Listen free for 30 days
-
Truth to Power
- A History of the U.S. National Intelligence Council
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, True Crime
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Buy Now for £16.09
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
How Spies Think
- Ten Lessons in Intelligence
- By: David Omand
- Narrated by: David Omand
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the former director of GCHQ, learn the methodology used by the British intelligence agencies to reach judgements, establish the right level of confidence and act decisively. Intelligence officers discern the truth. They gather information - often contradictory or incomplete - and, with it, they build the most accurate possible image of the world. With the stakes at their absolute highest, they must then decide what to do.
-
-
Not the way to teach maths.
- By Bouquiniste on 22-11-20
-
The Day After
- Why America Wins the War but Loses the Peace
- By: Brendan R. Gallagher
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since 9/11, why have we won smashing battlefield victories only to botch nearly everything that comes next? In the opening phases of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, we mopped the floor with our enemies. But in short order, things went horribly wrong. We soon discovered we had no coherent plan to manage the "day after". The ensuing debacles had truly staggering consequences - many thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars squandered, and the apparent discrediting of our foreign policy establishment.
-
Lords of Secrecy
- The National Security Elite and America's Stealth Warfare
- By: Scott Horton
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Forty years ago, a majority of Americans were highly engaged in issues of war and peace. Whether to go to war or keep out of conflicts was a vital question at the heart of the country's vibrant, if fractious, democracy. But American political consciousness has drifted. In the last decade, America has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while pursuing a new kind of warfare in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan.
-
Colin Powell
- Imperfect Patriot
- By: Jeffrey J. Matthews
- Narrated by: Jim Woods
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the past three decades, Colin Powell has been among America's most trusted and admired leaders. This biography demonstrates that Powell's decades-long development as an exemplary subordinate is crucial to understanding his astonishing rise from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to the highest echelons of military and political power.
-
Inside the Five-Sided Box
- Lessons from a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon
- By: Ash Carter
- Narrated by: Ash Carter
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 25th Secretary of Defense takes listeners behind the scenes to reveal the inner workings of the Pentagon, its vital mission, and what it takes to lead it. The Pentagon is the headquarters of the single largest institution in America: the Department of Defense. The DOD employs millions of Americans. It owns and operates more real estate and spends more money than any other entity. It manages the world’s largest and most complex information network and performs more R&D than Apple, Google, and Microsoft combined.
-
-
Good bedtime reading
- By pauljonaughton on 18-05-20
-
Trump and His Generals
- The Cost of Chaos
- By: Peter Bergen
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith, Peter Bergen
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is a simple fact that no president in American history brought less foreign policy experience to the White House than Donald J. Trump. The real estate developer from Queens promised to bring his brash, zero-sum swagger to bear to cut through America's most complex national security issues, and he did. If the cost of his "America First" agenda was bulldozing the edifice of foreign alliances that had been carefully tended by every president from Truman to Obama, then so be it.
-
How Spies Think
- Ten Lessons in Intelligence
- By: David Omand
- Narrated by: David Omand
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the former director of GCHQ, learn the methodology used by the British intelligence agencies to reach judgements, establish the right level of confidence and act decisively. Intelligence officers discern the truth. They gather information - often contradictory or incomplete - and, with it, they build the most accurate possible image of the world. With the stakes at their absolute highest, they must then decide what to do.
-
-
Not the way to teach maths.
- By Bouquiniste on 22-11-20
-
The Day After
- Why America Wins the War but Loses the Peace
- By: Brendan R. Gallagher
- Narrated by: Lloyd James
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since 9/11, why have we won smashing battlefield victories only to botch nearly everything that comes next? In the opening phases of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, we mopped the floor with our enemies. But in short order, things went horribly wrong. We soon discovered we had no coherent plan to manage the "day after". The ensuing debacles had truly staggering consequences - many thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars squandered, and the apparent discrediting of our foreign policy establishment.
