More fascinating than fiction, Seduced by Secrets takes the reader inside the real world of one of the most effective and feared spy agencies in history. The book reveals, for the first time, the secret technical methods and sources of the Stasi (East German Ministry for State Security) as it stole secrets from abroad and developed gadgets at home, employing universal, highly guarded techniques often used by other spy and security agencies. Seduced by Secrets draws on secret files from the Stasi archives, including CIA-acquired material, interviews and friendships, court documents, and unusual visits to spy sites, including "breaking into" a prison, to demonstrate that the Stasi overestimated the power of secrets to solve problems and created an insular spy culture more intent on securing its power than protecting national security. It recreates the Stasi's secret world of technology through biographies of agents, defectors, and officers and by visualizing James Bond like techniques and gadgets. In this highly original book, Kristie Macrakis adds a new dimension to our understanding of the East German Ministry for State Security by bringing the topic into the realm of espionage history and exiting the political domain."

A legendary CIA spy and counterterrorism expert tells the spellbinding story of his high-risk, action-packed career
Revelatory and groundbreaking, "The Art of Intelligence "will change the way people view the CIA, domestic and foreign intelligence, and international terrorism. Henry A. "Hank" Crumpton, a twenty-four-year veteran of the CIA's Clandestine Service, offers a thrilling account that delivers profound lessons about what it means to serve as an honorable spy. From CIA recruiting missions in Africa to pioneering new programs like the UAV Predator, from running post-9/11 missions in Afghanistan to heading up all clandestine CIA operations in the United States, Crumpton chronicles his role--in the battlefield and in the Oval Office--in transforming the way America wages war and sheds light on issues of domestic espionage.

Moura Budberg: spy, adventurer, charismatic seductress and mistress of two of the century's greatest writers, the Russian aristocrat Baroness Moura Budberg was born in 1892 to indulgence, pleasure and selfishness. But after she met the British diplomat and secret agent Robert Bruce Lockhart, she sacrificed everything for love, only to be betrayed. When Lockhart arrived in Revolutionary Russia in 1918, his official mission was Britain's envoy to the new Bolshevik government, yet his real assignment was to create a network of agents and plot the downfall of Lenin. Lockhart soon got to know Moura and they began a passionate affair, even though Moura was spying on him for the Bolsheviks. But when Lockhart's plot unravelled, she would forsake everything in an attempt to protect him from Lenin's secret police. Fleeing to a life of exile in England and taking a string of new lovers, including Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells, Moura later spied for Stalin and for Britain amidst the web of scandal surrounding the Cambridge spies. Through all this she clung to the hope that Lockhart would finally return to her. Grippingly narrated, this is the first biography of Moura Budberg to use the full range of previously unexamined letters, diaries and documents. An incredible true story of passion, espionage and double crossing that encircled the globe, A Very Dangerous Woman brings her extraordinary world vividly to life with dramatic resonances to rival the most sensational novel.

This book critically examines the weaknesses of U.S. intelligence led by the Central Intelligence Agency in informing presidential decision-making on issues of war and peace. It evaluates the CIA's strategic intelligence performance during the Cold War and post-Cold War periods as a foundation for examining the root causes of intelligence failures surrounding the September 11th attacks and assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs in the run up to the Iraq war. Intelligence expert Richard L. Russell probes the roots causes of these failures which lie in the CIA's poor human intelligence collection and analysis practices. Russell argues that none of the post-9/11 intelligence reforms have squarely addressed these root causes of strategic intelligence failure and it recommends measures for redressing these dangerous vulnerabilities in American security.

Ace of Spies reveals for the first time the true story of Sidney Reilly, the real-life inspiration behind fictional hero James Bond. Andrew Cook's startling biography cuts through the myths to tell the full story of the greatest spy the world has ever know. Sidney Reilly influenced world history through acts of extraordinary courage and sheer audacity. He was a master spy, a brilliant con man, a charmer, a cad and a lovable rogue who lived on his wits and thrived on danger, using women shamelessly and killing where necessary - and unnecessary. Sidney Reilly is one of the most fascinating spies of the twentieth century, yet he remains one of the most enigmatic - until now.

Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize
The explosive first-hand account of America's secret history in Afghanistan
With the publication of "Ghost Wars," Steve Coll became not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but also the expert on the rise of the Taliban, the emergence of Bin Laden, and the secret efforts by CIA officers and their agents to capture or kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan after 1998.

An assessment of Russia that suggests that we should look beyond traditional means of power to understand its strength and capacity to disrupt international politics. Too often, we are told that Russia plays a weak hand well. But, perhaps the nations cards are better than we know. Russia ranks significantly behind the US and China by traditional measures of power: GDP, population size and health, and military might. Yet 25 years removed from its mid-1990s nadir following the collapse of the USSR, Russia has become a supremely disruptive force in world politics. Kathryn E. Stoner assesses the resurrection of Russia and argues that we should look beyond traditional means of power to assess its strength in global affairs. Taking into account how Russian domestic politics under Vladimir Putin influence its foreign policy, Stoner explains how Russia has battled its way back to international prominence. From Russias seizure of the Crimea from Ukraine to its military support for the Assad regime in Syria, the country has reasserted itself as a major global power. Stoner examines these developments and more in tackling the big questions about Russias turnaround and global future. Stoner marshals data on Russias political, economic, and social development and uncovers key insights from its domestic politics. Russian people are wealthier than the Chinese, debt is low, and fiscal policy is good despite sanctions and the volatile global economy. Vladimir Putins autocratic regime faces virtually no organized domestic opposition. Yet, mindful of maintaining control at home, Russia under Putin also uses its varied power capacities to extend its influence abroad. While we often underestimate Russias global influence, the consequences are evident in the disruption of politics in the US, Syria, and Venezuela, to name a few. Russia Resurrected is an eye-opening reassessment of the country, identifying the actual sources of its power in international politics and why it has been able to redefine the post-Cold War global order.

In a bold and penetrating study, Gregory Treverton, former Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council and Senate investigator, offers his insider's views on how intelligence gathering and analysis must change. Treverton suggests why intelligence needs to be contrarian and attentive to the longer term. Believing that it is important to tap expertise outside government to solve intelligence problems, he argues that involving colleagues in the academy, think tanks, and Wall Street befits the changed role of government from doer to convener, mediator, and coalition-builder. Hb ISBN (2001): 0-521-58096-X

John Lodwick (1916-1959) was one of the great novelists of the early twentieth century. Yet his novels, and indeed his own extraordinary life story, have been virtually lost to the mists of time. Geoffrey Elliott here, for the first time, pieces together Lodwick's eventful life, from his youth in Ireland, to his wartime experiences in the SOE and Special Boat Service, his subsequent literary career and his untimely death in a car crash in Spain at the age of just 43. Initially acclaimed by Somerset Maugham and Anthony Burgess, soon after his death Lodwick's novels fell out of fashion and they have largely remained out-of-print since. Elliott makes the case for a revival in the fortunes of this singular English novelist, in a biography which sheds new light on the early twentieth century literary scene, the surrealist art world and the real-life experiences of World War II.

National security intelligence is a vast, complex, and important topic, made doubly hard for citizens to understand because of the thick veils of secrecy that surround it. In the second edition of his definitive introduction to the field, leading intelligence expert Loch K. Johnson guides readers skilfully through this shadowy side of government. Drawing on over forty years of experience studying intelligence agencies and their activities, he explains the three primary missions of intelligence: information collection and analysis, counterintelligence, and covert action, before moving on to explore the wider dilemmas posed by the existence of secret government organizations in open, democratic societies. Recent developments including the controversial leaks by the American intelligence official Edward J. Snowden, the U.S. Senate's Torture Report, and the ongoing debate over the use of drones are explored alongside difficult questions such as why intelligence agencies inevitably make mistakes in assessing world events; why some intelligence officers choose to engage in treason against their own country on behalf of foreign regimes; and how spy agencies can succumb to scandals -including highly intrusive surveillance against the very citizens they are meant to protect. Comprehensively revised and updated throughout, National Security Intelligence is tailor-made to meet the interests of students and general readers who care about how nations shield themselves against threats through the establishment of intelligence organizations, and how they strive for safeguards to prevent the misuse of this secret power.

