Churchill's Secret Messenger

Author: Alan Hlad
Publisher: A John Scognamiglio Book
ISBN: 1496728416
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Book Description
A riveting story of World War II and the courage of one young woman as she is drafted into Churchill’s overseas spy network, aiding the French Resistance behind enemy lines and working to liberate Nazi-occupied Paris… London, 1941: In a cramped bunker in Winston Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms, underneath Westminster’s Treasury building, civilian women huddle at desks, typing up confidential documents and reports. Since her parents were killed in a bombing raid, Rose Teasdale has spent more hours than usual in Room 60, working double shifts, growing accustomed to the burnt scent of the Prime Minister’s cigars permeating the stale air. Winning the war is the only thing that matters, and she will gladly do her part. And when Rose’s fluency in French comes to the attention of Churchill himself, it brings a rare yet dangerous opportunity. Rose is recruited for the Special Operations Executive, a secret British organization that conducts espionage in Nazi-occupied Europe. After weeks of grueling training, Rose parachutes into France with a new codename: Dragonfly. Posing as a cosmetics saleswoman in Paris, she ferries messages to and from the Resistance, knowing that the slightest misstep means capture or death. Soon Rose is assigned to a new mission with Lazare Aron, a French Resistance fighter who has watched his beloved Paris become a shell of itself, with desolate streets and buildings draped in Swastikas. Since his parents were sent to a German work camp, Lazare has dedicated himself to the cause with the same fervor as Rose. Yet Rose’s very loyalty brings risks as she undertakes a high-stakes prison raid, and discovers how much she may have to sacrifice to justify Churchill’s faith in her . . . "A rousing historical novel." - The Akron Beacon Journal, Best Books of the Year for Churchill's Secret Messenger

Shopping for Bombs

Author: Gordon Corera
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195375238
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
Here is the riveting, inside story of the rise and fall of A.Q. Khan and his role in the devastating spread of nuclear technology over the last thirty years. Drawing on exclusive interviews with key players in Islamabad, London, and Washington, as well as with members of Khan's own network, BBC journalist Gordon Corera paints a truly unsettling picture of the nuclear arms bazaar. Corera reveals how Khan operated within a world of shadowy deals amongst rogue states and how his privileged position in Pakistan protected his unique and deadly business empire.

War Pigeons

Author: Elizabeth G. Macalaster
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476680809
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Book Description
For more than seven decades, homing pigeons provided the U.S. military with its fastest most reliable means of communication. Originally bred for racing in the early 1800s, homing pigeons were later trained by pigeoneers to fly up to 60 mph for hundreds of miles, and served the United States for almost 75 years, through four wars on four continents. Barely weighing a pound, these extraordinary birds carried messages in and out of gas, smoke, exploding bombs and gunfire. They flew through jungles, deserts and mountains, not faltering even when faced with large expanses of ocean to cross. Sometimes they arrived nearly dead from wounds or exhaustion, refusing to give up until they reached their objective. This book is the first complete account of the remarkable service that homing pigeons provided for the American armed forces, from its fledgling beginnings after the Civil War to the birds' invaluable role in communications in every branch of the U.S. military through both World Wars and beyond. Personal narratives, primary sources and news articles tell the story of the pigeons' recruitment and training in the U.S., their deployment abroad and use on the home front.

Russians Among Us

Author: Gordon Corera
Publisher: William Collins
ISBN: 9780008318970
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The urgent, explosive story of Russia's espionage efforts against the West from the Cold War to the present - including their interference in the 2016 presidential election. Like a scene from a le Carre novel or the TV drama The Americans, in the summer of 2010 a group of Russian deep cover sleeper agents were arrested. It was the culmination of a decade-long investigation, and ten people, including Anna Chapman, were swapped for four people held in Russia. At the time it was seen simply as a throwback to the Cold War. But that would prove to be a costly mistake. It was a sign that the Russian threat had never gone away and more importantly, it was shifting into a much more disruptive new phase. Today, the danger is clearer than ever following the poisoning in the UK of one of the spies who was swapped, Sergei Skripal, and the growing evidence of Russian interference in American life. In this meticulously researched and gripping, novelistic narrative, Gordon Corera uncovers the story of how Cold War spying has evolved - and indeed, is still very much with us. Russians Among Us describes for the first time the story of deep cover spies in America and the FBI agents who tracked them. In intimate and riveting detail, it reveals new information about today's spies--as well as those trying to catch them and those trying to kill them.

The Bravest Voices

Author: Ida Cook
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 0369704304
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Book Description
This timeless memoir documents two sisters’ bravery leading up to WWII—a singular historical account that shines a light on one of humanity’s darkest hours. Ida and Louise Cook are two ordinary Englishwomen, seemingly destined never to stray from their quiet London suburb and comfortable jobs—Ida as a budding romance novelist and Louise as a civil service typist. But in 1923, a chance hearing of an aria from Madame Butterfly sparked a passion for opera in the sisters that led to the formation of friendships with some of Europe’s leading singers and their network, many of them Jewish. As the Nazis rose to power, Ida and Louise began working with the opera world’s insiders to save members of the community from persecution and death. Through ingenuity, thrift and bottomless goodwill, the sisters eluded the suspicion of the Nazis and helped secure safe passage for dozens of refugees. No one would have predicted such daring lives for Ida and Louise Cook—but that underestimation is exactly how they were able to save lives. First published in 1950, Ida’s memoir of the adventures she and Louise shared remains as fresh, vital and entertaining as the woman who wrote it, and is a moving testament to the extraordinary acts of courage by two everyday heroes.

