Book picks similar to
A Spy's Journey: A CIA Memoir by Floyd Paseman
non-fiction
history
intelligence
biography
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
In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story
John Stockwell - 1978
Beginning a career in '64, he spent six years in Africa, Chief of Base in the Katanga during the Bob Denard invasion in '68, then Chief of Station in Bujumbura, Burundi in '70, before being transferred to oversee Vietnamese Tay Ninh province intelligence operations. He was awarded a CIA Medal of Merit for keeping his post open until Saigon's '75 fall. In December of 1976, Stockwell resigned from the CIA, opposed to the methods & results of CIA paramilitary operations in the Third World & testified before Congressional committees. Two years later, he wrote the exposé 'In Search of Enemies', about that experience & its implications. He claimed the CIA was counterproductive to national security & that its secret wars afforded no benefit. The CIA made the Angolan MPLA to be an enemy despite the fact the MPLA wanted relations with the USA & hadn't committed aggressive acts. In 1978, on TV's '60 Minutes', he claimed CIA Director William Colby & National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had systematically lied to Congress about CIA operations. Stockwell was one of the 1st professionals to leave the CIA to go public. The CIA retaliated by suing him in the 4th District Court in Washington DC. Part of the suit intended to eliminate the possibility of selling the story for the purpose of making a movie & required future publications be submitted for CIA review. Unable to afford contesting the case, Stockwell filed for bankruptcy in Austin, TX. After the litigation was processed thru bankruptcy, the CIA dropped the suit. His book is useful for researchers & journalists interested in uncovering information about the conduct of US foreign policy in Africa & Asia. For example, the book tells of a CIA officer having Patrice Lumumba's body in his car trunk one night in then Elizabethville, Congo. Stockwell mentions in a footnote that at the time he didn't know the CIA was documented as having repeatedly tried to arrange Lumumba's assassination. His concerns were that, although many CIA colleagues had integrity, the organization harmed national security & its secret wars harmed innocents.
Hogs in the Sand: A Gulf War A-10 Pilot's Combat Journal
Buck Wyndham - 2020
The men who took it through walls of flak and surface-to-air missiles to help defeat the world's fourth-largest army were as untested as their airplanes, so they relied on personal determination and the amazing A-10 to accomplish their missions, despite the odds.Hogs in the Sand is the gripping journey of one of those pilots as he fights an increasingly terrifying war, all the while attempting to win over a woman and keep control of his internal demons. For anyone who has admired the Warthog, seen it in action, or called upon it to be their salvation, this story will fulfill a desire to virtually strap into the cockpit, while gaining unprecedented understanding of the mind of a modern combat pilot.
Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy: Ernest Hemingway's Secret Adventures, 1935-1961
Nicholas E. Reynolds - 2017
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.
The Company
Robert Littell - 2002
In a style intelligent and ironic, Littell tells it like it was: CIA agents fighting not only 'the good fight' against foreign enemies, but sometimes the bad one as well, with the ends justifying such means as CIA-organized assassinations, covert wars, kidnappings, and toppling of legitimate governments. Behind every manoeuvre and counter-manoeuvre, though, one question spans the length of the book... Who is the mole within the CIA? The Company - an astonishing novel that captures the life and death struggle of an entire generation of CIA operatives during a long Cold War.
Collateral Damage: Britain, America, and Europe in the Age of Trump
Kim Darroch - 2020
"@realDonaldTrump: The wacky ambassador that the UK foisted on the United States is not someone we are thrilled with, a very stupid guy . . . We will no longer deal with him." Kim Darroch is one of the UK's most experienced and respected diplomats, and this unvarnished, behind-the-scenes account will reveal the inside story behind his resignation; describe the challenges of dealing with the Trump White House; and offer a diplomat's perspective on Brexit, and how it looked to Britain's closest ally. Darroch was the British Ambassador to the US as the age of Trump dawned and Brexit unfolded. He explains why the British embassy expected a Trump victory from as early as February 2016, what part every key figure—from Steve Bannon to Sarah Sanders—has played in Trump's administration, and what balanced policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic should consider during this era of seismic change and populist politics. A riveting account from the best-informed insider, Collateral Damage charts the strangest and most convulsive period in the recent history of Britain and the US—and shows how thirty months threatened to overturn three centuries of history.
The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth
Mark Mazzetti - 2013
The Way of the Knife is the untold story of that shadow war: a campaign that has blurred the lines between soldiers and spies and lowered the bar for waging war across the globe. America has pursued its enemies with killer drones and special operations troops; trained privateers for assassination missions and used them to set up clandestine spying networks; and relied on mercurial dictators, untrustworthy foreign intelligence services, and proxy armies.This new approach to war has been embraced by Washington as a lower risk, lower cost alternative to the messy wars of occupation and has been championed as a clean and surgical way of conflict. But the knife has created enemies just as it has killed them. It has fomented resentments among allies, fueled instability, and created new weapons unbound by the normal rules of accountability during wartime.
Soldier Spy
Tom Marcus - 2016
A shocking, honest account revealing never-before-seen detail into MI5's operation.