In King of Spies, prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden, reveals one of the most astonishing - and previously untold - spy stories of the twentieth century. Donald Nichols was 'a one man war', according to his US Air Force commanding general. He won the Distinguished Service Cross, along with a chest full of medals for valor and initiative in the Korean War. His commanders described Nichols as the bravest, most resourceful and effective spymaster of that forgotten war. But there is far more to Donald Nichols' story than first meets the eye . . . Based on long-classified government records, unsealed court records, and interviews in Korea and the U.S., King of Spies tells the story of the reign of an intelligence commander who lost touch with morality, legality, and even sanity, if military psychiatrists are to be believed. Donald Nichols was America's Kurtz. A seventh-grade dropout, he created his own black-ops empire, commanding a small army of hand-selected spies, deploying his own makeshift navy, and ruling over it as a clandestine king, with absolute power over life and death. He claimed a - 'legal license to murder' - and inhabited a world of mass executions and beheadings, as previously unpublished photographs in the book document. Finally, after eleven years, the U.S. military decided to end Nichols's reign. He was secretly sacked and forced to endure months of electroshock in a military hospital in Florida. Nichols told relatives the American government was trying to destroy his memory. King of Spies looks to answer the question of how an uneducated, non-trained, non-experienced man could end up as the number-one US spymaster in South Korea and why his US commanders let him get away with it for so long . . .

An often overlooked aspect of the Cold War was the extent of diplomatic espionage that went on in the countries behind the Iron Curtain. Every Western diplomat stationed in the Soviet bloc was targeted as a spy by the security apparatus in these countries. Now with the opening of archives in Eastern Europe, the extent of this diplomatic espionage is revealed for the first time.   Ernest H. Latham, Jr. was a career Foreign Service Officer who served the United States in various posts in the Middle East and Central Europe. From 1983 to 1987, he was the cultural attachÉ at the American Embassy in Bucharest. During his time in Romania, Dr. Latham was targeted as a spy by the brutal Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu and subjected to constant, intrusive surveillance by his dreaded and dreadful secret police, the Securitate.    This book is a collection of surveillance reports that Dr. Latham obtained from the Romanian archives following the collapse of the Communist regime. They reveal the extent of the surveillance to which Western diplomats were subjected and, more importantly, they reveal a great deal about the system and society that conducted it. Latham’s introduction provides the context of his work and Romanian conditions at that time.  This book is essential reading for students of the Cold War as well as anyone interested in the mindset and methods of totalitarian regimes. The esteemed professor of Romanian history and editor of this English edition, Dennis Deletant, has called it “a notable event� representing “a rare case of such a file – of a foreigner....  Latham’s role as the US cultural attachÉ between 1983 and 1987 marks him out in body as an outsider,� but “in spirit, an insider, sympathetic to the ambivalences and ambiguities of Romania's past....  His file reminds the reader of the intrusiveness of the Communist regime into the lives of citizens, be they Romanian or otherwise.�

The world of intelligence has been completely transformed by the end of the Cold War and the onset of an age of information. Prior to the 1990s, US government intelligence had one principal target, the Soviet Union; a narrow set of 'customers', the political and military officials of the US government; and a limited set of information from the sources they owned, spy satellites and spies. Today, world intelligence has many targets, numerous consumers - not all of whom are American or in the government - and too much information, most of which is not owned by the U.S. government and is of widely varying reliability. In this bold and penetrating study, Gregory Treverton, former Vice Chair of the National Intelligence Council and Senate investigator, offers his insider's views on how intelligence gathering and analysis must change. He suggests why intelligence needs to be both contrarian, leaning against the conventional wisdom, and attentive to the longer term, leaning against the growing shorter time horizons of Washington policy makers. He urges that the solving of intelligence puzzles tap expertise outside government - in the academy, think tanks, and Wall Street - to make these parties colleagues and co-consumers of intelligence, befitting the changed role of government from doer to convener, mediator, and coalition-builder.

