*The USA Today bestseller* Surprise... your target. Kill... your enemy. Vanish... without a trace. From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units. When diplomacy fails, and war is unwise, the president calls on the CIA's Special Activities Division, a highly classified branch of the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world. Originally known as the president's guerrilla warfare corps, SAD conducts risky and ruthless operations that have evolved over time to defend America from its enemies. Almost every American president since World War II has asked the CIA to conduct sabotage, subversion and, yes, assassination. With unprecedented access to forty-two men and women who proudly and secretly worked on CIA covert operations from the dawn of the Cold War to the present day, along with declassified documents and deep historical research, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen unveils -- like never before -- a complex world of individuals working in treacherous environments populated with killers, connivers and saboteurs. Despite Hollywood notions of off-book operations and external secret hires, covert action is actually one piece in a colossal foreign policy machine. Written with the pacing of a thriller, SURPRISE, KILL, VANISH brings to vivid life the sheer pandemonium and chaos, as well as the unforgettable human will to survive and the intellectual challenge of not giving up hope that define paramilitary and intelligence work. Jacobsen's exclusive interviews -- with members of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service (equivalent to the Pentagon's generals), its counterterrorism chiefs, targeting officers, and Special Activities Division's Ground Branch operators who conduct today's close-quarters killing operations around the world -- reveal, for the first time, the enormity of this shocking, controversial and morally complex terrain. Is the CIA's paramilitary army America's weaponized strength, or a liability to its principled standing in the world? Every operation reported in this book, however unsettling, is legal.

Of German stock dating back to 1530 in Saxony, Eric George Ackermann GM was born on the Isle of Wight in 1919 and became a leading figure in the world of signals and electronic intelligence. As a Junior Scientific Officer at the Telecommunication Research Establishment, Boscombe Down, with an honorary commission in the Royal Air Force, he made numerous flights over occupied territory searching for, monitoring and destroying Germany's Wuerzburg, Knickebein and X Band radar systems. Much of his research was passed to the highest levels of wartime government, and was highly prized, ensuring that tactical plans could be executed that took full advantage of known, top secret German intelligence. A host of secret missions to assess the enemy's radar capabilities were carried out in North Africa, Gibraltar and Italy. This new and engaging biography explores the various highs and lows of his operational deployment at the vanguard of tactical intelligence operations in these exciting theaters of war. Winner of the George Medal for conspicuous gallantry, his efforts weren't confined to the offices of war. He saw conflict up close and personal, and was therefore aware of the urgency of his endeavours, and the extent to which his findings made a difference. The end of the war was a cause of great celebration, but it did not signal the end of Ackermann's role, far from it. He was to play a major part in the setting up and implementation of a string of listening stations built along the borders of Soviet Bloc countries which were destined to glean a wealth of invaluable post-war intelligence. Further work in aeronautics and satellite construction in the States followed, meaning the reach of Ackermann's influence could be allowed to stretch yet further. Yet despite the might and scale of his achievement, he has never before been the subject of a book-length study. The authors, Peter Jackson and David Haysom, have made every effort to rectify that in this new publication which is sure to appeal to aviation enthusiasts, as well as the more general reader curious to gain new insights into twentieth century intelligence practices and their often far-reaching consequences.

A history of Swedish interception of radio and telegraph messages during World Wars I and II providing a valuable background to Swedish military operations at this time. This should prove a valuable work for anyone interested in the intelligence systems at work during wartime.

Spies, secret messages, and military intelligence have fascinated readers for centuries but never more than today, when terrorists threaten America and society depends so heavily on communications. Much of what was known about communications intelligence came first from David Kahn's pathbreaking book, The Codebreakers. Kahn, considered the dean of intelligence historians, is also the author of Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II and Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943, among other books and articles. Kahn's latest book, How I Discovered World War II's Greatest Spy and Other Stories of Intelligence and Code, provides insights into the dark realm of intelligence and code that will fascinate cryptologists, intelligence personnel, and the millions interested in military history, espionage, and global affairs. It opens with Kahn telling how he discovered the identity of the man who sold key information about Germany's Enigma machine during World War II that enabled Polish and then British codebreakers to read secret messages. Next Kahn addresses the question often asked about Pearl Harbor: since we were breaking Japan's codes, did President Roosevelt know that Japan was going to attack and let it happen to bring a reluctant nation into the war? Kahn looks into why Nazi Germany's totalitarian intelligence was so poor, offers a theory of intelligence, explicates what Clausewitz said about intelligence, tells-on the basis of an interview with a head of Soviet codebreaking-something about Soviet Comint in the Cold War, and reveals how the Allies suppressed the second greatest secret of WWII. Providing an inside look into the efforts to gather and exploit intelligence during the past century, this book presents powerful ideas that can help guide present and future intelligence efforts. Though stories of WWII spying and codebreaking may seem worlds apart from social media security, computer viruses, and Internet surveillance, this book offers timeless lessons that may help today's leaders avoid making the same mistakes that have helped bring at least one global power to its knees. The book includes a Foreword written by Bruce Schneier.

