Spyfail

Foreign Spies, Moles, Saboteurs, and the Collapse of America's Counterintelligence

De: James Bamford

Narrado por: David Colacci

James Bamford, the bestselling author of The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets, unveils a hidden cabal of foreign powers that have spied against America to reveal the incredible spygames, secrets, and cyberweapons they’ve hatched, unlocked, and stolen--and how U.S. intelligence has utterly failed to stop them.

SPYFAIL is about the highly dangerous and growing capability of foreign countries to conduct large-scale espionage within the United States and how the FBI and other agencies have failed to prevent it. These covert operations involve a variety of foreign countries—North Korea, Russia, Israel, China, and others—and include cyberattacks, espionage, psychological warfare, the infiltration of presidential campaigns, the smuggling of nuclear weapons components, and other incredibly nefarious actions.

With his trademark deep investigative style, James Bamford digs as deep as one can go into these clandestine invasions and attacks, uncovering who’s involved, how these spygames were carried out, and why none of this was stopped. Full of revelations, SPYFAIL includes access to previously secret and withheld documents, such as never-before-seen parts of the Mueller Report, and interviews with confidential sources.

Throughout this stunning, eye-opening account, SPYFAIL demonstrates again and again how large a role politics, special interests, and corruption play in allowing these shocking foreign intrusions to continue—leaving America and its secrets vulnerable and undefended.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Long before most Americans ever had to think about warrantless eavesdropping, the journalist James Bamford published The Puzzle Palace, the first book to be written about the National Security Agency . . . He concluded with an ominous warning: ‘Like an ever-widening sinkhole, N.S.A.’s surveillance technology will continue to expand, quietly pulling in more and more communications and gradually eliminating more and more privacy.’ Three decades later, this pronouncement feels uncomfortably prescient: We were warned.”—Alexander Nazaryan, The New Yorker

“James Bamford . . . rips away the secrecy with [The Puzzle Palace]. There have been glimpses inside the N.S.A. before, but until now no one has published a comprehensive and detailed report on the agency. The quality and depth of Mr. Bamford's research are remarkable . . . Mr. Bamford has emerged with everything except the combination to the director's safe. In some sections it appears that he may even have that . . . By revealing the scope and opening up the operations of the N.S.A. without giving away its most sensitive secrets, Mr. Bamford has performed an important public service with this impressive book.”—Philip Taubman, New York Times Book Review

"James Bamford's landmark account The Puzzle Palace . . . by far the most comprehensive and authoritative account of the [N.S.A.], quickly became a classic . . . Now Bamford, an investigative journalist . . . brings us Body of Secrets, an examination of the National Security Agency from its founding to the present. And he has done it again. Far more than an update of his first book, Body of Secrets is every bit as impressive an achievement. Not only is this the definitive book on America's most secret agency, but it is also an extraordinary work of investigative journalism, a galvanizing narrative brimming with heretofore undisclosed details."—Joseph Finder, New York Times Book Review

“For thirty years, on a sometimes lonely hunt, James Bamford has pursued that great white whale of American intelligence, the National Security Agency. It has been a jarring ride at times. He was threatened with prosecution in 1982 for revealing the secrets of that mammoth eavesdropping agency in his pathbreaking first book, The Puzzle Palace . . . Now he has followed up with [TheShadow Factory,] a third book reconstructing the agency’s recent history . . . Mr. Bamford traces what was happening inside the agency as the 9/11 hijackers arrived in the United States and made preparations for the attack. Some were living in Laurel, Maryland, home to thousands of agency employees. ‘The terrorists and the eavesdroppers would coexist in the N.S.A.’s close-knit community like unseeing ghosts,’ Mr. Bamford writes.”—Scott Shane, New York Times

Tip of the iceberg

Author is well connected to write about the community and has pieced together a story that only scratches the surface when it comes to the reality of American politics.

Sunlight is a great disinfectant

While I am sure that there are books dedicated to the triumphs of our clandestine services, it is always healthy to acknowledge their failures. Spyfail is a humbling account of the hypocrisy and epic misses of our “intelligence” community.

lot of good history

apart from all the righteousness and moralizing, it's okay... the butina stuff is hard to believe

As an undereducated layman, Bamford is excellent

I used to work in the Scientology cult, and worked in their 11 million dollar "Computer Operations" room in LA in the early 1990s, and "Puzzle Palace" even was recommended reading and it spell bound me.

We thought in Scientology land that we were clever and "off line" with our system, but the opposite, anyways, I wrote up a report after reading "Puzzle Palace" of how screwed we were, and crickets. As a cult, who cares really, our "secrets" were not interesting, so what.

Over the years I've heard Bamford speak, and always still way above what I will ever really understand, but I so appreciate, as a 70 year old, semi retired wacky lived adult, his intelligence community (IC) details, and his journalistic principles.

Excellent book, if one's interested and appreciative of all of Bamford's excellent history of journalism.

As a Luddite "normal" pro Israel American, I thought he was a little hard on Israel, for their look the other way allowed spywork in the US,

Education is the answer, more adult education worldwide, just make people everywhere smarter, keep the population reading as adults somehow.

Wish life were longer so I could read more books.

Worth the Listen

Worth the listen, but think critically, think critically, think critically, and think critically again and again