Download or read book America s Great Game written by Hugh Wilford and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 9/11 attacks to waterboarding to drone strikes, relations between the United States and the Middle East seem caught in a downward spiral. And all too often, the Central Intelligence Agency has made the situation worse. But this crisis was not a historical inevitability—far from it. Indeed, the earliest generation of CIA operatives was actually the region’s staunchest western ally. In America’s Great Game, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford reveals the surprising history of the CIA’s pro-Arab operations in the 1940s and 50s by tracing the work of the agency’s three most influential—and colorful—officers in the Middle East. Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt was the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and the first head of CIA covert action in the region; his cousin, Archie Roosevelt, was a Middle East scholar and chief of the Beirut station. The two Roosevelts joined combined forces with Miles Copeland, a maverick covert operations specialist who had joined the American intelligence establishment during World War II. With their deep knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs, the three men were heirs to an American missionary tradition that engaged Arabs and Muslims with respect and empathy. Yet they were also fascinated by imperial intrigue, and were eager to play a modern rematch of the “Great Game,” the nineteenth-century struggle between Britain and Russia for control over central Asia. Despite their good intentions, these “Arabists” propped up authoritarian regimes, attempted secretly to sway public opinion in America against support for the new state of Israel, and staged coups that irrevocably destabilized the nations with which they empathized. Their efforts, and ultimate failure, would shape the course of U.S.–Middle Eastern relations for decades to come. Based on a vast array of declassified government records, private papers, and personal interviews, America’s Great Game tells the riveting story of the merry band of CIA officers whose spy games forever changed U.S. foreign policy.
Download or read book 109 East Palace written by Jennet Conant and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Tuxedo Park, the extraordinary story of the thousands of people who were sequestered in a military facility in the desert for twenty-seven intense months under J. Robert Oppenheimer where the world's best scientists raced to invent the atomic bomb and win World War II. In 1943, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant, charismatic head of the Manhattan Project, recruited scientists to live as virtual prisoners of the U.S. government at Los Alamos, a barren mesa thirty-five miles outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thousands of men, women, and children spent the war years sequestered in this top-secret military facility. They lied to friends and family about where they were going and what they were doing, and then disappeared into the desert. Through the eyes of a young Santa Fe widow who was one of Oppenheimer's first recruits, we see how, for all his flaws, he developed into an inspiring leader and motivated all those involved in the Los Alamos project to make a supreme effort and achieve the unthinkable.
Download or read book A Secret Location on the Lower East Side written by Steven Clay and published by Granary Books. This book was released on 1998 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By Jerome Rothenberg. Contributions by Steven Clay, Rodney Phillips.
Download or read book Secret Stairs East Bay written by Charles Fleming and published by Santa Monica Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revised and Updated in September 2020! The hills of the East Bay contain one of the finest and densest urban hiking environments in the state of California—more than 400 paved pathways and public staircases lattice up and down the slopes of Berkeley and Oakland alone. Rising high above the city centers, with towering views of the San Francisco Bay, the Bay Bridge, and San Francisco itself, these elegant civic walking trails—many of them shaded in oaks and redwoods, and many unknown even to local residents—present a unique landscape for both the casual walker and dedicated hiker. Charles Fleming, the Southern California author whose bestselling 2010 walking guide Secret Stairs turned the hidden public staircases of Los Angeles into popular hiking trails, now turns his eyes northward. For Secret Stairs: East Bay, Fleming has designed more than 30 individual hiking loops. Linking multiple staircases into one-to two-hour self-guided strolls, these urban treks will delight the tourist, newly arrived Berkeley undergraduate, and veteran Bay Area resident alike. The circular walks, each calibrated by length, difficulty, and duration—and each accompanied by a detailed, easy-to-follow map—are sprinkled with fascinating facts about the historic staircases, the historic homes around them, and the famous Bay Area characters who gave them their names. Walk the walks of Bret Harte, Mark Twain, and John Muir! Climb Berkeley’s massive Fred Herbert and Tamalpais Paths, hike Easter Way, and summit Sunset Trail! Mount Oakland’s Oakmore stairs, then tackle the hills of Upper Rockridge and Crocker Highlands via the public staircases. And do it all within easy walking distance from BART or bus stops, free parking, and excellent Bay Area cafés.
