Beyond The Call

The geography speaks for itself. The bad guys are just kilometers away, across the river. We are the only international (or locals) with a brick and mortar office downtown, for them to go for help. No assistance from govt unless elderly, and the assistance they get is shit. Office safe from “normal” shelling (tank fire, most mortars). Glide bombs and attack drones are new since Ukrainians landed on other side and have beachhead. Quietly, that is a total massacre over there — poorly kept secret here. can’t do much about the big stuff … if we get hit with a glide bomb we’re fucked. I like our chances. Mon wed Friday the FREE STORE AT THE FRONT is open at our office. Basic foods medicines hygiene and winter clothes. Mondays we run bread into insanely dangerous places by the Antonivky bridge, do other stuff like that. Off the radar. For city admin. We are an important “off the books asset” for them.

The first and only book to be written by a member of America's most secret military unit! Adam Gamal (pseudonym), one of the only Muslim Arab Americans to serve inside "The Unit" - as the Department of Defense has asked us to refer to it - has written one of the most explosive and unlikely stories of immigration, service and sacrifice -- THE UNIT: My Life Fighting Terrorists as One of America's Most Secret Military Operatives, written with Kelly Kennedy (St. Martin's Press, on sale date February 20, 2024, $32.00). ​**As a heads up - Adam will be disguised on camera and voice altered for audio due to security concerns** Within the U.S. military there is a team so secretive that not only is the name of this unit classified, its members are like ghosts to the military personnel in the country. Veterans Affairs doesn't even have them listed. Phantoms or not, this highly-trained team has been responsible for preventing dozens of terrorist attacks against the U.S. and Western world. This is the world in which Adam Gamal lived. Before that, his life in Egypt was one of great dismay as the Muslim Brotherhood overran a once-free country. When he arrived in the U.S., he spoke no English, was 5'1", 112 pounds, and certainly was far from what one would expect a future soldier to be. He loved his new country, and soon enlisted in the U.S. Army, feeling a great compulsion to serve a nation that gave him the freedom he craved. From his first deployment in Bosnia, to his search for Saddam Hussein in Iraq, to his work in Africa fighting against the very same Muslim Brotherhood that terrorized his community in Egypt when he was a child, he offers a gripping first-hand account of our nation's most secret military unit. His tales of a cat-and-mouse game tracking terrorist Aden Hashi Ayro - the head of the Hizb al-Shabab, or youth wing of the Islamic Courts Union, who it was believed led militias within Somalia - are filled with tension.Gamal also goes into great detail about the diversification of our nation's defenses. As he says in THE UNIT, he was often mistaken for being Hispanic, and relates stories of other members of the military who were from a Middle Eastern background who passed for Latino. But because they could blend in within those communities overseas when hunting bad guys, they gave the U.S. an advantage in gathering intelligence necessary to capture terrorists. Fair-haired and fair-skinned American soldiers are going to stick out in many nations dealing with conflict, especially those representing threats to the U.S. Gamal strongly believes that immigrants would make extraordinary soldiers. He feels that women, people of color, and immigrants do things differently. They see things differently, and meld different views, strategies, and thought processes when engaging enemies. This is crucial and often overlooked. Gamal talks about the importance of keeping up with intelligence and why future wars will resemble nothing like they have throughout the 20th century and the very early years of the 21st century. America needs to do a better job relating with the citizenry of our allies, and those defending them. Along the way, we abandoned the idea of winning hearts and minds, he argues, and America needs to return to that way of thinking.

x-spy Jack Beaumont reveals how he maintained five false identities at once by Emily Pidgeon A former spy has opened up about one of the most grueling aspects of his secretive job. Jack Beaumont (not his real name) is a former operative in the clandestine operations branch of the French foreign secret service, known as the DGSE. Speaking to news.com.au's podcast, I've Got News For You, Beaumont explained that the job required him to have five false identities on the go at all times, and detailed the incredible effort it took to maintain them all. "If it's an ID you use to try to recruit a human source, and it's a long-term manipulation, then the ID has to be quite solid," Beaumont told podcast host Andrew Bucklow.That meant that each false identity had to have a social media presence and a different address. "Every one of those IDs have to be, if necessary, dismantled in 24 hours," he said. "So you can't just rent a flat because you will leave a trace of payment. "You have to find some place in Paris or in the countryside where you have some empty flats and then you're going to make them yours."

