The plot to destroy democracy How Putin and his spies are undermining America and dismantling the West

Malcolm W. Nance

Book - 2018

In the greatest intelligence operation in the history of the world, Donald Trump was made President of the United States with the assistance of a foreign power. Career U.S. Intelligence officer Malcolm Nance provides the dramatic story of how blackmail, espionage, assassination, and psychological warfare were used by Vladimir Putin and his spy agencies to steal the 2016 U.S. election as a step towards bringing about the fall of NATO, the European Union, and Western democracy. Russia and its fifth column allies work to flip the cornerstones of democracy in order to re-engineer the world political order that has kept most of the world free since 1945. Nance has utilized top secret Russian-sourced political and hybrid warfare strategy document...s to demonstrate the master plan to undermine American institutions that has been in effect from the Cold War to the present day. Nance exposes how Russia has supported the campaigns of right-wing extremists throughout both the U.S. and Europe to leverage an axis of autocracy, and how Putin's agencies have worked since 2010 to bring fringe candidate Donald Trump into elections.

Saved in:

2nd Floor Show me where

324.973/Nance
1 / 1 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 324.973/Nance Checked In
Subjects
Published
New York : Hachette Books 2018.
Language
English
Main Author
Malcolm W. Nance (author)
Other Authors
Rob Reiner (writer of foreword)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
viii, 344 pages ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-327) and index.
ISBN
9780316484817
  • Shots fired
  • Reporting to Moscow
  • Make Russia great again
  • Putin's philosophy
  • A rising Russia, a failing America
  • Active measures
  • Fake news
  • Internet Research Agency & Russian cyber weapons
  • Hail Hydra!
  • The axis of autocracy
  • Operation GLOBAL GRIZZLY
  • Russia's American beachhead
  • The American fifth column
  • A treasonous aspect
  • Epilogue: "Freedom is a light."
Review by Booklist Review

In his prescient The Plot to Hack America published before the 2016 election Nance, a naval intelligence officer and a national security advisor for NBC News, offered informed speculation about how the Russians might meddle. Now Nance is back with more specific information about how that meddling was done, laying out in frightening detail Russia's plot to upend the world's democratic norms and promote authoritarian governments, which Nance dubs a potential Axis of Autocrats. The early chapters are easy going; the writing gets denser as Russians pop up faster than creatures in a Whack-a-Mole game, but even as this plot gets more intricate (and, yes, sometimes it does read like a political thriller), readers will be turning pages quickly, feeling both anxiety and betrayal. When, in the final pages, Nance lays out how he believes Donald Trump was recruited by Russian intelligence through the time-tried operation known as MICE (money, ideology, coercion, and ego), even supporters of the president will have something to think about. For those who are not supporters, Nance offers suggestions designed to counter the threat. Yes, his ideas are familiar vote, discuss, and protest but they also reflect the most American of values. Nance will be on air a lot, so expect demand.--Ilene Cooper Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Russian president Vladimir Putin is also "the first Russian president of the United States," bent on world domination, with President Donald Trump merely his puppet, argues this overwrought work of conspiracy theory. NBC counterterrorism analyst Nance (The Plot to Hack America) gives a knowledgeable if disjointed rehash of the Russian government's hacking into voter databases, leaking Democratic officials' emails, bot-flooding social media with pro-Trump fake news, and holding suspicious meetings with Trump campaign figures during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He sets the account of these activities against a history of Russian hacking, disinformation, blackmail, and assassination in America and Europe. Nance inflates these reasonably well-attested claims into a grandiose Putin scheme to convert democracies into authoritarian ethnonationalist regimes in an "Axis of Autocracy." Trump, he writes, is a "malignant narcissist" who displays "real idiocy" and is "willingly working with Putin to pull America down" for monetary gain alongside Republicans, white nationalists, and former Breitbart News executive chairman turned presidential advisor Steve Bannon, "the American Goebbels." Nance produces no evidence that Trump has done anything at Putin's behest, or that Putin masterminds the global populist right, or that Russian meddling decided the election; his larger conspiracy theories rest on hand-waving insinuations. The result is an unconvincing exaggeration of genuine misconduct into cartoonish supervillainy. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Review by Kirkus Book Review

Did Donald Trump meet with the Russians before the election? By this account, almost certainlyand "virtually all of Trump's senior staff and family had numerous contacts with Russia that were nothing short of suspicious."It's a remarkable bit of spinning that has allowed right-leaning media to portray Russia, the longtime rival and even enemy of the United States, as our friend. By intelligence officer and counterterrorism analyst Nance's (Defeating ISIS: Who They Are, How They Fight, What They Believe, 2016, etc.) account, the victor in Trump's electoral win was Vladimir Putin, who "won with the aid of Americans who had turned on their own values." In this, everyone is implicated, from the putatively liberal media and its obsession with Clinton's emails to pro-Trump voters who cast their ballots for him despite their candidate's "slavish devotion to Putin." It's a story that isn't going away, despite what the president might wish. Certainly, Nance writes, the intelligence community is keeping its eye on the prize, and for those in the administration who urge that it's all just misperception and accident, Nance counters, "coincidence takes a lot of planning." The author argues that much of that planning originated inside the Kremlin, but much also came from the desk of Steve Bannon, a key actor in forging a vanguard for a new kind of pro-Moscow conservative movement in America. In a narrative dense with "active measures" and "Kompromat," Nance traces the revival of Russian enmity to Putin's second term as president, when he turned his KGB training to good use in weakening his American opponents by exploiting their divisionsexactly what those active measures are supposed to do. The author wraps up his case with a provocative declaration that will occasion divisions all on its own: "Trump has definitely convinced me that he transitioned from an unwitting asset of Vladimir Putin to a willing asset working in league with the Russian Federation." A convincing and alarmingand perhaps alarmistcry that treason is afoot. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.