go to pursue al-Qa’ida. Now, more than fifteen years later, ex-CIA executive Philip Mudd comes forward with a never-before-told account of the 9/11 story, one that illuminates the profound impact that enhanced interrogation techniques and other initiatives known internally as “The Program” took on those who administered them. With unprecedented access to officials at the highest levels―including Director George Tenet―Mudd goes beyond the 2014 Senate report to show us what life was really like at the CIA prisons and why interrogators were forced to make decisions that they still ponder today. As hair-raising as it is revelatory, Black Site shows us the tragedy and triumph of the CIA during its most difficult hour.
America's War for the Greater Middle East
Andrew J. Bacevich - 2016
Bacevich provides a searing reassessment of U.S. military policy in the Middle East over the past four decades. From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift? Andrew J. Bacevich, one of the country’s most respected voices on foreign affairs, offers an incisive critical history of this ongoing military enterprise—now more than thirty years old and with no end in sight. During the 1980s, Bacevich argues, a great transition occurred. As the Cold War wound down, the United States initiated a new conflict—a War for the Greater Middle East—that continues to the present day. The long twilight struggle with the Soviet Union had involved only occasional and sporadic fighting. But as this new war unfolded, hostilities became persistent. From the Balkans and East Africa to the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, U.S. forces embarked upon a seemingly endless series of campaigns across the Islamic world. Few achieved anything remotely like conclusive success. Instead, actions undertaken with expectations of promoting peace and stability produced just the opposite. As a consequence, phrases like “permanent war” and “open-ended war” have become part of everyday discourse. Connecting the dots in a way no other historian has done before, Bacevich weaves a compelling narrative out of episodes as varied as the Beirut bombing of 1983, the Mogadishu firefight of 1993, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the rise of ISIS in the present decade. Understanding what America’s costly military exertions have wrought requires seeing these seemingly discrete events as parts of a single war. It also requires identifying the errors of judgment made by political leaders in both parties and by senior military officers who share responsibility for what has become a monumental march to folly. This Bacevich unflinchingly does. A twenty-year army veteran who served in Vietnam, Andrew J. Bacevich brings the full weight of his expertise to this vitally important subject. America’s War for the Greater Middle East is a bracing after-action report from the front lines of history. It will fundamentally change the way we view America’s engagement in the world’s most volatile region.Advance praise for America’s War for the Greater Middle East“In one arresting book after another, Bacevich has relentlessly laid bare the failings of American foreign policy since the Cold War. This one is his sad crowning achievement: the story of our long and growing military entanglement in the region of the most tragic, bitter, and intractable of conflicts.”—Richard K. Betts, director, Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University “An unparalleled historical tour de force certain to affect the formation of future U.S. foreign policy . . . Every citizen aspiring to high office needs not only to read but to study and learn from this important book. This is one of the most serious and essential books I have read in more than half a century of public service.”—Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.) “Bacevich asks and answers a provocative, inconvenient question: In a multigenerational war in the Middle East, ‘Why has the world’s mightiest military achieved so little?’ ”—Graham Allison, director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of GovernmentFrom the Hardcover edition.
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.
Understanding the Black Economy and Black Money in India: An Enquiry into Causes, Consequences & Remedies
Arun Kumar - 2017
It has crippled the country’s economy for a long time to come. In this book, Arun Kumar, the country’s leading authority on the black economy, tells us why Modi’s gambit failed. He shows us the way in which the problem can be rooted out, provided the government has the political will and determination to act.Today, the black economy is estimated to be 62 per cent of GDP—or about `93 lakh crore ($1.4 trillion). Corrupt businessmen, corrupt politicians, and corrupt members of the executive (bureaucrats, police and the judiciary) are responsible for controlling the black economy and enabling its growth. If the black economy were to be dismantled and turned into a part of the ‘white’ economy, the country’s rate of growth would be 12 per cent. If it had not grown the way it has since the 1970s, India’s per capita income today would be approximately `7 lakh per annum ($11,000) and India would become the second largest economy in the world. If the black economy were taxed at current rates, it would generate `37 lakh crore in additional taxes and the union budget would show a surplus of `31 lakh crore instead of a deficit.The failure of successive governments to tackle the problem effectively has been the single biggest obstacle to eradicating poverty. It is the cause of both widespread policy failure and the inability of the nation to improve its living conditions rapidly.
A Bantu in my Bathroom
Eusebius McKaiser - 2012
Nobody writes like this.’ - Jonathan Jansen Why are South Africans so uncomfortable with deep disagreement? Why do we lash out at people with opposing views without taking the time to engage logically with their arguments? Eusebius McKaiser is on a mission to raise the level of debate in South Africa. He provokes us from our comfort zones and lures us into the debates that shape our opinions and our society. With surprising candour and intensely personal examples, McKaiser examines our deepest-felt prejudices and ingrained assumptions. Don’t expect to read this book and escape with your defences intact. Immensely readable and completely engaging, McKaiser tackles deeply South African questions of race, sexuality and culture, including: •Can blacks be racist? •Why is our society so violent? •Is it morally okay to be prejudiced against skinny lovers? •Why is the presidential penis so problematic? •Is unconditional love ever a good thing? •Is it necessary to search for a national identity?