-
Lords of Secrecy
- The National Security Elite and America's Stealth Warfare
- By: Scott Horton
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Forty years ago, a majority of Americans were highly engaged in issues of war and peace. Whether to go to war or keep out of conflicts was a vital question at the heart of the country's vibrant, if fractious, democracy. But American political consciousness has drifted. In the last decade, America has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while pursuing a new kind of warfare in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan.
-
Colin Powell
- Imperfect Patriot
- By: Jeffrey J. Matthews
- Narrated by: Jim Woods
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the past three decades, Colin Powell has been among America's most trusted and admired leaders. This biography demonstrates that Powell's decades-long development as an exemplary subordinate is crucial to understanding his astonishing rise from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to the highest echelons of military and political power.
-
Inside the Five-Sided Box
- Lessons from a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon
- By: Ash Carter
- Narrated by: Ash Carter
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 25th Secretary of Defense takes listeners behind the scenes to reveal the inner workings of the Pentagon, its vital mission, and what it takes to lead it. The Pentagon is the headquarters of the single largest institution in America: the Department of Defense. The DOD employs millions of Americans. It owns and operates more real estate and spends more money than any other entity. It manages the world’s largest and most complex information network and performs more R&D than Apple, Google, and Microsoft combined.
-
-
Good bedtime reading
- By pauljonaughton on 18-05-20
-
Trump and His Generals
- The Cost of Chaos
- By: Peter Bergen
- Narrated by: Nicholas Guy Smith, Peter Bergen
- Length: 12 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It is a simple fact that no president in American history brought less foreign policy experience to the White House than Donald J. Trump. The real estate developer from Queens promised to bring his brash, zero-sum swagger to bear to cut through America's most complex national security issues, and he did. If the cost of his "America First" agenda was bulldozing the edifice of foreign alliances that had been carefully tended by every president from Truman to Obama, then so be it.
-
Enduring Alliance
- A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order
- By: Timothy Andrews Sayle
- Narrated by: John B. Leen
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Born from necessity, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has always seemed on the verge of collapse. At this moment of incipient strategic crisis, Timothy A. Sayle offers a sweeping history of the most critical alliance in the post-World War II era. In Enduring Alliance, Sayle recounts how the Western European powers, along with the United States and Canada, developed a treaty to prevent encroachments by the Soviet Union and to serve as a first defense in any future military conflict.
-
Covert Regime Change
- America's Secret Cold War: Cornell Studies in Security Affairs
- By: Lindsey A. O'Rourke
- Narrated by: Gary Roelofs
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Covert Regime Change, Lindsey A. O’Rourke shows us how states really act when trying to overthrow another state. She argues that conventional focus on covert cases misses the basic causes of regime change. O’Rourke provides substantive evidence of types of security interests that drive states to intervene. Covert Regime Change assembles an original dataset of all American regime change operations during the Cold War. This fund of information shows the United States was 10 times more likely to try covert rather than overt regime change during the Cold War.
-
Losing the Long Game
- The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East
- By: Philip H. Gordon
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since the end of World War II, the United States has set out to oust governments in the Middle East on an average of once per decade - in places as diverse as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan (twice), Egypt, Libya, and Syria. The reasons for these interventions have also been extremely diverse, and the methods by which the United States pursued regime change have also been highly varied, ranging from diplomatic pressure alone to outright military invasion and occupation
-
Chaos Under Heaven
- Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century
- By: Josh Rogin
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 13 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The explosive, behind-the-scenes story of Donald Trump's high-stakes confrontation with Beijing, from an award-winning Washington Post columnist and peerless observer of the US-China relationship.
-
Back Channel to Cuba
- The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana
- By: Peter Kornbluh, William M. LeoGrande
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 20 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Since 1959, conflict and aggression have dominated the story of U.S.-Cuban relations. From John F. Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger's top-secret quest for normalization, to Barack Obama's promise of a "new approach", William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh reveal a 50-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, indicating a path toward better relations in the future.
