THE USA TODAY BESTSELLER 'As fast paced as a thriller' Fred Burton, Stratfor Talks' Pen and Sword Podcast 'Jacobsen here presents a tour de force exploring the CIA's paramilitary activities...this excellent work feels like uncovering the tip of the iceberg ...Highly recommended for those seeking a better understanding of American foreign policy in action' Jacob Sherman, Library Journal 'A behind-the-scenes look at the most shadowy corners of the American intelligence community...Well-sourced and well-paced, this book is full of surprises' Kirkus 'Annie Jacobsen takes us inside the darkest and most morally ambiguous corner of our government, where politicians ask brave men and women to kill-up close and personal-on America's behalf' Garrett M. Graff, author of Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself - While the Rest of us Die 'This is a first rate book on the CIA, its paramilitary armies, operators, and assassins' New York Journal of Books 'Having already demonstrated her remarkable aptitude for unearthing government secrets in books like Area 51 (2011) and The Pentagon's Brain (2015), Jacobsen pulls back the curtain on the history of covert warfare and state sanctioned assassinations from WWII to the present...Jacobsen's work revealing a poorly understood but essential slice of warfare history belongs in every library collection' Booklist The definitive, character-driven history of CIA covert operations and U.S. government-sponsored assassinations, from the author of the Pulizter Prize finalist The Pentagon's Brain Since 1947, domestic and foreign assassinations have been executed under the C IA-led covert action operations team. Before that time, responsibility for taking out America's enemies abroad was even more shrouded in mystery. Despite Hollywood notions of last-minute rogue-operations and external secret hires, covert action is actually a cog in a colossal foreign policy machine, moving through, among others, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the House and Senate Select Committees. At the end of the day, it is the President, not the C IA, who is singularly in charge. For the first time, Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen takes us deep inside this top-secret history. With unparalleled access to former operatives, ambassadors, and even past directors of the Secret Service and CIA operations, Jacobsen reveals the inner workings of these teams, and just how far a U.S. president may go, covertly but lawfully, to pursue the nation's interests.

Polly Corrigan Book Prize shortlist  Professional intelligence became a permanent feature of the French state as a result of the army’s June 8, 1871, reorganization following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. Intelligence practices developed at the end of the nineteenth century without direction or oversight from elected officials, and yet the information gathered had a profound influence on the French population and on pre–World War I Europe more broadly. In Marianne Is Watching Deborah Bauer examines the history of French espionage and counterespionage services in the era of their professionalization, arguing that the expansion of surveillance practices reflects a change in understandings of how best to protect the nation. By leading readers through the processes and outcomes of professionalizing intelligence in three parts—covering the creation of permanent intelligence organizations within the state; the practice of intelligence; and the place of intelligence in the public sphere—Bauer fuses traditional state-focused history with social and cultural analysis to provide a modern understanding of intelligence and its role in both state formation and cultural change. With this first English-language book-length treatment of the history of French intelligence services in the era of their inception, Bauer provides a penetrating study not just of the security establishment in pre–World War I France but of the diverse social climate it nurtured and on which it fed.

An Intelligence Studies Anthology: Foundational Concepts and Case Studies for the 21st Century is designed to provide undergraduate students with an introduction to the U.S. government's collection and use of intelligence. Through a carefully curated selection of readings, students gain an understanding of the history of the intelligence process and the agencies involved in it. They also learn about the intelligence cycle, types of intelligence products, best practices for writing and briefing intelligence, covert operations, counterintelligence, technical tools and legal concepts, and the ways in which law enforcement collects and uses intelligence. The anthology provides students with a novel collection of information discussing the ways the intelligence process can be used to stop health crises, including pandemics, and includes the editor's original article discussing the creation of a new department in the U.S. government devoted to fighting future pandemics. Illuminating and insightful, An Intelligence Studies Anthology is an exemplary resource for introductory courses in intelligence, criminal justice, criminology, government, and health/public health.

Vienna, located at the heart of Europe was the city of choice for American, British, German and Russian spymasters in their merciless trade, to plot against one another and steal secrets. For the first time a book is dedicated to the secret stories of spymasters, their tradecraft and secret sources from the end of the World War I, the Interwar with the rise of Nazis to the Second World War and the Cold War. The rich of culture and music Vienna hid a labyrinth of spies and dissidents in the interwar period, and a powerful Gestapo presence during the war meant that the Office of Strategic Services and British intelligence could not deploy operatives in Austria in general. In post war, a few young American and British intelligence officers pitted their wits against hundreds of seasoned Russian operatives of the NKVD and their thousands of informers. and the secret truth was that both Russian and Allied intelligence services employed members of the Nazi intelligence services just upon the defeat of Germany in 1945 and the occupation of Austria.

Venice's Secret Service is the untold and arresting story of the world's earliest centrally-organised state intelligence service. Long before the inception of SIS and the CIA, in the period of the Renaissance, the Republic of Venice had masterminded a remarkable centrally-organised state intelligence organisation that played a pivotal role in the defence of the Venetian empire. Housed in the imposing Doge's Palace and under the direction of the Council of Ten, the notorious governmental committee that acted as Venice's spy chiefs, this 'proto-modern' organisation served prominent intelligence functions including operations (intelligence and covert action), analysis, cryptography and steganography, cryptanalysis, and even the development of lethal substances. Official informants and amateur spies were shipped across Europe, Anatolia, and Northern Africa, conducting Venice's stealthy intelligence operations. Revealing a plethora of secrets, their keepers, and their seekers, Venice's Secret Service explores the social and managerial processes that enabled their existence and that furnished the foundation for an extraordinary intelligence organisation created by one of the early modern world's most cosmopolitan states.

Sinclair McKay's Bletchley Park Brainteasers was the runaway quiz book bestseller of 2017, now it's time to pit your wits against the secret heroes of MI5 and MI6 and find out if YOU have what it takes to be a spy! If you cracked the GCHQ Puzzle Book and followed the Ordnance Survey Puzzle Book, you MUST show off your James Bond credentials with Secret Service Brainteasers ... Whether you have linguistic flair, an instinct for technology or good old common sense, pit your wits against some of the greatest minds of our time with ingenious brainteasers including secret languages, sabotage themed brain bogglers, deadly countdowns and hidden codes. Weaving astonishing stories of the men and women who operate from the shadows, the secret heroes and heroines of MI5 and MI6 who have faced extraordinary and terrifying challenges and a wide range of mind twisting puzzles, Secret Service Brainteasers will test your mental agility to discover: Do YOU have what it takes to be a spy?

Between 1940 and 1945, Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE) carried out sabotage and organised resistance across occupied Europe. Over 5 years, SOE sent over 500 agents into Norway to carry out a range of operations from sabotage and assassination to attempts to organise an underground guerrilla army. This book is the first multi-archival, international academic analysis of SOE's policy and operations in Norway and the influences that shaped them, challenging previous interpretations of the relationship between this organisation and both the Norwegian authorities and the Milorg resistance movement.