Most of us remember the seventh of September 1940 as the day the London docks were bombed and devastated by fire. I remember it as the day I was called up. But the police car that collected me took me to Wormwood Scrubs Prison . . . Major Ronnie Reed never spoke about what he did in the Second World War. He was only 23 when it broke out; an amateur radio enthusiast who was working as a maintenance engineer for the BBC. And yet, despite minimal money and qualifications, he became one of the men behind some of the most remarkable spy stories of all time. Recruited in the dead of night from his Anderson shelter, Ronnie became a case officer for double agents, including Eddie Chapman, known then as Agent Zigzag. The passport photo of The Man Who Never Was, was a photo of Ronnie Reed. For ten years after the Second World War, he headed the anti-Russian department of MI5, dealing with notorious spies such as Philby, Burgess and Maclean. In 1994, shortly before Ronnie's death, he revealed the truth of his remarkable past to his son, Nicholas. In Spy Runner he reveals his father's fascinating story with a collection of recently released reports and photos from The National Archives, and intimate family snaps.

Creating Chaos explores that dark side of statecraft, the covert use of political warfare in international relations - from its early practices during the Great Game between the British and Russian empires, through the Cold War era of ideological confrontation and forward into the hybrid political warfare of the 21st Century. Creating Chaos presents and illustrates the full body of covert and deniable political warfare practices, tracing their historical development and their use by both America and Russia throughout the Cold War and beyond. Using the most current information available, Hancock, a "veteran national security journalist" (Publishers Weekly) examines the evolution of political warfare tools and tactics in the era of the global Internet and ubiquitous social media, evaluating their effectiveness and illustrating the rapidly increasing levels of risk associated with these new and untested cyberwarfare tools. Virtually no books have studied actual political warfare beyond the Cold War, and only a handful have provided any insights into the new and rapidly evolving practices of the Russian Federation or of the political warfare aspect of NGOs or other surrogate actors. A companion volume to Shadow Warfare: The History of America's Undeclared Wars, Creating Chaos introduces the nature and history of political action practices, exploring a number of formerly secret American and Russian hybrid warfare and active measures projects in detail. With that background for context, it then extends those practices into the twenty-first century and contemporary events, evaluating wellestablished practices as they are being used with the newest tools of the global Internet and social media. It demonstrates the exponential increase in their effectiveness-and the equally exponential risk and consequences involved.

Between 1942 and 1944 a very small, very secret, very successful clandestine unit of the Royal Navy, operated between Dartmouth in Devon, and the Brittany Coast in France. It was a crossing of about 100 miles, every yard of it dangerous. The unit was called the 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla: crewed by 125 officers and men, it became the most highly decorated Royal Naval unit of the Second World War. The 15th MGBF was an extraordinary group of men thrown together in the most secret of adventures. Very few were regular Royal Naval officers: instead the unit was made up of mostly Royal Naval Volunteer Officers and 'duration only' sailors. Their home was a converted paddle steamer and luxury yacht, but their work could not have been more serious. Their mission was to ferry agents of SIS and SOE to pinpoint landing sites on the Brittany coast in Occupied France. Once they had landed their agents, together with stores for the Resistance, they picked up evaders, escaped POWs who had had the good fortune to be collected by escape lines run by M19, as well as returning SIS and SOE agents. It is a story that is inextricably entwined with that of the many agents they were responsible for - Pierre Hentic, Yves Le Tac, Virginia Hall, Albert Hue, Jeannie Rousseau, Suzanne Warengham, Francois Mitterrand and Mathilde Carre, as well as many others. Without the Flotilla, such intelligence gathering networks as Jade Fitzroy and Alliance would never have developed, and SOE's VAR Line and MI9's Shelburne Escape Line would never have been realised. Drawing on a huge amount of research on both sides of the Channel, including private archives of many of the families involved, A Dangerous Enterprise brings the story of this most clandestine of operations brilliantly to life.

