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Surprise, Kill, Vanish
- The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 19 hrs and 5 mins
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Publisher's summary
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 42 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 audiobook, however unsettling, is legal.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Steve M
- 05-24-19
Lots of facts, offset by too much fiction
Good book; excellent subject; needs additional substantiation.
Having spent 40+ years in the military and intelligence community, I was looking forward to reading (listening to) this book. This is my first opportunity to enjoy this author and, based on her comments in the prologue, I was encouraged by the evident thorough research and numerous credible references.
Unfortunately, I believe she put a bit too much trust into the veracity of one or two of her first-hand-account sources. For example:
- Reference to assistance from "Lieutenant Colonel John F. Kennedy" during WW II. Assistance from Kennedy is believable, but he was never a LtCol (he was in the Navy).
- So-and-so armed and relying on his '.375' caliber pistol. There is no such thing. Perhaps a mere typo for .357?
- "Each man carried 25 magazines of .223 caliber ammunition and each soldier had 25 grenades of various types." I call 'no-way' on this. As a retired Marine Corps careerist, I've carried M-16 magazines and grenades. 25 of each may be POSSIBLE to pick up, but not possible to maneuver and fight with.
- Numerous references to "RPG tracers" and one subject being "struck in the knee by an RPG." RPGs don't have or produce tracer identities and being struck in the leg with one would unquestionably take that leg clean off.
Trivial observations and unwarranted criticism? Perhaps. However I believe additional research into simple terms, concepts, and historical facts, as well as verifying the credulity of evident military "sea stories," would have moved this book from a 3-star to a 5-star review.
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190 people found this helpful
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- M-Theory517
- 07-07-19
Sources vetted?? Come on...
I was seriously looking forward to this book. My excitement suffered an excruciating death before I made it to Chapter 1. In the intro, one of the author's main sources visits her and her sons at her home. He has with him a challenge coin from our embassy in Kabul (whoopty f'ing do). She says, "he didn't say what he did over there and I knew better than to ask". Seriously??? This is your source and you didn't bother asking him what he actually did over there? By the way - we give out those challenge coins to every Tom, Dick, and Harry that walks through the compound. If you're just delivering food or taking away dirty water, you too can get a challenge coin. Post One even sells them if you're too lazy to earn one. It gets better. This Barney of a source apparently carries 3 cases around with him everywhere he goes. He keeps guns in the first two, and a large, serrated knife in the 3rd. Yes, serrated (you're about to read why this is laughable). Upon seeing the knife, she continues, "'What's that for?' I ask, almost immediately recognizing my mistake." He responds, "Sometimes a job requires quiet." He then closes the case.
Shaking my damn head. I just paid $21 for that garbage?? If I had a dime for every wannabe who came through Baghdad or Kabul as a contractor and then went on to tell EVERYONE how they were Agency black ops, I would have been able to retire 5 years ago. But hey, special props to this Rambo black ops assassin who works quietly with his serrated knife. "Damn thing is stuck again."
Yes. It is THAT bad.
Folks, if you want a book about real deal black ops (albeit Israeli Mossad), read Rise and Kill First by Ronen Bergman.
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82 people found this helpful
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- jenny hankins
- 07-23-19
Small inaccuracies
This book has many small errors that undermine is credibility. Stuff like JFK’s military rank... he was in the Navy and the book says he was a Lt Col... not a rank used in the Navy. Also referenced Vietnam scene where Billy Waugh is hit by a “tracer RPG”. It was a bullet not an RPG... just finished his book. Editing should catch this stuff
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54 people found this helpful
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- JM2020
- 05-25-19
A lot of mistakes
Jacobsen gets some things right and some things obviously wrong, everything in between is interesting but its veracity is suspect. She gets unit names and call signs wrong with surprising frequency.
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40 people found this helpful
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- Penny W.
- 11-04-19
BASIC & SIMPLE
Very basically written & performed - employing simple language, a total lack of color or detail, & far too few stories from the field. Avoid this book - there are many books about or by the author's sources which provide better detailed accounting of the CIA's "secret" paramilitary operations. Performance by author is flat & uninspired.
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24 people found this helpful
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- Richard Davis
- 05-28-19
More fiction than truth
This book just screams fake from the very beginning and doesn't get any better. It was hard to get past the big knife in the gun case that her first "source" showed her. She might be able to be fooled but anyone that has gotten past Rambo will not.
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22 people found this helpful
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- DRF
- 08-05-19
Lots of info, but not organized very well
There is a great deal of information here and the author did a lot of research using Freedom of Information sources and many personal interviews, as she never tires of telling us. It gets a bit confusing when she jumps from one vignette to another with reckless abandon. The book is organized according to decades, but the episodes she chooses to highlight seem all over the map (literally). The whole thing could benefit from a good outline.
I was disappointed that she didn't spend more time on the raid to kill Osama bin Laden, since she emphasized that this was actually a CIA-lead operation and not a Navy SEAL one. The raid got passed over in a few sentences. I also could not tell whether she was horrified of the covert kill operations or if she was fascinated by the people and technologies. At times it seemed a good deal of both.
