LEADER 00000nam  2200265 i 4500 
005    20171204121359.0 
008    170926s2017    nyua     b    001 0beng d 
010    bl2017040425 
020    9780525429937 
040    IMmBT|beng|erda|cIMmBT|dUtOrBLW 
092    327.12092|bHAR 
100 1  Harden, Blaine,|eauthor. 
245 10 King of spies :|bthe dark reign of America's spymaster in 
       Korea /|cBlaine Harden. 
264  1 New York, New York :|bViking,|c[2017] 
300    viii, 260 pages :|billustrations ;|c24 cm 
336    text|2rdacontent 
337    unmediated|2rdamedia 
338    volume|2rdacarrier 
504    Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-249) and 
       index. 
520    In 1946, master sergeant Donald Nichols was repairing 
       jeeps on the sleepy island of Guam when he caught the eye 
       of recruiters from the army's Counter Intelligence Corps. 
       After just three months' training, he was sent to Korea, 
       then a backwater beneath the radar of MacArthur's Pacific 
       Command. Though he lacked the pedigree of most U.S. 
       spies—Nichols was a 7th grade dropout—he quickly 
       metamorphosed from army mechanic to black ops phenomenon. 
       He insinuated himself into the affections of America’s 
       chosen puppet in South Korea, President Syngman Rhee, and 
       became a pivotal player in the Korean War, warning months 
       in advance about the North Korean invasion, breaking enemy
       codes, and identifying most of the targets destroyed by 
       American bombs in North Korea.   But Nichols's triumphs 
       had a dark side. Immersed in a world of torture and 
       beheadings, he became a spymaster with his own secret base,
       his own covert army, and his own rules. He recruited 
       agents from refugee camps and prisons, sending many to 
       their deaths on reckless missions. His closeness to Rhee 
       meant that he witnessed—and did nothing to stop or even 
       report—the slaughter of tens of thousands of South Korean 
       civilians in anticommunist purges. Nichols’s clandestine 
       reign lasted for an astounding eleven years.   In this 
       riveting book, Blaine Harden traces Nichols's unlikely 
       rise and tragic ruin, from his birth in an operatically 
       dysfunctional family in New Jersey to his sordid postwar 
       decline, which began when the U.S. military sacked him in 
       Korea, sent him to an air force psych ward in Florida, and
       subjected him—against his will—to months of electroshock 
       therapy. But King of Spies is not just the story of one 
       American spy: with napalmed villages and severed heads, 
       high-level lies and long-running cover-ups, it reminds us 
       that the darkest sins of the Vietnam War—and many other 
       conflicts that followed—were first committed in Korea. 
600 10 Nichols, Donald. 
650  0 Spies|zUnited States|vBiography. 
650  0 Espionage, American|zKorea|xHistory|y20th century.