"Thelma and Louise go clandestine."-Kirkus Reviews on Bodyguard of Lies "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." Winston Churchill Who polices the world of covert operations? Enter the Cellar, the most secret spy organization hiding deep within the United States. Two women become inextricably involved in a dangerous web of lies, intrigue, and betrayal as they fight for their lives and the safety of their country. Neeley is the lover and protege of Gant, a Cellar operative, and is trying to pick up the pieces of her life after Gant's death and unveil a mystery that Gant always held close to his chest. Hannah, a housewife, is equally lost after her husband simply disappears. They soon learn that the men in their lives shared a dangerous secret, one some very powerful people would shed blood to protect. Neeley and Hannah's chance meeting sets a decades-old plan into motion and puts their lives at risk. They couldn't come from more different worlds, but as they try to escape the people who seem determined to kill them, Hannah and Neeley discover they have at least one thing in common: they've both been living a lie. Crisscrossing the globe, the women find themselves in a deadly game of survival, one that they must win in order to keep the United States safe not only from vicious acts of terror, but from its own powers that be. And if they ever hope to uncover the truth about the lovers they thought they knew, Neeley and Hannah first must learn the truth about themselves. But when the Cellar is involved, there is no such thing as coincidence, and the truth is always protected by a Bodyguard of Lies.
*Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the deception plan from Allied spies *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a Bodyguard of lies." - Winston Churchill During the first half of 1944, the Americans and British commenced a massive buildup of men and resources in the United Kingdom, while Allied Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower and military brass planned the details of an enormous and complex amphibious invasion of Europe. The most obvious place for an invasion was just across the narrow English Channel, and the Germans had built coastal fortifications throughout France to protect against just such an invasion. Cloaking the vastest amphibious landing in history in layers of shrouding misdirection represented an undertaking second only in ambitiousness to the grand seaborne invasion itself, yet with Operation Bodyguard, the Allies attempted precisely that task in regards to 1944's D-Day. Bodyguard would, if successful, confuse the Wehrmacht occupiers of France about the actual place where Operation Overlord would ultimately come ashore. The plan was to trick the Germans into thinking the expected invasion would come in late summer 1944, and would be accompanied by an invasion in Norway, Greece and elsewhere in Europe. The goal was to trick the Germans into defending areas away from the invasion, thus posing less threat to the success of the actual invasion, Operation Overlord. On an operational level it hoped to disguise the strength, timing and objectives of the invasion. The success or failure of these planned misdirections would have deadly serious consequences for the men wading ashore through the Normandy surf in early summer of 1944. The difference in the number and deployment of German forces facing them could determine if they successfully crashed through the west wall of Hitler's "Festung Europa" ("Fortress Europe") or found their decimated, bleeding remnants hurled back in defeat into the sea. Thanks to the misinformation, even as Nazi Germany's Atlantic Wall was strengthened, the deception tricked Hitler into keeping 13 divisions in Norway rather than reinforcing the Normandy peninsula. It had also tricked German High Command into believing that 89 Allied divisions were preparing to land, with enough landing craft to bring 20 divisions ashore. In actuality, the figures were 47 and 6 respectively. It would not have taken a genius commander to realize that an exhausted Britain and a U.S. Army fighting a multi-theatre war in the Pacific, Africa, Western Europe and Italy could not have fielded 87 divisions to attack Europe. Instead the Germans swallowed Allied misinformation hook, line and sinker. Statistics show the extent to which the German High Command were tricked by Allied deception plans. The Fifteenth Army, based at Pas de Calais, grew to a strength of 18 infantry and two panzer divisions. The Seventh Army, based in Normandy, had just 14 infantry and one panzer divisions. To make matters more complicated for the smaller force defending Normandy, the size of their theater of operations stretched for 995 miles of coastline. Rommel and von Rundstedt were both reminded of Frederick II's maxim, "He who defends everything, defends nothing." Without the deception, the Germans would have had free reign to maximize its forces at the point of attack in Normandy and with it, it is unclear whether the Allied invasion would have succeeded. Against such a formidable foe, however, the Allies needed to rely on every trick in the book. Operation Bodyguard: The History of the Allies' Disinformation Campaign Against Nazi Germany Before D-Day looks at the deception and its results. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Operation Bodyguard like never before.
Where were you when Diana died? For Trevor Rees-Jones the answer is simple: he was in the same hospital as her fighting for his own life a few rooms away. As bodyguard to her companion Dodi Fayed, Trevor was with the couple when their Mercedes crashed in a Paris tunnel in August 1997. Despite horrific injuries, Trevor was the sole survivor.But after the fight to recover his health came the real battle: the struggle to clear his name, as his boss Mohamed Al Fayed's grief at the loss of his son quickly turned into a desperate hunt for culprits and conspiracy. Now, for the first time, Trevor Rees-Jones grippingly describes his part in these extraordinary events.
This book uses real-world examples, case studies, and commentary from practitioners to reveal the many and varied strategies American and English lawyers use to protect truth. It shows how they tackle their conflicting duties, and highlights the 'tragic choices' lawyers everywhere routinely make through their 'power of decision'. What emerges are new ways of understanding the critical role lawyers play in society – and their professional responsibilities. 'Truth is so precious it should always be protected by a bodyguard of lies.' Churchill said this about wartime deception plans, but lawyers' clients may think their truth - especially an 'inconvenient truth' - is so precious it too should be protected. Lawyers are 'bodyguards of lies' when they use so-called 'tricks of the trade' not only to keep clients' secrets but to construct a reality that is far from real. But should they? Lawyers have a divided loyalty. The book presents a unique and fascinating account of what happens when lawyers' duties to clients conflict with their duties to the legal system, and looks in detail at the ethical codes and laws that regulate their conduct.
