Spying Blind

Download or read book Spying Blind written by Amy B. Zegart and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pathbreaking book, Amy Zegart provides the first scholarly examination of the intelligence failures that preceded September 11. Until now, those failures have been attributed largely to individual mistakes. But Zegart shows how and why the intelligence system itself left us vulnerable. Zegart argues that after the Cold War ended, the CIA and FBI failed to adapt to the rise of terrorism. She makes the case by conducting painstaking analysis of more than three hundred intelligence reform recommendations and tracing the history of CIA and FBI counterterrorism efforts from 1991 to 2001, drawing extensively from declassified government documents and interviews with more than seventy high-ranking government officials. She finds that political leaders were well aware of the emerging terrorist danger and the urgent need for intelligence reform, but failed to achieve the changes they sought. The same forces that have stymied intelligence reform for decades are to blame: resistance inside U.S. intelligence agencies, the rational interests of politicians and career bureaucrats, and core aspects of our democracy such as the fragmented structure of the federal government. Ultimately failures of adaptation led to failures of performance. Zegart reveals how longstanding organizational weaknesses left unaddressed during the 1990s prevented the CIA and FBI from capitalizing on twenty-three opportunities to disrupt the September 11 plot. Spying Blind is a sobering account of why two of America's most important intelligence agencies failed to adjust to new threats after the Cold War, and why they are unlikely to adapt in the future.

Download or read book Blind Man's Bluff written by Sherry Sontag and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2008-03-04 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller The secret history of America's submarine warfare is revealed for the first time in this "vividly told, impressively documented," (The New York Times) and fast-paced chronicle of adventure and intrigue during the Cold War. For decades, only a select and powerful few knew the truth about the submarines that silently roamed the ocean in danger and in stealth, seeking information and advantage. Based on six years of groundbreaking investigation into the “silent service,” Blind Man’s Bluff uncovers an epic story of adventure, courage, victory, and disaster beneath the surface. With an unforgettable array of characters from the Cold War to the twenty-first century, Sontag and Drew recount scenes of secrecy from Washington, DC, to the depths of the sea. A magnificent achievement in investigative reporting, Blind Man’s Bluff reads like a spy thriller with one important difference: everything is true.

Download or read book Spies, Lies, and Algorithms written by Amy B. Zegart and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-02 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligence challenges in the digital age : Cloaks, daggers, and tweets -- The education crisis : How fictional spies are shaping public opinion and intelligence policy -- American intelligence history at a glance-from fake bakeries to armed drones -- Intelligence basics : Knowns and unknowns -- Why analysis is so hard : The seven deadly biases -- Counterintelligence : To catch a spy -- Covert action - "a hard business of agonizing choices" -- Congressional oversight : Eyes on spies -- Intelligence isn't just for governments anymore : Nuclear sleuthing in a Google earth world -- Decoding cyber threats.

Download or read book Spying for Wellington written by Huw J. Davies and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligence is often the critical factor in a successful military campaign. This was certainly the case for Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, in the Peninsular War. In this book, author Huw J. Davies offers the first full account of the scope, complexity, and importance of Wellington’s intelligence department, describing a highly organized, multifaceted series of networks of agents and spies throughout Spain and Portugal—an organization that was at once a microcosm of British intelligence at the time and a sophisticated forebear to intelligence developments in the twentieth century. Spying for Wellington shows us an organization that was, in effect, two parallel networks: one made up of Foreign Office agents “run” by British ambassadors in Spain and Portugal, the other comprising military spies controlled by Wellington himself. The network of agents supplied strategic intelligence, giving the British army advance warning of the arrival, destinations, and likely intentions of French reinforcements. The military network supplied operational intelligence, which confirmed the accuracy of the strategic intelligence and provided greater detail on the strengths, arms, and morale of the French forces. Davies reveals how, by integrating these two forms of intelligence, Wellington was able to develop an extremely accurate and reliable estimate of French movements and intentions not only in his own theater of operations but also in other theaters across the Iberian Peninsula. The reliability and accuracy of this intelligence, as Davies demonstrates, was central to Wellington’s decision-making and, ultimately, to his overall success against the French. Correcting past, incomplete accounts, this is the definitive book on Wellington’s use of intelligence. As such, it contributes to a clearer, more comprehensive understanding of Wellington at war and of his place in the history of British military intelligence.

Download or read book The Unexpected Spy written by Tracy Walder and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly entertaining account of a young woman who went straight from her college sorority to the CIA, where she hunted terrorists and WMDs "Reads like the show bible for Homeland only her story is real." —Alison Stewart, WNYC "A thrilling tale...Walder’s fast-paced and intense narrative opens a window into life in two of America’s major intelligence agencies" —Publishers Weekly (starred review) When Tracy Walder enrolled at the University of Southern California, she never thought that one day she would offer her pink beanbag chair in the Delta Gamma house to a CIA recruiter, or that she’d fly to the Middle East under an alias identity. The Unexpected Spy is the riveting story of Walder's tenure in the CIA and, later, the FBI. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for Weapons of Mass Destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion. Driven to stop terrorism, Walder debriefed terrorists—men who swore they’d never speak to a woman—until they gave her leads. She followed trails through North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, shutting down multiple chemical attacks. Then Walder moved to the FBI, where she worked in counterintelligence. In a single year, she helped take down one of the most notorious foreign spies ever caught on American soil. Catching the bad guys wasn’t a problem in the FBI, but rampant sexism was. Walder left the FBI to teach young women, encouraging them to find a place in the FBI, CIA, State Department or the Senate—and thus change the world.

Download or read book Fair Play written by James M. Olson and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the high-stakes world of spying, do the ends justify the means?

Download or read book God's Spies written by Elisabeth Braw and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The real-life cloak-and-dagger story of how East Germany’s notorious spy agency infiltrated churches here and abroad East Germany only existed for a short forty years, but in that time, the country’s secret police, the Stasi, developed a highly successful “church department” that—using persuasion rather than threats—managed to recruit an extraordinary stable of clergy spies. Pastors, professors, seminary students, and even bishops spied on colleagues, other Christians, and anyone else they could report about to their handlers in the Stasi. Thanks to its pastor spies, the Church Department (official name: Department XX/4) knew exactly what was happening and being planned in the country’s predominantly Lutheran churches. Yet ultimately it failed in its mission: despite knowing virtually everything about East German Christians, the Stasi couldn’t prevent the church-led protests that erupted in 1989 and brought down the Berlin Wall.