Once a top-secret training manual for CIA field agents in the early Cold War Era of the 1950s, The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception--a key component of the infamous MK-ULTRA campaign--is now available to the general public.
An amazing historical artifact, this eye-opening handbook offered step-by-step instructions to covert intelligence operatives in all manner of sleight of hand and trickery designed to thwart the Communist enemy. Part of MK-ULTRA, the CIA's secret mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, this legendary document, the brainchild of John Mulholland, then America's most famous magician, was believed lost forever. But thanks to former CIA gadgeteer Bob Wallace and renowned spycraft historian H. Keith Melton, The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception is now available to everyone, spy and civilian alike.
A warrior's handbook that provides a conceptual overview of all relevant topics of small unit tactics every Special Forces soldier ought to be familiar with to be effective on the battlefield. It seeks to define the course of study for the sound development of Special Forces soldiers so as to avoid the Scylla of mere academia and the Charybdis of pure pragmatism, and to preserve the heritage, lineage, and legacy of the United States of America's most often misunderstood and unsung heroes, the fighting men of Special Forces. The handbook is categorized into five functional areas: HISTORY, DOCTRINE, PLANNING, OPERATIONS, and COMMON SKILLS. The handbook contains history of the regiment because it accentuates the why of planning and operations. If a fool learns by experience alone, then the wise man certainly can profit from the experience of fools. This expression attributed to Otto Von Bismarck, highlights an especially important truth in the study of war, namely, learning from history, especially the failures of others. Professional warriors have always placed a high premium on it, for it yields the laurels of victory. The desired end state for this systematic arrangement of knowledge is to serve as an institutional rudder for the Special Forces Community by laying a solid foundation during the initial Phases of the Special Forces Qualification Course. We're also hopeful this 10th anniversary edition of the warrior's handbook will prove indispensable for ODAs as a quick GO-TO reference when deployed overseas training and teaching warriors abroad.
Psychological Operations (PSYOP) are a core component of all human competition and struggle: from all-out war, to low-intensity conflict, to the political and commercial influence operations whose effects we are exposed to by the news and other media every day.
Without the ability to win hearts and minds, to cement existing beliefs and loyalties, to sway the undecided and even to convince enemies to defect, no exertion of will directed at a group of people can ever be successful, regardless of its righteousness.
Furthermore, without an awareness of the techniques arrayed against us, anyone can fall victim to the efforts of influence operators whose malign intent may be focused on fomenting division and instability.
This fascinating manual was originally created for anti-Sandinista Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua in the early 1980s. In addition to its value as a historical document, the fact that it deals with the use of PSYOP by a paramilitary group during a period of overt war means that it possesses an honesty and urgency that would be unlikely under other circumstances: it treats subjects that would otherwise be considered taboo with blunt clarity. The reader is therefore left with no illusions about the lengths to which operators may go to achieve their objectives.
Controversy surrounding several such passages in the manual led to significant media attention in late 1984, and President Ronald Reagan ordered an investigation into its origins.
This definitive new full-size edition is based on the complete 2017 FOIA release of the manual, which has been transcribed, corrected, annotated, and newly indexed. It contains a new introduction and a file of related material from the CIA archives.
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In Policing Show Business, Francis MacDonnell explores the starring role played by J. Edgar Hoover in the development of the Hollywood blacklist in the 1940s and 1950s. As director of the FBI, Hoover poured resources into scrutinizing show business, a policy choice unjustified by any corresponding threat to public security. He detailed agents to write regular reports on actors, screenwriters, lyricists, singers, and studio executives. His frequent handwritten comments on papers inside the files of film industry personalities demonstrate a level of interest bordering on obsession.
Policing Show Business is not just another book about the Hollywood blacklist. MacDonnell approaches the Red Scare through biography using FBI records on such luminaries as Marlene Dietrich, Walt Disney, Hedda Hopper, Adolphe Menjou, Lena Horne, Fredric March, Cecil B. DeMille, and Burl Ives to present in unexpected, surprising, and sometimes poignant ways the rich human dramas experienced by both targets of the bureau and its collaborators.
MacDonnell's meticulously researched account, drawing on many newly available FBI files, evokes the passions and resentments; the courageous acts and calculated evasions; and the petty tyrannies and self-interested campaigns of an ignominious episode in the annals of American freedom.
A unique, compelling read.--Midwest Book Review
Revolutionary War officer Nathan Hale, one of America's first spies, said, Any kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary. A statue of Hale stands outside CIA headquarters, and the agency often cites his statement as one of its guiding principles. But who decides what is necessary for the public good, and is it really true that any kind of service is permissible for the public good? These questions are at the heart of James M. Olson's book, Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying.
Olson, a veteran of the CIA's clandestine service, takes readers inside the real world of intelligence to describe the difficult dilemmas that field officers face on an almost daily basis. Far from being a dry theoretical treatise, this fascinating book uses actual intelligence operations to illustrate how murky their moral choices can be. Readers will be surprised to learn that the CIA provides very little guidance on what is, or is not, permissible. Rather than empowering field officers, the author has found that this lack of guidelines actually hampers operations. Olson believes that U.S. intelligence officers need clearer moral guidelines to make correct, quick decisions. Significantly, he believes these guidelines should come from the American public, not from closed-door meetings inside the intelligence community. Fair Play will encourage a broad public debate about the proper moral limits on U.S. intelligence activities.In To Catch a Spy: The Art of Counterintelligence, former Chief of CIA counterintelligence James M. Olson offers a wake-up call for the American public, showing how the US is losing the intelligence war and how our country can do a better job of protecting its national security and trade secrets.
This revelatory and dramatic history of disinformation traces the rise of secret organized deception operations from the interwar period to contemporary internet troll farms
We live in the age of disinformation--of organized deception. Spy agencies pour vast resources into hacking, leaking, and forging data, often with the goal of weakening the very foundation of liberal democracy: trust in facts. Thomas Rid, a renowned expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to sound the alarm. More than four months before the 2016 election, he warned that Russian military intelligence was carefully planning and timing a high-stakes political campaign to disrupt the democratic process. But as crafty as such so-called active measures have become, they are not new. The story of modern disinformation begins with the post-Russian Revolution clash between communism and capitalism, which would come to define the Cold War. In Active Measures, Rid reveals startling intelligence and security secrets from materials written in more than ten languages across several nations, and from interviews with current and former operatives. He exposes the disturbing yet colorful history of professional, organized lying, revealing for the first time some of the century's most significant operations--many of them nearly beyond belief. A White Russian ploy backfires and brings down a New York police commissioner; a KGB-engineered, anti-Semitic hate campaign creeps back across the Iron Curtain; the CIA backs a fake publishing empire, run by a former Wehrmacht U-boat commander, that produces Germany's best jazz magazine. Rid tracks the rise of leaking, and shows how spies began to exploit emerging internet culture many years before WikiLeaks. Finally, he sheds new light on the 2016 election, especially the role of the infamous troll farm in St. Petersburg as well as a much more harmful attack that unfolded in the shadows. Active Measures takes the reader on a guided tour deep into a vast hall of mirrors old and new, pointing to a future of engineered polarization, more active and less measured--but also offering the tools to cut through the deception.INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An absolute home run! You will never look at WWII the same way again. --Brad Thor, #1 bestselling author Meltzer and Mensch are masters. --Jon Meacham, author The Soul of America A true story that reads like a thriller. --Alexander S. Vindman, LT. Col., U.S. Army (Ret.) An outstanding and memorable reading experience....a true page-turner from beginning to end. --Bookreporter.com