In World War II, the Allies employed unprecedented methods and practiced the most successful military deception ever seen, meticulously feeding misinformation to Axis intelligence to lead Axis commanders into erroneous action. Thaddeus Holt's elegantly written and comprehensive book is the first to tell the full story behind these operations. Exactly how the Allies engaged in strategic deception has remained secret for decades. Now, with the help of newly declassified material, Holt reveals this secret to the world in a riveting work of historical scholarship. Once the Americans joined the war in 1941, they had much to learn from their British counterparts, who had been honing their deception skills for years. As the war progressed, the British took charge of misinformation efforts in the European theater, while the Americans focused on the Pacific. The Deceivers takes readers from the early British achievements in the Middle East and Europe at the beginning of the war to the massive Allied success of D-Day, American victory in the Pacific theater, and the war's culmination on the brink of an invasion of Japan. Colonel John Bevan, who managed British deception operations from London, described the three essentials to strategic deception as good plans, double agents, and codebreaking, and The Deceivers covers each of these aspects in minute detail. Holt brings to life the little-known men, British and American, who ran Allied deception, such as Bevan, Dudley Clarke, Peter Fleming, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Newman Smith. He tracks the development of deception techniques and tells the hitherto unknown story of double agent management and other deception through the American FBI and Joint Security Control. Full of fascinating sources and astounding revelations, The Deceivers is an indispensable volume and an unparalleled contribution to World War II literature.
Among the operations known as Plan Bodyguard, the deception devised to cover the Allies’ Normandy landing, was the little known but critical Plan Zeppelin, the largest and most complex of the Bodyguard plans. Zeppelin, in conjunction with the Mediterranean Strategy, succeeded in pinning down sixty German divisions from southern France to the Balkans in time for D-Day. This was the work of “A” Force, Britain’s only military organization tasked with carrying out both strategic and tactical deception in World War II. Whitney T. Bendeck’s Diversion and Deception finds “A” Force at its finest hour, as the war shifted from North Africa to Europe. Focusing on the years 1943 to 1945, Bendeck describes how “A” Force, under the leadership of Dudley Clarke, orchestrated both strategic and tactical deception plans to create notional threats across the southern perimeter of Europe, with the chief objective of keeping the Germans pinned down across the Mediterranean. Her work offers a close and clarifying look at “A” Force’s structure and command, operations and methods, and successes and failures and, consequently, its undeniable contribution to the Allies’ victory in World War II. By shining a light on the often overlooked Mediterranean theater and its direct connection to European plans and operations, Diversion and Deception also provides a deeper understanding of Allied grand strategy in the war. Combining military and deception histories—so often viewed in isolation—this book provides context for the deceptions and adds a layer of knowledge regarding the planning of military operations. The result is a more complete and nuanced view of Allied operations than is to be found in most histories of World War II.
This book defends the controversial 'absolute view' of lying, which maintains that an assertion contrary to the speaker's mind is always wrong, regardless of the speaker's intentions. Whereas most people believe that a lie told for a good cause, such as protecting Jews from discovery by Nazis, is morally acceptable, Christopher Tollefsen argues that Christians should support the absolute view. He looks back to the writings of Augustine and Aquinas to illustrate that lying violates the basic human goods of integrity and sociality and severely compromises the values of religion and truth. He critiques the comparatively permissive views espoused by Cassian, Bonhoeffer, and Niebuhr and argues that lies often jeopardize the good causes for which they are told. Beyond framing a moral absolute against lying, this book explores the questions of to whom we owe the truth and when, and what steps we may take when we should not give it.
Adolf Hitler’s Great War military experiences in no way qualified him for supreme command. Yet by July 1940, under his personal leadership the Third Reich’s armed forces had defeated Poland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium and France. The invasion of Great Britain was a distinct reality following Dunkirk. Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania had become allies along with the acquiescent military powers of Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain. These achievements prompted Field Marshal Willem Keitel, the Wehrmacht’s Chief of Staff, to pronounce Hitler to be ‘the Greatest Commander of all time’. Storm clouds were gathering, most notably the disastrous decision to tear up the treaty with the Soviet Union and launch Operation Barbarossa in 1941. As described in this meticulously researched and highly readable book, Hitler’s blind ideology, racist hatred and single-mindedness led him and his allies inexorably to devastating defeat. How far was it good luck that gave Hitler his sensational early political and military successes? Certainly fortune played a major role in his survival from many assassination attempts and sex scandals. The author concludes, from 1941 onwards, the Fuhrer’s downfall was entirely attributable to military misjudgments that he alone made. Lucky: Hitler’s Big Mistakes exposes the enigmatic Dictator for what he really was – incredibly lucky and militarily incompetent.
History is replete with pronouncements on war. Some reflect on man’s warlike nature (“We are quick to flare up, we races of men on the earth”—Homer); others deal with the practical strategies of the combatants (“If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons”—Winston Churchill); and still others offer advice for avoiding conflict (“The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war”—Desiderius Erasmus). More than 2,700 quotations on war and conflict are presented in this reference work. The quotations are arranged by more than 100 broad categories, from action to winning. For each, the quotation is first given, followed by its author, the work in which it appeared (when appropriate), and the date. The book includes numerous cross-references, and keyword-in-context and author indexes are provided for further utility.
