John Pomfret – författare

From Warsaw with Love is the epic story of how Polish intelligence officers forged an alliance with the CIA in the twilight of the Cold War, told by the award-winning author John Pomfret.Spanning decades and continents, from the battlefields of the Balkans to secret nuclear research labs in Iran and embassy grounds in North Korea, this saga begins in 1990. As the United States cobbles together a coalition to undo Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, six US officers are trapped in Iraq with intelligence that could ruin Operation Desert Storm if it is obtained by the brutal Iraqi dictator. Desperate, the CIA asks Poland, a longtime Cold War foe famed for its excellent spies, for help. Just months after the Polish people voted in their first democratic election since the 1930s, the young Solidarity government in Warsaw sends a veteran ex-Communist spy who’d battled the West for decades to rescue the six Americans.John Pomfret’s gripping account of the 1990 cliffhanger in Iraq is just the beginning of the tale about intelligence cooperation between Poland and the United States, cooperation that one CIA director would later describe as “one of the two foremost intelligence relationships that the United States has ever had.” Pomfret uncovers new details about the CIA’s black site program that held suspected terrorists in Poland after 9/11 as well as the role of Polish spies in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In the tradition of the most memorable works on espionage, Pomfret’s book tells a distressing and disquieting tale of moral ambiguity in which right and wrong, black and white, are not conveniently distinguishable. As the United States teeters on the edge of a new cold war with Russia and China, Pomfret explores how these little-known events serve as a reminder of the importance of alliances in a dangerous world.

The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: A Captivating Chronicle of the Complex Relationship Between the United States and ChinaFrom clipper ships swapping American ginseng for Chinese tea to warships facing off in the South China Sea, from Yankee missionaries bringing Christianity and education to Chinese laborers building the American West, the United States and China have long been dramatically intertwined. For over two centuries, statesmen, merchants, missionaries, and adventurers from both nations have profoundly influenced each other''s fates, engaging in a recurring pattern of enchantment followed by disillusionment.Drawing on personal letters, diaries, memoirs, government documents, and contemporary news reports, John Pomfret reconstructs the surprising, tragic, and marvelous ways Americans and Chinese have interacted through the centuries. The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom provides a fascinating and thrilling account, offering an indispensable guide to understanding the most important—and often perplexing—relationship between any two countries in the world. Tracing the complex history of Sino-American relations, Pomfret reveals the deep roots of current tensions and the potential for future cooperation.