The vital ingredient in the formulation and execution of a successful foreign policy is intelligence. For the USA, as the Bay of Pigs incident and the Iran-Contra affair have shown, controlling intelligence is a problem which policy-makers and concerned citizens have rarely examined and imperfectly understood. Of the seven contributors, five have direct experience of working with or in intelligence, and all have written extensively on the subject.

Building on Goldman's Words of Intelligence and Maret's On Their Own Terms this is a one-stop reference tool for anyone studying and working in intelligence, security, and information policy. This comprehensive resource defines key terms of the theoretical, conceptual, and organizational aspects of intelligence and national security information policy. It explains security classifications, surveillance, risk, technology, as well as intelligence operations, strategies, boards and organizations, and methodologies. It also defines terms created by the U.S. legislative, regulatory, and policy process, and routinized by various branches of the U.S. government. These terms pertain to federal procedures, policies, and practices involving the information life cycle, national security controls over information, and collection and analysis of intelligence information. This work is intended for intelligence students and professionals at all levels, as well as information science students dealing with such issues as the Freedom of Information Act.

This book is a professional military-intelligence officer's and a controversial insider's view of some of the greatest intelligence blunders of recent history. It includes the serious developments in government misuse of intelligence in the recent war with Iraq. Colonel John Hughes-Wilson analyses not just the events that conspire to cause disaster, but why crucial intelligence is so often ignored, misunderstood or spun by politicians and seasoned generals alike. This book analyses: how Hitler's intelligence staff misled him in a bid to outfox their Nazi Party rivals; the bureaucratic bungling behind Pearl Harbor; how in-fighting within American intelligence ensured they were taken off guard by the Viet Cong's 1968 Tet Offensive; how over confidence, political interference and deception facilitated Egypt and Syria's 1973 surprise attack on Israel; why a handful of marines and a London taxicab were all Britain had to defend the Falklands; the mistaken intelligence that allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power until the second Iraq War of 2003; the truth behind the US failure to run a terrorist warning system before the 9/11 WTC bombing; and how governments are increasingly pressurising intelligence agencies to 'spin' the party-political line.

In A Sense of Place, renowned wine expert and writer Steven Kolpan tells the story of how Francis Ford Coppola brought California's most distinguished and historic vineyard back to life. Gustave Niebaum's Inglenook Estate, started in 1879, was one of the Napa Valley's first established vineyards and the birthplace of its premium wine industry. Generations after Niebaum's death, the vineyard was sold to Heublein, the wine and spirits monolith, who broke up the land and changed the Inglenook brand from a premium, connoisseur wine to a mass-market jug wine. In 1975, Francis Coppola bought the Niebaum residence and the surrounding estate. Along with the original estate's reputation, he also brought back some of its original workers, including Rafael Rodriquez, who, in h is late seventies, now serves as the vineyard manager and historian. Coppola overcame naysayers, red tape, and financial turmoil to reestablish the winery as a defender of quality, producing wine under four different labels, including the revered wine Rubicon. In 1995, Coppola purchased the Inglenook Chateau and its adjacent vineyards, fulfilling his dream of reuniting the original Napa Valley estate. Kolpan's luscious, flavorful narrative is worth enjoying now and keeping for later.

