They thought they had found a safe haven in the green hills of England. They were wrong. One by one, the Russian oligarchs, dissidents, and gangsters who fled to Britain after Vladimir Putin came to power dropped dead in strange or suspicious circumstances. One by one, their British lawyers and fixers met similarly grisly ends. Yet, one by one, the British authorities shut down every investigation -- and carried on courting the Kremlin. The spies in the riverside headquarters of MI6 looked on with horror as the scope of the Kremlin's global killing campaign became all too clear. And, across the Atlantic, American intelligence officials watched with mounting alarm as the bodies piled up, concerned that the tide of death could spread to the United States. Those fears intensified when a one-time Kremlin henchman was found bludgeoned to death in a Washington, D.C. penthouse. But it wasn't until Putin's assassins unleashed a deadly chemical weapon on the streets of Britain, endangering hundreds of members of the public in a failed attempt to slay the double agent Sergei Skripal, that Western governments were finally forced to admit that the killing had spun out of control. Unflinchingly documenting the growing web of death on British and American soil, Heidi Blake bravely exposes the Kremlin's assassination campaign as part of Putin's ruthless pursuit of global dominance -- and reveals why Western governments have failed to stop the bloodshed. The unforgettable story that emerges whisks us from London's high-end night clubs to Miami's million-dollar hideouts ultimately renders a bone-chilling portrait of money, betrayal, and murder, written with the pace and propulsive power of a thriller. Based on a vast trove of unpublished documents, bags of discarded police evidence, and interviews with hundreds of insiders, this heart-stopping international investigation uncovers one of the most important -- and terrifying -- geopolitical stories of our time.

    Kennan. On his graduation from Princeton in 1925, moved perhaps by the example of his distant cousin George Kennan, who wrote the classic work on Siberia, the younger George prepared to enter the Foreign Service. After a short exposure to diplomacy in Germany and on the Baltic Coast, the young consul felt so inadequate that he was about to resign. His career was salvaged when the State Department registered him as a student of Russian at the University of Berlin, and here he began to acquire his knowledge of and insight into the Russian character which were to serve him so well.It has been Mr. Kennan's destiny to be posted repeatedly at the threshold of crises. His fluency in Russian make him an indispensable member of Ambassador Bullitt's small staff which reopened the American Embassy in Moscow in 1933. He was an observer at Stalin's famous purge trials. He was in Prague when the Germans took over Czechoslovakia. When Hitler declared war on the United States, Mr. Kennan was in Berlin and was interned for six months. He was Harriman's right-hand man in Moscow from 1944 to 1946 during the strenuous war negotiations with the Kremlin. Throughout this long exposure to the agony of Europe, Mr. Kennan was evolving policies for dealing with the Russians and, after the end of the war, the Germans. His Russian policies he defined in a series of farsighted Position Papers, which were sent to the State Department and pigeonholed without comment. These historic papers have been released by the State Department and are published at the end of this volume.When he was recalled to Washington in 1946, Kennan came into his own as a positive force in American foreign policy. President Truman and Secretary Marshall gave him the scope which F.D.R. had denied him. Kennan played a formative part in the development and application of the Marshall Plan. He was sent to Japan to help reform our occupational policy. He drew up a blueprint for the peaceful settlement of Central Europe -- a settlement in which he strongly resisted the rearming of Germany with nuclear weapons.This long and detailed account of twenty-five years of diplomatic history is written with extraordinary eloquence and lucidity. Mr. Kennan's portraits of Stalin, William Bullitt, Alexander Kirk, Harry Hopkins, General Marshall, Ambassador Harriman and Charles Bohlen are superbly drawn. The generous excerpts from his journals reveal his sensitivity to human details and his skill at evoking scenes and incidents from his travels in many lands.Mr. Kennan never loses the overview. Transcending he personal encounters, the specific events and positions, are his clearly articulated principles for the just government of foreign affairs in a world for which, like it or not, we as Americans bear a major responsibility. This makes these memoirs the most important book Mr. Kennan has yet written.