'I do it because it is all I know.
I'm a hunter of people and I'm damn good at it.'
Bestselling author Tom Marcus is the first MI5 officer to tell the true story of British counter terrorism operations on our streets. Recruited after the 7/7 attacks on London, Tom quickly found himself immersed in the tense world of watching, following and infiltrating networks of terrorists, spies and foreign agents. It was a job that took over his life for months at a time and cost him dear, taking him to the limit of physical and mental endurance. Filled with extraordinary, searing accounts of operations that saved countless lives, Soldier Spy is the only authentic account by an ex-MI5 officer of the round-the-clock battle to keep this country's streets safe. 'Very well written, gives a startling amount of operational detail, the biggest shock of all - MI5 agreed to its publication' Sunday Times 'A blistering, visceral insight into life on the front line against terror, revealed in remarkable detail' Daily Telegraph 'Startling, absolutely fascinating. A footsoldier's account out on the street. A vivid picture of surveillance'Midweek, Radio 4 'Gripping. One of the most successful MI5 undercover surveillance officers of his time' Sun
The Art of Betrayal: Life and Death in the British Secret Service
Gordon Corera - 2011
Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of James Bond and John le Carre. The Art of Betrayal provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction. It tells the story of how the secret service has changed since the end of World War II and by focusing on the people and the relationships that lie at the heart of espionage, revealing the danger, the drama, the intrigue, the moral ambiguities and the occasional comedy that comes with working for British intelligence.From the defining period of the early Cold War through to the modern day, MI6 has undergone a dramatic transformation from a gung-ho, amateurish organisation to its modern, no less controversial, incarnation. Gordon Corera reveals the triumphs and disasters along the way. The grand dramas of the Cold War and after - the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 11 September 2001 attacks and the Iraq war - are the backdrop for the human stories of the individual spies whose stories form the centrepiece of the narrative. But some of the individuals featured here, in turn, helped shape the course of those events. Corera draws on the first-hand accounts of those who have spied, lied and in some cases nearly died in service of the state. They range from the spymasters to the agents they ran to their sworn enemies. Many of these accounts are based on exclusive interviews and access. From Afghanistan to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the voices of those who have worked on the front line of Britain's secret wars. And the truth is often more remarkable than the fiction.
An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent
Owen Matthews - 2019
Born of a German father and a Russian mother in Baku in 1895, he moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. A member of the angry and deluded generation who found new, radical faiths after their experiences on the battlefields of the First World War, Sorge became a fanatical communist - and the Soviet Union's most formidable spy.Like many great spies, Sorge was an effortless seducer, combining charm with ruthless manipulation. He did not have to go undercover to find out closely guarded state secrets - his victims willingly shared them. As a foreign correspondent, he infiltrated and influenced the highest echelons of German, Chinese and Japanese society in the years leading up to and including the Second World War. His intelligence regarding Operation Barbarossa and Japanese intentions not to invade Siberia in 1941 proved pivotal to the Soviet counteroffensive in the Battle of Moscow, which in turn determined the outcome of the war.Never before has Sorge's story been told from the Russian side as well as the German and Japanese. Owen Matthews takes a sweeping historical perspective and draws on a wealth of declassified Soviet archives - along with testimonies from those who knew and worked with Sorge - to rescue the riveting story of the man described by Ian Fleming as 'the most formidable spy in history'.
Thatcher’s Spy: My Life as an MI5 Agent Inside Sinn Féin
Willie Carlin - 2019
So began the dramatic extraction of Margaret Thatcher’s key undercover agent in Sinn Féin – Willie Carlin, aka Agent 3007. For 11 years the former British soldier worked alongside former IRA commander Martin McGuinness in the republican movement’s political wing in Derry. He was MI5’s man at McGuinness’ side and gave the British State unprecedented insight into the IRA leader’s strategic thinking. Carlin worked with McGuinness to develop Sinn Féin’s election strategy after the 1981 hunger strike, and the MI5 and later FRU agent’s reports on McGuinness, Adams and other republicans were read by the British Cabinet, including Margaret Thatcher herself. When Carlin’s cover was blown in mid-1985 thanks to one of his old MI5 handlers being jailed as a Soviet spy, Thatcher authorised the use of her jet to whisk him to safety. Incredibly, it was another British ‘super spy’ inside the IRA’s secretive counter-intelligence unit, the ‘nuttin’ squad’, who saved Carlin’s life. The Derry man is perhaps the only person alive thanks to the information provided by the ‘jewel in the crown’ of British military intelligence – Freddie Scappaticci, aka Stakeknife. In Thatcher’s Spy, the Cold War meets Northern Ireland’s Dirty War in the remarkable real-life story of a deep under-cover British intelligence agent, a man now doomed forever to look over his shoulder. . .
Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior
Hugh Shelton - 2010
Shelton chronicles his incredible journey from a small farming community in North Carolina to the highest level of American military and political power at the Pentagon and White House.As one of the nation's elite Special Forces soldiers, Shelton served twice in Vietnam, commanding a Green Beret unit and then an airborne infantry company. He was awarded a Bronze Star for valor and a Purple Heart for a wound suffered when a booby trap drove a poisoned stake through his leg.Shelton rose up the ranks and was assistant division commander of the 101st Airborne Division as they invaded Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, then led the 20,000 American troops tasked with restoring Haiti's deposed President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, to power. Promoted to 4-star General, he became Commander in Chief of U.S. Special Operations Command (including Delta Force, Navy SEALS and other top secret Special Mission Units).But it was while serving as Chairman during both the Clinton and Bush administrations that he faced his biggest challenges, including his role as chief architect of the U.S. military response to 9/11. General Shelton speaks frankly of how decisions were made behind the scenes in the inner sanctum of the E-Ring and Oval Office, and reveals key military operations and meetings that have not yet been revealed, including:* High-ranking Cabinet member proposes intentionally allowing an American pilot to be killed by the Iraqis to have an excuse to retaliate and go to war.* Details of a contentious Camp David meeting among President George W. Bush and his National Security Council immediately after 9/11, where internal battle lines were drawn---and Shelton (along with Colin Powell) convinced President Bush to do the right thing.* How Rumsfeld persuaded General Tommy Franks to bypass the Joint Chiefs, leading to a badly flawed Iraq war plan that failed to anticipate the devastating after-effects of the insurgency and civil war.* Attempts to kill Usama bin Laden that were shot down by our State Department.* CIAbotched high-profile terrorist snatches, leaving Shelton's Special Operations teams to clean up their mess.* How Shelton "persuaded" Haiti's dictator to flee the country. * And much more.Yet it's Shelton's amazing personal story that puts his military career in perspective. It began with a fall from a ladder in his backyard, resulting in total paralysis from the neck down---and a risky experimental procedure, so dangerous that if it didn't cure him, chances are it would kill him.Revealing, compelling, and controversial, this is the story of a man whose integrity and ethics were always above reproach, and who dedicated his life to serving his country.
Stalin's Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess
Andrew Lownie - 2015
'One of the great biographies of 2015.' The Times
Fully updated edition including recently released information.
A Guardian Book of the Year. The Times Best Biography of the Year. Mail on Sunday Biography of the Year. Daily Mail
Biography of Year.
Spectator Book of the Year. BBC History Book of the Year.
'A remarkable and definitive portrait ' Frederick Forsyth
'Andrew Lownie's biography of Guy Burgess, Stalin's Englishman ... shrewd, thorough, revelatory.' William Boyd
'In the sad and funny Stalin's Englishman, [Lownie] manages to convey the charm as well as the turpitude.' Craig Brown
Guy Burgess was the most important, complex and fascinating of 'The Cambridge Spies' - Maclean, Philby, Blunt - all brilliant young men recruited in the 1930s to betray their country to the Soviet Union. An engaging and charming companion to many, an unappealing, utterly ruthless manipulator to others, Burgess rose through academia, the BBC, the Foreign Office, MI5 and MI6, gaining access to thousands of highly sensitive secret documents which he passed to his Russian handlers.In this first full biography, Andrew Lownie shows us how even Burgess's chaotic personal life of drunken philandering did nothing to stop his penetration and betrayal of the British Intelligence Service. Even when he was under suspicion, the fabled charm which had enabled many close personal relationships with influential Establishment figures (including Winston Churchill) prevented his exposure as a spy for many years.Through interviews with more than a hundred people who knew Burgess personally, many of whom have never spoken about him before, and the discovery of hitherto secret files, Stalin's Englishman brilliantly unravels the many lives of Guy Burgess in all their intriguing, chilling, colourful, tragi-comic wonder.
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
Steve Coll - 2004
It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005.Prize-winning journalist Steve Coll has spent years reporting from the Middle East, accessed previously classified government files and interviewed senior US officials and foreign spymasters. Here he gives the full inside story of the CIA's covert funding of an Islamic jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, explores how this sowed the seeds of Bin Laden's rise, traces how he built his global network and brings to life the dramatic battles within the US government over national security. Above all, he lays bare American intelligence's continual failure to grasp the rising threat of terrorism in the years leading to 9/11 - and its devastating consequences.
Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America's First Cyber Spy
Eric O'Neill - 2019
With zero training in face-to-face investigation, O'Neill found himself in a windowless, high-security office in the newly formed Information Assurance Section, tasked officially with helping the FBI secure its outdated computer system against hackers and spies--and unofficially with collecting evidence against his new boss, Robert Hanssen, an exacting and rage-prone veteran agent with a fondness for handguns. In the months that follow, O'Neill's self-esteem and young marriage unravel under the pressure of life in Room 9930, and he questions the very purpose of his mission. But as Hanssen outmaneuvers an intelligence community struggling to keep up with the new reality of cybersecurity, he also teaches O'Neill the game of spycraft. The student will just have to learn to outplay his teacher if he wants to win.A tension-packed stew of power, paranoia, and psychological manipulation, Gray Day is also a cautionary tale of how the United States allowed Russia to become dominant in cyberespionage--and how we might begin to catch up.