In True Face: A Woman's Life in the CIA, Unmasked (PublicAffairs; on sale March 5, 2024) is full of high-stakes stories, like when Mendez came face to face with a rogue Jihadi who had brought down an American plane and when she helped steal a top-secret encryption machine from a Soviet embassy. While In True Face takes readers into the shadowy sides of some of the most important episodes during the Cold War; it also explores the culture within the CIA, making an honest assessment of what it took for a woman to even get a job there-never mind rise through the ranks to one of the agency's most important jobs. This is the story of an incredible spy career and what it took to achieve it.

The geography speaks for itself. The bad guys are just kilometers away, across the river. We are the only international (or locals) with a brick and mortar office downtown, for them to go for help. No assistance from govt unless elderly, and the assistance they get is shit. Office safe from “normal” shelling (tank fire, most mortars). Glide bombs and attack drones are new since Ukrainians landed on other side and have beachhead. Quietly, that is a total massacre over there — poorly kept secret here. can’t do much about the big stuff … if we get hit with a glide bomb we’re fucked. I like our chances. Mon wed Friday the FREE STORE AT THE FRONT is open at our office. Basic foods medicines hygiene and winter clothes. Mondays we run bread into insanely dangerous places by the Antonivky bridge, do other stuff like that. Off the radar. For city admin. We are an important “off the books asset” for them.

The day before his discharge from the Army, General Garrett Sinclair is freed from Ft. Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks by his former Delta Force operative, Jake Mahegan. Meanwhile, his imprisoned teammates are released from Naval incarceration by a manipulative tech magnate, Mitch Drewson, solely for the purpose of having Sinclair and his Dagger team protect his Project Optimus. Author A. J. Tata uses his vast military experience to create thrillers that feel as if they're ripped from today's headlines. In his new masterpiece, THE PHALANX CODE: A Garrett Sinclair Novel (St. Martin's Press, on sale date February 27, 2024; $29.00), Sinclair, newly freed, has to save members of his team while learning of a devastating family secret in the process. Project Optimus - an ambitious endeavor to empower citizens to protect financial and personal data in the face of increasingly authoritarian federal governments - is going face to face against the threat from Aurelius Blanc and Phalanx Corporation. Phalanx's data collection and media application is enabling a global security state through partnerships with the major industrialized nations, creating a form of technofascism that monitors the activity of everyone with a smartphone, tablet, computer, or any web connected device. Though Sinclair is a "free agent," with no military chain of command to deal with, he directly challenges Drewson's motives for gathering his entire team for this mission. At that moment, though, Phalanx assassin squads take over an Optimus server farm in California and grab an Optimus coder named Blair Campbell. With Campbell's well being in jeopardy, Sinclair deploys his team in an attempt to save him and protect the remainder of Optimus so they can complete their vital work, which is highlighted by deciphering the mysterious Phalanx Code, suspected to contain the Phalanx kill list of Optimus employees. Caught in a deadly game between two tech moguls, and with Phalanx squads hunting him and those he loves, Sinclair must determine who he can trust while a devastating part of his family past comes back to haunt him and everything and everyone he holds dear.

DEAD MAN'S HAND: A Pike Logan Novel (William Morrow; January 23, 2024; $32.00), the eighteenth entry into New York Times bestselling author Brad Taylor's longstanding Pike Logan series, features authentic operational details that will stun even the most prolific military thriller reader. Leaning on his over two decades of service in the Army, Taylor delivers his most timely and prescient thriller to date, pitting Pike Logan and the Taskforce against Putin and his henchman in an all-too-real scenario that could be ripped from today's headlines. To finally end the war between their nations, a rogue band of Ukranian partisans known as the Wolves teams up with members of Russia's military intelligence to assassinate Vladimir Putin. But Putin is aware of the traitors in his midst and assigns the loyal commander of the Russian national guard to root them out. It's a mission Victor Petrov is expected to undertake after he prevents Sweden from joining NATO-by assassinating a deputy minister of foreign affairs. After receiving intelligence about the threat in Sweden, the United States sends Pike Logan to identify Petrov's target-only for him to get caught in the crossfire between Putin's agents and the Wolves. When the smoke clears, Pike makes no effort to stop the Wolves on their ultimate mission, believing it just, until he discovers that their operation has unimaginable consequences. For Putin is preparing a devastating endgame: activating the Dead Man's Hand nuclear response that will launch Russia's missiles in the event of his death. . . This riveting new novel delivers top notch action with each turn of the page. Taylor incorporates current events involving the US military complex to deliver one of the most prophetic thrillers of 2024. This authoritative blend of ripped from the headlines action complemented by authentic characters allows for praise that proclaims with each new entry into his bestselling series, Brad Taylor is "laying claim to being the American John le Carre." (Providence Journal).

