Hoover's Secret War against Axis Spies
Hoover's Secret War against Axis Spies

Author: Raymond J. Batvinis

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2014-04-28

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0700619526

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The world was at war, America precariously poised on the sidelines. But already a second secret war was well underway with the United States very much in the thick of it. While he fought on the home front to consolidate the FBI's intelligence gathering power, J. Edgar Hoover was conducting an all-out campaign to make his agency America's first foreign espionage service--a campaign that would lead to an uneasy alliance with British intelligence in a brilliantly successful operation to undermine Germany throughout the Second World War. While pieces of the story have been told before, only now, in this work by FBI historian and former agent Raymond Batvinis, does this crucial chapter in the history of World War II, and of the FBI, received its full due. Taking up the tale begun in his acclaimed Origins of FBI Counterintelligence, Batvinis mines a wealth of heretofore untapped resources to expose Hoover's remarkable connivances and accomplishments in concert--and occasionally contention--with the Allies in outsmarting German intelligence. Hoover's Secret War opens up a world of spy rings, secret and double agents, surveillance, codes and ciphers, wire taps, microdots, mail drops, invisible ink, radio transmissions, and deception and disinformation as it tracks the warring nations spreading their intelligence tentacles throughout Europe and North and South America. As it documents the rocky evolution of the FBI's relationship with Britain's vaunted M15 and M16, the book brings to light the feud between Hoover and William Stephenson, director of the British Secret Intelligence Service's U. S. operation, BSC. Batvinis reveals how the agency gained access to ULTRA intelligence, thanks to the British decryption of the ENIGMA code, along with the strenuous efforts to keep the Germans in the dark about it. He uncovers eye-opening details of the FBI's participation in the famed "Double-Cross System, which effectively "turned" German agents against the Fatherland, among them a flamboyant, larger-larger-than-life playboy, a world famous French flyer, and a lecherous Dutchman. Batvinis tells for the first time how the Bureau manipulated these agents, and how it transmitted deceptive information critical to the Normandy landings, the Allied invasion of the Marshall Islands, and the atomic bomb program, among other matters. Rich with secrets and surprises worthy of the finest spy fiction, this true story of espionage and counterintelligence gives us our first clear look at the secret second world war, and a significant moment in history--for the FBI, for America, and for the world.

The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence
The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence

Author: Raymond J. Batvinis

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13:

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Examines the United States- efforts to create and project a strong counterintelligence capability both at home and abroad during the 1930s. Several federal agencies, governmental departments, and military divisions vied for that role before it was eventually handed to the FBI. The author, a former FBI agent, chronicles the evolution, achievements, and failure of that effort.

The Einstein File
The Einstein File

Author: Fred Jerome

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2003-06-17

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 9780312316099

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A look at how the FBI, with the help of other government agencies, set out to collect information to use against Einstein.

Freedom Betrayed
Freedom Betrayed

Author: George H. Nash

Publisher: Hoover Press

Published: 2013-09-01

Total Pages: 816

ISBN-13: 0817912363

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Herbert Hoover's "magnum opus"—at last published nearly fifty years after its completion—offers a revisionist reexamination of World War II and its cold war aftermath and a sweeping indictment of the "lost statesmanship" of Franklin Roosevelt. Hoover offers his frank evaluation of Roosevelt's foreign policies before Pearl Harbor and policies during the war, as well as an examination of the war's consequences, including the expansion of the Soviet empire at war's end and the eruption of the cold war against the Communists.

The Secret War
The Secret War

Author: Max Hastings

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2016-05-10

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 0062259296

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"Monumental." --New York Times Book Review NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From one of the foremost historians of the period and the acclaimed author of Inferno and Catastrophe: 1914, The Secret War is a sweeping examination of one of the most important yet underexplored aspects of World War II—intelligence—showing how espionage successes and failures by the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany, and Japan influenced the course of the war and its final outcome. Spies, codes, and guerrillas played unprecedentedly critical roles in the Second World War, exploited by every nation in the struggle to gain secret knowledge of its foes, and to sow havoc behind the fronts. In The Secret War, Max Hastings presents a worldwide cast of characters and some extraordinary sagas of intelligence and resistance, to create a new perspective on the greatest conflict in history.

