For the period between World War II and the full onset of the Cold War, histories of American intelligence seem to go dark. Yet in those years a little known clandestine organization, the Strategic Services Unit (SSU), emerged from the remnants of wartime American intelligence to lay the groundwork for what would become the CIA and, in ways revealed here for the first time, conduct its own secret war of espionage and political intrigue in postwar Europe. Telling the full story of this earl...

A New York Times bestsellerThe secret history of America's submarine warfare is revealed for the first time in this fast-paced chronicle of adventure and intrigue during the Cold War.**"Vividly told, impressively documented." —**New York TimesFor decades, only a select and powerful few knew the truth about the submarines that silently roamed the ocean in danger and...

In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II-a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin's communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the Tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes-starting with the British Empire.Russian Roulette tells the spectacular and harrowing story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia and their mi...

Drawing on newly declassified government files, this is the dramatic story of how a forbidden book in the Soviet Union became a secret CIA weapon in the ideological battle between East and West.In May 1956, an Italian publishing scout took a train to a village just outside Moscow to visit Russia’s greatest living poet, Boris Pasternak. He left carrying the original manuscript of Pasternak’s first and only novel, entrusted to him with these words: “This is Doctor Zhivag...

**Based on astonishing KGB documents, this essential exposé uncovers the shadowy operations of the Soviet Union’s top intelligence organization.“The Sword and the Shield will stand as an indispensable reference work on Soviet espionage for years to come.”** ―Washington PostBased on an unprecedented, top-secret archive described by the FBI as “the most complete and extensive intelligence ever achieved from any source,” The Sword and the...

A revelatory and pathbreaking account of the highly secretive world of the Soviet intelligence servicesA uniquely comprehensive and rich account of the Soviet intelligence services, Jonathan Haslam's Near and Distant Neighbors charts the labyrinthine story of Soviet intelligence from the October Revolution to the end of the Cold War.Previous histories have focused on the KGB, leaving military intelligence and the special service—which specialized in ...

The New York Times bestselling author of Dark Invasion and The Last Goodnight once again illuminates the lives of little-known individuals who played a significant role in America's history as he chronicles the incredible true story of a critical, recently declassified counterintelligence mission and two remarkable agents whose story has been called "the greatest secret of the Cold War."In 1946, genius linguist and codebreaker Meredith Ga...

The "definitive" book on the U-2 episode and its disastrous impact on the future of the Cold War ( Kirkus Reviews).On May Day 1960, Soviet forces downed a CIA spy plane flown deep into Soviet territory by Francis Gary Powers two weeks before a crucial summit. This forced President Dwight Eisenhower to decide whether, in an effort to save the meeting, to admit to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev—and the world—that he had secretly ordered Powers's flight, or ...

A real-life James Bond, alleged to have spied for at least four nations and executed on the direct orders of Stalin himself, Sidney Reilly left a trail of false identities that made him precisely the type of person the secret intelligence service needed as an agent. Hero, conman, master spy, womaniser - who really was the 'Ace of Spies'? In September 1925, Sidney Reilly journeyed across the Russian frontier on a mission to overthrow the existing Bolshevik regime and restore the Czar. Yet, ...

The KGB of Cold War renown was the successor to a series of equally infamous and lethal state security agencies that date from the early days of the Russian Revolution: Cheka, OGPU, GUGB, NKVD, NKGB and MVD. Beginning with the Cheka, the organisation for combating counter-revolution and sabotage, Stalin’s Secret Police examines the Soviet state’s treatment of the enemies of Bolshevism, using methods that were so ruthless that the government was moved to abolish the organization ‘with expre...

Heroes to some, traitors to others, spies and intelligence officers continue to fascinate and enthral us with their abilities to operate secretly in the shadows. With these mini-biographies of twenty agents of various nationalities (including members of the DGSE, KGB, CIA, MI6 and Mossad), Patrick Pesnot and 'Mr X' bring the reader as close as possible into the world of espionage, though a panorama of intelligence history.Among the best known of these agents, the reader will find Aldrich A...