SKU: 10010838374

Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and Assassins

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Surprise, Kill, Vanish: The Secret History of CIA Paramilitary Armies, Operators, and AssassinsFrom Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold USA Today bestselling story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units. Surprise . . . your target. Kill . . . your enemy. Vanish . . . without a trace. When diplomacy fails, and war is unwise, the president calls on the CIA's Special Activities Division, a highly classified branch of the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world. Originally known as the president's guerrilla

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen, the untold USA Today bestselling story of the CIA's secret paramilitary units.
Surprise . . . your target. Kill . . . your enemy. Vanish . . . without a trace.
When diplomacy fails, and war is unwise, the president calls on the CIA's Special Activities Division, a highly-classified branch of the CIA and the most effective, black operations force in the world.
Originally known as the president's guerrilla warfare corps, SAD conducts risky and ruthless operations that have evolved over time to defend America from its enemies. Almost every American president since World War II has asked the CIA to conduct sabotage, subversion and, yes, assassination.
With unprecedented access to forty-two men and women who proudly and secretly worked on CIA covert operations from the dawn of the Cold War to the present day, along with declassified documents and deep historical research, Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen unveils -- like never before -- a complex world of individuals working in treacherous environments populated with killers, connivers, and saboteurs.
Despite Hollywood notions of off-book operations and external secret hires, covert action is actually one piece in a colossal foreign policy machine.
Written with the pacing of a thriller, Surprise, Kill, Vanish brings to vivid life the sheer pandemonium and chaos, as well as the unforgettable human will to survive and the intellectual challenge of not giving up hope that define paramilitary and intelligence work. Jacobsen's exclusive interviews -- with members of the CIA's Senior Intelligence Service (equivalent to the Pentagon's generals), its counterterrorism chiefs, targeting officers, and Special Activities Division's Ground Branch operators who conduct today's close-quarters killing operations around the world -- reveal, for the first time, the enormity of this shocking, controversial, and morally complex terrain. Is the CIA's paramilitary army America's weaponized strength, or a liability to its principled standing in the world? Every operation reported in this book, however unsettling, is legal.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Published: 07/07/2020
ISBN: 9780316441421
Pages: 560
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.40w x 1.60d
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SKU: 10010838374

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Zach M.
Lowell, US
★★★★★ 5
An essential book on U.S. race and capitalism!
Format: Paperback
One of the most important books on race and capitalism ever written. Such a nuanced study of the California penal system that includes the racist structure of the United States’ criminal justice system, but goes far beyond to analyze how capitalism and profit drive politicians, police, investors, landowners, and working class people—white and Black—to expand the prison system in an age of dropping crime rates. I teach it regularly to undergraduates and graduate students, and it drives fascinating discussions.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2025
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Daniela Robles
San Leandro, US
★★★★★ 5
Gilmore does a great job of discussing and parceling out the very complex ...
Format: Paperback
If anyone has mastered the political economy and geography of prisons in California, it is Ruth Wilson Gilmore in Golden Gulag. Gilmore does a great job of discussing and parceling out the very complex and complicated relationships that exist between capitalism as a system that produces our material world alongside economic crises, and the function of prisons to absorb, manage, relocate and "hide" those very crises in the era of neoliberalism. She also skillfully reminds us over and over that it is black and brown working-class poor communities that bear the brunt of this kind of system that also expresses it's power via white supremacy. I am finding this book very useful and chock-full of interesting information for my current research. People may find the book a difficult read because it loaded with information and technicalities they are unfamiliar with, but these are good reasons to struggle with a text and truly grasp the increasingly intricate processes that determine and guide the world we live in (and the places we may end up locked in!). As Marx said, there is no royal road to science and knowledge.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2017
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BL Wilson
Louisville, US
★★★★★ 5
I'm still reading it but its a great book. It makes me think about how much ...
Format: Paperback
I'm still reading it but its a great book. It makes me think about how much money is invested in keeping poor and people of color populations in prison. The prison industrial complex is no joke. This book provides the studies, chart and details of what I always thought. There's plenty of money to be made keeping the 'right people in prison' and finding new victims such as immigrants and school kids.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2015
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Joseph
Battle Creek, US
★★★★★ 4
This was a good expose on how our government secures monies without you ...
Format: Paperback
This was a good expose on how our government secures monies without you being aware of it for use in their useless game of punishment and the ultimate ruination of the towns in which they place these freaking Hell-holes
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Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2017
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Horse Clamp
Cuba, US
★★★★★ 5
Everyone should read this, it affects us all
Format: Paperback
Incisive, informative, well-researched critique not only if the prison complex but of reform efforts that feed into it.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2019

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