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The Anatomy of a Traitor: A History of Espionage and Betrayal
- Narrated by: Richard Attlee
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
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Publisher's summary
In this compelling investigation, Michael Smith explores the critical moment in a spy's life: that split-second decision to embrace a double life. Through in-depth insider knowledge, he also uncovers new and unknown cases, including ISIS, President Trump's links with Russia and Edward Snowden's role as a whistle-blower to offer compelling psychological portraits of these men and women, homing unerringly on the fault lines and shady corners of their characters, their weaknesses and their strengths, the lies they tell other people, and the lies they always end up telling themselves.
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Michal Goleniewski, cover name Sniper, was one of the most important spies of the early Cold War. For two and a half years at the end of the 1950s, as a Lt. Colonel at the top of Poland’s espionage service, he smuggled more than 5,000 top-secret Soviet bloc intelligence and military documents, as well as 160 rolls of microfilm, out from behind the Iron Curtain. In January 1961, he abandoned his wife and children and made a dramatic defection across divided Berlin with his East German mistress to the safety of American territory.
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Very entertaining cold war spy story
- By Jason on 12-18-21
By: Tim Tate
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The Black Banners (Declassified)
- How Torture Derailed the War on Terror After 9/11
- By: Ali H. Soufan
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 19 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Widely heralded on publication as a “must-read” (Military Review) and “important window on America’s battle with al-Qaeda” (Washington Post), Ali Soufan’s revelatory account of the war on terror as seen from its front lines changed the way we understand al-Qaeda and how the United States prosecuted the war — and led to hard questions being asked of our leaders.
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Magnificent !
- By JJ on 09-21-20
By: Ali H. Soufan
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The Sword and the Shield
- By: Christopher Andrew, Vasilli Mitrokhin
- Narrated by: Robert Whitfield
- Length: 31 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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This book reveals the most complete picture ever of the KGB and its operations in the United States and Europe. It is based on an extremely top secret archive which details the full extent of its worldwide network. Christopher Andrew is professor of modern and contemporary history and chair of the history department at Cambridge University, a former visiting professor of national security at Harvard, a frequent guest lecturer at other United States universities, and a regular host of BBC radio and TV programs.
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Great book on the history of the KGB
- By Clydene on 05-28-12
By: Christopher Andrew, and others
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The Compatriots
- The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad
- By: Andrei Soldatov, Irina Borogan
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The history of Russian espionage is soaked in blood, from a spontaneous pistol shot that killed a secret policeman in Romania in 1924 to the attempt to poison an exiled KGB colonel in Salisbury, England, in 2017. Russian émigrés have found themselves continually at the center of the mayhem. Russians began leaving the country in big numbers in the late 19th century, fleeing pogroms, tsarist secret police persecution, and the Revolution, then Stalin and the KGB - and creating the third-largest diaspora in the world.
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Great book. Extremely detailed history of the USSR
- By M. Gordon on 03-03-20
By: Andrei Soldatov, and others
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The Skripal Files
- The Life and Near Death of a Russian Spy
- By: Mark Urban
- Narrated by: Mark Urban
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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The Skripal Files is a remarkable and definitive account of Sergei Skripal’s story, which lays bare the new spy war between Russia and the West. Mark Urban, the diplomatic and defense editor for the BBC, met with Skripal in the months before his poisoning, learning about his career in Russian military intelligence, how he became a British agent, his imprisonment in Russia, and the events that led to his release. Skripal’s first-hand accounts and experiences reveal the high stakes of a new spy game that harks back to the chilliest days of the Cold War.
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Facinating story and very relevant
- By Sheri on 06-25-24
By: Mark Urban
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Dirty Wars
- The World Is a Battlefield
- By: Jeremy Scahill
- Narrated by: Tom Weiner
- Length: 24 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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From Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond, Scahill speaks to the CIA agents, mercenaries, and elite Special Operations Forces operators who populate the dark side of American war-fighting. He goes deep into al Qaeda-held territory in Yemen and walks the streets of Mogadishu with CIA-backed warlords. We also meet the survivors of US night raids and drone strikes - including families of US citizens targeted for assassination by their own government - who reveal the human consequences of the dirty wars the United States struggles to keep hidden.
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Non political BUT very anti-violence
- By aaron on 05-11-13
By: Jeremy Scahill
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The Ghost
- The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton
- By: Jefferson Morley
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Ghost, investigative reporter Jefferson Morley tells Angleton's dramatic story, from his friendship with the poet Ezra Pound through the underground gay milieu of mid-century Washington to the Kennedy assassination to the Watergate scandal. From the agency's MKULTRA mind-control experiments to the wars of the Mideast, Angleton wielded far more power than anyone knew.
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Flawed Superpatriot
- By Bubblehog on 11-23-17
By: Jefferson Morley
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The Art of Betrayal
- The Secret History of MI6 - Life and Death in the British Secret Service
- By: Gordon Corera
- Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
- Length: 17 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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From Berlin to the Congo, from Moscow to the back streets of London, these are the stories of the agents on the front lines of British intelligence. And the truth is often more remarkable than fiction.
MI6 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 Ian Fleming and John le Carré. Gordon Corera provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world and the reality that lies behind the fiction.
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Good details but lacks thorough research
- By Unapologetic on 09-06-17
By: Gordon Corera
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Spymaster
- Startling Cold War Revelations of a Soviet KGB Chief
- By: Tennent H. Bagley
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From the dark days of World War II through the Cold War, Sergey A. Kondrashev was a major player in Russia’s notorious KGB espionage apparatus. Rising through its ranks through hard work and keen understanding of how the spy and political games are played, he “handled” American and British defectors, recruited Western operatives as double agents, served as a ranking officer at the East Berlin and Vienna KGB bureaus, and tackled special assignments from the Kremlin.
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An brilliant personal Cold War perspective
- By Iamnotaspy on 01-09-15
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At the Center of the Storm
- My Years at the CIA
- By: George Tenet
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In the whirlwind of accusations and recriminations that has attended the post 9/11 world, one man's vital testimony has been conspicuously absent. Candid and compelling, At the Center of the Storm is George Tenet's memoir of his life at the CIA - a revelatory look at the inner workings of America's top intelligence agency and its dealings with national leaders at home and abroad.
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Brilliant!
- By Karen on 05-05-07
By: George Tenet
What listeners say about The Anatomy of a Traitor: A History of Espionage and Betrayal
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Grimjack
- 12-06-23
Good overview of spy motivations
A very good overview of multiple espionage cases with some details I haven’t seen in other books. The author breaks the book into sections by the standard motivation factors seen in most studies of spy cases. There were some details in several cases that I hadn’t read in other books, so I thought this was a worthwhile listen. The narrator is decent when he isn’t affecting some ridiculous accents and mispronouncing non-English words and names.
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