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  • American Spy

  • Wry Reflections on My Life in the CIA
  • By: H. K. Roy
  • Narrated by: Christopher Lane
  • Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
  • 1.0 out of 5 stars (1 rating)
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American Spy

By: H. K. Roy
Narrated by: Christopher Lane
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Summary

This ain't your daddy's spy story. In a memoir written as a series of narrative vignettes, a former CIA operations officer recounts his years of danger, intrigue, and adventure.

This candid and darkly witty memoir recounts an exhilarating life - and a few close brushes with death. With remarkable sangfroid and a humorist's eye for absurdity, H. K. Roy describes his many strange and risky exploits in his long career with the CIA. Whether he was pursuing Soviet and Cuban spies, running "denied area" operations in Eastern Europe, hunting Bosnian War criminals, or providing actionable intelligence to US government and coalition forces in Iraq, Roy usually found himself at the right place at the right time.

Except when he didn't - like the time he stumbled into a life-threatening ambush by Iranian terrorists while dodging Serb snipers and shelling in Sarajevo. Eight summers later, caught in a blinding sandstorm between Amman and Baghdad, he learned his fate was in the hands of an Iraqi tribal chief who had just lost his entire family to a US airstrike in Ramadi, in a failed attempt to kill Saddam Hussein that had tragic consequences. 

Combining dedication to duty with a maverick's disdain for bureaucracy, Roy makes it clear that he prefers foreign locales to Washington and thrives on the adrenaline rush that comes with danger. He also sheds much light on why intelligence is an essential component of national defense, even our very survival as a nation.

©2019 H. K. Roy (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. “Chapter 1: Betrayal in the Balkans” accounts originally published in and adapted from “Betrayal in the Balkans,” World & I Magazine, August 2001 “The Closer You Get,” track 1, on Alabama, The Closer You Get, RCA, 2000, compact disc, originally released in 1983. Used with permission by Easy Song Licensing.

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How I was right and everyone else was stupid

According to this book, had the American government listened to the author, all of the Balkan wars would have been prevented, the insurgency in Iraq would have been prevented and ISIS would never have got started, just some among the many foreign policy mistakes that the author tried to prevent but the US government was too stupid to take seriously. The only bright spot is the entirely justified diatribe against Trump at the end. As for “a wry look”, the leaden delivery made the pathetic jokes fall completely flat

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