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Books > Humanities > History > American history > From 1900
Positioning statement: The untold story of the FBI informants who
penetrated the upper reaches of organizations such as the Communist
Party, USA, the Black Panther Party, the Revolutionary Union and
other groups labeled threats to the internal security of the United
States. Sales points: Tells the story of FBI informants in
Communist groups in America in the 60s and 70s Uses newly released
FBI documents to uncover significant information about various
suspected FBI informants The follow up to their groundbreaking 2015
book, Heavy Radicals. Topical in light of recent US Government
leaks and FBI cover-ups Synopsis: Sometime in the late fall/early
winter of 1962, a document began circulating among members of the
Communist Party USA based in the Chicago area, titled ''Whither the
Party of Lenin.'' It was signed ''The Ad Hoc Committee for
Scientific Socialist Line.'' This was not the work of factionally
inclined CP comrades, but rather something springing from the
counter-intelligence imagination of the FBI. A Threat of the First
Magnitude tells the story of the FBI's fake Maoist organization,
The Ad Hoc Committee for a Scientific Socialist Line, and the
informants the FBI used to penetrate the highest levels of the
Communist Party USA, the Black Panther Party, the Revolutionary
Union and other groups labelled threats to the internal security of
the United States in the 1960s and 1970s. As once again the FBI is
thrust into the spotlight of US politics, A Threat of a First
Magnitude offers a view of the historic inner-workings of the
Bureau's counterintelligence operations - from generating ''''fake
news'''' and the utilization of ''''sensitive intelligence
methods'''' to the handling of ''''reliable sources'''' - that
matches or exceeds the sophistication of any contenders.
Most of us never get to test ourselves in combat. As a UH-1
Helicopter pilot flying in the jungle highlands of South Vietnam,
Warrant Officer Jim Crigler and the men he flew with were tested
daily. Coming of age in the late 1960s and early 1970s was
challenging for most young men of that era. Throw in drugs, free
love, draft notices, the Vietnam War and a country deeply divided,
and you have one of the most important books of this genre. This
true story is a raw, bold, introspective autobiography where the
author openly wrestles with his personal moral dilemma to find
meaning and purpose in his life. He calls it his "Mission of
Honor."
In the fall of 1965, Army cadet Tom Carhart and five others at West
Point Academy pulled off a feat of precision and ingenuity that
made them famous: the theft of the Navy's Billy-Goat mascot from
their rival academy, Annapolis, just before the biggest game of the
year. With U.S. forces in Vietnam swollen to nearly 200,000 and
American casualties steadily growing, it was an unnerving time to
join the military. At West Point, the young men preparing to
graduate the following June were well aware that they would be
called upon to serve, and quite possibly die, in that far-off
country where war raged. That November would be the last Army-Navy
football game any of the six cadets would ever participate in, so
they had to make it count. After an embarrassing theft of their
mascot ten years earlier, the Navy went to extraordinary lengths to
make sure it could never happen again. Formal agreements were made
between the two superintendents, who subsequently threatened fire
and brimstone to any of their charges who dared go near the other
Academy. To reinforce those orders, during the week before The Big
Game, the Navy placed their goat in an effectively impregnable
lockup under 24/7 guard by U.S. Marines at an intimidating Naval
Security Station--a modern day Golden Fleece. The Golden Fleece by
Tom Carhart is the incredible true story, told by one of the
participants, of how six West Point cadets in the Class of 1966 set
out to steal that Golden Fleece, and how they succeeded against all
odds. The Golden Fleece is a rollicking non-fiction military caper
about a famous prank conducted by these cadets as their one last
hurrah before shipping off to a war they might not come back from.
The six-month siege of Khe Sanh in 1968 was the largest, most
intense battle of the Vietnam War. For six thousand trapped U.S.
Marines, it was a nightmare; for President Johnson, an obsession.
For General Westmoreland, it was to be the final vindication of
technological weaponry; for General Giap, architect of the French
defeat at Dien Bien Phu, it was a spectacular ruse masking troops
moving south for the Tet offensive. With a new introduction by Mark
Bowden-best-selling author of Hu? 1968-Robert Pisor's immersive
narrative of the action at Khe Sanh is a timely reminder of the
human cost of war, and a visceral portrait of Vietnam's fiercest
and most epic close-quarters battle. Readers may find the politics
and the tactics of the Vietnam War, as they played out at Khe Sahn
fifty years ago, echoed in our nation's global incursions today.
Robert Pisor sets forth the history, the politics, the strategies,
and, above all, the desperate reality of the battle that became the
turning point of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
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