Vince Houghton – författare

"Compulsively readable laugh out loud history." Mary RoachBomb-carrying bats. Poisoned flower arrangements. Cigars laced with mind-altering drugs. Listening devices implanted into specially-trained cats. A torpedo-proof aircraft carrier made out of ice and sawdust. And a CIA plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon ... just because. In Nuking the Moon, Vince Houghton, Historian and Curator at the International Spy Museum, collects the most inspired, implausible and downright bizarre military intelligence schemes that never quite made it off the drawing board. From the grandly ambitious to the truly devious, they illuminate a new side of warfare, revealing how a combination of desperation and innovation led not only to daring missions and brilliant technological advances, but to countless plans and experiments that failed spectacularly. Alternatively terrifying and hilarious, and combining archival research with newly-conducted interviews, these twenty-six chapters reveal not only what might have happened, but also what each one tells us about the history and people around it. If 'military intelligence' makes you think of James Bond and ingenious exploding gadgets ... get ready for the true story.

The International Spy Museum''s Historian takes us on a wild tour of missions, schemes, and weapons that were planned, but ultimately deemed too dangerous, expensive, ahead of their time, or even certifiably insaneIn 1958, the US Air Force nuked the moon as a show of military might. In 1967, the CIA implanted recording devices in live cats and sent them into Russia as spies. In 1942, the British built an aircraft carrier made of ice and sawdust, impervious to German torpedoes. Of course, none of these things ever happened.But in Nuking the Moon, intelligence historian Vincent Houghton shows us that what didn''t happen is just as illuminating, and every bit as engrossing. WWII and the Cold War were periods of desperation and innovation, a combination that led to brilliant missions and technological advances. But for every Argo or Operation Mincemeat, there were countless abandoned plans. Some are laughable, like the US Navy''s plan to train pigeons to pilot missiles; some are implausible, like the Kennedy administration''s plan to build a command center 4,000 feet underground; and some are legitimately terrifying, like the cornucopia of US plans to justify attacking Cuba. Through extensive archival research and expert interviews, Vincent Houghton has dug up more than thirty of these fascinating abandoned plans, and recounts the story behind each one in vivid, captivating detail, revealing not only what might have happened, but also what each one tells us about the history and people around it. The first-ever book to bring these historical episodes together, this wholly original work--alternatively terrifying and hilarious, but always riveting--is the unique story of history left on the drawing board.

How a Quartet of American Musicians Outwitted the KGB – The Untold History of a Daring Cold War Spy MissionIn 1985, while the United States engaged in a battle of nuclear brinkmanship, four Americans landed in Moscow on a mission to smuggle secret information in and out using music as their cipher. Under the watchful eye of the KGB, the group faced countless challenges and risks—because they weren’t trained in espionage. In fact, they were musicians with the New England-based Yiddish-music focused Klezmer Conservatory Band (KCB).Now, the quartet’s saxophonist, Merryl Goldberg, together with Vince Houghton, the Director of the National Security Agency’s National Cryptologic Museum, tell the harrowing story of how Goldberg devised an ingenious plan to encode the intelligence within the group’s sheet music.

Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi 's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong?Houghton's delightful retelling of this fascinating case of American spy ineffectiveness in the then new field of scientific intelligence provides us with a new look at the early years of the Cold War. During that time, scientific intelligence quickly grew to become a significant portion of the CIA budget as it struggled to contend with the incredible advance in weapons and other scientific discoveries immediately after World War II. As The Nuclear Spies shows, the abilities of the Soviet Union's scientists, its research facilities and laboratories, and its educational system became a key consideration for the CIA in assessing the threat level of its most potent foe. Sadly, for the CIA scientific intelligence was extremely difficult to do well. For when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949, no one in the American intelligence services saw it coming.

Secret operations, corruption, crime, and a city teeming with spies: why Miami was as crucial to winning the Cold War as Washington DC or Moscow.The Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the most dramatic and dangerous period of the Cold War. What's less well known is that the city of Miami, mere miles away, was a pivotal, though less well known, part of Cold War history. With its population of Communist exiles from Cuba, its strategic value for military operations, and its lax business laws, Miami was an ideal environment for espionage.Covert City tells the history of how the entire city of Miami was constructed in the image of the US-Cuba rivalry. From the Bay of Pigs invasion to the death of Fidel Castro, the book shows how Miami is a hub for money and cocaine but also secrets and ideologies. Cuban exiles built criminal and political organizations in the city, leading Washington to set up a CIA station there, codenamed JMWAVE. It monitored gang activities, plotted secret operations against Castro, and became a base for surveilling Latin American neighbors. The money and infrastructure built for the CIA was integral to the development of Miami.Covert City is a sweeping and entertaining history, full of stunning experimental operations and colorful characters--a story of a place like no other.

"Compulsively readable laugh out loud history." Mary RoachBomb-carrying bats. Poisoned flower arrangements. Cigars laced with mind-altering drugs. Listening devices implanted into specially-trained cats. A torpedo-proof aircraft carrier made out of ice and sawdust. And a CIA plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon ... just because. In Nuking the Moon, Vince Houghton, Historian and Curator at the International Spy Museum, collects the most inspired, implausible and downright bizarre military intelligence schemes that never quite made it off the drawing board. From the grandly ambitious to the truly devious, they illuminate a new side of warfare, revealing how a combination of desperation and innovation led not only to daring missions and brilliant technological advances, but to countless plans and experiments that failed spectacularly. Alternatively terrifying and hilarious, and combining archival research with newly-conducted interviews, these twenty-six chapters reveal not only what might have happened, but also what each one tells us about the history and people around it. If ''military intelligence'' makes you think of James Bond and ingenious exploding gadgets ... get ready for the true story.