Espionage - The Greatest Spy Operations of the Twentieth Century (Hardcover)

This amazing collection of real-life capers, con games, and subterfuges offers an eye-opening glimpse of the unseen forces behind the most important events of the twentieth century. Documenting twenty-eight secret operations, espionage expert Ernest Volkman unravels the mysteries and provides a shrewd assessment of the impact of covert activity on world history. Consider the following examples.

In the early 1920s all anti-Bolshevik resistance both inside and outside Russia was organized, monitored, and controlled by the CHEKA, Lenin's personal intelligence service. Its Trust operation lured enemies of the fledgling revolution to their destruction and ensured the survival and growth of the Soviet state.

For six years, detailed information about Germany's most secret weapons research was regularly delivered to Britain's MI6 by a network of couriers composed largely of Norwegian exchange students. Called Operation Griffin, this plot enabled the allies to counter many of Hitler's deadliest weapons.

For more than two decades, the CIA maintained a peephole into the Kremlin's corridors of power. When Operation Top Hat revealed that a deep rift was developing between China and the Soviet Union, Richard Nixon was even more motivated to open relations with Communist China.

A colorful line-up of heroes and villains, patriots and rogues carried out these daring and complex operations. Learn the story of the eccentric mathematicians and linguists who ran the code-breaking operations ULTRA and MAGIC, which solved German and Japanese ciphers and turned the tide of World War II. Find out about the U.S. Navy Warrant Officer who walked into the Soviet Embassy in Washington and established the most effective penetration of U.S. classified information in history. And read about the Cuban double agents who humiliated the CIA by revealing—on Cuban television—how they had tricked the agency for two decades, supplying false information while remaining loyal to Castro.

Espionage is a thoroughly engaging reference work—provocative, panoramic, and brimming with adventure.

Spying Operations That Changed The Course of History

Windows shattered in Manhattan, shrapnel struck the Statue of Liberty, and the Brooklyn Bridge swayed when, in July of 1916, German saboteurs blew up the huge Black Tom munitions dump near Bayonne, New Jersey. The explosion was a spectacular success but its effect was to galvanize public opinion against Germany and help bring the United States into World War I.

Japan's seizure of the Mandate Islands in the central Pacific gave America the jitters. Could the secret of Amelia Earhart's tragic final flight be connected to the covert activities the United States undertook against Japan, its rival for control of the Pacific in the days before World War II?

Author and investigative reporter Ernest Volkman explores these and other major intelligence operations to discover their true impact on subsequent events and shed light on the hidden side of twentieth-century history.