Download or read book Pirates of the Caribbean The Secret Files of the East India Trading Company written by Sir Thomas Faye and published by Disney Press. This book was released on 2007-08-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The East India Trading Company has been working to rid the Seven Seas of all pirates, but the cunning pirates are hard to catch. If the East India Trading Company is ever to gain control, they will need all the help they can get. Luckily for them, this compiliation pulls together all the stories of the notorious, pesky Pirates of the Caribbean. Featuring legends and facts known about the key characters, their ships, and the places they travel, it's a who's-who for new and old fans alike.
Download or read book Shadow Wars written by Christopher Davidson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 933 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than a century successive US and UK governments have sought to thwart nationalist, socialist and pro-democracy movements in the Middle East. Through the Cold War, the ‘War on Terror’ and the present era defined by the Islamic State, the Western powers have repeatedly manipulated the region’s most powerful actors to ensure the security of their own interests and, in doing so, have given rise to religious politics, sectarian war, bloody counter-revolutions and now one of the most brutal incarnations of Islamic extremism ever seen. This is the utterly compelling, systematic dissection of Western interference in the Middle East. Christopher Davidson exposes the dark side of our foreign policy – dragging many disturbing facts out into the light for the first time. Most shocking for us today is his assertion that US intelligence agencies continue to regard the Islamic State, like al-Qaeda before it, as a strategic but volatile asset to be wielded against their enemies. Provocative, alarming and unrelenting, Shadow Wars demands to be read – now.
Download or read book The Secret of Secrets written by William Francis Ryan and published by University of London Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The History of the Stasi written by Jens Gieseke and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A well-balanced and detailed look at the East German Ministry for State Security, the secret police force more commonly known as the Stasi. “This is an excellent book, full of careful, balanced judgements and a wealth of concisely-communicated knowledge. It is also well written. Indeed, it is the best book yet published on the MfS.”—German History The Stasi stood for Stalinist oppression and all-encompassing surveillance. The “shield and sword of the party,” it secured the rule of the Communist Party for more than forty years, and by the 1980s it had become the largest secret-police apparatus in the world, per capita. Jens Gieseke tells the story of the Stasi, a feared secret-police force and a highly professional intelligence service. He inquires into the mechanisms of dictatorship and the day-to-day effects of surveillance and suspicion. Masterful and thorough at once, he takes the reader through this dark chapter of German postwar history, supplying key information on perpetrators, informers, and victims. In an assessment of post-communist memory politics, he critically discusses the consequences of opening the files and the outcomes of the Stasi debate in reunified Germany. A major guide for research on communist secret-police forces, this book is considered the standard reference work on the Stasi.
Download or read book Stasi written by John O. Koehler and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-05 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this gripping narrative, John Koehler details the widespread activities of East Germany's Ministry for State Security, or "Stasi." The Stasi, which infiltrated every walk of East German life, suppressed political opposition, and caused the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of citizens, proved to be one of the most powerful secret police and espionage services in the world. Koehler methodically reviews the Stasi's activities within East Germany and overseas, including its programs for internal repression, international espionage, terrorism and terrorist training, art theft, and special operations in Latin America and Africa. Koehler was both Berlin bureau chief of the Associated Press during the height of the Cold War and a U.S. Army Intelligence officer. His insider's account is based on primary sources, such as U.S. intelligence files, Stasi documents made available only to the author, and extensive interviews with victims of political oppression, former Stasi officers, and West German government officials. Drawing from these sources, Koehler recounts tales that rival the most outlandish Hollywood spy thriller and, at the same time, offers the definitive contribution to our understanding of this still largely unwritten aspect of the history of the Cold War and modern Germany.