    Barton Gellman’s informant called himself ‘Verax’ - the truth-teller. It was only later that Verax unmasked himself as Edward Snowden. But Gellman’s primary role in bringing Snowden’s revelations to light, for which he shared the Pulitzer Prize, is only the beginning of this gripping real-life spy story. Snowden unlocked the door: here Gellman describes what he found on the other side over the course of a years-long journey of investigation. It is also the story of his own escalating battle against unknown digital adversaries after he discovered his own name on a file in the leaked document trove and realised that he himself was under attack.Through a gripping narrative of paranoia, clandestine operations and jaw-dropping revelations, Dark Mirror delineates in full for the first time the hidden superstructure that connects government espionage with Silicon Valley. Who is spying on us and why? Here are the answers.©2020 Barton Gellman (P)2020 Penguin Audio

    Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy brings to light for the first time this riveting secret side of Hemingway’s life—when he worked closely with both the American OSS, a precursor to the CIA, and the Soviet NKVD, the USSR’s forerunner to the KGB to defeat Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.Reynolds dig deep into Hemingway’s involvement in World War II, from his recruitment by both the Americans and the Soviets—who valued Hemingway for his journalistic skills and access to sources—through his key role in gaining tactical intelligence for the Allies during the liberation of Paris, to his later doubts about communist ideology and his undercover work in Cuba. As he examines the links between his work as a spy and as an author, Reynolds reveals how Hemingway’s wartime experiences shook his faith in literature and contributed to the writer’s block that plagued him for much of the final two decades of his life. Reynolds also illuminates how those same experiences also informed one of Hemingway’s greatest works—The Old Man and the Sea—the final novel published during his lifetime.A unique portrait as fast-paced and exciting as the best espionage thrillers, Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy illuminates a hidden side of a revered artist and is a thrilling addition to the annals of World War II.

    Orphaned as a teenager, he came to America in search of an education, a home, and the war that would at last bring him fame and honor. As George Washington’s most trusted aide, Hamilton helped to win the American Revolution—but after the war, his enemies lost no time accusing him of trying to sell his country back to the British. He was the most powerful member of Washington’s presidential cabinet—so why did Adams and Jefferson hate him so much?In this book, you will learn how the author of the Federalist Papers and the first Secretary of the Treasury nearly ruined his career by fighting duels, seducing women, and getting involved in America’s first sex scandal. The duel that killed Alexander Hamilton is the most famous duel in American history, but you’ll have to come up with your own answer to its greatest mystery: who shot first, Hamilton or Burr?

    Many have speculated about what might have happened or what must have happened, but no reporter has been able to get the full story -- until now.In The Wizard of Lies, Diana B. Henriques of The New York Times -- who has led the paper’s coverage of the Madoff scandal since the day the story broke -- has written the definitive book on the man and his scheme, drawing on unprecedented access and more than one hundred interviews with people at all levels and on all sides of the crime, including Madoff’s first interviews for publication since his arrest. Henriques also provides vivid details from the various lawsuits, government investigations, and court filings that will explode the myths that have come to surround the story.A true-life financial thriller, The Wizard of Lies contrasts Madoff's remarkable rise on Wall Street, where he became one of the country’s most trusted and respected traders, with dramatic scenes from his accelerating slide toward self-destruction. It is also the most complete account of the heartbreaking personal disasters and landmark legal battles triggered by Madoff’s downfall -- the suicides, business failures, fractured families, shuttered charities -- and the clear lessons this timeless scandal offers to Washington, Wall Street, and Main Street.

    How did Mair Thomas, a musician brought up in the Welsh valleys, find herself in the rarefied atmosphere of Hut Six, surrounded by hundreds of others, all desperately trying to break the German Enigma Code? Sworn to secrecy and working in cramped and uncomfortable conditions, Mair discovered her degree in German and Music was just what was needed. Drawn from the public schools and Oxbridge her background was very different to that of most of her colleagues and she didn't immediately fit in. This captivating memoir unpacks her daily life and explores the relationships she built. My Secret Life in Hut Six provides a fascinating insight into one woman's battle against Nazi Germany vividly capturing an era of danger, strain and day to day difficulties that were brightened occasionally by visits from the top brass, such as Winston Churchill.