Operation Columba—The Secret Pigeon Service

Author: Gordon Corera
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062667092
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
The fascinating, untold story of how British intelligence secretly used homing pigeons as part of a clandestine espionage operation to gather information, communicate, and coordinate with members of the Resistance to defeat the Nazis in occupied Europe during World War II. Between 1941 and 1944, British intelligence dropped sixteen thousand homing pigeons in an arc across Nazi-occupied Europe, from Bordeaux, France to Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of a spy operation code-named Columba. Returning to MI14, the secret government branch in charge of the "Special Pigeon Service," the birds carried messages that offered a glimpse of life under the Germans in rural France, Holland, and Belgium. Written on tiny pieces of rice paper tucked into canisters and tied to the birds’ legs, these messages were sometimes comic, often tragic, and occasionally invaluable—reporting details of German troop movements and fortifications, new Nazi weapons, radar systems, and even the deployment of the feared V-1 and V-2 rockets used to terrorize London. The people who sent these messages were not trained spies. They were ordinary men and women willing to risk their lives in the name of freedom, including the "Leopold Vindictive" network—a small group of Belgian villagers led by an extraordinary priest named Joseph Raskin. The intelligence Raskin sent back by pigeon proved so valuable that it reached Churchill and MI6 parachuted agents behind enemy lines to assist him. Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive original research to tell the story of the Operation Columba and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time. A powerful tale of wartime espionage, bitter rivalries, extraordinary courage, astonishing betrayal, harrowing tragedy, and a quirky, quarrelsome band of spy masters and their special mission, Operation Columba opens a fascinating new chapter in the annals of World War II. It is ultimately, the story of how, in one of the darkest and most dangerous times in history, under threat of death, people bravely chose to resist.

Pizza Bomber

Author: Jerry Clark
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101611987
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 450

Book Description
The bizarre, true story of a robbery gone wrong and the explosive murder that shocked the nation—as seen on Netflix’s docuseries Evil Genius. For the first time, two of the people who followed the story from the beginning—Jerry Clark, the lead FBI Special Agent who cracked what became known as the Pizza Bomber case, and investigative reporter Ed Palattella—tell the complete story of what happened on August 28, 2003. In the suburbs of Erie, Pennsylvania, a pizza delivery man named Brian Wells was accosted by several men who locked a time bomb around his neck. They then ordered him to rob a bank. After delivering the money, he would receive clues to help him disarm the bomb. It was one of the most ingenious bank robbery schemes in history, known as Collarbomb by the FBI. It did not go according to plan. Wells, picked up by police shortly after the robbery, never found the clues he needed. Investigating the crime after his grisly death, the FBI soon discovered that Wells was not, in fact, an innocent victim. He was merely the first co-conspirator to fall in a bizarre trail of death following the crime... INCLUDES PHOTOS

Building the Army’s Backbone

Author: Andrew L. Brown
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774866993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

Book Description
In September 1939, Canada’s tiny army began its remarkable expansion into a wartime force of almost half a million soldiers. No army can function without a backbone of skilled non-commissioned officers (NCOs) – corporals, sergeants, and warrant officers – and the army needed to create one out of raw civilian material. Building the Army’s Backbone tells the story of how senior leadership created a corps of NCOs that helped the burgeoning force train, fight, and win. This innovative book uncovers the army’s two-track NCO-production system: locally organized training programs were run by units and formations, while centralized training and talent-distribution programs were overseen by the army. Meanwhile, to bring coherence to the two-track approach, the army circulated its best-trained NCOs between operational forces, the reinforcement pool, and the training system. The result was a corps of NCOs that collectively possessed the necessary skills in leadership, tactics, and instruction to help the army succeed in battle.

The Art of Betrayal

Author: Gordon Corera
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0297861018
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413

Book Description
The secret history of MI6 - from the Cold War to the present day. The British Secret Service has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded in myth since it was created a hundred years ago. Our understanding of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional worlds of James Bond and John le Carre. THE ART OF BETRAYAL provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction. It tells the story of how the secret service has changed since the end of World War II and by focusing on the people and the relationships that lie at the heart of espionage, revealing the danger, the drama, the intrigue, the moral ambiguities and the occasional comedy that comes with working for British intelligence. From the defining period of the early Cold War through to the modern day, MI6 has undergone a dramatic transformation from a gung-ho, amateurish organisation to its modern, no less controversial, incarnation. Gordon Corera reveals the triumphs and disasters along the way. The grand dramas of the Cold War and after - the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 11 September 2001 attacks and the Iraq war - are the backdrop for the human stories of the individual spies whose stories form the centrepiece of the narrative. But some of the individuals featured here, in turn, helped shape the course of those events. Corera draws on the first-hand accounts of those who have spied, lied and in some cases nearly died in service of the state. They range from the spymasters to the agents they ran to their sworn enemies. Many of these accounts are based on exclusive interviews and access. From Afghanistan to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the voices of those who have worked on the front line of Britain's secret wars. And the truth is often more remarkable than the fiction.

Intercept

Author: Gordon Corera
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0297871749
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476

Book Description
The computer was born to spy, and now computers are transforming espionage. But who are the spies and who is being spied on in today's interconnected world? This is the exhilarating secret history of the melding of technology and espionage. Gordon Corera's compelling narrative, rich with historical details and characters, takes us from the Second World War to the internet age, revealing the astonishing extent of cyberespionage carried out today. Drawing on unique access to intelligence agencies, heads of state, hackers and spies of all stripes, INTERCEPT is a ground-breaking exploration of the new space in which the worlds of espionage, geopolitics, diplomacy, international business, science and technology collide. Together, computers and spies are shaping the future. What was once the preserve of a few intelligence agencies now matters for us all.