Blaine Harden, "King of Spies"
January 5, 2018
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1:02:19Now PlayingBlaine Harden, "King of Spies"
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as posted by the channelIn the first full biography of Donald Nichols (1923-1992), Harden draws on previously classified documents, letters, and interviews to recount the troubling career of one of the country’s most effective covert agents. Recruited by the Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps in 1946, Nichols received three months of training before being sent to Korea. By 1950 his connections included the Korean president and he was so attuned to events that he predicted the North Korean invasion. Nichols proved invaluable during the war itself, breaking codes, identifying targets, and recruiting agents. But he also sent those recruits on needless, fatal missions and participated in atrocities and their cover-ups. In this powerful story of a man by turns brilliant and brutal, Harden, former Washington Post bureau chief in East Asia and Africa and the award-winning author of The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot, also illuminates much about the Korean War, especially the ways in which it anticipated the conflict in Vietnam.
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