Roosevelt's Secret War
Roosevelt's Secret War

Author: Joseph E. Persico

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 2002-10-22

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 0375761268

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Despite all that has already been written on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Joseph Persico has uncovered a hitherto overlooked dimension of FDR's wartime leadership: his involvement in intelligence and espionage operations. Roosevelt's Secret War is crowded with remarkable revelations: -FDR wanted to bomb Tokyo before Pearl Harbor -A defector from Hitler's inner circle reported directly to the Oval Office -Roosevelt knew before any other world leader of Hitler's plan to invade Russia -Roosevelt and Churchill concealed a disaster costing hundreds of British soldiers' lives in order to protect Ultra, the British codebreaking secret -An unwitting Japanese diplomat provided the President with a direct pipeline into Hitler's councils Roosevelt's Secret War also describes how much FDR had been told--before the Holocaust--about the coming fate of Europe's Jews. And Persico also provides a definitive answer to the perennial question Did FDR know in advance about the attack on Pearl Harbor? By temperament and character, no American president was better suited for secret warfare than FDR. He manipulated, compartmentalized, dissembled, and misled, demonstrating a spymaster's talent for intrigue. He once remarked, "I never let my right hand know what my left hand does." Not only did Roosevelt create America's first central intelligence agency, the OSS, under "Wild Bill" Donovan, but he ran spy rings directly from the Oval Office, enlisting well-placed socialite friends. FDR was also spied against. Roosevelt's Secret War presents evidence that the Soviet Union had a source inside the Roosevelt White House; that British agents fed FDR total fabrications to draw the United States into war; and that Roosevelt, by yielding to Churchill's demand that British scientists be allowed to work on the Manhattan Project, enabled the secrets of the bomb to be stolen. And these are only a few of the scores of revelations in this constantly surprising story of Roosevelt's hidden role in World War II.

Double Agent
Double Agent

Author: Peter Duffy

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2014-07-22

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1451667957

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An account of a virtually unknown pre-World War II counterespionage operation describes how naturalized German-American agent William G. Sebold became the FBI's first double agent and was a pivotal figure in the arrests of 33 enemy agents for the Nazis.

The Burglary
The Burglary

Author: Betty Medsger

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2014-01-07

Total Pages: 609

ISBN-13: 0307962962

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INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS & EDITORS (IRE) BOOK AWARD WINNER • The 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 that J. Edgar Hoover had created and was operating, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, his own shadow Bureau of Investigation. “Impeccably researched, elegantly presented, engaging.”—David Oshinsky, New York Times Book Review • “Riveting and extremely readable. Relevant to today's debates over national security, privacy, and the leaking of government secrets to journalists.”—The Huffington Post It begins in 1971 in an America being split apart by the Vietnam War . . . A small group of activists set out to use a more active, but nonviolent, method of civil disobedience to provide hard evidence once and for all that the government was operating outside the laws of the land. The would-be burglars—nonpro’s—were ordinary people leading lives of purpose: a professor of religion and former freedom rider; a day-care director; a physicist; a cab driver; an antiwar activist, a lock picker; a graduate student haunted by members of her family lost to the Holocaust and the passivity of German civilians under Nazi rule. Betty Medsger's extraordinary book re-creates in resonant detail how this group scouted out the low-security FBI building in a small town just west of Philadelphia, taking into consideration every possible factor, and how they planned the break-in for the night of the long-anticipated boxing match between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali, knowing that all would be fixated on their televisions and radios. Medsger writes that the burglars removed all of the FBI files and released them to various journalists and members of Congress, soon upending the public’s perception of the inviolate head of the Bureau and paving the way for the first overhaul of the FBI since Hoover became its director in 1924. And we see how the release of the FBI files to the press set the stage for the sensational release three months later, by Daniel Ellsberg, of the top-secret, seven-thousand-page Pentagon study on U.S. decision-making regarding the Vietnam War, which became known as the Pentagon Papers. The Burglary is an important and gripping book, a portrait of the potential power of non­violent resistance and the destructive power of excessive government secrecy and spying.

