NOC

If you love the gritty details of real special operations, I think you will love this revealing chronicle of the mostly true life of a genuine MI-6 operative. Nicholas Anderson spins an engaging fictional tale based on his real life. I am the sort of reader that puts a book down if it doesn’t grab me early. I did not have that problem with NOC. The author’s style is unconventional, but very compelling at a visceral level. The editing is a little rough around the edges, but it so fits with the story line itself that it works well. It is not a speed-read. The level of detail and the use of a lot of Russian names and phrases requires some concentration. However, it will reward the patient reader. Now, only about 2/3 of the way through the book, I am settling into the writing style and looking forward to each evening’s episode. It is a good read. I am looking forward to the next book in the series.

Great fun but more Fleming than LaCarre. Author makes out it is a hidden biography but then he was in every covert action over three decades plus being a long term deep cover operative (cough cough). Also many facts are wrong – subtle things like equipment and geography but significant enough. But the environment is authentically represented and most events map on to real situations. Most annoying is the amateur philosophy and spruiking soviet (who needs rigorous testing) medical ‘science’. But when ‘Anderson’ sticks to black ops stuff its fun though towards the end the scent of Munchausen is a little overwhelming. Maybe it should have been two books with some professional editing and fact checking. Still some parts were interesting enough to make me read a little further and query some more knowledgeable folks. Good at half the length.

In ancient Sparta, when King Leonidas would receive a plea for help from neighboring allies he would send one lone Spartan soldier. If Sparta existed today, that lone Spartan would be author Nicholas Anderson. I have read Navy SEAL books (No easy day, lone survivor, The red circle, American Sniper)… I’ve read John Le Carré (The Spy Who came in from the cold, Tinker Tailor, A most wanted man)… I’ve read books on generals,(The Operators, David Patraeus by Gericke)… I’ve read books on Delta (Kill Bin Laden, inside delta force)… All these books are amazing but to me NOC is a book that’s in a genre of its own. As I got close to the end I started savouring chapters like fine wine! All the other negative reviews on here are BS. I went against the grain and purchased it and just bought NOC TWICE his second book.

should be on the shelf of anyone who wants to know more about how governments work for their own gains

You need to be into the spy stuff to enjoy this one, for those it’s a decent read. For others, don’t bother, this not one to get you hooked.

Sorry for fhe author’s loss explained at the end of this book and in the next. It’s odd how people die from a long, nasty illness. Some wait for the assembly of loved ones, some wait until everyone has left the room, some seem to need permission. It is never easy. As is said been there, done that, there are no t-shirts. But the author’s seeming reaction? Dealing in fetal tissue and buying body parts wholesale from Chinese criminals condemned for thievery to murder in the no doubt fair justice system in China? I’ll die when my time comes without any of these miracle cures, thank you. Not sure how even an atheist can accomodate the moral/ethical acrobatics involved. The writing is good. Somtimes the author seems to be channeling Graham Greene. But the content. Did it really take so long for you to grow up Mr. Anderson? Why do I hear that voice and Rage Against the Machine in the background ? , but I digress… I didn’t trust the govt. much in the 60’s and don’t now. And this Greene-like growing hatred of the US. Your govt. was playing the same or worse game of silly buggers with any country or territory it could get it’s greedy hands on, Mr. Anderson, before we were dragged into it through 2 world wars and said enough, now we will play too. Which led to Presidents like Reagan and Bush and things like the mess in the near East. So look a little closer to home while casting stones. Does the evil world system suck? The Bible has been telling us that for millennia. Perhaps an atheist doesn’t realize that.

I found this book hard to put down from the moment I started reading. It’s kind of hard not to do that when the book opens with a parachuting sequence and then followed by the intrigue of a spy on a mission in a foreign land. Each step and every turn detailed with explanation and anecdote. It’s clear to me that the novelist is the real deal telling his own story with the red-tape wrapper that it’s fiction because it would be illegal for him to tell his story as non-fiction (and that’s explained convincingly as well). Regardless, it’s a fun and exciting story worthy of any James Bond fan who doesn’t mind the grit and grime of real espionage instead of fancy fortresses with no explanation as to who really builds mountain fortresses…Is there a company that makes these gigantic nerve centers of doom, anyway? The reality is much more mundane but the detail is what builds a story and the detail in this book is quite rich and thought-provoking. You can easily lose yourself in this book and find that time has flown. I highly recommend this book for anyone who likes to read when traveling because the locations are far flung, the backdrops in the story are fascinating and the action doesn’t let up. It’s a great and fast-paced read!