Download or read book On Secret Service East of Constantinople written by Peter Hopkirk and published by John Murray. This book was released on 2011-09-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the banner of a Holy War, masterminded in Berlin and unleashed from Constantinople, the Germans and the Turks set out in 1914 to foment violent revolutionary uprisings against the British in India and the Russians in Central Asia. It was a new and more sinister version of the old Great Game, with world domination as its ultimate aim. Here, told in epic detail and for the first time, is the true story behind John Buchan's classic wartime thriller Greenmantle, recounted through the adventures and misadventures of the secret agents and others who took part in it. It is an ominously topical tale today in view of the continuing turmoil in this volatile region where the Great Game has never really ceased.
Download or read book The Secret War for the Middle East written by Youssef Aboul-Enein and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It can be argued that the Middle East during the World War II has been regarded as that conflict’s most overlooked theater of operations. Though the threat of direct Axis invasion never materialized beyond the Egyptian Western Desert with Rommel’s Afrika Korps, this did not limit the Axis from probing the Middle East and cultivating potential collaborators and sympathizers. These actions left an indelible mark in the socio-political evolution of the modern states of the Middle East. This book explores the infusion of the political language of anti-Semitism, nationalism, fascism, and Marxism that were among the ideological byproducts of Axis and Allied intervention in the Arab world. The status of British-dominated Middle East was tailor-made for exploitation by Axis intelligence and propaganda. German and Italian intelligence efforts fueled anti-British resentments; their influence shaped the course of Arab nationalist sentiments throughout the Middle East. A relevant parallel to the pan-Arab cause was Hitler’s attempt to bring ethnic Germans into the fold of a greater German state. In theory, as the Sudeten German stood on par with the Carpathian German, so too, according to doctrinal theory, did the Yemeni stand in union with the Syrian in the imagination of those espousing pan-Arabism. As historic evidence demonstrates, this very commonality proved to be a major factor in the development of relations between Arab and Fascist leaders. The Arab nationalist movement amounted to nothing more than a shapeless, fragmented, counter position to British imperialism, imported to the Arab East via Berlin for Nazi aspirations.
Download or read book Secrets and Truth written by Katherine Verdery and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-28 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nothing in Soviet-style communism was as shrouded in mystery as its secret police. Its paid employees were known to few and their actual numbers remain uncertain. Its informers and collaborators operated clandestinely under pseudonyms and met their officers in secret locations. Its files were inaccessible, even to most party members. The people the secret police recruited or interrogated were threatened so effectively that some never told even their spouses, and many have held their tongues to this day, long after the regimes fell. With the end of communism,ÿmany ofÿtheÿnewly established governments?among them Romania?s?opened their secret police archives. From those files,ÿas well asÿher personal memories, the author has carried out historical ethnography of the Romanian Securitate.ÿSecrets and Truthsÿis not only of historical interest but has implications for understanding the rapidly developing ?security state? of the neoliberal present. ÿ
Download or read book Security Empire written by Molly Pucci and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling examination of the establishment of the secret police in Communist Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Eastern Germany This book examines the history of early secret police forces in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War. Molly Pucci delves into the ways their origins diverged from the original Soviet model based on differing interpretations of communism and local histories. She also illuminates the difference between veteran agents who fought in foreign wars and younger, more radical agents who combatted "enemies of communism" in the Stalinist terror in Eastern Europe.
