Intelligence History

Independent filmmaker Mary Haverstick thought she’d stumbled onto the project of a lifetime—a biopic of aviation pioneer Jerrie Cobb, the key figure in a group of extraordinary women who in 1960 passed the same tests as the legendary male astronauts of the Mercury 7 but never went to space. Just as casting was set to begin, Haverstick received a mysterious warning from a government agent; soon she began to suspect that there was more to Jerrie’s story than what met the eye. As she dug deeper, she discovered that Jerrie’s life shadowed that of a mysterious CIA agent named June Cobb.

What if the greatest equation ever written was not one that explained the universe, but one that questioned existence itself? Elias Voltaire was a man who believed that everything could be calculated—every force, every motion, even human thought itself. But in his final moments, as he crossed the threshold of life and death, he found himself in a realm that defied all mathematical logic. Instead of nothingness, he encountered an infinite field of information, a vast and ever-changing ocean where knowledge flowed endlessly—yet he himself was dissolving into it. With no body, no form, and...

Whilst putting this handbook together, I have tried hard not to embed the narrative with my own thoughts and feelings. Those that I do have, are consolidated here in this forward. It has been difficult not to descend into my own projections where we, the human race will be, moving forward into the future. When we look back in time however, it is easier to understand how we have arrived at this moment in our history. We have over the course of the past eighty years or so, developed a technology, which I firmly believe is about to become our nemesis. For the first time in the history of our ...

Step into a world of shadow diplomacy, double agents, and nuclear tension in this riveting exploration of the Cold War era. In The Cold War Files, acclaimed historian and bestselling author Isabella Hayes delivers a powerful narrative of one of the most dangerous and defining periods in modern history. From the chilling silence of spy tunnels beneath Berlin to the nerve-wracking hours of the Cuban Missile Crisis, this audiobook brings to life the hidden battles, betrayals, and global maneuverings that shaped the post-war world.

The Mobile Wave argues that the changes brought by mobile computing are so big and widespread that it’s impossible for us to see it all, even though we are all immersed in it. Saylor explains that the current generation of mobile smart phones and tablet computers has set the stage to become the universal computing platform for the world. In the hands of billions of people and accessible anywhere and anytime, mobile computers are poised to become an appendage of the human being and an essential tool for modern life.

Since its founding in 1995, the FSB, Russia's Federal Security Service, has regained the majority of the domestic security functions of the Soviet-era KGB. Under Vladimir Putin, who served as FSB director just before becoming president, the agency has grown to be one of the most powerful and favored organizations in Russia. The FSB not only conducts internal security but also has primacy in intelligence operations in former Soviet states.

With unprecedented access to more than a dozen individuals who have made the life-and-death decisions that come with running the world’s most powerful and influential intelligence service, Chris Whipple tells the story of an agency that answers to the United States president alone, but whose activities — spying, espionage, and covert action — take place on every continent. At pivotal moments, the CIA acts as a counterforce against rogue presidents, starting in the mid-70s with DCI Richard Helms’s refusal to conceal Richard Nixon’s criminality.

In this accessible, up-to-date, and authoritative examination of the world’s most radical technology, neuroscientist and AI researcher Christopher Summerfield explores what it really takes to build a brain from scratch. We have entered a world in which disarmingly human-like chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard, appear to be able to talk and reason like us—and are beginning to transform everything we do. But can AI ‘think’, 'know' and ‘understand’? What are its values? Whose biases is it perpetuating? Can it lie and if so, could we tell? Does their arrival threaten our very existence?

The highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence official ever to defect to the West, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa is at it again. A quarter century ago, in his international bestseller Red Horizons, Pacepa exposed the massive crimes and corruption of his former boss, Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, giving the dictator a nervous breakdown and inspiring him to send assassination squads to the U.S. to find his former spy chief and kill him. They failed.

Russia expert Luke Harding lays out the most in-depth look to date at the Trump campaign's dealings with Russia. Beginning with a meeting with Christopher Steele, the man behind the shattering dossier that first brought the allegations to light, Harding probes the histories of key Russian and American players with striking clarity and insight. Harding exposes the disquieting details of the Trump-Russia story - a saga so huge it involves international espionage, offshore banks, sketchy real estate deals, mobsters, money laundering, disappeared dissidents, and more.

The National Security Agency is the world's most powerful, most far-reaching espionage organization. Now with a new afterword describing the security lapses that preceded the attacks of September 11, 2001, Body of Secrets takes us to the inner sanctum of America's spy world. In the follow-up to his best-selling Puzzle Palace, James Bamford reveals the NSA's hidden role in the most volatile world events of the past, and its desperate scramble to meet the frightening challenges of today and tomorrow.

It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. At the helm as prime minister was charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba. Just days after the handover, however, the Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo crisis.”

When the Detroit Red Wings were rebooting their franchise after more than two decades of relative futility, they knew the best place to find world-class players who could turn things around more quickly were conscripted servants behind the Iron Curtain. All they had to do to get them was make history by drafting them and then figure out how to get them out of the Soviet Union.

AI expert Yorick Wilks takes a journey through the history of artificial intelligence up to the present day, examining its origins, controversies, and achievements, as well as looking into just how it works. He also considers the future, assessing whether these technologies could menace our way of life and how we are all likely to benefit from AI applications in the years to come.

Beyond the Horizon: The Declassified History of the CIA’s Office of Special Activities (CIA Area 51 Chronicles – Book 10) By TD Barnes The CIA’s most secretive division. The covert missions that shaped modern intelligence. The untold story of Area 51’s black operations. For decades, the CIA’s Office of Special Activities (OSA) operated in the shadows, overseeing some of the most classified projects in intelligence history. From the secret testing of high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft to the development of stealth technology and satellite surveillance, this elite division played...

The never-before-told full story of the history-changing break-in at the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, by a group of unlikely activists - quiet, ordinary, hardworking Americans - that made clear the shocking truth and confirmed what some had long suspected, that J. Edgar Hoover had created and was operating, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, his own shadow Bureau of Investigation.

Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag was hailed as “rollicking, spellbinding” (New York Times), “wildly improbable but entirely true” (Entertainment Weekly), and, quite simply, “the best book ever written” (Boston Globe). In his new book, Operation Mincemeat, he tells an extraordinary story that will delight his legions of fans. In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliant intelligence officers conceived a plan that was both simple and complicated - Operation Mincemeat.

This essential, pause-resister narrative on the history of drone warfare by the acclaimed author of Rumsfeld explores how this practice emerged, who made it happen, and the real consequences of targeted killing.

Cuando, en junio de 2013, Edward Snowden reveló que la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional había interceptado a millones de personas, incluyendo varios jefes de Estado y de Gobierno, se descubrió que no se había escapado de espionaje, ni siquiera Jorge Mario Bergoglio o los cardenales que habían elegido al nuevo Papa.

In 1942, the Allies were losing, Germany seemed unstoppable, and every able man in England was on the front lines. To "set Europe ablaze," in the words of Winston Churchill, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), whose spies were trained in everything from demolition to sharpshooting, was forced to do something unprecedented: recruit women. Thirty-nine answered the call, leaving their lives and families to become saboteurs in France.