    After surviving the shoot-down of his reconnaissance plane and his capture on May 1, 1960, Powers endured sixty-one days of rigorous interrogation by the KGB, a public trial, a conviction for espionage, and the start of a ten-year sentence. After nearly two years, the U.S. government obtained his release from prison in a dramatic exchange for convicted Soviet spy Rudolph Abel. The narrative is a tremendously exciting suspense story about a man who was labeled a traitor by many of his countrymen but who emerged a Cold War hero.

    An orphaned niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she converted her Gilded Age childhood of denial and secrecy into an irreconcilable marriage with her ambitious fifth cousin Franklin. Despite their inability to make each other happy, Franklin Roosevelt transformed Eleanor from a settlement house volunteer on New York’s Lower East Side into a matching partner in New York’s most important power couple in a generation. When Eleanor discovered Franklin’s betrayal with her younger, prettier social secretary, Lucy Mercer, she offered a divorce and vowed to face herself honestly. Here is an Eleanor both more vulnerable and more aggressive, more psychologically aware and sexually adaptable than we knew. She came to accept FDR’s bond with his executive assistant, Missy LeHand; she allowed her children to live their own lives, as she never could; and she explored her sexual attraction to women, among them a star female reporter on FDR’s first presidential campaign, and younger men. Eleanor needed emotional connection. She pursued deeper relationships wherever she could find them. Throughout her life and travels, there was always another person or place she wanted to heal. As FDR struggled to recover from polio, Eleanor became a voice for the voiceless, her husband’s proxy in presidential ambition, and then the people’s proxy in the White House. Later, she would be the architect of international human rights and world citizen of the Atomic Age, urging Americans to cope with the anxiety of global annihilation by cultivating a “world mind.” She insisted that we cannot live for ourselves alone but must learn to live together or we will die together. Drawing on new research, Michaelis’s riveting portrait is not just a comprehensive biography of a major American figure, but the story of an American ideal: how our freedom is always a choice. Eleanor rediscovers a model of what is noble and evergreen in the American character, a model we need today more than ever.

    Includes the cases of Jack the Ripper, Reg Christie, the Great Train Robbery, plus notorious sex scandals and terrorism. 16 pages of photographs. Index.

    From World War II to the Cold War, Angleton operated beyond the view of the public, Congress, and even the president. He unwittingly shared intelligence secrets with Soviet spy Kim Philby, a member of the notorious Cambridge spy ring. He launched mass surveillance by opening the mail of hundreds of thousands of Americans. He abetted a scheme to aid Israel’s own nuclear efforts, disregarding U.S. security. He committed perjury and obstructed the JFK assassination investigation. He oversaw a massive spying operation on the antiwar and black nationalist movements and he initiated an obsessive search for communist moles that nearly destroyed the Agency.In The Ghost, investigative reporter Jefferson Morley tells Angleton’s dramatic story, from his friendship with the poet Ezra Pound through the underground gay milieu of mid-century Washington to the Kennedy assassination to the Watergate scandal. From the agency’s MKULTRA mind-control experiments to the wars of the Mideast, Angleton wielded far more power than anyone knew. Yet during his seemingly lawless reign in the CIA, he also proved himself to be a formidable adversary to our nation’s enemies, acquiring a mythic stature within the CIA that continues to this day.

    This popular lack of acquaintance-nurtured by gauzy imagery of Maine summer cottages, gray-haired national grandmothers, July 4th sparklers & cowboy boots-has let national politics create a dynasticized presidency that would have horrified the Founders. After all, they'd led a revolution against a succession of royal Georges. Onetime Republican strategist Phillips reveals how four generations of Bushes have ascended the ladder of national power since WWI, becoming entrenched within the establishment-Yale, Wall Street, the Senate, the CIA, the vice presidency & presidency-thru a recurrent flair for old-boy networking, national security involvement, criminality & deception. By uncovering relationships & connecting facts, Phillips comes to the conclusion that the Bush family has systematically used its financial & social empire to gain the White House, subverting the very core of democracy. In their ambition, the Bushes ultimately reinvented themselves with facile timing, twisting & turning from silver spoon Yankees to born-again evangelical Texans. As Jeb Bush considers a run for the presidency, American Dynasty explains what it all means.

