March 1968: three miles below the stormy surface of the North Pacific, a Soviet submarine lay silent as a tomb-its crew dead, its payload of nuclear missiles, once directed toward strategic targets in Hawaii, inoperable. No longer a real threat, the sub still presented an alluring target and it was not long before the CIA answered its siren call—even at the risk of igniting World War III.Project AZORIAN—the monumentally audacious six-year mission to recover the sub and learn its se...

PO Box 500, London W2; the nondescript address from behind which one of the worlds most famous Secret Services hid: MI5. This book, based on previously secret sources, lifts the lid on Britains Security Service.The authors look in detail at MI5s role in the post-Cold War world; in particular, they consider its changing role as it took on the main responsibility in countering terrorist threats to Britain. Controversy has never been far away during MI5s battle against the IRA, which ...

PO Box 500, London W2; the nondescript address from behind which one of the worlds most famous Secret Services hid: MI5. This book, based on previously secret sources, lifts the lid on Britains Security Service in its battle against German espionage. During the Second World War, the Security Service, through brilliant officers such as Guy Liddell, Dick White and the fearsome spy-breaker, Tin-eye Stephens, commandant of MI5s interrogation centre, Camp 020, successfully ran the Double Cross ...

In this "thoughtful, entertaining, and often insightful" book, a former CIA director explores the delicate give-and-take between the Oval Office and Langley.With the disastrous intelligence failures of the last few years still fresh in Americans minds--and to all appearances still continuing--there has never been a more urgent need for a book like this.In Burn Before Reading, Admiral Stansfield Turner, the CIA director under President Jimmy Carter, t...

Until the watershed leak of top-secret documents by Edward Snowden to the Guardian UK and the Washington Post, most Americans did not realize the extent to which our government is actively acquiring personal information from telecommunications companies and other corporations. As made startlingly clear, the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected information on every phone call Americans have made over the past seven years. In that same time, the NSA and the FBI have...

PO Box 500, London W2 the nondescript address from behind which one of the worlds most famous secret services hid: MI5. Drawing on previously secret sources, this book lifts the lid on Britains Security Service in its battle against German and Soviet espionage. It tells the sensational stories of the officers and agents and the enemies they confronted, from MI5s creation in 1909 under the direction of Vernon Kell, Britains first spymaster.Building on the services wartime success, M...

Major investigative nonfiction on one of the most important stories of our time -- the spread of nuclear weapons -- written by two award-winning journalists who for years have followed the trail of the world's most notorious arms dealer.The world has entered a second nuclear age. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation is on the rise. Should such an assault occur, there is a strong likelihood that the trail of devastatio...

Spying on the Bomb is an "engrossing" (Wall Street Journal) global history of the American-led effort to spy on every nation with nuclear ambitions.A global history of U.S. nuclear espionage from its World War II origins to twenty-first century threats from rogue states. For more than sixty years, the United States has monitored friends and foes who seek to develop the ultimate weapon. Since 1952 the nuclear club has grown to at least nine nations...

In 1956, the United States detonated 17 H-bombs in the South Pacific, including the two deadliest explosions ever to occur anywhere on our planet—before or since.The 1,612 soldiers stationed at the headquarters island (including me, a draftee) were sent there to “observe” this nuclear test series, named Operation Redwing. Wearing only T-shirts and shorts and without Radsuits, high density goggles or other protective gear, we were exposed to radiation and fallout.NUKED: ...

Does government surveillance make us safer? The thirteenth Munk Debate, held in Toronto on Friday, May 2, 2014, pitted Michael Hayden and Alan Dershowitz against Glenn Greenwald and Alexis Ohanian to debate whether state surveillance is a legitimate defence of our freedom — the democratic issue of the moment.In a risk-filled world, democracies are increasingly turning to large-scale state surveillance, at home and abroad, to fight complex and unconventional threats — but is it just...

The years 1909-1918 can be regarded as formative for MI5, an era in which it developed from a small counterespionage bureau into an established security intelligence agency. MI5 had two main roles during this period; counterespionage, and advising the War Office on how to deal with the police and the civilian population, particularly foreign nationals in Britain.Using hitherto neglected documents from official archives, this study examines how MI5 foiled the spies of the Kaiser dur...

In 1942, on the recommendation of 26-year-old Bob Santamaria, Australia’s Catholic bishops created a clandestine church organisation to smash the Communist Party’s massive trade union base. Soon, The Movement, working closely with ASIO, became a sophisticated intelligence agency that would influence every corner of politics.Santamaria based his Movement (also called The Show) completely on the Communist Party, copying its spectacularly successful union-organising m...