The New Spymasters
Inside Espionage from the Cold War to Global Terror
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER
'Exceptional. A blueprint for productive, sophisticated espionage in the age of Islamist terror' Daily Telegraph
Spying has changed. In this era of email intercepts and drone strikes, spooks are expected to uncover plots buried in mountains of data. Yet this makes the need for trained field operatives who can verify facts and uncover secrets more acute than ever. The human factor endures.
In The New Spymasters, the first real account of how modern espionage works, we follow riveting stories of dramatic missions and the larger-than-life characters who undertook them. These were moments when success - and ultimately life or death - depended on whether the right person was in the right place... at exactly the right time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this highly detailed survey of intelligence gathering, Grey, widely celebrated for Ghost Plane, his expos on the CIA's top secret rendition and torture program, updates the methods and tactics of modern spying. Grey moves the discussion beyond the "human factor" to technically superior spy satellites and computerized communication intercepts. He calls spying "the world's second oldest profession," one that has evolved steadily since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Warsaw Pact, 9/11, the Iraqi War, and the rise of drones in the early 21st Century. Grey also examines the historical collapse of the French and British empires in the wake of wars of independence, the bitter aftermath of the late 20th Century mujahedeen struggle, and various contemporary terror cells in Europe and America. Readers of Ian Fleming and John LeCarr will delight in the lively anecdotes about bold British agents, including the infamous Kim Philby, the "Cambridge Five" recruited by the Soviets during the Cold War, and the aggressive operations against the IRA to prolong English rule in Ulster. In this current age of al-Qaeda and ISIS, Grey's engrossing, chilling read reveals to readers the fluidity with which the intelligence world must operate.