James Bond's amazing gadgets reveal both enthusiasm about technology and fear of its potential ramifications. The popularity of the 007 franchise depends on a seductive formula of sex, violence, and snobbery. Much of its appeal, too, lies in its gadgets: slick, somewhat improbable technological devices that give everyone's favorite secret agent the edge over his adversaries. In Equipping James Bond, Andre Millard chronicles a hundred-year history of espionage technology through the lens of Ian Fleming's infamous character and his ingenious spyware. Beginning with the creation of MI6, the British secret service, Millard traces the development of espionage technology from the advanced weaponry of the nineteenth century to the evolving threat of computer hacking and surveillance. Arguing that the gadgets in the books and films articulate the leading edge of technological awareness at the time, Millard describes how Bond goes from protecting 1950s England from criminal activity to saving a world threatened by nuclear bombs, poison gas, and attacks from space. As a modern and modernizing hero, Bond has to keep up with the times. His film franchise is committed to equipping both Bond and his adversaries with the latest technological gadgets. Simultaneously, Millard stresses, the villains and threats that Bond faces embody contemporary fears about the downside of technological change. Taking a wide-ranging look at factual (and fictional) technology, Millard views the James Bond universe as evidence for popular perceptions of technological development as both inevitably progressive and apocalyptically threatening.

In an era of intensified international terror, universities have been increasingly drawn into an arena of locating, monitoring and preventing such threats, forcing them into often covert relationships with the security and intelligence agencies. With case studies from across the world, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies provides a comparative, in-depth analysis of the historical and contemporary relationships between global universities, national security and intelligence agencies. Written by leading international experts and from multidisciplinary perspectives, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies provides theoretical, methodological and empirical definition to academic, scholarly and research enquiry at the interface of higher education, security and intelligence studies. Divided into eight sections, the Handbook explores themes such as: the intellectual frame for our understanding of the university-security-intelligence network; historical, contemporary and future-looking interactions from across the globe; accounts of individuals who represent the broader landscape between universities and the security and intelligence agencies; the reciprocal interplay of personnel from universities to the security and intelligence agencies and vice versa; the practical goals of scholarship, research and teaching of security and intelligence both from within universities and the agencies themselves; terrorism research as an important dimension of security and intelligence within and beyond universities; the implication of security and intelligence in diplomacy, journalism and as an element of public policy; the extent to which security and intelligence practice, research and study far exceeds the traditional remit of commonly held notions of security and intelligence. Bringing together a unique blend of leading academic and practitioner authorities on security and intelligence, the Routledge International Handbook of Universities, Security and Intelligence Studies is an essential and authoritative guide for researchers and policymakers looking to understand the relationship between universities, the security services and the intelligence community.

We are living in an age of conspiracy theories, whether it's enduring, widely held beliefs such as government involvement in the Kennedy assassination or alien activity at Roswell, fears of a powerful infiltrating group such as the Illuminati, Jews, Catholics, or communists, or modern fringe movements of varying popularity such as birtherism and trutherism. What is it in American culture that makes conspiracy theories proliferate? Who is targeted, and why? Are we in the heyday of the conspiracy theory, or is it in decline?
Though there is significant scholarly literature on the topic in psychology, sociology, philosophy, and more, American Conspiracy Theories is the first to use broad, long-term empirical data to analyze this popular American tendency. Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent draw on three sources of original data: 120,000 letters to the editor of the New York Times and Chicago Tribune from between 1890 and 2010; a two-wave survey from before and after the 2012 presidential election; and discussions of conspiracy theories culled from online news sources, blogs, and other Web sites, also from before and after the election. Through these sources, they are able to address crucial questions, such as similarities and differences in the nature of conspiracy theories over time, the role of the Internet and communications technologies in spreading modern conspiracy theories, and whether politics, economics, media, war, or other factors are most important in popularizing conspiratorial beliefs. Ultimately, they conclude that power asymmetries, both foreign and domestic, are the main drivers behind conspiracy theories, and that those at the bottom of power hierarchies have a strategic interest in blaming those at the top-in other words, "conspiracy theories are for losers." But these "losers" can end up having tremendous influence on the course of history, and American Conspiracy Theories is an unprecedented examination of one of the defining features of American political life.

Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, uncovers a systematic campaign to persecute Assange. He reveals that Assange has faced grave and systematic due process violations, judicial bias, collusion and manipulated evidence. He has been the victim of constant surveillance, defamation and threats. Melzer also gathered together consolidated medical evidence that proves that the prison has suffered prolonged psychological torture. Melzer's compelling investigation puts the UK and US state into the dock, showing how, through secrecy, impunity and, crucially, public indifference, unchecked power reveals a deeply undemocratic system. Furthermore, the Assange case sets a dangerous precedent: once telling the truth becomes a crime, censorship and tyranny will inevitably follow.