“Personal violence is for the amateur in dominance, structural violence is the tool of the professional. The amateur who wants to dominate uses guns; the professional uses social structure.” –Johan Galtung
Skyboat Media, together with Blackstone Publishing, is proud to bring Douglas Valentine’s THE CIA AS ORGANIZED CRIME, TDY, and PISCES MOON to audio.
Continuing the work he began with THE PHOENIX PROGRAM, THE STRENGTH OF THE WOLF, and THE STRENGTH OF THE PACK, Valentine delves into the shadowy world of America’s Central Intelligence Agency and exposes the connection between the CIA and current social and political events around the world, including the United States.
The only way to really grasp what is happening in our current political stew is by studying and understanding how the CIA and other bureaucracies began and tracing how they have evolved. What change has there been in the concentration of power? What role do the media play? Fake or otherwise. Only by answering these questions can we see through their “spin” on reality.
Including excerpts from Douglas Valentine’s first three books, along with articles and interview transcripts about various political topics, THE CIA AS ORGANIZED CRIME shows how the CIA has infiltrated drug enforcement agencies to ensure that drugs not only enter the country, but are delivered to certain targeted groups. It sheds light on the intricacies of the CIA’s Phoenix Program in Vietnam and how it changed the very nature of how America fights its wars. Both currently have had sinister effects on the world today, but are deeply frightening in their future implications. This audiobook provides a view of current affairs through the history of not only the CIA, but also the DEA, and other bureaucracies still active in this country.
Narrated by award-winning Stefan Rudnicki, THE CIA AS ORGANIZED CRIME will change the way you see what’s going on around us in the world today. Skyboat is thrilled to bring this to audio. It’s a must listen.
Listen to an audiobook sample on Skyboat’s SoundCloud and then purchase your copy today!
“Doug Valentine belongs to that precious remnant of journalists and historians with the wisdom to see our time, the integrity and courage to write about it, and the literary grace to bring it all chillingly alive.” —Roger Morris, Author of Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician
And Stefan was thrilled to return to the booth to narrate another of Douglas Valentine’s works: TDY, a CIA thriller based on a true Vietnam War story.
In early 1967, a bored, adventurous photojournalist on an Air Force base in Texas is offered a Temporary Duty (TDY) assignment somewhere overseas. The mission is steeped in secrecy, but Pete is promised a large bonus and hazardous duty pay. So he agrees.
He and a small group of photojournalists, each with a special skill, are isolated on a Special Forces base where they are kept under constant surveillance by a group of highly trained and menacing soldiers. The small band of 12 men is flown overseas on a transport plane large enough for 120 men. They are never told where they are going, until they arrive. And when they finally reach their destination, the mission that unfolds is terrifying beyond anything Pete ever imagined.
TDY tells how “black operations” are organized and conducted. Meticulous in detail, and accurate in every aspect of “over the fence” missions deep into enemy territory, it reveals for the uninitiated the skill, determination, and self-sacrifice of American soldiers.
In stark contrast to the honor and commitment of these soldiers, TDY reveals the unimaginable duplicity and corruption of powerful men for whom American soldiers and civilians are pawns in a ruthless game.
Written in sparing prose, TDY is a story of Pete’s journey through the underworld and his awakening to the reality of the Vietnam War and the CIA role in Southeast Asia.
Listen to an audiobook sample of TDY on Skyboat’s SoundCloud and purchase your copy today!
“The elements of this book fit together like the layers of an onion, each one surrounding and making opaque the layers beneath. It’s like a detective story, a Vietnam War version of Chinatown, the impact of which depends on twists which are part of protecting the secrecy of the mission and the ignorant innocence of the American public.” —Bill Tremblay, Dissident Voice
PISCES MOON: The Dark Arts of Empire
Pisces Moon: The Dark Arts of Empire is a sweeping critical analysis of Western colonialism, its foundational beliefs in militarism, patriarchy, Christianity, and white supremacy; and its destructive impact on the nations of Southeast Asia and, ultimately, America.
Valentine focuses on the “dark arts” of empire: the black bag of CIA covert operations, including bribery, right-wing coups, assassinations, disinformation, and intimate relationships with drug, sex, and artifact traffickers. He pays especially close attention to the CIA’s use of psychological warfare to play upon the beliefs of people to shape their political and social movements. Pisces Moon shines a light on the central role played by missionaries, academics, writers, and filmmakers in assisting and promoting Western imperialism.
In the mid-1990s, based on his book The Phoenix Program, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) hired Valentine as a consultant to a documentary series it was making about the CIA’s activities in South Vietnam. Valentine embarked for London in February 1991 as the sun was about to enter Pisces, the astrological sign which rules deception, espionage, foreign things, prisons, and religion. The month-long trip began with five days in London, where Valentine was asked to carry ten thousand dollars in cash to the BBC crew in Vietnam. After a memorable week in Vietnam, Valentine spent two weeks traveling around Thailand interviewing expat CIA officers for his books on CIA drug smuggling. Unique in every respect, Pisces Moon features many prominent, historically significant CIA officers with whom he has interacted with while conducting his original research.
Throughout the narrative, Pisces Moon explains how decades of propaganda and disinformation directed against them by war planners, religious leaders, and corporate institutions have made it nearly impossible for Americans to distinguish fact from fiction; a descent into mass delusion that William Burroughs called “the backlash and bad karma of empire.”
Pisces Moon: The Dark Arts of Empire will grab you from the beginning and won’t let go.
Listen to an audiobook sample of PISCES MOON on Skyboat’s SoundCloud and purchase your copy today!
“Douglas Valentine is our most unflinching chronicler of the Central Intelligence Agency’s bloody and sordid history…Compelling yet tragic, Pisces Moon is compulsive reading.” —Dr. Christian Parenti, professor of political economy at John Jay College, CUNY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Photo courtesy of author’s website
Douglas Valentine is an American journalist and author of works of historical non-fiction, including The Hotel Tacloban, The Phoenix Program, The Strength of the Wolf (winner of the Choice Academic Library Award), and The Strength of the Pack. His articles have appeared regularly in CounterPunch, ConsortiumNews, and elsewhere. Portions of his research materials are archived at the National Security Archive (both a Vietnam Collection and a separate Drug Enforcement Collection), Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center, and John Jay College. He provided expert testimony at the King v Jowers trial on the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination at the request of the King family.