-
Playing to the Edge
- American Intelligence in the Age of Terror
- By: Michael V. Hayden
- Narrated by: Michael V. Hayden
- Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An unprecedented high-level master narrative of America's intelligence wars from the only person ever to helm both the CIA and NSA, at a time of heinous new threats and wrenching change. For General Michael Hayden, playing to the edge means playing so close to the line that you get chalk dust on your cleats. Otherwise, by playing back, you may protect yourself, but you will be less successful in protecting America.
-
The Fourteenth Day
- JFK and the Aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis
- By: David G. Coleman
- Narrated by: Andy Caploe
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A fly-on-the-wall narrative of the Oval Office in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, using JFK’s secret White House tapes. On October 28, 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove nuclear missiles from Cuba. Popular history has marked that day as the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a seminal moment in American history. As President Kennedy’s secretly recorded White House tapes now reveal, the reality was not so simple.
-
Exercise of Power
- American Failures, Successes, and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World
- By: Robert M. Gates
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed number one best-selling memoir, Duty, a candid, sweeping examination of power, and how it has been exercised, for good and bad, by American presidents in the post-Cold War world.
-
The Road to 9/11
- Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America
- By: Peter Dale Scott
- Narrated by: Raymond Todd
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is an ambitious, meticulous examination of how U.S. foreign policy since the 1960s has led to partial or total cover-ups of past domestic criminal acts, including, perhaps, the catastrophe of 9/11. Peter Dale Scott, whose previous books have investigated CIA involvement in southeast Asia, the drug wars, and the Kennedy assassination, here probes how the policies of presidents since Nixon have augmented the tangled bases for the 2001 terrorist attack.
-
Rigged: America, Russia and 100 Years of Covert Electoral Interference
- By: David Shimer
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Understanding 2016 as one battle in a much longer war is essential to understanding the critical threat currently posed to America's electoral sovereignty and how to defend against it. Illuminating how the lessons of the past can be used to protect our democracy in the future, Rigged is an essential book for consumers of every political persuasion.
-
-
Now I know. Election rigging is a reality
- By RC on 17-04-22
-
My Journey at the Nuclear Brink
- By: William Perry
- Narrated by: Kevin F Spalding
- Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
My Journey at the Nuclear Brink is a continuation of William J. Perry's efforts to keep the world safe from a nuclear catastrophe. It tells the story of his coming of age in the nuclear era, his role in trying to shape and contain it, and how his thinking has changed about the threat these weapons pose. In a remarkable career, Perry has dealt firsthand with the changing nuclear threat.
-
-
If you have misophonia read this review!
- By Thermonuclear on 24-03-20
-
Blinded by Humanity
- Inside the UN's Humanitarian Operations
- By: Martin Barber
- Narrated by: William Barber
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How to respond effectively to humanitarian crises is one of the most pressing and seemingly intractable problems facing the United Nations. Martin Barber, for many years a senior UN official and with decades of humanitarian experience, here argues that the explanation for UN 'failures' or only partial successes lies not with any lack of idealism or good intentions but with the constraints placed on aid workers by ill-considered policies and poor practical application officials are 'blinded by humanity'.
Summary
This historic mission of this remarkable but little-known organization, the US National Intelligence Council (NIC), now 40 years old, is strategic intelligence assessment in service of senior American foreign policymakers. Its signature inside products, National Intelligence Estimates, are now accompanied by the NIC's every-four-years Global Trends. Unclassified, Global Trends has become a noted NIC brand, its release awaited by officials, academics, and private sector managers around the world.
Truth to Power tracks the NIC's role in providing strategic analysis on every major foreign policy issue confronting the United States during this consequential period. Chapters provide insider insights on the Balkan wars of the 1990s, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea, upheaval in the Middle East including the rise and fall of the Islamic State, the rise of China, and Russia's turn toward aggression under Vladimir Putin. The book also assesses the NIC's newly expanded role in direct support to meetings of the National Security Council as well as its longstanding role in producing longer-range strategic intelligence.