    And Young" (1992) is still required reading in all branches of the military. Every day the authors receive letters from readers wanting to know what's happened to the characters they came to admire such as Ed "Too Tall to Fly" Freeman and Bruce "Old Snake" Crandall. There are also questions about whether they are still in touch with their North Vietnam counterparts and where they are now.Many of these questions are finally answered in title "We are Soldiers Still", which recounts a unique journey back to the battlefields by the commanders and veterans of both sides - a journey which ended with the authors and some of the comrades stranded overnight, alone, on the isolated field code-named Landing Zone XRay where so many perished. They will tell what was learned and felt during a night when a meteor shower filled the sky and peace came upon them. The authors mix gritty and vivid detail with reverence and respect for their comrades. Their authority on the military, their ability to capture man's sense of heroism and brotherhood, and readers' fascination with their story is sure to make this a must-buy book for all history buffs. While "We Were Soldiers" brought to life an important moment in US history, "We are Soldiers Still" will illuminate how that history has changed the authors, the men involved, and our country.

    From the time of the Tsars to the waning days of Communist regime, Russian leaders tried to control the flow of ideas by controlling its citizens' movements. They believed strict limits on travel combined with censorship was the best way to escape the influence of subversive Western ideologies. Yet Russians continued to emigrate westward, both to seek new opportunities and to flee political crises at home.Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Russians' presence in Western countries - particularly the United States - has been for the Kremlin both the biggest threat and the biggest opportunity. It sought for years to use the Russian emigre community to achieve Russia's goals - espionage to be sure, but also to influence policies and public opinion. Russia's exiles are a potent mix of the very rich and the very driven, some deeply hostile to their homeland and others deeply patriotic. Russia, a vast, insular nation, depends on its emigres - but it cannot always count on them.Celebrated Moscow-based journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan masterfully look at the complex, ever-shifting role of Russian émigrés from the October Revolution to present day. From comely secret agents to tragically doomed dissidents, the story of Russian émigrés is at times thrilling, at times touching, and always full of intrigue. But their influence and importance is an invaluable angle through which to understand Russia in the modern world.The Compatriots provides an intriguing and thought provoking gripping history of Russian score settling around the globe.©2019 Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan (P)2019 Hachette Audio

    Attracting no attention, Stanislav Shumovsky had completed his journey from Moscow to enrol at a top American university. He was concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students heading to prestigious academic institutions. But he was after far more than an excellent education.Recognizing Russia was 100 years behind the encircling capitalist powers, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had sent Shumovsky on a mission to acquire America’s vital secrets to help close the USSR’s yawning technology gap. The road to victory began in the classrooms and laboratories of MIT.Shumovsky’s destination soon became the unwitting finishing school for elite Russian spies. The USSR first transformed itself into a military powerhouse able to confront and defeat Nazi Germany. Then in an extraordinary feat that astonished the West, in 1947 American ingenuity and innovation exfiltrated by Shumovsky made it possible to build and unveil the most advanced strategic bomber in the world.Following his lead, other MIT-trained Soviet spies helped acquire the secrets of the Manhattan Project. By 1949, Stalin’s fleet of TU-4s, now equipped with atomic bombs could devastate the US on his command. Appropriately codenamed BLÉRIOT, Shumovsky was an aviation spy. Shumovsky’s espionage was so successful that the USSR acquired every American aviation secret from his network of agents in factories and at top secret military research institutes.In this thrilling history, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation. She pieces together every aspect of Shumovsky’s life and character using information derived from American and Russian archives, exposing how even Shirley Temple and Franklin D. Roosevelt unwittingly advanced his schemes.