AMERICAN GUN: The True Story of the AR-15 by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson is about the most lethal handheld icon of the 21st century - the AR-15 rifle - which has become the weapon of choice for mass shooters. The same gun, under the name M16, was the gun that was carried by soldiers in Vietnam. Now, that weapon - or even just the silhouette of its barrel and trigger - has come to symbolize freedom for millions of Americans and the essence of evil for millions of others. AMERICAN GUN tells the essential and extraordinary story of the AR-15 for the first time. Jonathan Eig writes, "With hard-core reporting and gripping prose. [t]his is social history at its finest." AMERICAN GUN authors McWhirter and Elison are both journalists at the Wall Street Journal who have covered gun culture and the industry, including mass shootings, for years. They tell the story in three parts. The first is about an iconoclastic engineer with no formal training, Eugene Stoner, who came up with the idea for the gun in his garage workshop in Los Angeles, solving an age-old problem in weapons design - how to make a lightweight, easy to fire gun that essentially powers itself. He then, somewhat heroically, took on the military industrial complex with a small company and ultimately overcame lies and deceit at the top of the government to establish this weapon as by far the better option for the military. The book then moves to the jungles of Vietnam. It tells another part of the story of the AR-15 where the government modified the gun, naming it the M16, which didn't work very well - jamming repeatedly, costing many lives, and causing a major Congressional investigation. In the final part of the book, the terrifying story of how this weapon that has no use in hunting became more and more popular in the civilian market, beginning in the 1970s and accelerating most recently, is told. We meet upstarts and transgressive gun manufacturers as well as video game developers who celebrate the A-15's outlaw mystique in order to promote it. And we see how attempts to ban and restrict it are foiled again and again, even as mass shootings proliferate.

In November 1963, Paul Landis was a witness to history. But despite seeing the fatal shot from 20 feet away and being at President John F. Kennedy's side at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Landis was never called on by the Warren Commission to tell his story of the president's assassination. Sixty years later, the former Secret Service agent is telling his story of safeguarding the Kennedy family and the explosive moment in Dallas that changed the course of history-and his life. In The Final Witness (Chicago Review Press, October 10, 2023), Landis shares his role in of one of American history's most shocking events, and the one action that alters our understanding of one of the most notorious murders of the 20th Century. Special Agent Paul Landis was stationed in the car directly behind the president's in Dealey Plaza. He was inside Trauma Room #1 as the president was pronounced dead. He was on Air Force One with the president's casket on the flight back to Washington D.C.-an eyewitness to Lyndon Johnson taking the oath of office. What he saw indelibly imprinted on his psyche. By mid-1964, the nightmares from Dallas remained, and he resigned. It wasn't until the fiftieth anniversary that he began to talk about it and read his first books about the assassination, realizing that they had the story wrong. He has kept his recollections private until now, including details surrounding a key piece of evidence that may permanently change our understanding of this critical moment of U.S. history.

