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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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Non political BUT very anti-violence
- By aaron on 05-11-13
By: Jeremy Scahill
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American Cipher
- Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. Tragedy in Afghanistan
- By: Matt Farwell, Michael Ames
- Narrated by: Christopher Ryan Grant
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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The explosive narrative of the life, captivity, and trial of Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier who was abducted by the Taliban and whose story has served as a symbol for America's foundering war in Afghanistan.
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An epic he had written in his imagination...
- By Darwin8u on 03-18-19
By: Matt Farwell, and others
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Twilight Warriors
- The Soldiers, Spies, and Special Agents Who Are Revolutionizing the American Way of War
- By: James Kitfield
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 15 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In Twilight Warriors, award-winning foreign correspondent James Kitfield introduces us to the tight-knit brotherhood that strives to keep the United States safe from the dimly understood threats it now faces. Together these men have broken down the boundaries between their respective agencies to engineer a network-centric way of fighting using a seamless web of intelligence analysts, information networks, FBI forensics experts, and Special Forces units to take the fight to America's enemies as never before.
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South African Perspectives
- By Bernard Remacle on 03-22-17
By: James Kitfield
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Eagle Down
- The Last Special Forces Fighting the Forever War
- By: Jessica Donati
- Narrated by: Brittany Pressley
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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A Wall Street Journal national security reporter takes listeners into the lives of US Special Forces on the front lines against the Taliban and Islamic State, where a new and covert war is keeping Afghanistan from collapse.
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Excellent depiction of the non tactical battle.
- By Paddy on 11-16-21
By: Jessica Donati
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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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The Way of the Knife
- The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth
- By: Mark Mazzetti
- Narrated by: Richard Ferrone
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Mazzetti examines secret wars over the past decade, tracking key characters from the intelligence and military communities across the world. Among the characters we meet in The Way of the Knife are a young CIA officer dropped into the tribal areas to learn the hard way how the spy games in Pakistan are played; an Air Force test pilot who fired the first drone missile in the Nevada desert; and a chain-smoking Pentagon official who ran an off-the-books spying operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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Excellent critique of covert operations
- By Keefer on 04-27-13
By: Mark Mazzetti
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Eyes on Target
- Inside Stories from the Brotherhood of the U.S. Navy SEALs
- By: Scott McEwen, Richard Miniter
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Told through the eyes of current and former Navy SEALs, Eyes on Target is an inside account of some of the most harrowing missions in American history-including the mission to kill Osama bin Laden and the mission that wasn't, the deadly attack on the US diplomatic outpost in Benghazi where a retired SEAL sniper with a small team held off one hundred terrorists while his repeated radio calls for help went unheeded.
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Just an attempt to cash in
- By John on 09-24-16
By: Scott McEwen, and others
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SEAL Target Geronimo
- The Inside Story of the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden
- By: Chuck Pfarrer
- Narrated by: Erik Bergmann
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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On May 2, 2011, at 1:03 a.m. a satellite uplink was sent from Pakistan crackling into the situation room of the White House: "Geronimo, Echo, KIA." These words, spoken by a Navy SEAL, ended Osama bin Laden's reign of terror. SEAL Target Geronimo is the story of Neptune's Spear from the men who were there. After talking to members of the SEAL team involved in the raid, Pfarrer shares never-before-revealed details in an exclusive account of what happened as he takes listeners inside the walls of Bin Laden's compound.
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Marcinko’s Legacy….his pain, their gain.
- By James on 11-10-11
By: Chuck Pfarrer
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Benghazi
- The Definitive Report
- By: Brandon Webb, Jack Murphy
- Narrated by: Melinda Fleming, Salomon Maya
- Length: 2 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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On September 12th, 2012, Brandon Webb learned Glen Doherty, one of his closest friends and his former Navy SEAL teammate, was killed alongside Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and two other Americans when the U.S. State Department and CIA headquarters in Benghazi, Libya, were sieged in a shocking terrorist attack.
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Beware of definitive reports
- By Steve on 04-13-13
By: Brandon Webb, and others
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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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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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Night Fighter
- An Insider's Story of Special Ops from Korea to SEAL Team 6
- By: William H. Hamilton Jr., Charles W. Sasser
- Narrated by: Bill Thatcher
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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One month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when President John F. Kennedy pressed Congress about America’s “urgent national needs”, he named expanding US special operations forces along with putting a man on the moon. Captain William Hamilton was the officer tasked with creating the finest unconventional warriors ever seen. Merging his own experience commanding Navy Underwater Demolition Teams with expertise from Army Special Forces and the CIA, and working with his subordinate, Roy Boehm, he cast the mold for sea-, air-, and land-dispatched night fighters.
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OK story
- By dexter on 03-16-20
By: William H. Hamilton Jr., and others
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Manhunt
- The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden - from 9-11 to Abbottabad
- By: Peter L. Bergen
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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From the author of the New York Times best-selling Holy War, Inc., this is the definitive account of the decade-long manhunt for the world’s most wanted man, Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda expert and CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen paints a multidimensional picture of the hunt for bin Laden over the past decade, including the operation that killed him.
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DO NOT MISS THIS ONE!
- By Betty on 05-04-12
By: Peter L. Bergen
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American Spy
- Wry Reflections on My Life in the CIA
- By: H. K. Roy
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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This candid and darkly witty memoir recounts an exhilarating life - and a few close brushes with death. With remarkable sangfroid and a humorist's eye for absurdity, H. K. Roy describes his many strange and risky exploits in his long career with the CIA. Whether he was pursuing Soviet and Cuban spies, running "denied area" operations in Eastern Europe, hunting Bosnian War criminals, or providing actionable intelligence to US government and coalition forces in Iraq, Roy usually found himself at the right place at the right time.
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To political
- By Amazon Customer on 11-29-19
By: H. K. Roy
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Delta Force—the US Army’s most elite top-secret strike force. They dominate the modern battlefield, but you won’t hear about their heroics on CNN. No headlines can reveal their top-secret missions, and no book has ever taken readers inside—until now. Here, a founding member of Delta Force takes us behind the veil of secrecy and into the action to reveal the never-before-told story of First Special Forces Operational Detachment-D (Delta Force).
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In combating terror, America can no longer depend on its conventional military superiority and the use of sophisticated technology. More than ever, we need men like those of the Army Special Forces---the legendary Green Berets. In Chosen Soldier, Dick Couch draws on nearly a year spent at Special Forces training facilities and offers an unprecedented view of the education of these men.
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Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Green Beret
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What listeners say about Surprise, Kill, Vanish
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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- 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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- 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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56 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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- 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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- 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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- 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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- 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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- 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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