"David Shayler and Annie Machon worked for MI5's political and counter-terrorism departments in the 1990s. They were so disgusted by its crimes and incompetence that they left and David went on the record about the service's failings. Ministers refused to hear his evidence. Instead, they have used the Official Secrets Act and injunctions to stop journalists from investigating his disclosures. This has led to a life on the run, exile in Paris, a 2-year court case and two spells in prison." "Here, for the first time, Annie writes about her experiences at the heart of the secret state and what happens when you stand up to it. Her revelations about illegal intelligence operations, cover-ups to ministers, and MI6 funding of Al Qaeda operations will shock all of us who like to think that our security services are doing everything in their power to fight terrorism."--BOOK JACKET.
US intelligence agencies - the eponymous American spies - are exceedingly aggressive, pushing and sometimes bursting through the technological, legal and political boundaries of lawful surveillance. Written for a general audience by a surveillance law expert, this book educates readers about how the reality of modern surveillance differs from popular understanding. Weaving the history of American surveillance - from J. Edgar Hoover through the tragedy of September 11th to the fusion centers and mosque infiltrators of today - the book shows that mass surveillance and democracy are fundamentally incompatible. Granick shows how surveillance law has fallen behind while surveillance technology has given American spies vast new powers. She skillfully guides the reader through proposals for reining in massive surveillance with the ultimate goal of surveillance reform.
The ultimate book on the worldwide movement of hackers, pranksters, and activists collectively known as Anonymous—by the writer the Huffington Post says “knows all of Anonymous’ deepest, darkest secrets” “A work of anthropology that sometimes echoes a John le Carré novel.” —Wired Half a dozen years ago, anthropologist Gabriella Coleman set out to study the rise of this global phenomenon just as some of its members were turning to political protest and dangerous disruption (before Anonymous shot to fame as a key player in the battles over WikiLeaks, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street). She ended up becoming so closely connected to Anonymous that the tricky story of her inside–outside status as Anon confidante, interpreter, and erstwhile mouthpiece forms one of the themes of this witty and entirely engrossing book. The narrative brims with details unearthed from within a notoriously mysterious subculture, whose semi-legendary tricksters—such as Topiary, tflow, Anachaos, and Sabu—emerge as complex, diverse, politically and culturally sophisticated people. Propelled by years of chats and encounters with a multitude of hackers, including imprisoned activist Jeremy Hammond and the double agent who helped put him away, Hector Monsegur, Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy is filled with insights into the meaning of digital activism and little understood facets of culture in the Internet age, including the history of “trolling,” the ethics and metaphysics of hacking, and the origins and manifold meanings of “the lulz.”
Harry Markopolos and his team of financial sleuths discuss first-hand how they cracked the Madoff Ponzi scheme No One Would Listen is the thrilling story of how the Harry Markopolos, a little-known number cruncher from a Boston equity derivatives firm, and his investigative team uncovered Bernie Madoff's scam years before it made headlines, and how they desperately tried to warn the government, the industry, and the financial press. Page by page, Markopolos details his pursuit of the greatest financial criminal in history, and reveals the massive fraud, governmental incompetence, and criminal collusion that has changed thousands of lives forever-as well as the world's financial system. The only book to tell the story of Madoff's scam and the SEC's failings by those who saw both first hand Describes how Madoff was enabled by investors and fiduciaries alike Discusses how the SEC missed the red flags raised by Markopolos Despite repeated written and verbal warnings to the SEC by Harry Markopolos, Bernie Madoff was allowed to continue his operations. No One Would Listen paints a vivid portrait of Markopolos and his determined team of financial sleuths, and what impact Madoff's scam will have on financial markets and regulation for decades to come.