Excellent

A + I couldn’t put this book down.

 A fascinating book which explores the secret world of Mi6.

 The book is excellent and would recommend it to all people who like real life stories. so post this book up on your site.

Amazon seems to have lumped two separate books by Nicholas Anderson, NOC and NOC Twice, together as one book so I will review them separately below. Both books come from a disillusioned former U.K. intelligence officer writing on his experiences from a position of political asylum in France and labeling it as “fiction” to avoid the wrath of the U.K. Official Secrets Act. For the record, he fully admits to passing U.K. secrets to a French official in the first NOC book, which most anyone in the intelligence business would consider an admission of treason and probably relates to his eventual political asylum in France. He rationalizes it as just desserts for an SIS that allegedly tried to set up his friend as a patsy in Ambassador Christopher Ewart-Biggs’ assassination, but I don’t think any intelligence officer would view that as a valid excuse for passing state secrets. That being said, plenty of regular folks would and he fully admits to it!

Here are reviews of his two books:

NOC
In NOC, Nicholas Anderson (a pseudonym) details a time in the early 1990s when Her Majesty’s Secret Service yanked him back into the spy games he angrily quit without notice nearly a decade prior and then intermixes this story with disparate flashbacks of his past life as a non-official cover (NOC) covert action-focused case officer for the U.K.’s Secret Intelligence Service. Some real-life James Bond-esque derring do is described in exciting detail, such as parachuting into denied areas for special reconnaissance and ex-filtrating defectors. In other words, Anderson was not one of the prissy nancy boys under diplomatic cover sipping cocktails at the embassy parties, but actually one of the few, proud (and possibly insane) covert-action focused deep cover NOCs with no diplomatic immunity to save him from the Fingernail Factory. He risked his neck for Queen and Country, was even tortured for days by sadistic Bulgarians, and ultimately came to feel his courage and loyalty had been abused and misplaced.

The real focus of the book is Anderson’s relationship with ingenious Russian doctor and scientist Michal Molody (a pseudonym), who serves as the reason SIS coerced Anderson into one last unofficial mission. Back in the `70s, Anderson had ex-filtrated Dr. Molody and his wife as they defected from the Soviet Union to the West. Now that the oppressive Soviet system had been replaced with an attempt at capitalist democracy in the early `90s, Molody returns to Russia and notifies the British Embassy that he has special secret information to share, but he will only give it to his trusted old handler Nicholas Anderson. SIS sends Anderson on one last unofficial mission to Russia to find out what Dr. Molody has to say, and as earth-shattering as it is to Anderson and the reader, it falls on deaf ears back in the West.
NOC makes for a great read for its memorably poetic yet tough prose, richly detailed real-life suspense and excitement, and most of all for the following bombshell revelations:

-U.K. Ambassador to Ireland Christopher Ewart-Biggs was NOT assassinated by IRA terrorists, but instead by the U.K. government and deliberately pinned on the IRA as a false-flag attack! If Anderson knows all the real motives, he chooses not to make them clear, though he hints it was done to prevent Ambassador Ewart-Biggs from brokering a peace between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Apparently, there was too much money to be made from selling weapons to both sides, or something along those lines.

-HIV/AIDS was created as a biological weapon by the U.S. government in the late 1950s! While this was a familiar Soviet propaganda line, Anderson does not let the Soviets off easy either. According to Anderson, the U.S. government created HIV as one of its attempts at a fast-acting cancer-causing virus in the late `50s, tested it on a handful of African villagers, and for reasons unclear it didn’t balloon into an epidemic across the continent until the late `70s. As for the HIV/AIDS epidemic among gays and blacks in the U.S., Anderson alleges that an American doctor who was secretly a Soviet agent deliberately infected scores of black and homosexual Americans in New York under the guise of a vaccination program. A woman that was arguably the love of Anderson’ life was killed by HIV/AIDS from a dirty blood transfusion so the issue is deeply personal to him.

-The Western medical establishment has too much profit to lose from admitting that Eastern so-called “alternative medicine”, which genius Russian doctor Michal Molody endorses, can be very effective and so discredits it and is uninterested in his potential cures for HIV/AIDS and other major diseases!

