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King of Spies
The Dark Reign of America's Spymaster in Korea
1 of 1 copy available
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 considered a backwater and 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. It is a groundbreaking work of narrative history that—at a time when North Korea is threatening the United States with long-range nuclear missiles—explains the origins of an intractable foreign policy mess.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
October 3, 2017 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780525500063
- File size: 222293 KB
- Duration: 07:43:06
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- Lexile® Measure: 1210
- Text Difficulty: 9-12
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Reviews
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This account of the amazing Korean War service of Air Force Major Donald Nichols is given a solid narration by Mark Bramhall. Harden shows us Nichols's hardscrabble background as well as his good instincts and creative intelligence. He was also self-promoting and Machiavellian--but still a highly effective intelligence officer. Nichols was able in insinuate himself into the trust of South Korean President Rhee, and while Nichols ran a successful operation, his methods will shock many listeners. Bramhall's baritone is resonant and warm. His pace is easy to follow. He often affects accents for different voices when reading quotes. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine -
August 7, 2017
Journalist Harden (The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot) mines a broad spectrum of archival records, legal documents, and personal interviews to reveal the sordid side of one of Cold War America’s most notable intelligence operatives. In 1946, Donald Nichols (1923–1992) was an anonymous motor-pool sergeant when he attracted the attention of a U.S. intelligence system flailing in the Cold War’s murk. After three months’ training, Nichols was assigned to a backwater: South Korea. By 1950 he had developed unrivalled connections, from President Syngman Rhee downward. Nichols accurately predicted the North Korean invasion and spent the war conducting an increasingly spectacular and comprehensive intelligence campaign. Harden acknowledges Nichols’s “exquisite gift for clandestine operations” but presents Nichols as a loose cannon given a free hand by both U.S. and Korean authorities. Nichols witnessed, sanctioned, and participated in atrocities and war crimes; described himself as unfit to manage what he called “a legal license to murder”; and admitted to needing “tighter supervision.” He was also a sexual predator. With the war over, Nichols became expendable, receiving shock therapy and Thorazine as part of his military psychiatric treatment. Harden’s Nichols is both a victim and an exemplar of a war that “most Americans never debated, let alone understood.” Photos. Agent: Raphael Sagalyn, ICM/Sagalyn.
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