One of the Best Books of the Year Time * NPR * Washington Post * Bloomberg News * Chicago Tribune * Chicago Public Library * Fortune * Los Angeles Times * E! News * The Telegraph * Apple * Library Journal In this newly updated edition of the "meticulous and devastating" (Associated Press) account of violence and espionage that spent months on the New York Times Bestsellers list, Ronan Farrow exposes serial abusers and a cabal of powerful interests hell-bent on covering up the truth, at any cost - from Hollywood to Washington and beyond. In 2017, a routine network television investigation led to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood's most powerful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence. As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move, and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family. This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability, and silence victims of abuse. And it's the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in AutobiographyIndie Bound #1 BestsellerUSA Today BestsellerWall Street Journal Bestseller
"Mel Goodman has spent the last few decades telling us what's gone wrong with American intelligence and the American military . . . he is also telling us how to save ourselves."--Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker "Whistleblower at the CIA offers a fascinating glimpse into the secret, behind-the-scenes world of U.S. intelligence. Melvin A. Goodman's first-person account of the systematic manipulation of intelligence at the CIA underscores why whistleblowing is so important, and why the institutional obstacles to it are so intense. . . . At its core it's an invaluable historical expose, a testimony to integrity and conscience, and a call for the U.S. intelligence community to keep its top leaders in check. Urgent, timely, and deeply recommended."--Daniel Ellsberg "Mel Goodman shines a critical whistleblower light into the dark recesses of the CIA as a former insider. His book serves in the public interest as a warning and wake-up call for what's at stake and why we cannot trust the CIA or the intelligence establishment to do the right thing."—Thomas Drake, former NSA senior executive and whistleblower "Mel Goodman's Whistleblower at the CIA is not just an insider's look at politics at the highest levels of government. It's also a personal account of the political odyssey Goodman had to negotiate for telling the truth. The CIA likes for its employees to believe that everything is a shade of grey. But some things are black or white, right or wrong. Mel Goodman did what was right. He may have paid with his career, but he's on the right side of history."—John Kiriakou, former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former Senior Investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Melvin Goodman's long career as a respected intelligence analyst at the CIA, specializing in US/Soviet relations, ended abruptly. In 1990, after twenty-four years of service, Goodman resigned when he could no longer tolerate the corruption he witnessed at the highest levels of the Agency. In 1991 he went public, blowing the whistle on top-level officials and leading the opposition against the appointment of Robert Gates as CIA director. In the widely covered Senate hearings, Goodman charged that Gates and others had subverted "the process and the ethics of intelligence" by deliberately misinforming the White House about major world events and covert operations. In this breathtaking expose, Goodman tells the whole story. Retracing his career with the Central Intelligence Agency, he presents a rare insider's account of the inner workings of America's intelligence community, and the corruption, intimidation, and misinformation that lead to disastrous foreign interventions. An invaluable and historic look into one of the most secretive and influential agencies of US government--and a wake-up call for the need to reform its practices. Melvin A. Goodman served as a senior analyst and Division Chief at the CIA from 1966 to 1990. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Harper's, and many others. He is author of six books on US intelligence and international security.
We are living in a time of mind-boggling corruption, but we are also living in a golden age of whistleblowing. Over the past two decades, whistleblowers have emerged as both the government's best weapon against corporate misconduct and the citizenry's best defence against government. Drawing on relentless original research, including in-depth interviews with more than 200 whistleblowers, Crisis of Conscience is a modern-day David-and-Goliath saga, told through a series of riveting cases drawn from Big Pharma, the military, and beyond.
100 years old in August 2009, this is a complete and up-to-date account of the two oldest and still the most powerful, secretive intelligence services in the world: MI5, the security service, and MI6, the secret intelligence service. This is a story of spectacular triumphs, treachery, their frigid relationship, their untold work with the CIA, Mossad and the spy services of Europe and their part in the fight against terror. It is also the story of two agencies led by men who are enigmatic, eccentric and controversial and who ruthlessly control their spies. From the unique partnership between Mossad and MI6, how MI5 and MI6 became a breeding ground for Soviet spies post-war, their exploitation of the collapse of the Soviet Union and their role in biological warfare, and including how both services monitor the spies of every nation based in London, it reads like fiction. But it's not. Based on prodigious research and interviews with significant players Inside British Intelligence is packed with new and startling information. Gordon Thomas is a bestselling author of 40 books published worldwide, a number dealing with the intelligence world, including Gideon's Spies and Secrets and Lies (both JR Books). His awards include the Citizens Commission for Human Rights Lifetime Achievement Award for Investigative Journalism, the Mark Twain Society Award for Reporting Excellence, and an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Investigation. He lives in Ireland.
Dangerous Dossiers is as powerful and relevant today as it was when it first made worldwide headlines 25 years ago: a chilling reminder of the dangers of unfettered government intrusion into the lives and beliefs of private citizens, whether famous or not. This shocking account by award-winning author and former New York Times cultural reporter Herbert Mitgang provided hard evidence for the first time of the decades-long cultural war waged by the FBI and other federal intelligence-gathering agencies against scores of the world’s most renowned writers and artists. Using the Freedom of Information Act to pry loose actual surveillance files kept by the FBI, Mitgang documented that the targets of government snooping included a who’s-who of the literary and artistic worlds whom J. Edgar Hoover and his red-baiting legions suspected of communist leanings or outright disloyalty, usually with no basis whatsoever. They included: Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Thornton Wilder, Carl Sandburg, Norman Mailer, Robert Frost, and Allen Ginsburg; and artists including Alexander Calder, Georgia O’Keefe, and Henry Moore. Called “a fascinating, illuminating and above all, morally decent book” by The New York Times, and “first-class journalism” by The Associated Press, this exposé and the many “dangerous dossiers” it contains reveal no evidence of guilt on the part of the targets of the FBI witch-hunts. But Mitgang finds plenty of proof of the paranoia, political bias, and cultural illiteracy of those who controlled the nation’s most powerful investigative agencies.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down. In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it. Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online—a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.