-Anderson went to college with the infamous Marxist terrorist (and Soviet agent) Carlos the Jackal at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow! And he had a friendly run-in with him decades later while he was an international fugitive (and claims he contributed to his capture)!

-Disparate terrorist and criminal groups that seem ideologically incompatible often collaborate! Anderson claims to have seen IRA terrorists in Libya meeting with Qaddafi’s intelligence service and likewise palling around with Islamist terrorists!
While I can’t independently verify these bold claims, the book is certainly worth a read and can spur on some of your own further research into matters where the official story doesn’t quite add up.

NOC TWICE
In NOC Twice, Nicholas Anderson sticks closer to chronological order and details his original 1970s and early 1980s career in SIS as a non-official cover covert action-focused case officer on the political action staff and the gradual disillusionment leading to his angry exit without prior notice. Anderson endures numerous gruesome traumas throughout his career, which include being shot down as a young Royal Navy helicopter pilot in the not-so-secret war in Laos and killing scores of guerrillas in self-defense, giving cavity searches to corpses in search of a key piece of intelligence from a courier killed in West Africa’s senseless wars spurred on by oil-seeking Brits, and being captured and tortured by the Bulgarian security services.

The two main straws that seem to have broken the camel’s back for Anderson are his early `80s return TDY to Bulgaria and a brutal tour in Lebanon during the Sabra and Shatila massacres and the worst of the Lebanese Civil War. Anderson is disgusted to learn that many U.K. politicians and high-ranking intelligence officials profit from drugs, guns, and even human trafficking conducted by a shell company called Kintex, which is a front for the intelligence services of communist and Soviet-allied Bulgaria, a country that is supposed to be the U.K. and NATO’s enemy! Then caught in the middle of the horrors of Lebanon’s religious and sectarian war spurred on by foreign powers with expansionist designs, Anderson begins to feel like an imperialist intruder and can stand his line of work no longer.

NOC Twice comes more highly recommended than NOC for those curious to learn the dark secrets of U.K. intelligence operations or even gain insights into intelligence training and the overall mindset. However, NOC Twice does not flesh out any of its characters to three dimensions the same way that Dr. Michal Molody was in NOC, so the sequel is probably inferior on the human level. NOC Twice gives you a better sense of Nicholas Anderson’s philosophy and worldview, however. Here, Anderson comes across as a populist leftist who has slight Marxist sympathies, but is still no fan of the Soviet Union. He calls for a “third way” separate from both communism and capitalism, is a staunch atheist, despises organized religion, yet maintains a quasi-Buddhist spirituality and interest in psychic phenomena and a sense that certain things are meant to be. To Anderson, the U.S. and the Soviets were indistinguishably evil in the Cold War and he laments the fact that his native U.K. remains the U.S.’s loyal lapdog. Though I disagree with Anderson’s politics, worldview, and moral equivalency mental gymnastics, he never shoves them down the reader’s throat and spends more time presenting the facts and letting the reader decide how to feel about them. And like its predecessor, NOC Twice has some highly explosive revelations of its own:

-NATO countries feature highly secret and illegal shadow versions of their own legal and congressionally accountable intelligence services in joint operations, ultimately run by the U.S. , that are funded by guns, drugs, and sometimes even human trafficking! There is also a parallel structure of disturbing levels of cooperation in generating profits by officials from countries that are supposed to be enemies! The main example cited is communist Bulgaria’s Kintex front company sharing profits with NATO countries, which was probably more NATO corrupting Bulgaria away from its Soviet allies than some sort of Illuminati running both sides of a phony Cold War. Still, it raised my eyebrows!

-The most secret and trusted intelligence officers from NATO countries no longer work for their respective countries’ intelligence services per se, but instead for a joint NATO black ops group that is associated with Operation Gladio right-wing terrorist false flag attacks! Anderson claims to have been promoted into this group in the early `80s and to have become disgusted with it, prompting him to quit.

-Pope John Paul II’s would-be assassin was NOT a Bulgarian communist working for the Soviets as commonly reported, but was actually a right-wing Turkish Grey Wolves terrorist most likely working for NATO’s Operation Gladio in a false-flag attack!

