Spycraft (Season 1, 2021) [video+ebook]

The spy game is a serious business, and throughout history, the tools and technologies developed for it have mattered as much as the spies themselves.

1. High-Tech Surveillance and an Eye in the Sky

   In the spy game, if you can listen, you can learn, and gaining that crucial ability to eavesdrop has required some deeply creative ingenuity.

2. Deadly Poisons

   For some covert missions, the goal is not information, but assassination, and lethal toxins have been deployed by spy agencies to kill perceived foes.

3. Sexspionage

   As long as there has been espionage, sex and the promise of it have been powerful tools of persuasion and blackmail — practices that continue today.

4. Clandestine Collection

   Methods for covertly capturing sensitive data have grown infinitely more advanced as the devices used to do so have become exponentially smaller.

5. Covert Communication

   From old-school "dead drops" to high-tech digital transfers: Learn how intelligence officers actually acquire the information collected by sources.

6. Special Ops and the Saboteur

   Special ops require the very best people to execute them. But some of the most famous missions in modern history relied on elite technology as well.

7. The Code Breakers

   Encryption is a key tool for keeping valuable information secret — but some ingenious minds have managed to crack seemingly impenetrable codes.

8. Recruiting the Perfect Spy

   What leads someone to spy against their own nation? Motivations vary but tend to fall into one of four categories, as notorious cases demonstrate.

The ebook:

An unprecedented history of the CIA's secret and amazing gadgetry behind the art of espionage In this look at the CIA’s most secretive operations and the devices that made them possible, Spycraft tells gripping life-and-death stories about a group of spytechs—much of it never previously revealed and with images never before seen by the public. The CIA’s Office of Technical Service is the ultrasecret department that grappled with challenges such as: What does it take to build a quiet helicopter? How does one embed a listening device in a cat? What is an invisible photo used for? These amazingly inventive devices were created and employed against a backdrop of geopolitical tensions—including the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and continuing terrorist threats. Written by Robert Wallace, the former director of the Office of Technical Service, and internationally renowned intelligence historian Keith Melton, Spycraft is both a fantastic encyclopedia of gadgetry and a revealing primer on the fundamentals of high-tech espionage.

The first comprehensive look at the technical achievements of American espionage from the 1940s to the present.
—Wired

Reveals more concrete information about CIA tradecraft than any book.
—The Washington Times

This is a story I thought could never be told.
—JAMES M. OLSON, former chief of CIA counterintelligence From the trade paperback edition