A fascinating anthology which sheds new light on the Bletchley Park story and shows that there is still more to tell.' - Tony Comer OBE, formerly Departmental Historian at GCHQ This important volume tells the story of Bletchley Park through countless letters written by key players to former colleagues and loved ones as the war unfolded. Having intercepted millions of German communications, the codebreakers had felt bound by the Official Secrets Act and said little about their wartime activities. Some who had stayed on at GCHQ after the war, were concerned that speaking out could jeopardise their pensions.Over one hundred letters have been included in this volume and have either been recovered from family members or declassified by GCHQ. They reveal fresh information about the clandestine operation and disclose the true feelings of the participants at Bletchley.Park. In contrast to early accounts, which lacked detail and were occasionally inaccurate, this book thoroughly lays bare the day-to-day experiences at Bletchley Park and uncovers the operational and technical reasons behind the organisation's successes and failures. Simultaneously intimate and comprehensive, it will interest historians, World War II researchers, and anyone who wants to learn the secrets of Britain's signal intelligence effort.

Among the most crucial roles of the United States military in the global War on Terror is the collection of human intelligence from prisoners of war, unlawful combatants, and others. On the heels of controversy over some of the techniques used to extract information--such as waterboarding--the Department of the Army completely revised its interrogation guidelines. The result is this book, the United States Army's human intelligence collection playbook, which gives instructions on the structure, planning and management of human intelligence operations, the debriefing of soldiers, and the analysis of known relationships and map data. The largest and most newsworthy section of the book details procedures for screening and interrogation, which permits a specific number of interrogation techniques, described in Chapter 8 as "approach techniques." These techniques, described in great detail, carry such names as "Emotional Love, ""Mutt and Jeff," "False Flag," and even "Separation." A must-read for today's military buffs, U.S. Army Human Intelligence Collector Field Manual is also a valuable resource for anyone seeking strategies to employ in the gathering of information.

The Cambridge Spies continue to fascinate - but one of them, John Cairncross, has always been more of an enigma than the others. He worked alone and was driven by his hostility to Fascism rather than to the promotion of Communism. During his war-time work at Bletchley Park, he passed documents to the Soviets which went on to influence the Battle of Kursk. Geoff Andrews gained exclusive access to the Cairncross papers and secrets, and has spoken to friends, relatives and former colleagues. In his portrait, a complex individual emerges – a scholar as well as a spy – whose motivations have often been misunderstood. After his resignation from the Civil Service, Cairncross moved to Italy and there he rebuilt his life as a foreign correspondent, editor and university professor. This gave him new circles and friendships – which included the writer Graham Greene – while he always lived with the fear that his earlier espionage would come to light. The full account of Cairncross's spying, his confession and his dramatic public exposure as the ‘fifth man’ is told here for the first time, unveiling the story of his post-espionage life.

Based on OSS records only recently released to US National Archives, and on evidence from British archival sources, this is a thoroughly researched study of the Office of Strategic Services in London. The OSS was a critical liaison and operational outpost for American intelligence during World War II. Dr MacPherson puts the activities of the OSS into the larger context of the Anglo-American relationship and the various aspects of intelligence theory, while examining how a modern American intelligence capability evolved.

During World War II, Britain enjoyed spectacular success in the secret war between hostile intelligence services, enabling a substantial and successful expansion of British counter-espionage. Hugh Trevor-Roper's experiences working for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) during the war had a profound impact on him and he later observed the world of intelligence with particular sharpness. To him, the subjects of wartime espionage and the complex espionage networks that developed in the Cold War period were as worthy of profound investigation and reflection as events from the more distant past. Expressing his observations through some of his most ironic and entertaining correspondence, articles and reviews, Trevor-Roper wrote vividly about some of the greatest intelligence characters of the age - from Kim Philby and Michael Straight to the Germans Admiral Canaris and Otto John. Including some previously unpublished material, this book is a sharp, revealing and personal first-hand account of the intelligence world in World War II and the Cold War.