-Late British media tycoon Robert Maxwell, long known to be an Israeli agent of influence, was ALSO involved in sharing guns, drugs, and human trafficking profits with communist Bulgaria’s Kintex front company and pressured British politicians to keep the illegal parallel structure Gladio networks going!

-Syria and Soviet Russia secretly instigated the Lebanese Civil War so that Syria could steal lucrative oil off the coast of Lebanon with Russia’s help and profit-sharing without any resistance from the Lebanese government!

-Many U.K. SIS officers are forced to undergo an electro-convulsive therapy forgetting process when they retire so there’s no risk of them blabbing about some of the most sensitive operations! Anderson claims he managed to avoid this process.

But the real juicy stuff will come with Anderson’s upcoming third NOC book, where he describes how the SIS sucked him in yet again in the mid-2000s in the Iraq War and he became more disgusted with U.S. and U.K. foreign policy than ever before and even lost an eye! This chapter in his life allegedly ended with him essentially defecting to France and receiving political asylum. Whatever the U.K.’s Chilcot Inquiry fails to reveal about the true origins of the disastrous Iraq War, Anderson’s third NOC book will surely unearth for the betterment of all who seek the truth.

Nicholas Anderson’s book `NOC Non-Official Cover: British Secret Operations’ would make a most remarkable achievement of fiction — a protagonist who is a former MI6 officer and, latterly, a “freelance” British agent with a licence to kill, whose conscience about working for an organisation believing themselves to be “above the law” leads him to reveal the nefarious deeds he committed in the name of national security — except that the enigmatic author claims every word is the God’s honest truth and that he himself is the agent in question. Like paprika in a well-seasoned goulash, the ambiguity is what gives this exceptional book its added spice and lifts it head and shoulders above the normal run-of-the-mill spy yarn.
Anderson (presented as a pseudonym, like the majority of names in the book) tells us in the first few paragraphs about his signing of the Official Secrets Act, which forbids all employees of The Secret Intelligence Agency of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of ever talking or writing about their work. This necessitates his choice of presentation of his memoir as “informed fiction.” Anderson’s frustration at having to adopt this ruse is obvious in his, somewhat defensive, introduction. But is this a double bluff? When he throws out the challenge to investigative journalists “… to closely follow my story: They will see the truth emerge…” is he merely piling on the mystery to tantalise us?
As one progresses through the text — resisting the temptation to run to Google every other paragraph to check on Anderson’s facts — we soon realize it doesn’t matter a damn if this is a true story or not. What matters is it’s an intriguing and informed narrative that grabs the reader and pulls him along for a fascinating, insightful and sometimes philosophical glimpse into a world of which few of us are even aware, but that is totally credible by virtue of Anderson’s exceptional writing skills. There are tense and hugely entertaining scenes. Characters are finely drawn. Anderson’s own personality and character is gradually revealed as a fully rounded, sympathetic individual with definite opinions, with which the reader might not agree but can’t help but concede have been formed by experience that is extreme and rare.
As Anderson writes: “In the end there’s not a lot of difference between history and fiction because the former has been written with the latter in mind.” By book’s end we know this for a fact because we’ve been taken beyond mind-boggling events to a greater understanding of their underlying significance, regardless of their veracity. Like all good books, fiction and non-fiction, we emerge from Anderson’s pages with a world empathy we may not have had before we started. An awesome (in the true sense of the word) read for more than just the cloak-and-dagger spy book fan.

Most of the spy books out there today are mostly two accounts. One being a culmination of a researchers information of events on covert operations, but no details of the actually events, and two being a memoir of a case officer that goes from point A to point B collecting Intel from informants. None off these show the dark side of intelligence collecting under a non official cover, where your life is in the hands of knowing to blend in and not get compromised because if you are compromised you do not have diplomatic immunity. Only one author out there has truly lived in this environment of a NOC and that person is Nicholas Anderson. Whether he’s jumping out covert planes to do a Halo insertion or flying a sterile helicopter over south-east Asia he’s been there. These books are necessary reading for anyone who wants to go into covert operations!

Hey. I’m an aspiring spy (read: I like James Bond a lot). I went on a date with a girl who’s dad is this guy. She told me that her dad was a spy and that he wrote this book, so I bought it and read it. Cool story, right? The problem is that the book is only okay. He’s not the best writer and most of his stories reek of “check out how cool I am”. Plus, his daughter is dating someone else now, so that’s a total bummer.