"A rip-roaring read about spycraft and the CIA's inner workings . . . an inspiring group portrait of extraordinary CIA women whose careers are multisided profiles in courage."-Steve Coll, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ghost Wars The acclaimed author of Code Girls returns with a revelatory history of three generations at the CIA-the women who fought to become operatives, transformed spy craft, and tracked down Osama Bin Laden. Created in the aftermath of World War Two, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on women even as it attempted to channel their talents and keep them down. Women sent cables, made dead drops, and maintained the agency's secrets. Despite discrimination-even because of it-women who started as clerks, secretaries, or unpaid spouses rose to become some of the CIA's shrewdest operatives. They were unlikely spies-and that's exactly what made them perfect for the role. Because women were seen as unimportant, pioneering female intelligence officers moved unnoticed around Bonn, Geneva, and Moscow, stealing secrets from under the noses of their KGB adversaries. Back at headquarters, women built the CIA's critical archives-first by hand, then by computer. And they noticed things that the men at the top didn't see. As the CIA faced an identity crisis after the Cold War, it was a close-knit network of female analysts who spotted the rising threat of Al Qaeda-though their warnings were repeatedly brushed aside. After the 9/11 attacks, more women joined the Agency as a new job, "targeter," came to prominence. They showed that data analysis would be crucial to the post-9/11 national security landscape-an effort that culminated spectacularly in the CIA's successful efforts to track down Bin Laden in his Pakistani compound.

One of the most hotly contested issues of our time - the US-Mexico border - stretches more than 2,000 miles. It's protection is led by a thin-line of overworked and underfunded US Border Patrol agents. Vincent Vargas, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan with the US Army's 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, later served with the Border Patrol. His new book, BORDERLINE: Defending the Homefront, which publishes November 14, 2023, provides a thorough insiders look at just how dangerous defending the border is.

"The most bracingly honest, refreshing account of the Afghan war" (Sebastian Junger, New York Times? bestselling author) from a Marine Corps Combat Cameraman and director of the acclaimed documentary Combat Obscura. At just eighteen years old, Miles Lagoze joined the Marine Corps a decade after the war began and found himself surrounded by people not unlike those he'd left behind at home-aimless youth searching for stability, community, and economic security. Deployed to Afghanistan as a Combat Cameraman-an active-duty videographer and photographer-Lagoze produced slick images of glory and heroism for public consumption. But his government-approved footage concealed a grim reality. Here, Lagoze pulls back the curtain and illustrates the grisly truth of the longest war in American history. As these young men and women were deployed to an unfamiliar country half a world away-history's "graveyard of empires"-they carried the scars of the fractured homeland that sent them. Lagoze shows us Marines straddling the edge of chaos. We see forces desensitized to gore and suffering by the darkest reaches of the internet, unsure of their places in an unraveling world and set further adrift by the uncertain mission to which they had been assigned abroad. Whistles from the Graveyard: My Time Behind the Camera on War, Rage, and Restless Youth in Afghanistan shows the parts of the Afghanistan War we were never meant to see-Afghan locals and American infantry drawn together by their fears of the ghostly, ever-present terror of the Taliban; moments of dark resignation as the devastating toll of years in war's crossfire reveals itself between bouts of adrenaline-laced violence; and nights of reckless, drug-fueled abandon to dull the pain. In full, vivid color, Miles Lagoze shows us an oft-overlooked generation of young Americans we cast out into the desert, steeped in nihilism, and shipped back home with firsthand training in extremism, misanthropy, and insurrection.

When Ian Fritz joined the Air Force at eighteen, he did so out of necessity. He hadn't been accepted into college thanks to an indifferent high school career. He'd too often slept through his classes as he worked long hours at a Chinese restaurant to help pay the bills for his trailer-dwelling family in Lake City, Florida. But the Air Force recognizes his potential and sends him to the elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, to learn Dari and Pashto, the main languages of Afghanistan. By 2011, Fritz was an airborne cryptologic linguist and one of only a tiny number of people in the world trained to do this job on low-flying gunships. He monitors communications on the ground and determines in real time which Afghans are Taliban and which are innocent civilians. This eavesdropping is critical to supporting Special Forces units on the ground, but there is no training to counter the emotional complexity that develops as you listen to people's most intimate conversations. Over the course of two tours, Fritz listens to the Taliban for hundreds of hours, all over the country night and day, in moments of peace and in the middle of battle. What he hears teaches him about the people of Afghanistan-Taliban and otherwise-the war, and himself. Fritz's fluency is his greatest asset to the military, yet it becomes the greatest liability to his own commitment to the cause. Both proud of his service and in despair that he is instrumental in destroying the voices that he hears, What the Taliban Told Me is a brilliant, intimate coming-of-age memoir and a reckoning with our twenty years of war in Afghanistan.

