Search results for ""Author Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones""

The first full account of Nazi spies in 1930s America and how they were exposed. In the mid-1930s just as the United States was embarking on a policy of neutrality, Nazi Germany launched a program of espionage against the unwary nation. The Nazi Spy Ring in America tells the story of Hitler’s attempts to interfere in American affairs by spreading anti-Semitic propaganda, stealing military technology, and mapping US defenses. This fast-paced history provides essential insight into the role of espionage in shaping American perceptions of Germany in the years leading up to US entry into World War II. Fascinating and thoroughly researched, The Nazi Spy Ring in America sheds light on a now-forgotten but significant episode in the history of international relations and the development of the FBI. Using recently declassified documents, prize-winning historian Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones narrates this little-known chapter in US history. He shows how Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the Abwehr, was able to steal top secret US technology such as a prototype codebreaking machine and data about the latest fighter planes. At the center of the story is Leon Turrou, the FBI agent who helped bring down the Nazi spy ring in a case that quickly transformed into a national sensation. The arrest and prosecution of four members of the ring was a high-profile case with all the trappings of fiction: fast cars, louche liaisons, a murder plot, a Manhattan socialite, and a ringleader codenamed Agent Sex. Part of the story of breaking the Nazi spy ring is also the rise and fall of Turrou, whose talent was matched only by his penchant for publicity, which eventually caused him to run afoul of J. Edgar Hoover's strict codes of conduct.

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A Question of Standing deals with recognizable events that have shaped the history of the first 75 years of the CIA. Unsparing in its accounts of dirty tricks and their consequences, it values the agency's intelligence and analysis work to offer balanced judgements that avoid both celebration and condemnation of the CIA. The mission of the CIA, derived from U-1 in World War I more than from World War II's OSS, has always been intelligence. Seventy-five years ago, in the year of its creation, the National Security Act gave the agency, uniquely in world history up to that point, a democratic mandate to pursue that mission of intelligence. It gave the CIA a special standing in the conduct of US foreign relations. That standing diminished when successive American presidents ordered the CIA to exceed its original mission. When they tasked the agency secretly to overthrow democratic governments, the United States lost its international standing, and its command of a majority in the United Nations General Assembly. Such dubious operations, even the government's embrace of assassination and torture, did not diminish the standing of the CIA in US public opinion. However, domestic interventions did. CIA spying on domestic protesters led to tighter congressional oversight from the 1970s on. The chapters in A Question of Standing offer a balanced narrative and perspective on recognizable episodes in the CIA's history. They include the Bay of Pigs invasion, the War on Terror, 9/11, the weapons of mass destruction deception, the Iran estimate of 2007, the assassination of Osama bin Laden, and Fake News. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 diminished the CIA and is construed as having been the right solution undertaken for the wrong reasons, reasons that grew out of political opportunism. The book also defends the CIA's exposure of foreign meddling in US elections.

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In 1935–37 America passed several Neutrality Acts, vowing never again to take sides in a European conflict. In 1938 public attitudes changed, with the American people beginning to favour Britain and turn against Germany – but what caused this shift of opinion?One reason was a tip-off received by the FBI on the eve of the Second World War, which led to the exposure of a Nazi spy ring operating right there in America. The FBI was able to bring the group to justice and launch a campaign to warn the American people about the Nazi threat to their shores and society.In Ring of Spies, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones reveals how this case helped to awaken America to the Nazi menace, and how it skewed American opinion, thus spelling the end of US neutrality. Using evidence from FBI files he uncovers a story straight out of a detective novel featuring honey traps, fast cars and double agents.

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In 1935–37 America passed several Neutrality Acts, vowing never again to take sides in a European conflict. In 1938 public attitudes changed, with the American people beginning to favour Britain and turn against Germany – but what caused this shift of opinion?One reason was a tip-off received by the FBI on the eve of the Second World War, which led to the exposure of a Nazi spy ring operating right there in America. The FBI was able to bring the group to justice and launch a campaign to warn the American people about the Nazi threat to their shores and society.In Ring of Spies, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones reveals how this case helped to awaken America to the Nazi menace, and how it skewed American opinion, thus spelling the end of US neutrality. Using evidence from FBI files he uncovers a story straight out of a detective novel featuring honey traps, fast cars and double agents.

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This book shows how left-wing politics has shaped life in the USA, from the 1900s to the present day. Only the American right has ever really recognised the potency of the American left. Now, Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones fully details the left's numerous achievements, including the welfare state, opposing militarism, reshaping of American culture, black rights and civil liberties, awakening the USA to the dangers of fascism and great public enterprises such as the late Twin Towers. Jones tells the full story of the USA's left wing: how the socialists of the Old Left gave way by the 1960s to the anti-war militants of the New Left, and how they in turn gave way to a 'Newer Left' that advocated causes such as LGBT rights and multiculturalism. Bringing the discussion into the 21st century, he shows how the post-2000 Bush administration succumbed to the 'socialist' nationalisation it despised, and hails Barack Obama as a president for the left. It looks at why the USA's left is always underestimated: the relative absence of a free press, its tendency to deny its own existence, and the fallacious claim that if the right is always wrong, it must be wrong about the left's impact too. It explores the changes that have taken place in the years between the orthodox socialist challenge of a century ago and the actions of those President Obama describes as 'my friends on the left'. It draws on interviews with participants on the left including: Todd Gitlin, president of Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s; Frances Piven, anti-poverty campaigner and bete noir of the American right; Bernie Sanders, socialist US Senator from Vermont; and, Marilyn Young, leading New Left historian of US foreign policy.

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