Covert Entry


Book Description

A unique, unprecedented look at the inner workings of our domestic secret service by a leading investigative reporter. An alarming portrait of incompetence -- and worse -- inside the agency that is supposed to protect us from terrorism. Canada’s espionage agency enjoys operating deep in the shadows. Set up as a civilian force in the early eighties after the RCMP spy service was abolished for criminal excesses, no news is good news for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). This country’s spymasters work diligently to prevent journalists, politicians and watchdog agencies from prying into their secret world. Few journalists have come close to rivalling Andrew Mitrovica at unveiling the stories CSIS does not want told. InCovert Entry, the award-winning investigative reporter uncovers a disturbing pattern of corruption, law-breaking and incompetence deep inside the service, and provides readers with a troubling window on its daily operations. At its core,Covert Entrytraces the eventful career of a veteran undercover operative who worked on some of the service’s most sensitive cases and was ordered to break the law by senior CSIS officers, in the name of national security. Like Philip Agee’sInside the Company: CIA Diary, Mitrovica’s book delivers a ground-level, day-to-day look at who is actually running the show in clandestine operations inside Canada. The picture he paints does not fill one with confidence and definitively shatters the myth that CSIS respects the rights and liberties it is charged with protecting. From the Hardcover edition.




Agents of Influence


Book Description

The astonishing story of the British spies who set out to draw America into World War II As World War II raged into its second year, Britain sought a powerful ally to join its cause-but the American public was sharply divided on the subject. Canadian-born MI6 officer William Stephenson, with his knowledge and influence in North America, was chosen to change their minds by any means necessary. In this extraordinary tale of foreign influence on American shores, Henry Hemming shows how Stephenson came to New York--hiring Canadian staffers to keep his operations secret--and flooded the American market with propaganda supporting Franklin Roosevelt and decrying Nazism. His chief opponent was Charles Lindbergh, an insurgent populist who campaigned under the slogan "America First" and had no interest in the war. This set up a shadow duel between Lindbergh and Stephenson, each trying to turn public opinion his way, with the lives of millions potentially on the line.




I Was Never Here


Book Description

Dispelling myths along the way, an ex-covert special operations lead with Canada's Security Intelligence Service reveals what life as a spy is really like, sharing his on-the-ground experience of becoming a CSIS member and how he rose up the ranks to leading missions.




Shattered Illusions


Book Description

Yevgeni Vladimirovich Brik and James Douglas Finley Morrison were central figures in what was considered one of the most important Cold War operations in the West at the time. Their story, which involves espionage, intelligence tradecraft, intelligence service penetrations, double agent scenarios, and betrayal, is a piece of Cold War intelligence history that has never been fully told. Yevgeni Brik was a KGB deep cover illegal who had been dispatched to Canada in 1951. He settled in Verdun, Quebec. He eventually became the KGB Illegal Resident where he had responsibility for running a number of agents, one of whom was working on the CF-105, Avro Arrow. In 1953, he fell in love with a married Canadian woman to whom he revealed his true identity. She persuaded him to turn himself in, which resulted in his becoming a double agent, working for Canada. He was later betrayed by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer, James Morrison, who sought money from the KGB to pay his debts. Brik was consequently lured back to Moscow in 1955, where he was arrested, and interrogated. Convicted of treason, a traitor’s fate awaited him, predictable, grim and final. Incredibly, he reappeared at a British Embassy as an old man in 1992, seeking Canada’s help. He was exfiltrated by a joint Canadian / British intelligence team which was headed by Donald Mahar. He was debriefed by Mahar for several months when they returned to Canada.




Canadian Spies


Book Description

During World War II, some of the most treacherous jobs were those performed by men and women located deep within enemy territory. Always in danger of being exposed and subjected to torture, imprisonment, and even death, their stories are chilling accounts of bravery and luck--and, in some cases, what happens when the luck runs out.




Stalin's Man in Canada


Book Description

First book about key Soviet spy and Canadian communist. Fred Rose was deeply involved in atomic espionage.




Spying 101


Book Description

Since the end of the First World War, members of the RCMP have infiltrated the campuses of Canada's universities and colleges to spy, meet informants, gather information, and on occasion, to attend classes.




The Great Mental Models, Volume 1


Book Description

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.




Whose National Security?


Book Description

Would you believe that RCMP operatives used to spy on Tupperware parties? In the 1950s and '60s they did. They also monitored high school students, gays and lesbians, trade unionists, left-wing political groups, feminists, consumer's associations, Black activists, First Nations people, and Quebec sovereignists. The establishment of a tenacious Canadian security state came as no accident. On the contrary, the highest levels of government and the police, along with non-governmental interests and institutions, were involved in a concerted campaign. The security state grouped ordinary Canadians into dozens of political stereotypes and labelled them as threats. Whose National Security? probes the security state's ideologies and hidden agendas, and sheds light on threats to democracy that persist to the present day. The contributors' varied approaches open up avenues for reconceptualizing the nature of spying. Including: * "APEC Days at UBC: Student Protests and National Security in an Era of Trade Liberalization," Karen Pearlston * "Remembering Federal Police Surveillance in Quebec, 1940s-70s," Madeleine Parent * "The Red Petticoat Brigade: Mine Mill Women's Auxiliaries and the Threat from Within, 1940s-70s," Mercedes Steedman * "Spymasters, Spies, and their Subjects: The RCMP and Canadian State Repression, 1914-39," Gregory S. Kealey * "In Whose Public Interest? The Canadian Union of Postal Workers and National Security," Evert Hoogers




Spying on Canadians


Book Description

Award winning author Gregory S. Kealey's study of Canada's security and intelligence community before the end of World War II depicts a nation caught up in the Red Scare in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and tangled up with the imperial interests of first the United Kingdom and then the United States. Spying on Canadians brings together over twenty five years of research and writing about political policing in Canada. Through itse use of the Dominion Police and later the RCMP, Canada repressed the labour movement and the political left in defense of capital. The collection focuses on three themes; the nineteenth-century roots of political policing in Canada, the development of a national security system in the twentieth-century, and the ongoing challenges associated with research in this area owing to state secrecy and the inadequacies of access to information legislation. This timely collection alerts all Canadians to the need for the vigilant defence of civil liberties and human rights in the face of the ever increasing intrusion of the state into our private lives in the name of countersubversion and counterterrorism.