In recounting his exploits as a field officer and later in second tier management positions, Prado delights in the prose of spy thrillers and detective novels, making more than a dozen allusions to fictional accounts of the CIA, such as the Jason Bourne/Matt Damon movie franchise. He says he intends to correct the fictional accounts,...
Category: Reviews
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John le Carre Revisited: The Spy Who Spied on Spies
From Book Marks John le Carre was the pen name of David Cornwell, a former MI6 intelligence officer, who became a novelist. When John le Carré died in December of last year, not long after completing work on his final novel, he left behind an incomparable body of espionage fiction that includes The Spy Who Came...
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A Perfectly Timed New Spy Thriller
From SpyTalk For espionage aficionados, Down Range has plenty of battlefield tradecraft and CIA intrigue. But Moore’s story is bigger: It bridges themes of corporate greed and big oil, drug traffickers, compromised businessmen and officials. The protagonist knows failure and regret, but faced with choices of good and evil, he’s looking for the decency that...
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‘The Dissident’ Unravels the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi
A top official in Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, the General Intelligence Presidency (GIP), has been implicated in the assassination of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi (pronounced “Kash-shoke-gee”) The Office of the Director of the National Intelligence has released a declassified report concluding that the order for the assassination came from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A...
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‘Special Ops’: A RAW Story in a New Format
There are almost as many cable series about intelligence agencies as there are intelligence agencies. There’s “Pine Gap,” which takes you inside the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. There’s “Mossad 101” about Israel’s famed intelligence service. And now there’s “Special Ops” a streaming hit in India about the once-ignored Research & Analysis Wing. But “Special Ops”...