“A searing, facts-driven indictment of America’s drone wars and their implications for US democracy and foreign policy. A must-read for concerned citizens” (Library Journal, starred review) from bestselling author Jeremy Scahill and his colleagues at the investigative website The Intercept. Drones are a tool, not a policy. The policy is assassination. But drone strikes often kill people other than the intended target. These deaths, which have included women and children, dwarf the number of actual combatants who have been assassinated by drones. They have generated anger toward the United States among foreign populations and have even become a recruiting tool for jihadists. The first drone strike outside a declared war zone was conducted more than twelve years ago, but it was not until May 2013 that the White House released a set of standards and procedures for conducting such strikes. However, there was no explanation of the internal process used to determine whether a suspect should be killed without being indicted or tried, even if that suspect is an American citizen. The implicit message of the Obama administration has been: Trust, but don’t verify. The Assassination Complex reveals stunning details of the government’s secretive drone warfare program based on documents supplied by a confidential source in the intelligence community. These documents make it possible to begin the long-overdue debate about the policy of drone warfare and how it is conducted. The Assassination Complex allows us to understand at last the circumstances under which the US government grants itself the right to sentence individuals to death without the established checks and balances of arrest, trial, and appeal—“readers will be left in no doubt that drone warfare affronts morality and the Constitution” (Kirkus Reviews).

In this shocking exposé of the US government's drone programme, bestselling author Jeremy Scahill and his colleagues at the investigative website The Intercept expose stunning new details about the secret assassination policy being carried out by America and her allies. When the US government discusses drone strikes publicly, it offers assurances that such operations are a more precise alternative to troops on the ground and are authorised only when an "imminent" threat is present and there is "near certainty" that the intended target will be killed. The implicit message on drone strikes from the Obama administration has been trust, but don't verify. The online magazine The Intercept exploded this secrecy when it obtained an extraordinary cache of secret documents, the most shocking of which are included in this book, that reveal how Washington's fourteen-year targeted killing campaign suffers from an overreliance on flawed intelligence, an apparently incalculable civilian toll, and an inability to extract potentially valuable intelligence from terror suspects. The Assassination Complex is a vital, urgent book which allows us to understand at last the circumstances under which the US government and her allies have granted themselves the right to sentence individuals to death without the established checks and balances of arrest, trial, and appeal.

A reveal of the government's secret drone warfare program.

A New York Times bestseller Now also an Oscar-nominated documentary In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater, takes us inside America's new covert wars. The foot soldiers in these battles operate globally and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies. Drawn from the ranks of the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, former Blackwater and other private security contractors, the CIA's Special Activities Division and the Joint Special Operations Command ( JSOC), these elite soldiers operate worldwide, with thousands of secret commandos working in more than one hundred countries. Funded through "black budgets," Special Operations Forces conduct missions in denied areas, engage in targeted killings, snatch and grab individuals and direct drone, AC-130 and cruise missile strikes. While the Bush administration deployed these ghost militias, President Barack Obama has expanded their operations and given them new scope and legitimacy. Dirty Wars follows the consequences of the declaration that "the world is a battlefield," as Scahill uncovers the most important foreign policy story of our time. From Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond, Scahill reports from the frontlines in this high-stakes investigation and explores the depths of America's global killing machine. He goes beneath the surface of these covert wars, conducted in the shadows, outside the range of the press, without effective congressional oversight or public debate. And, based on unprecedented access, Scahill tells the chilling story of an American citizen marked for assassination by his own government. As US leaders draw the country deeper into conflicts across the globe, setting the world stage for enormous destabilization and blowback, Americans are not only at greater risk -- we are changing as a nation. Scahill unmasks the shadow warriors who prosecute these secret wars and puts a human face on the casualties of unaccountable violence that is now official policy: victims of night raids, secret prisons, cruise missile attacks and drone strikes, and whole classes of people branded as "suspected militants." Through his brave reporting, Scahill exposes the true nature of the dirty wars the United States government struggles to keep hidden.

Bugliosi, brilliant prosecutor and bestselling author, is perhaps the only man in America capable of "prosecuting" Lee Harvey Oswald for the murder of John F. Kennedy. His book is a narrative compendium of fact, ballistic evidence, and, above all, common sense.

An action-packed, blood-soaked, futuristic debut thriller—set in a world where the murder rate is higher than the birthrate—by Lindsay Cummings, co-author (with Sasha Alsberg) of the New York Times #1 Bestseller Zenith. "Legend meets La Femme Nikita in this dark and dangerous bloody thriller. The nonstop action of The Murder Complex kept us guessing at every twist and turn. It's a must for fans of action-packed dystopians like The Hunger Games and Divergent."—Justine Magazine Meadow Woodson, a fifteen-year-old girl who has been trained by her father to fight, to kill, and to survive in any situation, lives with her family on a houseboat in Florida. The state is controlled by The Murder Complex, an organization that tracks the population with precision. The plot starts to thicken when Meadow meets Zephyr James, who is—although he doesn't know it—one of the MC's programmed assassins. Is their meeting a coincidence? Destiny? Or part of a terrifying strategy? And will Zephyr keep Meadow from discovering the haunting truth about her family? Action-packed, blood-soaked, and chilling, this is a dark and compelling debut novel by Lindsay Cummings.

In the battle for the streets of Mosul in Iraq, drones in the hands of ISIS terrorists made life hell for the Iraq army and civilians. Today, defense companies are racing to develop the lasers, microwave weapons, and technology necessary for confronting the next drone threat. Seth J. Frantzman takes the reader from the midnight exercises with Israel’s elite drone warriors, to the CIA headquarters where new drone technology was once adopted in the 1990s to hunt Osama bin Laden. This rapidly expanding technology could be used to target nuclear power plants and pose a threat to civilian airports. In the Middle East, the US used a drone to kill Iranian arch-terrorist Qasem Soleimani, a key Iranian commander. Drones are transforming the battlefield from Syria to Libya and Yemen. For militaries and security agencies—the main users of expensive drones—the UAV market is expanding as well; there were more than 20,000 military drones in use by 2020. Once the province of only a few militaries, drones now being built in Turkey, China, Russia, and smaller countries like Taiwan may be joining the military drone market. It’s big business, too—$100 billion will be spent over the next decade on drones. Militaries may soon be spending more on drones than tanks, much as navies transitioned away from giant vulnerable battleships to more agile ships. The future wars will be fought with drones and won by whoever has the most sophisticated technology.