Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them.

"Only eleven men and one woman are alive today who have made the life-and-death decisions that come with running the world's most powerful and influential intelligence service. With unprecedented, deep access to nearly all these individuals plus several of their predecessors, Chris Whipple tells the story of an agency that answers to the United States president alone, but whose activities--spying, espionage, and covert action--take place on every...

"A scion of one of the most storied families in France, Robert de La Rochefoucald was raised in magnificent chateaux and educated in Europe's finest schools. When the Nazis invaded and imprisoned his father, La Rochefoucald escaped to England and learned the dark arts of anarchy and combat--cracking safes and planting bombs and killing with his bare hands--from the officers of Special Operations Executive, the collection of British spies, beloved...

Explains how Vladimir Putin and Russia hacked an American election as part of a covert operation to subvert the United States' democracy and help Donald Trump win the presidency.

An investigative journalist chronicles his twenty-year obsession with the 1969 Manson murders and describes how he discovered evidence of a cover-up, carelessness from police, misconduct by prosecutors, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents. "What really happened in 1969? Over two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With...

The author of three books on CIA operations, Douglas Valentine began his research into the agency's activities when CIA director William Colby gave him free access to interview agency officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. It was a permission Colby was to regret. The CIA would eventually rescind it and made every effort to impede publication of The Phoenix Program, which documented an

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"Taking place during the most critical period of our nation's birth, The First Conspiracy tells a remarkable and previously untold piece of American history that not only reveals George Washington's character, but also illuminates the origins of America's counterintelligence movement that led to the modern day CIA. In 1776, an elite group of soldiers were handpicked to serve as George Washington's bodyguards. Washington trusted them; relied on them....

This thirteen-year work of journalism finally settles one of the nation's most controversial and politically powerful ideas about the American southern border: that Islamic jihadists might infiltrate it and commit terrorist acts. Perhaps no other idea about the border has sown more conflict, claims, counterclaims, rebuttals, and false narratives on all sides.

"Every day, a member of the CIA presents to the president a report detailing the most sensitive activities and analysis of world events. These can range from the behavior of America's allies to the maneuvering of its adversaries, from imminent dangers to long-term strategic opportunities, and are often based on the words of highly placed sources or the interceptions of astonishingly nimble technologies. This report--for the president's eyes only--forms...

Describes how, after the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, maverick Texas congressman Charlie Wilson persuaded his colleagues to fund the CIA's efforts to arm the mujahideen and recounts the repercussions of that covert operation.