'The best book on codebreaking I have read', SIR DERMOT TURING 'Brings back the joy I felt when I first read about these things as a kid', PHIL ZIMMERMANN 'This is at last the single book on codebreaking that you must have. If you are not yet addicted to cryptography, this book will get you addicted. Read, enjoy, and test yourself on history's great still-unbroken messages!' JARED DIAMOND is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel; Collapse; and other international bestsellers 'This is THE book about codebreaking. Very concise, very inclusive and easy to read', ED SCHEIDT 'Riveting', MIKE GODWIN 'Approachable and compelling', GLEN MIRANKER This practical guide to breaking codes and solving cryptograms by two world experts, Elonka Dunin and Klaus Schmeh, describes the most common encryption techniques along with methods to detect and break them. It fills a gap left by outdated or very basic-level books. This guide also covers many unsolved messages. The Zodiac Killer sent four encrypted messages to the police. One was solved; the other three were not. Beatrix Potter's diary and the Voynich Manuscript were both encrypted - to date, only one of the two has been deciphered. The breaking of the so-called Zimmerman Telegram during the First World War changed the course of history. Several encrypted wartime military messages remain unsolved to this day. Tens of thousands of other encrypted messages, ranging from simple notes created by children to encrypted postcards and diaries in people's attics, are known to exist. Breaking these cryptograms fascinates people all over the world, and often gives people insight into the lives of their ancestors. Geocachers, computer gamers and puzzle fans also require codebreaking skills. This is a book both for the growing number of enthusiasts obsessed with real-world mysteries, and also fans of more challenging puzzle books. Many people are obsessed with trying to solve famous crypto mysteries, including members of the Kryptos community (led by Elonka Dunin) trying to solve a decades-old cryptogram on a sculpture at the centre of CIA Headquarters; readers of the novels of Dan Brown as well as Elonka Dunin's The Mammoth Book of Secret Code Puzzles (UK)/The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms (US); historians who regularly encounter encrypted documents; perplexed family members who discover an encrypted postcard or diary in an ancestor's effects; law-enforcement agents who are confronted by encrypted messages, which also happens more often than might be supposed; members of the American Cryptogram Association (ACA); geocachers (many caches involve a crypto puzzle); puzzle fans; and computer gamers (many games feature encryption puzzles). The book's focus is very much on breaking pencil-and-paper, or manual, encryption methods. Its focus is also largely on historical encryption. Although manual encryption has lost much of its importance due to computer technology, many people are still interested in deciphering messages of this kind.

Asia represented the hottest theatre of the Cold War, with several declared and undeclared wars always in progress. Examining the Asian dimension of this struggle, this volume describes and analyzes a range of clandestine activities from intelligence and propaganda to special operations and security support. It draws on documents declassified after the end of the Cold War.

"A Classic in Counterintelligence -- Now Back in Print"

Originally published in 1987, "Thwarting Enemies at Home and Abroad" is a unique primer that teaches the principles, strategy, and tradecraft of counterintelligence (CI). CI is often misunderstood and narrowly equated with security and catching spies, which are only part of the picture. As William R. Johnson explains, CI is the art of actively protecting secrets but also aggressively thwarting, penetrating, and deceiving hostile intelligence organizations to neutralize or even manipulate their operations.

Johnson, a career CIA intelligence officer, lucidly presents the nuts and bolts of the business of counterintelligence and the characteristics that make a good CI officer. Although written during the late Cold War, this book continues to be useful for intelligence professionals, scholars, and students because the basic principles of CI are largely timeless. General readers will enjoy the lively narrative and detailed descriptions of tradecraft that reveal the real world of intelligence and espionage. A new foreword by former CIA officer and noted author William Hood provides a contemporary perspective on this valuable book and its author.

The official line is clear: the UK does not 'participate in, solicit, encourage or condone' torture. And yet, the evidence is irrefutable: when faced with potential threats to our national security, the gloves always come off. Drawing on previously unseen official documents, and the accounts of witnesses, victims and experts, prize-winning investigative journalist Ian Cobain looks beyond the cover-ups and the equivocations, to get to the truth. From WWII to the War on Terror, via Kenya and Northern Ireland, Cruel Britannia shows how the British have repeatedly and systematically resorted to torture, bending the law where they can, and issuing categorical denials all the while. What emerges is a picture of Britain that challenges our complacency and exposes the lie behind our reputation for fair play.

In 1974, the British government admitted that its WWII secret intelligence organization had read Germany's ciphers on a massive scale. The intelligence from these decrypts influenced the Atlantic, the Eastern Front and Normandy. Why did the Germans never realize the Allies had so thoroughly penetrated their communications? As German intelligence experts conducted numerous internal investigations that all certified their ciphers' security, the Allies continued to break more ciphers and plugged their own communication leaks. How were the Allies able to so thoroughly exploit Germany's secret messages? How did they keep their tremendous success a secret? What flaws in Germany's organization allowed this counterintelligence failure and how can today's organizations learn to avoid similar disasters? This book, the first comparative study of WWII SIGINT (Signals Intelligence), analyzes the characteristics that allowed the Allies SIGINT success and that fostered the German blindness to Enigma's compromise.

