political science / political freedom & security / intelligence

Presents the untold story of Master Sergeant Donald Nichols, and how he became a spy master, complete with his own secret base, covert army, and rules during the Korean War.

"An unprecedented high-level master narrative of America's intelligence wars, from the only person ever to helm both the CIA and the NSA, at a time of heinous new threats and momentous change For General Michael Hayden, playing to the edge means playing so close to the line that you get chalk dust on your cleats. Otherwise, by playing back, you may protect yourself, but you will be less successful in protecting America. "Play to the edge" was Hayden's guiding principle when he ran the National Security Agency, and it remained so when he ran the CIA. In his view, many shortsighted and uninformed people are quick to criticize, and this book will give them much to chew on but little easy comfort. It is an unapologetic insider's look told from the perspective of the people who faced awesome responsibilities head on, in the moment. How did American intelligence respond to terrorism, a major war, and the most sweeping technological revolution in the last five hundred years? What was the NSA before 9/11 and how did it change in its aftermath? Why did the NSA begin the controversial terrorist surveillance program that included the acquisition of domestic phone records? What else was set in motion during this period that formed the backdrop for the infamous Snowden revelations in 2013? "--.

The untold story of the Ya'mas, Israel's special forces undercover team that infiltrated Palestinian terrorist strongholds during the al-Aqsa, the Second Intifada, which began in late 2000.

Chronicles the fourteen-year pursuit and capture of the Balkan war criminals indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. Indicting the worst war criminals that Europe had known since the Nazi era, all one hundred and sixty-one suspects on the wanted list were caught, a feat never before achieved in political and military history.

In 2013, Americans learned that a former FBI agent turned private investigator, who disappeared in Iran in 2007, had been there on a mission for the CIA. Robert Levinson's mission was secret and the hunt to rescue him revealed the shadowlands between crime, business, espionage, and the law, where secrets are currency and betrayal is commonplace.

The story of political prisoners finally freed in December 2014, after being held captive by the United States since the late 1990s. Anti-Castro groups based in Florida carried out hundreds of military attacks on Cuba through the 1980s and 1990s, bombing hotels and shooting up Cuban beaches with machine guns. The Cuban government struck back with the Wasp Network--a dozen men and two women--sent to infiltrate those organizations. The Last Soldiers of the Cold War tells the story of those unlikely Cuban spies and their eventual unmasking and prosecution by U.S. authorities. Five of the Cubans received long or life prison terms on charges of espionage and murder.

"This story of the virus that destroyed Iran's nuclear centrifuges ... shows that the door has been opened on a new age of warfare--one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb dropped from an airplane"--Provided by publisher.

"THE GREAT WAR OF OUR TIME offers an unprecedented assessment of the CIA while at the forefront of our nation's war against al-Qa'ida and during the most remarkable period in the history of the Agency. Called the "Bob Gates of his generation," Michael Morell is a top CIA officer who saw it all--the only person with President Bush on 9/11/01 and with President Obama on 5/1/11 when Usama Bin Laden was brought to justice. Like Ghost Wars, See No Evil, and At the Center of the Storm, THE GREAT WAR OF OUR TIME will be a vivid, newsmaking account of the CIA, a life of secrets and a war in the shadows"--.

A master class in spycraft from one of its greatest practitioners. Jack Devine is one of the legendary spymasters of our time. He was in Chile when Allende fell; he ran Charlie Wilson's war in Afghanistan; he had too much to do with Iran-Contra for his own taste, though he tried to stop it; he caught Pablo Escobar in Colombia; he tried to warn George Tenet that there was a bullet coming from Iraq with his name on it. Devine served America's interests for more than thirty years in a wide range of covert operations, ultimately overseeing the Directorate of Operations, a CIA division that watches over thousands of American covert operatives worldwide. Good Hunting is his guide to the art of spycraft, told with great wit, candor, and commonsense wisdom. Caricatured by Hollywood, lionized by the right, and pilloried by the left, the CIA remains one of the least understood instruments of the United States government. Devine knows more than almost anyone about the CIA's vital importance as a tool of American statecraft. Now, as he sees it, the agency is trapped within a larger bureaucracy, losing swaths of turf to the military and, most ominous of all, being transformed into a paramilitary organization. Its capacity to do what it does best has been seriously degraded. In wonderfully readable prose, Good Hunting aims to set the record straight. This is a revelatory inside look at an organization whose history has not been given its real due.