
The Quiet Americans
Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War - a Tragedy in Three Acts
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Narrated by:
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Robertson Dean
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Scott Anderson
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By:
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Scott Anderson
About this listen
From the bestselling author of Lawrence in Arabia—the gripping story of four CIA agents during the early days of the Cold War—and how the United States, at the very pinnacle of its power, managed to permanently damage its moral standing in the world.
“Enthralling … captivating reading.” —The New York Times Book Review
At the end of World War II, the United States was considered the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear—to some—that the Soviet Union was already seeking to expand and foment revolution around the world, and the American government’s strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly formed CIA. Chronicling the fascinating lives of four agents, Scott Anderson follows the exploits of four spies: Michael Burke, who organized parachute commandos from an Italian villa; Frank Wisner, an ingenious spymaster who directed actions around the world; Peter Sichel, a German Jew who outwitted the ruthless KGB in Berlin; and Edward Lansdale, a mastermind of psychological warfare in the Far East. But despite their lofty ambitions, time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by a combination of ham-fisted politicking and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government.
©2020 Scott Anderson (P)2020 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Anderson delivers a complex, massively scaled narrative, balancing prodigious research with riveting storytelling skills...Over the course of the narrative, the author amply shows how the CIA was increasingly pushed to function as an instrument of politically charged ambitions. An engrossing history of the early days of the CIA.” (Kirkus Review [Starred])
"Anderson notes the harrowing emotional cost on his subjects…as the U.S. threw its support behind autocratic leaders and missed opportunities to aid legitimate liberation movements such as the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Such blunders, Anderson writes, recast the U.S. from WWII savior to “one more empire in the mold of all those that had come before.” Laced with vivid character sketches and vital insights into 20th-century geopolitics, this stand-out chronicle helps to make sense of the world today." (Publisher’s Weekly [Starred])
"Anderson weaves his narrative among the lives of his subjects, highlighting aspects of their livelihoods as American spies that were at times equally frustrating, ridiculous, and chillingly dangerous...A fascinating and compulsively readable account of wartime spying." (Library Journal)
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Alright. Some interesting facts
- By Dustin C. on 07-28-24
By: Alex Wellerstein
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Betrayal in Berlin
- The True Story of the Cold War's Most Audacious Espionage Operation
- By: Steve Vogel
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Its code name was “Operation Gold”, a wildly audacious CIA plan to construct a clandestine tunnel into East Berlin to tap into critical KGB and Soviet military telecommunication lines. The tunnel, crossing the border between the American and Soviet sectors, would have to be 1,500 feet (the length of the Empire State Building) with state-of-the-art equipment, built and operated literally under the feet of their Cold War adversaries.
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Fascinating Book
- By Toni Bowes on 01-11-20
By: Steve Vogel
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Fallout
- The Hiroshima Cover-Up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World
- By: Lesley M.M. Blume
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the US government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation that would kill thousands during the months after the blast.
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Required reading (listening, too)!
- By Michael Griffin on 08-13-20
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Fair Play
- The Moral Dilemmas of Spying
- By: James M. Olson
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Revolutionary War officer Nathan Hale, one of America's first spies, said, "Any kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary." A statue of Hale stands outside CIA headquarters, and the agency often cites his statement as one of its guiding principles. But who decides what is necessary for the public good, and is it really true that any kind of service is permissible for the public good? These questions are at the heart of James M. Olson's book, Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying.
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A well researched and worth a listen
- By Jeremy on 12-18-18
By: James M. Olson
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The Main Enemy
- The Inside Story of the CIA's Final Showdown with the KGB
- By: Milton Bearden, James Risen
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 19 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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A landmark collaboration between a thirty-year veteran of the CIA and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, The Main Enemy is the inside story of the CIA-KGB spy wars, told through the actions of the men who fought them. Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and rose to run the CIA and KGB in the last days of the Cold War.
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A masterpiece of espionage history
- By kucherv on 08-21-18
By: Milton Bearden, and others
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Fractured Lands
- How the Arab World Came Apart
- By: Scott Anderson
- Narrated by: Scott Anderson
- Length: 5 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2011 a series of antigovernment uprisings shook the Middle East and North Africa in what would become known as the Arab Spring. Few could predict that these convulsions, initially hailed in the West as a triumph of democracy, would give way to brutal civil war, the terrors of the Islamic State, and a global refugee crisis. But, as New York Times best-selling author Scott Anderson shows, the seeds of catastrophe had been sown long before. In this gripping account, Anderson examines the myriad complex causes of the region's profound unraveling.
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Timely and a must to listen to!