THE SPACE RACE weaves together the stories of Black astronauts seeking to break the bonds of social injustice to reach for the stars, including Guion Bluford, Ed Dwight and Charles Bolden, among many others. In THE SPACE RACE, directors Diego Hurtado de Mendoza and Lisa Cortés profile the pioneering Black pilots, scientists and engineers who joined NASA to serve their country in space, even as their country failed to achieve equality for them back on Earth. From 1963, when the assassination of JFK thwarted Captain Ed Dwight's quest to reach the moon, to 2020, when the echoes of the civil unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd reached the International Space Station, the story of African Americans at NASA is a tale of world events colliding with the aspirations of uncommon men. The bright dreams of Afrofuturism become reality in THE SPACE RACE, turning science fiction into science fact and forever redefining what "the right stuff" looks like, giving us new heroes to celebrate and a fresh history to explore.

The war in Afghanistan impacted Americans in profound ways, yet only a small percentage of Americans know what it's like to be there, fight there, come home from there, and then live the rest of their lives wondering if their service made a difference. This Troubled Ground (Koehler Books; September 12, 2023) by Les Carroll goes there-to the cold, dark, and heartbreaking tarmac at Dover Air Force Base, to the Kabul newsrooms, to briefing rooms, and to the deadly battlefields in their many forms across Afghanistan. Inspired by true events, this book follows a haunting, sometimes uplifting but ultimately tragic journey into war through the eyes of an Air Force officer searching for meaning as his path intersects with a mother's desperate quest to find hope after her son is killed serving with the US Marines in Afghanistan. Les Carroll grew up in South Carolina, served in the Air Force and Air National Guard for twenty-eight years, and retired in 2013. He served two tours in Afghanistan and one tour at the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base. This Troubled Ground was created out of those experiences. He is an award-winning military and civilian journalist and acclaimed documentary filmmaker. His documentary Bringing the Fallen Home aired nationally in 2014. He wrote and published three books in the mid-1990s.

On December 5, 2005, Air Force Special Ops Paratrooper Israel Del Toro's life changed completely when, returning to his base, the Humvee he was in ran over an IED. The resulting explosion and fire burned Del Toro over 80% of his body. He survived, somehow, and was transported back to a U.S. hospital. Against enormous odds, his trials and tribulations to live were just beginning. For the first time, Del Toro tells the full story of his ordeal in his truly inspiring memoir, A PATRIOT'S PROMISE: Protecting My Brothers, Fighting for My Life, and Keeping My Word (St. Martin's Press, on sale July 4, 2023, $28.99). For the next four months, Del Toro lay in a coma. On three separate occasions his devoted wife, Carmen, was called to his side as doctors feared he would not make it overnight. His story is not only one of courage and overcoming horrific obstacles from war, but also conquering myriad roadblocks throughout his life. At age 12, he lost his father and became the man of the house. Having been told by his high school guidance counselor he should just concentrate on going to a local junior college, the determined teen ended up with a scholarship to the University of Illinois. But just as things started rounding into shape in his young life, his mother unexpectedly died. Now Del Toro had to fully embrace the promise he gave his father to take care of his younger siblings. He walked away from his college dream and returned home to care for his family. With his siblings growing up, and family members close by, Del Toro made the tough decision to enlist in the Air Force. His skills were a natural fit and his superior officers could see his natural leadership qualities. Though recently married, with a baby boy to care for as well, he was deployed to Afghanistan. His strength and perseverance made his fellow cadets gravitate towards him. And then.December 5, 2005. Still, after being told he'd spend 18 months in the hospital, Del Toro was so determined to return home that he was released only two months into his stay. He still needed daily care from his wife, Carmen, and his greatest fear remained - would his young three-year-old son be frightened of his physical appearance? When father and son met again after months of separation, the young boy ran into his father's arms. All he wanted was his Dad back. His amazing story began inspiring other wounded troops, and soon thereafter Del Toro became an advocate for others in the Burn Unit and those badly injured. He continues to inspire today, speaking at numerous organizations and foundations, and numbers among his strongest friends President George W. Bush, Prince Harry, Gary Sinise, and Jon Stewart. Del Toro has gone on to set records and win medals at The Warrior Games and The Invictus Games. He won the Pat Tillman Courage Award at the ESPYs. Perhaps his most amazing accomplishment, though, occurred in February of 2010 when he became the first completely disabled airman ever to re-enlist in the Air Force and become an instructor. Though he couldn't deploy again he was at least back in the game.