Download or read book War of Shadows written by Gershom Gorenberg and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this World War II military history, Rommel's army is a day from Cairo, a week from Tel Aviv, and the SS is ready for action. Espionage brought the Nazis this far, but espionage can stop them—if Washington wakes up to the danger. As World War II raged in North Africa, General Erwin Rommel was guided by an uncanny sense of his enemies' plans and weaknesses. In the summer of 1942, he led his Axis army swiftly and terrifyingly toward Alexandria, with the goal of overrunning the entire Middle East. Each step was informed by detailed updates on British positions. The Nazis, somehow, had a source for the Allies' greatest secrets. Yet the Axis powers were not the only ones with intelligence. Brilliant Allied cryptographers worked relentlessly at Bletchley Park, breaking down the extraordinarily complex Nazi code Enigma. From decoded German messages, they discovered that the enemy had a wealth of inside information. On the brink of disaster, a fevered and high-stakes search for the source began. War of Shadows is the cinematic story of the race for information in the North African theater of World War II, set against intrigues that spanned the Middle East. Years in the making, this book is a feat of historical research and storytelling, and a rethinking of the popular narrative of the war. It portrays the conflict not as an inevitable clash of heroes and villains but a spiraling series of failures, accidents, and desperate triumphs that decided the fate of the Middle East and quite possibly the outcome of the war.
Download or read book Israel Undercover written by Steve Posner and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1987-11-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Israel Undercover focuses on the execution of paramilitary counterterrorist operations against Palestinian guerrillas and the behind-the-scenes negotiations carried out among Arab statesmen, Israeli leaders, and American officials. Intelligence agencies like the CIA and the KGB are often viewed as tools for carrying out "dirty tricks," covert operations that lead to government coups, illegal bombings, political killings, and "Iranscam." In the Middle East, undercover operatives are frequently called upon to serve a dual purpose: to wage clandestine warfare behind enemy lines and to help public officials carry out secret diplomatic moves that would be impossible if carried out under the glare of the world press. This book successfully portrays the cold objectivity that governs the life-and-death foreign policy of a country like Israel-the need to view friend and foe alike with resolute realism. The book is divided into four sections: (1) "Inside Beirut" describes Israel's use of its intelligence network in Lebanon during the 1970s to conduct military reprisals and its impact on the Israeli-Egyptian peace process; (2) "Across the River Jordan" examines the decades-old secret relationship between Israeli leaders and Jordan's King Hussein; (3) "American Dreams" reveals the quiet alliance between the Christian Phalangist militia and Washington's back-door channel to the PLO; and (4) "The Mysterious Middle East" provides a glimpse of the region's special mix of conspiracy and animosity. In order to provide a historical setting and a political context for the events described in the book, material is included from widely published sources, integrated with information gathered from private informants, some of whom have chosen to remain anonymous.
Download or read book Behind the Desert Storm written by Pavel Stroilov and published by Price World Publishing. This book was released on 2011-07-15 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using top secret documents stolen from Russian archives, historian Pavel Stroilov, a Russian dissident living in London in political exile, has written a masterpiece on the behind-the-scenes politicking of the first Gulf War that exposes direct lies in the memoirs of President Bush Senior, Brent Scowcroft and James Baker, and explains the truth behind the current revolutions throughout the Middle East. In addition to revealing a great number of never-before-seen top secret documents, Behind the Desert Storm delves into closed-doors discussions between world leaders - something that normally remains secret for a very long time. It tells the hidden history of the events which have largely determined the current state of the Middle East - from the conflict in Iraq to the Israeli-Palestinian 'peace process' to the development of the 'Eurabia' alliance between the EU and the Arab states. Looking forward, Stroilov draws out relevant lessons from history for future foreign policy.
Download or read book Riches Hidden in Secret Places written by Thorkild Jacobsen and published by Eisenbrauns. This book was released on 2002 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a scholar's salute to a teacher, colleague, and friend, the contributors of this new volume honor the memory of Thorkild Jacobsen with essays on Mesopotamian history, culture, literature, and religion. Contributors include: Tzvi Abusch, John Huehnergard, Bendt Alster, Jeremy Black, Miguel Civil, Jerrold S. Cooper, M. J. Geller, Stephen A. Geller, Samuel Greengus, William W. Hallo, Wolfgang Heimpel, Jacob Klein, W. G. Lambert, Jack M. Sasson, Ake W. Sjoberg, Piotr Steinkeller, H. L. J. Vanstiphout, and Claus Wilcke.