Wild Bill Donovan
Wild Bill Donovan

Author: Douglas Waller

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-02-21

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 1416576207

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"Entertaining history...Donovan was a combination of bold innovator and imprudent rule bender, which made him not only a remarkable wartime leader but also an extraordinary figure in American history" (The New York Times Book Review). He was one of America's most exciting and secretive generals--the man Franklin Roosevelt made his top spy in World War II. A mythic figure whose legacy is still intensely debated, "Wild Bill" Donovan was director of the Office of Strategic Services (the country's first national intelligence agency) and the father of today's CIA. Donovan introduced the nation to the dark arts of covert warfare on a scale it had never seen before. Now, veteran journalist Douglas Waller has mined government and private archives throughout the United States and England, drawn on thousands of pages of recently declassified documents, and interviewed scores of Donovan's relatives, friends, and associates to produce a riveting biography of one of the most powerful men in modern espionage. William Joseph Donovan's life was packed with personal drama. The son of poor Irish Catholic parents, he married into Protestant wealth and fought heroically in World War I, where he earned the nickname "Wild Bill" for his intense leadership and the Medal of Honor for his heroism. After the war he made millions as a Republican lawyer on Wall Street until FDR, a Democrat, tapped him to be his strategic intelligence chief. A charismatic leader, Donovan was revered by his secret agents. Yet at times he was reckless--risking his life unnecessarily in war zones, engaging in extramarital affairs that became fodder for his political enemies--and he endured heartbreaking tragedy when family members died at young ages. Wild Bill Donovan reads like an action-packed spy thriller, with stories of daring young men and women in his OSS sneaking behind enemy lines for sabotage, breaking into Washington embassies to steal secrets, plotting to topple Adolf Hitler, and suffering brutal torture or death when they were captured by the Gestapo. It is also a tale of political intrigue, of infighting at the highest levels of government, of powerful men pitted against one another. Donovan fought enemies at home as often as the Axis abroad. Generals in the Pentagon plotted against him. J. Edgar Hoover had FBI agents dig up dirt on him. Donovan stole secrets from the Soviets before the dawn of the Cold War and had intense battles with Winston Churchill and British spy chiefs over foreign turf. Separating fact from fiction, Waller investigates the successes and the occasional spectacular failures of Donovan's intelligence career. It makes for a gripping and revealing portrait of this most controversial spymaster.

The Einstein File
The Einstein File

Author: Fred Jerome

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2003-06-17

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 1429975881

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From the moment of Einstein's arrival in the U.S. in l933 until his death in l955, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, with help from several other federal agencies, busied itself collecting "derogatory information" in an effort to undermine Einstein's influence and destroy his prestige. For the first time Fred Jerome tells the story of that anti-Einstein campaign, as well as the story behind it--why and how the campaign originated, and thereby provides the first detailed picture of Einstein's little known political activism. Unlike the popular image of Einstein as an absent-minded, head-in-the-clouds genius, the man was in fact intensely politically active and felt it was his duty to use his world-wide fame shrewdly in the cause of social justice. A passionate pacifist, socialist, internationalist and outspoken critic of racism (Einstein considered racism America's "worst disease"), and personal friend of Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois, Einstein used his immense prestige to denounce McCarthy at the height of his power, publicly urging witnesses to refuse to testify before HUAC. The story that emerges not only reveals a little known aspect of Einstein's character, but underscores the dangers that can arise, to threaten the American Republic and the rule of law, in times of obsession with national security.