This is the first book to appear on British intelligence operations based in both India and London, which defended the Indian Empire against subversion during the first two decades of the twentieth century. It is concerned with the threat to the British Raj posed by the Indian revolutionary movement, the resulting development of the imperial intelligence service and the role it played during the First World War.

The harrowing, and inspiring, story of the capture of one of Britain's top SOE agents in World War Two, his refusal to crack under the most horrific torture, and his final imprisonment in a concentration camp. 'The White Rabbit' was the code name of Wing Commander F.F.E. Yeo-Thomas when he parachuted into France in 1942 as a member of the Special Operations Executive with the Resistance. For the next eighteen months he was responsible for organising all the separate factions of the French Resistance into one combined 'secret army'. On three separate missions into occupied France he met with the heads of Resistance movements all over the country, and he spoke personally with Winston Churchill in order to ensure they were properly supplied. His capture by the Gestapo in March 1944 was therefore a terrible blow for the Resistance movement. For months he was submitted to the most horrific torture in an attempt to get him to spill his unparalleled knowledge of the Resistance, but he refused to crack. Finally he was sentenced to death, and sent to Buchenwald, one of the most infamous German concentration camps. The story of his endurance, and survival, is an inspiring study in the triumph of the human spirit over the most terrible adversity.

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.

During World War Two the Special Operation Executive's French Section sent more than 400 agents into Occupied France -- at least 100 never returned and were reported 'Missing Believed Dead' after the war. Twelve of these were women who died in German concentration camps -- some were tortured, some were shot, and some died in the gas chambers. Vera Atkins had helped prepare these women for their missions, and when the war was over she went out to Germany to find out what happened to them and the other agents lost behind enemy lines. But while the woman who carried out this extraordinary mission appeared quintessentially English, she was nothing of the sort. Vera Atkins, who never married, covered her life in mystery so that even her closest family knew almost nothing of her past. In A LIFE IN SECRETS Sarah Helm has stripped away Vera's many veils and -- with unprecedented access to official and private papers, and the cooperation of Vera's relatives -- vividly reconstructed an extraordinary life.

The wartime adventures of the legendary SOE agent Harry Ree, told in his own words "A beautiful collection of writings by schoolmaster-turned-secret agent Harry Ree. . . . Memoirs, postwar broadcasts and letters from French comrades combine to paint a picture of everyday heroism, treachery and tragedy."-Robert Gildea, author of Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of the French Resistance "In a book devoted to heroism in its true, self-effacing form, that modesty seems entirely appropriate, and is a tribute both to Ree and to the son who put it together."-Andrew Holgate, The Sunday Times A pacifist school teacher at the start of the war, Harry Ree changed his mind with the fall of France in 1940. He was deployed into a secret branch of the British army and parachuted into central France in April 1943. He soon won the confidence of local resisters and directed a series of dramatic sabotage operations. Ree's memoirs, superbly edited by his son, the philosopher Jonathan Ree, offer unique insights into life in the French Resistance, and into the anxiety, folly and pity of war.

'The most comprehensive narrative of intelligence compiled ... unrivalled' Max Hastings, Sunday Times 'Captivating, insightful and masterly' Edward Lucas, The Times The history of espionage is far older than any of today's intelligence agencies, yet the long history of intelligence operations has been largely forgotten. The first mention of espionage in world literature is in the Book of Exodus.'God sent out spies into the land of Canaan'. From there, Christopher Andrew traces the shift in the ancient world from divination to what we would recognize as attempts to gather real intelligence in the conduct of military operations, and considers how far ahead of the West - at that time - China and India were. He charts the development of intelligence and security operations and capacity through, amongst others, Renaissance Venice, Elizabethan England, Revolutionary America, Napoleonic France, right up to sophisticated modern activities of which he is the world's best-informed interpreter. What difference have security and intelligence operations made to course of history? Why have they so often forgotten by later practitioners? This fascinating book provides the answers.