Finally, this is what happens when you narrate your own material and don't do enough research as to how to pronounce specialized words. She was shockingly bad in areas with which I am familiar (medicine, photography), so who knows what she was mangling in other categories. "Thor-ACK-tomy" for thoracotomy," "fee-moral" for femoral artery (should be pronounced with a short "e"), "Kway-star" for Questar (pronounced "quest-star") for the telephoto lens brand.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Kenton
- 06-02-19
Another Jacobsen Hit
I LOVE Annie Jacobsen. So before reading on, know that my review is probably tainted, because I go into her books with the attitude of she can do no wrong.
But again, she takes a cloudy subject rife with conspiracy theory and sheds light on the facts through FOI research, face to face interviews with the people involved, and travel to the places where the events happened.
On top of it all, she paces the information and storytelling so it’s a very entertaining read and not just a dry documentary.
Now I will say that while I do enjoy author-narrated books, Annie would benefit from a pronunciation and technical detail editor. She often gets words from the industries and groups she writes about wrong - for example, pronouncing the helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky “SY-korskee” when anyone somewhat familiar with aviation would know it’s “s-KOR-skee.” Or referring to a “.375 Magnum” handgun, when it’s obviously supposed to be the very common “.357 Magnum.” Not huge things, but little slips like that - and there quite a few - tend to degrade the readers’ perception of her obviously rich command of the subject. Her cadence tends to get really slow, too. In fact I play her books back at 1.25x to bring her up to a fairly normal speaking cadence. These are the only reasons I took down the performance score from 5stars.
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- Troy Ray
- 09-05-19
Distracted by the Reader
Very interesting content that was overshadowed by the Reader's monotony and slaughter of words through mispronunciation.
First time I ever wanted my money back.
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Overall
- matthew berghuis
- 05-24-19
Good material, too many typos and too much opinion
There is a lot of good material in this book, however there are a noticeable amount of typos and opinion as well. It falls into the category of historical non-fiction and reads like a spy thriller. After finishing it I am left doubting several of the authors points and would not use this book as a reference in any scholarly work.
That said, there are some real interesting stories reiterated in this book.
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First Platoon
- A Story of Modern War in the Age of Identity Dominance
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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This is a story that starts off close and goes very big. The initial part of the story might sound familiar at first: it is about a platoon of mostly 19-year-old boys sent to Afghanistan, and an experience that ends abruptly in catastrophe. Their part of the story folds into the next: inexorably linked to those soldiers and never comprehensively reported before is the US Department of Defense’s quest to build the world’s most powerful biometrics database, with the ability to identify, monitor, catalog, and police people all over the world.
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An eye opener
- By Amazon Customer on 01-19-21
By: Annie Jacobsen
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The Pentagon's Brain
- An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Discover the definitive history of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, in this Pulitzer Prize finalist from the author of the New York Times best seller Area 51. No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history about the organization, New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or "the Pentagon's brain".
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Scientia Est Potentia/Knowledge is Power
- By Cynthia on 10-08-15
By: Annie Jacobsen
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Phenomena
- The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For more than 40 years, the US government has researched extrasensory perception, using it in attempts to locate hostages, fugitives, secret bases, and downed fighter jets, to divine other nations' secrets, and even to predict future threats to national security. The intelligence agencies and military services involved include CIA, DIA, NSA, DEA, the navy, air force, and army - and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now, for the first time, New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen tells the story of these radical, controversial programs.
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Phenomenally mediocre narration of a good book
- By philip on 05-18-17
By: Annie Jacobsen
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Area 51
- An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere s75 miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the US government - but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades. Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to 19 men who served the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92, and unprecedented access to 55 additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, 32 of whom lived and worked there for extended periods.
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Disappointing
- By Mike From Mesa on 06-06-11
By: Annie Jacobsen
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Operation Paperclip
- The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
In the chaos following World War II, the US government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States. Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery.
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The Osenberg list
- By Jean on 08-07-14
By: Annie Jacobsen
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Hunting the Jackal
- A Special Forces and CIA Soldier's Fifty Years on the Frontlines of the War Against Terrorism
- By: Billy Waugh, Tim Keown
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
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Performance
-
Story
For more than half a century, Special Forces and CIA legend Billy Waugh dedicated his life to tracking down and eliminating America's most virulent enemies. Operating from the darkest shadows and most desolate corners of the world, he made his mark in many of the most important operations in the annals of US Spec Ops. He spent seven and a half years behind enemy lines in Vietnam as a member of a covert group of elite commandos.
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Hunting the Jackal - epic accounting of SOF/SOG and CIA IV
- By Eric on 01-08-18
By: Billy Waugh, and others
-
First Platoon
- A Story of Modern War in the Age of Identity Dominance
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is a story that starts off close and goes very big. The initial part of the story might sound familiar at first: it is about a platoon of mostly 19-year-old boys sent to Afghanistan, and an experience that ends abruptly in catastrophe. Their part of the story folds into the next: inexorably linked to those soldiers and never comprehensively reported before is the US Department of Defense’s quest to build the world’s most powerful biometrics database, with the ability to identify, monitor, catalog, and police people all over the world.
