Spy Memoir

Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong?

The Rogue Warrior is invading Germany with a blitzkrieg of bravado. His secret assignment: recover a pair of U.S. ADM's—Atomic Demolition Munitions—lost in the Rhine Valley. Yet, what begins as a simple SEAL mission explodes in his face when terrorists visit the cache site. With scandals at home and fresh hotbeds of political and military tensions, America's diplomatic priorities are everywhere but eastern Europe—and the Rogue Warrior and his SEALs must take matters into their own hands.

For Leslie Absher, secrecy is just another member of the family. Throughout childhood, her father's shadowy government job was ill-defined, her mother's mental health stayed off limits—even her queer identity remained hidden from her family and unacknowledged by Leslie herself.

On a sunny September day in 1931, Soviet spy Stanislav Shumovsky walked down the gangplank of the SS Europa and into New York, concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students. Joseph Stalin had sent him to acquire American secrets to help close the USSR’s yawning technology gap. In this thrilling history, Svetlana Lokhova takes the listener on a journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation, piecing together every aspect of Shumovsky’s life and character using information derived from American and Russian archives.

Frederick Rutland was an accomplished aviator, British WWI war hero, and real-life James Bond. He was the first pilot to take off and land a plane on a ship, a decorated warrior for his feats of bravery and rescue, was trusted by the admirals of the Royal Navy, had a succession of aeronautical inventions, and designed the first modern aircraft carrier. He was perhaps the most famous early twentieth-century naval aviator. Despite all of this, and due mostly to class politics, Rutland was not promoted in the new Royal Air Force in the wake of WWI.

Spies on the Sidelines: The High-Stakes World of NFL Espionage details the collection techniques that NFL teams utilize to gather information on their opponents in order to gain a game-day advantage, as well as the countermeasures used to defend against them. The book spans the entire history of the league and contains anecdotes from every NFL team. Topics include spying on practices, stealing paperwork and signals, debriefing personnel that switch teams, listening devices, headset tampering, elicitation, Spygate, Deflategate, and so much more!

The United Kingdom. A story based on real events. Few people are deemed smart enough to be selected and trained as a spy for Her Majesty’s Government, fewer qualify. The author is one such man, who, uniquely, was chosen at the age of 16, the only person still to pass selection without an education through the university system. Andy describes his unbelievable life, from the beginning, as a child, playing in the woods and fields around his home in Maple Cross, Hertfordshire, learning the skills he had no idea he would need in his future spy world.

Kristie Macrakis combines a storyteller's sense of drama with a historian's respect for evidence in this pause-resisting history of intrigue and espionage, love and war, magic and secrecy. From the piazzas of ancient Rome to the spy capitals of the Cold War, Macrakis' global history reveals the drama and importance of invisible ink. From Ovid's advice to use milk for illicit love notes, to al-Qaeda's hidden instructions in pornographic movies, this book presents stories of secret messaging that chart its evolution in sophistication and its impact on history.

A former OSS spy looks back to his training in one of the key intelligence agencies in WWII, his experience in espionage, and his remarkable metamorphosis from boy to man, man to soldier, and soldier to spy. This is the story of Helias Doundoulakis, who became a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during WWII. Rescued by the SOE's Patrick Leigh Fermor, he escaped to Egypt and joined the American army and the OSS.

Sulick reveals six fundamental elements of espionage in these stories: the motivations that drove them to spy; their access and the secrets they betrayed; their tradecraft, i.e., the techniques of concealing their espionage; their exposure; their punishment; and, finally, the damage they inflicted on America's national security.

An American-born boy grew up in a small village on the Greek island of Crete. In his last year in high school, he witnessed the German invasion of the island in May of 1941 during the early days of WWII. At the age of 18, he joined a resistance group headed by his brother and supplied crucial information to the SOE, an arm of the English Intelligence Service. This resistance group is uncovered, resulting in their hasty evacuation by the SOE to Cairo, Egypt.

In late 2013, Americans were shocked to learn that a former FBI agent turned private investigator who disappeared in Iran in 2007 was there on a mission for the CIA. The missing man, Robert Levinson, appeared in pictures dressed like a Guantánamo prisoner and pleaded in a video for help from the United States.

Her father was a man cloaked in mystery, a man of contradiction. James M. Eichelberger was a writer, philosopher, decorated WWII intelligence officer, CIA Agent, and oil industry consultant who died a penniless alcoholic. After he left her family in Beirut, Lebanon when she was six years old, Anne E. Tazewell only saw her father seven times before his death in 1989.

During the Cold War, stories of espionage became popular on both sides of the Iron Curtain, capturing the imagination of readers and filmgoers alike as secret police quietly engaged in surveillance under the shroud of impenetrable secrecy. And curiously, in the post-Cold War period there are no signs of this enthusiasm diminishing.

In January 2003, 28-year-old GCHQ translator Katharine Gun received an email from the US National Security Agency that would turn her world upside down. The message requested Katharine’s assistance in co-ordinating an illegal US-UK spy operation which would secure UN authorisation for the Iraq invasion. Horrified, she decided to leak the information to the British press. Katharine’s decision would change her life forever, as she was arrested under the Official Secrets Act whilst becoming a cause célèbre for political activists.

The most remarkable double agent of World War II, Eddie Chapman was witty, handsome, and charming. Too bad he was also a con man, womanizer, and safe-cracker. To the British, though, he was known as ZigZag, one of MI5's most valuable agents. To the Abwehr - German military intelligence - he was known as Fritzchen (Little Fritz), and was believed to be one of their most valued and trusted spies.

This is the story of Esther Simpson, a remarkable woman history has largely forgotten, but whose selfless actions left an indelible mark on the cultural and intellectual landscape of the modern world. Forgoing marriage, family, even, it seems, a private life, she committed her whole life resettling academic refugees before, during and after World War Two. She thought of these refugees as her family and by the end of her life could count among her 'children'.

A finales de la década de los 80, el sentimiento antinorteamericano afloraba en las calles del Teherán revolucionario de Jomeini, y los estadounidenses residentes eran forzados a abandonar el país. Algunos, sin embargo, fueron detenidos sin acusaciones concretas y ante la impasividad de las autoridades.

Known as Fritz to his German spy-handlers and Zig-Zag to the British secret service, Eddie Chapman was a man of many faces. While his early life was rife with petty crime, gang activity and a dishonorable discharge from the British military, Chapman’s unique skills were eventually sought out by Nazi Germany, and after convincing them he could use his criminal contacts to sabotage the English forces, he was quickly recruited.

Women Spies: A Novel of Remembrance of Mata Hari, Mary Bowser, Noor Inayat Khan, Nancy Wake and other Strong Women of History is a historical fiction that uses the "grandmother's chair" method to recount the very real histories of famous and infamous female spies down through the ages. The story begins with Lannie (a fictitious character) watching a mysterious neighbor moving in next door. Her grandmother (also fictitious) collects stories about spies.