- By becky robbins on 05-05-17
By: Scott Anderson
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The Spy Who Was Left Behind
- By: Michael Pullara
- Narrated by: Michael Pullara
- Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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On August 8, 1993, a single bullet to the head killed Freddie Woodruff, the Central Intelligence Agency’s station chief in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Within hours, police had a suspect - a vodka-soaked village bumpkin named Anzor Sharmaidze. A tidy explanation quickly followed: It was a tragic accident. US diplomats hailed Georgia’s swift work. Yet the bullet that killed Woodruff was never found, and key witnesses have since retracted their testimony, saying they were beaten and forced to identify Sharmaidze. But if he didn’t do it, who did?
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great book needs a hires narrator
- By Blake Dahl on 11-17-18
By: Michael Pullara
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The Achilles Trap
- Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq
- By: Steve Coll
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 17 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, its message was clear: Iraq, under the control of strongman Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction that, if left unchecked, posed grave danger to the world. But when no WMDs were found, the United States and its allies were forced to examine the political and intelligence failures that had led to the invasion and the occupation, and the civil war that followed. One integral question has remained unsolved.
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From the Saddam’s Point of View.
- By philip on 03-08-24
By: Steve Coll
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Dead Reckoning
- The Story of How Johnny Mitchell and His Fighter Pilots Took on Admiral Yamamoto and Avenged Pearl Harbor
- By: Dick Lehr
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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“AIR RAID, PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT DRILL.” At 7:58 a.m. on December 7, 1941, an officer at the Ford Island Command Center frantically typed what would become one of the most famous radio dispatches in history as the Japanese navy launched a surprise aerial assault on the American navy stationed in Hawaii. In a little over two hours, the Japanese killed more than 2,400 Americans and propelled the US’s entry into World War II. Dead Reckoning is the story of the mission to avenge that devastating strike.
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Half Soap Opera, target audience 20 something male
- By Donald L. Hogan on 03-20-21
By: Dick Lehr
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The CIA Intelligence Analyst
- Views from the Inside
- By: Roger Z. George - edited by, Robert Levine - edited by
- Narrated by: Linda Jones, Bob Johnson
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The common perception of a CIA officer is someone who collects secret intelligence abroad-a spy. However, the critical link between secrets and policy is the intelligence analyst. The CIA Intelligence Analyst brings to light the vital, but often-unseen, work of these officers.
By: Roger Z. George - edited by, and others
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First Platoon
- A Story of Modern War in the Age of Identity Dominance
- By: Annie Jacobsen
- Narrated by: Annie Jacobsen
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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This is a story that starts off close and goes very big. The initial part of the story might sound familiar at first: it is about a platoon of mostly 19-year-old boys sent to Afghanistan, and an experience that ends abruptly in catastrophe. Their part of the story folds into the next: inexorably linked to those soldiers and never comprehensively reported before is the US Department of Defense’s quest to build the world’s most powerful biometrics database, with the ability to identify, monitor, catalog, and police people all over the world.
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An eye opener
- By Amazon Customer on 01-19-21
By: Annie Jacobsen
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The Doomsday Machine
- By: Daniel Ellsberg
- Narrated by: Steven Cooper
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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The Doomsday Machine is Ellsberg's hair-raising insider's account of the most dangerous arms buildup in the history of civilization, whose legacy - and renewal under the Obama administration - threatens the very survival of humanity. It is scarcely possible to estimate the true dangers of our present nuclear policies without penetrating the secret realities of the nuclear strategy of the late Eisenhower and early Kennedy years, when Ellsberg had high-level access to them.
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Fascinating Insider Story
- By Terry Masters on 12-07-17
By: Daniel Ellsberg
America’s role in Albania, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan raises the hopes of many but at a cost of too many lives and dollars. Hope of many of these country’s citizens becomes despair. How many lives and dollars could have been saved and repurposed for freedom and equality, rather than destruction of cultural difference. What Anderson makes clear is that national purpose (American or other) is distorted when it is undisclosed because human beings are seduced by self-interest, whether that interest is money, power, and/or prestige.
Listening to “The Quiet Americans” makes one understand how important freedom of the press is to America. Americans must lead by example, not by covert action. More recent episodes in Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan show America continues to ignore history’s lessons.
AMERICAN SPIES
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Very interesting, A great insight into the history of the CIA
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An introduction to the Cold War spy game!
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No wonder so many in the rest of the world don’t trust us.
I wish they taught this in high school
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Spy craft insight
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The folly of intelligence
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it was like a cold bucket of water in my face!
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very good tale of the CIA
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Important work on Cold War
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Something fresh in the history of espionage
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