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King of Spies: The Dark Reign and Ruin of An American Spymaster

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In 1946, Master Sergeant Donald Nicholes was repairing jeeps on the sleepy island of Guam when he caught the eye of recruiters from the army's Counter Intelligence Corps. After just three months' training, he was sent to Korea, then a backwater beneath the radar of MacArthur's Pacific command. Though he lacked the pedigree of most U.S. spies - Nichols was a seventh-grade dropout - he quickly metamorphosed from army mechanic into black ops phenomenon. He insinuated himself into the affections of America's chosen puppet in South Korea. President Syngman Rhee, and became a pivotal player in the Korean War, warning months in advance about the North Korean invasion, breaking enemy codes, and identifying most of the targets destroyed by American bombs in North Korea.rnrnBut Nichols'striumphs had a dark side. Immersed in a world of torture and beheadings, he became a spymaster with his own secret base, his own covert army, and his own rules. He recruited agents from refugee camps and prisons, sending many to their deaths on reckless missions. His closeness to Rhee meant that he witnessed - and did nothing to stop or even report - the slaughter of tens of thousands of South Korean civilians in anti-Communist purges. Nichols's clandestine reign lasted for an astounding eleven years. rnrnIn this reveting book, Blaine Harden traces Nichhols's unlikely rise and tragic fall from his birth in an operatically dysfunctional familllllllllly in New Jersey to his sordid postwar decline, which began when the U.S. military sacked him in Korea, sent him to an air force psych ward in Florida, and subjected him - against his will - to months of electroshock therapy. But King of Spies is not just the story of one American spy; with napalmed villages and mass executions, high-level lies and long-running coverups, it reminds us that the darkest sins of the Vietnam War - and many other conflicts that followed - were first committed in Korea. rn

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Detail Information

Series Title

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Call Number

823 HAR k

Publisher

: ., 2017

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

978-0-525-42993-7

Classification

English Fiction/Fiksi Inggris, Prosa Ing

Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Oktober 2017

Subject(s)

English Fiction

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