The book is a memoir of a British undercover agent who served in the Secret Intelligence Service from 1971 to 1983 and was then recalled to active duty after the fall of communism. In a series of flashbacks the author provides a broad account of some of his exploits and weaves them seamlessly into his own life. Because of censorship requirements, the author had to publish his book under an assumed name and as a ‘fictional autobiography’. Despite this disclaimer, I was impressed that the book describes events that actually happened and that the author was actually a witness and participant in those events. The author takes great pains to include details that only an agent who lived through the events described would know. At times the additional details slow down the narrative but overall I liked the style of the author. All in all I enjoyed reading the book and would recommend it to anyone interested in “real life” espionage and cloak and dagger operations.

Since I read the first NOC, I was very much looking forward to reading NOC Twice and it did not disappoint. This work is not just for men, but there is a strong appeal for women in these stories. It was a page turner. In each chapter, Mr. Anderson relates what seem like impossible missions. All the time, these involvements are supposed to be for the greater good. I truly feel that each chapter could be made into a feature film or an HBO series.

I like to read Amazon’s reviews a lot! Opinions on this title are at opposite ends – like New York City, you either will love it or hate it. Yet when you research both the admiring and the criticism you soon realise – even an idiot can figure it out – that clearly Messrs Waller and O’Shea (who inescapably seem to know each other) have an peculiar bee in their bonnet about the most minor of the same evidence they’ve jointly presented. I have a PhD – it took me many years to achieve it as did the author – and I have a relative in the Royal Navy who was “fast-tracked” and with whom I have consulted. From what I can gather this writer’s career from 1971 to 1992-1993 (the timeframe of the book) went from a Lt. to a Lt-Cmdr. – like my cousin did – and, much later, possibly during his recall to active duty reached the rank of a Cmdr. (at some point before the book was published in 2009 as it clearly states on the back book cover). This is a point of contention to bother to write in about? Based on the unwarranted slam downs I would almost be inclined to believe there is an organised motion to discredit going on here. As a student of history I can confirm that individual accomplishment, threats to changes in society and those progressive others on the fringe – what the book is actually largely about – are subjects that are always heavily knocked down by the meek, blinkered and supporters of the realm with such negative propaganda. It’s a dirty feeling too, to mock…it swings in favour of the clean, sterling account of his life in action, which it was. I look forward to Nicholas Anderson’s next now. Thank you for the obvious “ridiculously bad” reviews that instigated me to seek out, read it and find for myself how wrongly slanted down these reviews can sometimes be and as if hell bent on some obscure agenda!

Mr. Anderson has written a complex book, which has rattled a few cages. He clearly makes a disclaimer in his foreword that the events in the book were based on real experiences rather than statements of fact, therefore it is a problematic book to review. The genre of ‘faction’ as the name suggests, falls betwixt and between, so right from the start the reader must decide how he or she wants to approach it. I decided not to question the accuracy of the details, since I have no military or intelligence background and am vastly under qualified to critique the book on those fronts. However, from a layman’s perspective, one can’t fail to be swept up in the narrative, which Mr. Anderson writes with effortless energy, fine prose and a sprinkling of philosophy which was ingrained in him during his upbringing in China. This in particular, adds a spiritual context to a usually very macho book genre. This book calls out the deadly hypocrisy of world affairs in the intelligence community and the tragic human cost of governmental policy. Particular highlights include his association with Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (Carlos the Jackal) and his campaigns in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. He also sheds light on the origins of the HIV virus, the dirty politics of the Big Pharma industry and the ghastly Chinese labour camps “a bonus way to cull the flow of criminals” for their organ harvesting programme. At the very least, this book and its sequels will raise many questions for the reader and prompt further examination into the dark little corners of the world, which one has to presume is one of the books main goals. As Mr. Anderson says at one point, “At the end of day I have always survived no matter what”, and doubters will doubt but this book is a powerful piece about a man on a personal, professional and spiritual journey that is his, and no one can take that away.

Sneering reviews that shrivel in the process of defending the most indefensible of attacks only serve to irritate the fair-minded. Instead I have a preference for intelligent free constructive critical nuance. A few pages in I sensed that this particular author’s story falls under the unusually iconic – where you don’t ever expect to be told the real thing as there’s clearly a lot of reasons to keep it secret. Wish more like this was available as it makes you actually think. I found myself frequently reading between the lines because it’s not right there in easy black on the line itself (probably due to obvious legal restrictions). A thesis of action mixed with philosophy to read again to really get a handle on it, and I’m going to too!

