SECRET ARMIES: The Growth of Corporate and Industrial Espionage

by Jacques Bergier ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 26, 1975

A potpourri of military and industrial spy facts that makes 007 seem like an unadventure-some bank clerk. Bergier (he worked with the Allies to destroy Peenemunde in WW II) knows whereof he speaks, and in breezy fashion goes from the Chinese princess who smuggled silkworms out of her country for her lover (the first known case of ""industrial espionage""), up to US and USSR orbital spy satellites which can zero in on the face of a pedestrian or a bed of shrimp twenty meters below the Atlantic. But the really fascinating part of Bergier's tale does not concern our technological Mata Haris (most of modern spying is done by computers and electronic and biologic sensors), but strange new weapons beyond what most of us have dreamt of: anti-matter and gravitational implosion bombs, huge mirrors in the sky to eliminate the night (contemplated for the Ho Chi Minh trail), catalysts that jell water, microbes that eat petroleum, dasers to make a darkness no light could penetrate--even a device to make objects invisible. Sound fantastic? So did the A-bomb. Once. Equally scary is the secrecy surrounding the military-spy complex, breached only by the occasional phenomenon too large to conceal--e.g., the death of several thousand sheep around a testing center at Dugway. Bergier is certainly not responsible for the alleged top-secret classifications of most of his info (which makes it impossible to confirm much of what he says) and the book relies too much on leaks and minors. Still, if only half of these 1984 gadgets are genuine, there's enough here to scare you out of your skin.

Pub Date: Jan. 26, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1975

Categories: NONFICTION