Intelligence & Espionage

Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people. Twenty years ago, when journalist Tom O'Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders, he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking evidence of a cover-up....

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units....

An explosive, headline-making portrait of Allen Dulles, the man who transformed the CIA into the most powerful - and secretive - colossus in Washington....

This is the book the CIA does not want you to read. For the last 60 years, the CIA has maintained a formidable reputation in spite of its terrible record, never disclosing its blunders....

If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky....

From the FBI’s former assistant director, a shocking journey to the dark side of America’s highways, revealing the FBI Highway Serial Killings Initiative’s hunt for the long-haul truckers behind an astonishing 850 murders–and counting.

A never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine....

A major new biography of J Edgar Hoover that draws from never-before-seen sources to create a groundbreaking portrait of a colossus who dominated half a century of American history and planted the seeds for much of today's conservative political landscape....

The definitive history of the military's decades-long investigation into mental powers and phenomena....

A fresh window on American history: the eye-opening truth about the government's secret plans to survive a catastrophic attack on US soil, even if the rest of us die....

A memoir by the highest-ranking covert warrior to lift the veil of secrecy and offer a glimpse into the shadow wars that America has fought since the Vietnam Era....

Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down....

From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, the never-before-told story behind America's high-stakes quest to dominate the skies....

The little-known true story of a Nazi plot to kill FDR, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill at the height of World War II.

Blind Man's Bluff shows for the first time how the navy sent submarines wired with self-destruct charges into the heart of Soviet seas to tap crucial underwater telephone cables....

From the best-selling author of Public Enemies and The Big Rich, an explosive account of the decade-long battle between the FBI and the homegrown revolutionary movements of the 1970s. The FBI combated these groups and others as nodes in a single revolutionary underground....

In 1965, the US government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the 20th century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the USSR and inspiring copycat terror programs....

In the late 1970s, the National Security Agency still did not officially exist. So why, when NSA engineer Charles Gandy filed for a visa to visit Moscow, did the Russian Foreign Ministry assert with confidence that he was a spy? Find out....

This is a sweeping narrative history of the events leading to 9/11, a groundbreaking look at the people and ideas that culminated in the assault on America....

A legendary CIA spy and counterterrorism expert tells the spellbinding story of his high-risk, action-packed career....

The best-selling author of All the Shah’s Men and The Brothers tells the astonishing story of the man who oversaw the CIA’s secret drug and mind-control experiments of the 1950s and ’60s....

First published in 1952, Witness came on the heals of America's trial of the century, in which Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss of spying for the Soviet Union....

Created in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on women even as it attempted to channel their talents and keep them down....

He swore to take a bullet for the President and left it all behind to take a bullet for the American people....

Antonio Mendez and his future wife, Jonna, were CIA operatives working to spy on Moscow in the late 1970s, at one of the most dangerous moments in the Cold War. Soviets kept files on all foreigners, studied their patterns, tapped their phones....

In 1978 the Bulgarian author and dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by a poisoned umbrella on Waterloo Bridge in London. His murder is the most iconic killing in almost five decades of the Cold War, and no one has ever been prosecuted for it. The Umbrella Murder reveals the real architect and hit man behind this spectacular killing: a spy code-named Piccadilly who worked for the Bulgarian secret service and the KGB, who has been hiding for more than forty years.

AI for Defense and Intelligence is a timely and compelling listen for graduate students interested in this rapidly-growing field, mid-career professionals looking to rebrand, and senior leaders in federal agencies who want to get smart on the latest tech. This approachable and focused book provides an overview of AI basics, a review of powerful machine learning models, and a discussion of applications across natural language processing (NLP), computer vision (CV), optimization, agent-based modeling and more.

Only in 1995 did the United States government officially reveal the existence of the super-secret Venona Project. For nearly fifty years American intelligence agents had been decoding thousands of Soviet messages, uncovering an enormous range of espionage activities carried out against the United States during World War II by its own allies. This extraordinary book is the first to examine the Venona messages.

In 1953, a top-secret manual teaching agents sleight-of-hand and other deception techniques was written for the CIA by America’s then most famous magician. All copies were believed destroyed by the CIA’s purge of the infamous MKULTRA documents in 1973, and there was no proof of the manual’s existence . . . until a copy was discovered among the CIA’s recently declassified archives. The manual in this work is thought to represent the only surviving copy of magician John Mulholland’s instructions.

Ten Years Undercover in America Tower of Secrets II. The CIA awarded Victor Sheymov the highest intelligence medal for the services he rendered to the US. Yet for the ten years that he and his family remained under deep cover, unbeknownst to the KGB, working at the highest levels of the NSA and British Intelligence, the CIA itself turned out to be Sheymov’s most insidiously persistent, and dangerous enemy. Why? Tiebreaker is the fascinating memoir of how Victor Sheymov figured out the reason behind the campaign to destroy him and his family, and the cause of the CIA’s catastrophic ...

Newly updated with chapters on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Covid vaccine, and statin drugs used to lower cholesterol. In today's world conspiracy theories abound. What is the actual history of false flags, state secrets, and government deceptions, both in the U.S. and abroad? Both admitted to and those still obscure and under investigation? The book gives the short history. Pre-publication readers say:"This book made me more aware of the news process, and who is spinning what, and for whom.""There is no such thing as a 'book that everyone should read' but this comes close. I am ...

In this engaging, accessible account, Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman explore the methods spies actually used in the period, including disguises, invisible inks, and even poisons. Drawing on a vast array of archival sources, they show how understanding the tricks and tools of espionage allows us to reimagine well-known stories such as the Babington and Gunpowder plots.

As World War II ended, the United States stood as the dominant power on the world stage. In 1947, to support its new global status, it created the CIA to analyse foreign intelligence. But within a few years, the Agency was engaged in other operations: bolstering pro-American governments, overthrowing nationalist leaders, and surveilling anti-imperial dissenters in the US. The Cold War was an obvious reason for this transformation - but not the only one. In The CIA, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford draws on decades of research to show the Agency as part of a larger picture.

Kim Philby was the most notorious British defector and Soviet mole in history. Agent, double agent, traitor and enigma, he betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians in the early years of the Cold War. This is a story of loyalty, trust and treachery, of male friendships forged, and then systematically betrayed. With access to newly released MI5 files and previously unseen papers, A Spy Among Friends unlocks what was perhaps the last great secret of the Cold War.

'Superb. Meticulously researched, splendidly told, immensely entertaining and often very moving.' JOHN LE CARRÉ