-
-
An eye opener
- By Amazon Customer on 01-19-21
By: Annie Jacobsen
-
The Pentagon's Brain
- An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Discover the definitive history of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, in this Pulitzer Prize finalist from the author of the New York Times best seller Area 51. No one has ever written the history of the Defense Department's most secret, most powerful, and most controversial military science R&D agency. In the first-ever history about the organization, New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen draws on inside sources, exclusive interviews, private documents, and declassified memos to paint a picture of DARPA, or "the Pentagon's brain".
-
-
Scientia Est Potentia/Knowledge is Power
- By Cynthia on 10-08-15
By: Annie Jacobsen
-
Phenomena
- The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For more than 40 years, the US government has researched extrasensory perception, using it in attempts to locate hostages, fugitives, secret bases, and downed fighter jets, to divine other nations' secrets, and even to predict future threats to national security. The intelligence agencies and military services involved include CIA, DIA, NSA, DEA, the navy, air force, and army - and even the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Now, for the first time, New York Times best-selling author Annie Jacobsen tells the story of these radical, controversial programs.
-
-
Phenomenally mediocre narration of a good book
- By philip on 05-18-17
By: Annie Jacobsen
-
Area 51
- An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere s75 miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the US government - but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades. Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to 19 men who served the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92, and unprecedented access to 55 additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, 32 of whom lived and worked there for extended periods.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Mike From Mesa on 06-06-11
By: Annie Jacobsen
-
Operation Paperclip
- The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 19 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the chaos following World War II, the US government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States. Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery.
-
-
The Osenberg list
- By Jean on 08-07-14
By: Annie Jacobsen
-
Hunting the Jackal
- A Special Forces and CIA Soldier's Fifty Years on the Frontlines of the War Against Terrorism
- By: Billy Waugh, Tim Keown
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For more than half a century, Special Forces and CIA legend Billy Waugh dedicated his life to tracking down and eliminating America's most virulent enemies. Operating from the darkest shadows and most desolate corners of the world, he made his mark in many of the most important operations in the annals of US Spec Ops. He spent seven and a half years behind enemy lines in Vietnam as a member of a covert group of elite commandos.
-
-
Hunting the Jackal - epic accounting of SOF/SOG and CIA IV
- By Eric on 01-08-18
By: Billy Waugh, and others
-
Black Ops
- The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior
- By: Ric Prado
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Enrique Prado found himself in his first firefight at age seven. The son of a middle-class Cuban family caught in the midst of the Castro Revolution, his family fled their war-torn home for the hope of a better life in America. Fifty years later, the Cuban refugee retired from the Central Intelligence Agency as the CIA equivalent of a two-star general. Black Ops is the story of Ric’s legendary career that spanned two eras, the Cold War and the Age of Terrorism.
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Impressive and Inspiring!
- By medardo on 03-12-22
By: Ric Prado
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Gray Work
- Confessions of an American Paramilitary Spy
- By: Jamie Smith
- Narrated by: Jeff Gurner
- Length: 15 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In this unprecedented audiobook, a paramilitary contractor with more than two decades of experience gives us a firsthand look into the secret lives of America's private warriors and their highly covert work around the world. Author Jamie Smith has planned and executed hundreds of missions on behalf of government agencies and private industry in some of the world's most dangerous hot spots - and lived to tell the tale.
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Don't believe a word of it.
- By Dustin Harry on 08-26-15
By: Jamie Smith
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Nuclear War
- A Scenario
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These projects are vital to how we understand the world we really live in: where one nuclear missile begets one in return; where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds-notice, with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have. Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking clock scenario.
By: Annie Jacobsen
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Rise and Kill First
- The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations
- By: Ronen Bergman
- Narrated by: Rob Shapiro
- Length: 25 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. From the very beginning of its statehood in 1948, protecting the nation from harm has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and armed services, and there is one weapon in their vast arsenal that they have relied upon to thwart the most serious threats: Targeted assassinations have been used countless times, on enemies large and small....
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Eye Opening
- By Ari Safari on 02-09-18
By: Ronen Bergman
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Relentless Strike
- The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command
- By: Sean Naylor
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 19 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Relentless Strike tells the inside story of Joint Special Operations Command, the secret military organization that, during the past decade, has revolutionized counterterrorism, seamlessly fusing intelligence and operational skills to conduct missions that hit the headlines and those that have remained in the shadows - until now. Because JSOC includes the military's most storied special operations units - Delta Force, SEAL Team Six, the 75th Ranger Regiment - as well as America's most secret aviation and intelligence units, this is their story, too.
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Horrible narrator
- By Michael on 08-19-19
By: Sean Naylor
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Directorate S
- The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan
- By: Steve Coll
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 28 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Resuming the narrative of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Ghost Wars, best-selling author Steve Coll tells for the first time the epic and enthralling story of America's intelligence, military, and diplomatic efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 9/11.
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Slow At Times But Always Horrifying And Engaging
- By Gillian on 02-20-18