Pod Crashing Episode 257 Jacob And Ashley Schick From The Good Stuff The Good Stuff Podcast delves into the inspiring stories of success and perseverance. Through well-crafted story monologues, we showcase individuals who have made a positive impact through their acts of kindness, successful careers, businesses, and military service.

What we see on television, as well as what we read in newspapers, watch on YouTube, and hear on the radio, routinely glorifies the military, obscures the real costs of war, and dehumanizes people the U.S. government has deemed dangerous or expendable. In War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine (Hardcover; $27.99; 978-1-62097-791-0; On sale 6/13/2023) acclaimed journalist and political analyst Norman Solomon takes American media and political leaders to task for selectively concealing tragic consequences of war. From Iraq through Afghanistan and Syria and on to little-known deployments in a range of countries around the globe, the United States has been at perpetual war for at least the past two decades. Yet many of these forays remain still off the radar of average Americans. Additionally, the increased use of high technology, airpower, and remote drones has put distance between soldiers and the civilians who die. And back at home, the cloak of invisibility masks massive Pentagon budgets that receive bipartisan approval even as policymakers struggle to fund the domestic agenda.

Pod Crashing Episode 250 With Coach Bill Courtney From An Army Of Normal Folks Coach Bill Courtney of Oscar-Winning Undefeated launches 'An Army of Normal Folks' Movement and podcast empower Americans to change our country by 'each of us doing what we can. Business leader and football coach Bill Courtney joins with other "ordinary" Americans doing extraordinary work to solve our nation's problems through the new movement, An Army of Normal Folks. "Our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits talking big words in Washington, but by An Army of Normal Folks just deciding 'hey, I can help,'" said Courtney. Based on his own example, Courtney is joining with the nonprofit Iron Light Labs to launch An Army of Normal Folks. Founder of Classic American Hardwoods, Inc., in 2003, he became a volunteer football coach in America's third poorest zip code and yet 31 out of 32 seniors in his last two seasons went to college. Their success on and off the field was the subject of the documentary film, Undefeated, which won an Academy Award in 2012. "We believe that everyone has the power to create change, no matter how 'ordinary' they or their actions may seem," said Courtney. "And if there's An Army of Normal Folks just doing what we can, imagine how different our country could be." As part of the movement, Courtney hosts the iHeartMedia podcast An Army of Normal Folks. iHeartMedia is the No. 1 podcast publisher globally according to Podtrac. The podcast features interviews with members of the Army such as Arkansas Police Officer Tommy Norman and Back on My Feet Founder Anne Mahlum. It aims to inspire listeners and present fascinating models that can be replicated in their own communities. All individuals are invited to join An Army of Normal Folks.

Inspiring lessons learned from a lifetime of honor, service, and leadership from Captain Brett Crozier, the former commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and renowned Navy officer. Amid one of the darkest times in American history, it was a moment that captured the attention of the nation. Brett Crozier, captain of the most powerful and prestigious aircraft carrier in the United States Navy, walked off his ship for the last time while thousands of his sailors saluted and chanted his name in admiration. This remarkable moment occurred after Crozier made the decision to try to protect his sailors by pleading with his superiors for help when COVID-19 swept through the vessel. Two days later, he was relieved of command. Now, Crozier reflects on his life, career, and commitment to doing the right thing in a book that celebrates the power of kindness, the importance of teamwork, and the value of standing up for what you believe in. Through a series of captivating stories set all around the world, Crozier takes us along on the grand adventures of his extraordinary career and introduces the incredible people he met along the way. From his days as fighter pilot facing near-death experiences to commandeering suspected pirate vessels in the Persian Gulf, and of course, seizing any opportunity to enjoy one of his favorite hobbies-surfing-Crozier distills the lessons he has learned and the principles that have guided him, showing how you can apply them to your personal and professional life.