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King of Spies cover art

King of Spies

By: Blaine Harden
Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
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Summary

In King of Spies, prize-winning journalist and best-selling author of Escape From Camp 14 Blaine Harden reveals one of the most astonishing - and previously untold - spy stories of the 20th century.

Donald Nichols was 'a one man war', according to his US Air Force commanding general. He won the Distinguished Service Cross along with a chest full of medals for valor and initiative in the Korean War. His commanders described Nichols as the bravest, most resourceful and effective spymaster of that forgotten war. But there is far more to Donald Nichols' story than first meets the eye....

Based on long-classified government records, unsealed court records, and interviews in Korea and the United States, King of Spies tells the story of the reign of an intelligence commander who lost touch with morality, legality and even sanity, if military psychiatrists are to be believed. Donald Nichols was America's Kurtz. A seventh-grade dropout, he created his own black-ops empire, commanding a small army of hand-selected spies, deploying his own makeshift navy and ruling over it as a clandestine king, with absolute power over life and death. He claimed a 'legal license to murder' - and inhabited a world of mass executions and beheadings.

Finally, after 11 years, the US military decided to end Nichols' reign. He was secretly sacked and forced to endure months of electroshock in a military hospital in Florida. Nichols told relatives the American government was trying to destroy his memory.

King of Spies looks to answer the question of how an uneducated, nontrained, nonexperienced man could end up as the number-one US spymaster in South Korea and why his US commanders let him get away with it for so long....

©2018 Penguin Random House LLC (P)2018 Macmillan Digital Audio

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