James Bamford has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 8 ratings. The most-rated is The Shadow Factory.
The Shadow Factory
Summary
Today's National Security Agency is the largest, most costly, and most technologically advanced spy organization the world has ever known. It is also the most intrusive, secretly filtering millions of phone calls and e-mails an hour in the United States and around the world. Half a million people live on its watch list, and the number grows by the thousands every month. Has America become a surveillance state? In The Shadow Factory, James Bamford, the foremost expert on National Security Agency, charts its transformation since 9/11, as the legendary code breakers turned their ears away from outside enemies, such as the Soviet Union, and inward to enemies whose communications increasingly crisscross America. Fast-paced and riveting, The Shadow Factory is about a world unseen by Americans without the highest security clearances. But it is a world in which even their most intimate whispers may no longer be private.
©2008 James Bamford (P)2008 Books on Tape
A Pretext for War
Summary
This book says outright what many have merely hinted at: that President George W. Bush knowingly misused the findings of the erroneous and incompetent U.S. intelligence community to provide a pretext for war with Iraq. The author hones in on the systematic weaknesses of the intelligence agencies that caused them to ignore the crucial signs leading up to the attacks of 9/11. Incompetence, deception, and misinformation from these agencies simply left the door open for President Bush and his cronies, who were less interested in the capture of Osama bin Laden and the destruction of his terror network than in following a dubious agenda in Iraq. The missing "weapons of mass destruction" are merely the latest by-product of Bush's co-optation of intelligence for political ends.
©2004 James Bamford (P)2004 Books on Tape
The Puzzle Palace
Summary
In this remarkable tour de force of investigative reporting, James Bamford exposes the inner workings of America's largest, most secretive, and arguably most intrusive intelligence agency. The NSA has long eluded public scrutiny, but The Puzzle Palace penetrates its vast network of power and unmasks the people who control it, often with shocking disregard for the law. So sensitive was the information uncovered that the agency twice attempted to suppress the book, threatened the author with prosecution, and even raided one of the libraries he used. This is a brilliant account of the use and abuse of technological espionage.
©1982 V. James Bamford (P)2018 Tantor
Body of Secrets
Summary
The National Security Agency is the world's most powerful, most far-reaching espionage organization. Now with a new afterword describing the security lapses that preceded the attacks of September 11, 2001, Body of Secrets takes us to the inner sanctum of America's spy world. In the follow-up to his best-selling Puzzle Palace, James Bamford reveals the NSA's hidden role in the most volatile world events of the past, and its desperate scramble to meet the frightening challenges of today and tomorrow. Here is a scrupulously documented account - much of which is based on unprecedented access to previously undisclosed documents - of the agency's tireless hunt for intelligence on enemies and allies alike. Body of Secrets is a riveting analysis of this most clandestine of agencies, a major work of history and investigative journalism.
©2002 James Bamford (P)2018 Tantor