This was a great book i really enjoyed reading it well done Nicholas Anderson. I only bought this book as there was an article on it in my local newspaper. Haway the Lads

IMPORTANT REVELATIONS ABOUT IRAQ WAR AND OSAMA BIN LADEN THAT NEED TO BE READ! BILDERBERG! LE CERCLE! WHEN DID BIN LADEN REALLY DIE?

The disastrous implications of the U.S.’s bizarre and heinous misadventure in Iraq are ongoing (ISIS, anyone?), but unfortunately, very few truly tell-all, insider memoirs exist for public consumption. This is one of those few and therefore deserves its place in history. Like the previous two books in the NOC trilogy, this is officially classified as fiction… only because the author doesn’t feel like going to prison for violating the U.K. Official Secrets Act. Make no mistake: save for changing a name here and there and hiding a few others… this is TRUE. While I don’t agree with some of the author’s opinions and big-picture analysis and speculation, I did not remove a star in this review because this is not book is not an opinion piece or an analysis. This is a memoir; a window into one’s man life on the tip of the spear in deniable covert operations in the Iraq War for the U.K. Secret Intelligence Service.

After “Nicholas Anderson” (a pseudonym) finds his Belize bank accounts looted by a wealthy British financier and politician connected to secret societies behind globalization, and after the U.K. government threatens to throw him in prison for showing his un-redacted SIS memoirs to a literary agent, his Israeli lawyer negotiates a deal: the disillusioned Anderson will be dragged back into the cold hard spook world he fled angrily decades earlier for one last mission in order to earn legal forgiveness for his sins. Anderson’s mission is to lead a team of British special ops warriors disguised as Chechen Islamic militants as they mingle undercover amongst what would become ISIS and other extremist jihadis in the Iraq War and the Afghanistan war in order to rescue hostages. Before they’re through, they also do stints in Somalia, Yemen, and a daring covert mission to Iran’s nuclear facilities! And they may or may not have killed Osama Bin Laden years before he died (or “died”) with no body shown!

Like the previous two NOC books, it is unusually well-written and poetic in its prose for an ex-spook, many of whom need ghost writers (or should have had them) for their memoirs. Or if it was ghost-written, he should give him a raise! Of Anderson’s three NOC books, this is the one with the tightest and most sequential story-line making it the most suitable for film adaptation. The male bonding amongst the undercover platoon members and wandering adventure with diverse characters encountered along the way reminded me of the classic World War II film The Big Red One. Someone should mail this book to Ralph Fiennes and see if he could get this project moving and play Anderson on the screen! They could pitch it as The Big Red One in Iraq or Bitter, Washed Up James Bond in Iraq!

Here are some of the book’s important revelations:

The Iraq War NEVER really had anything to do with WMDs or al-Qaeda links and was planned at PNAC and other think tanks years before 9/11. The Neocons in the Dubya Bush administration started B.S.’ing their way there immediately after 9/11 and Tony Blair played lapdog to the lies. (If you didn’t already know this, you probably need to turn off your boob tube and wake up!)

Anderson and his platoon found someone they were 90% sure was Osama Bin Laden while undercover in Af/Pak circa 2005 and reported his whereabouts to SIS HQ. Bombs were dropped. Jihadis died. And Anderson’s U.K. intel contacts who searched Bin Laden’s supposed house in Pakistan after his “death” was publicly announced told him that none of those clothes fit a man as tall as Bin Laden…

An international secret society of fascists called Le Cercle has a parallel structure above the various governments of the world!

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the elite families that run the Bilderberg Group and sit on the boards of the major multi-national corporations bribed the new class of Russian oligarchs into creation as a means of recruiting them into their club!

The war in Afghanistan was about building a natural gas pipeline that the Taliban wouldn’t build. It was never truly about 9/11 and catching Bin Laden.

Anderson tested the soil around Iran’s nuclear facilities and found them nowhere near as close to weaponizing as publicly reported!

And while Anderson emphasizes oil as the most likely true reason for the Iraq War, I think he makes it sound like par for the course for “perfidious” American imperialism (more perfidious than PERFIDIOUS ALBION?!) when it truly was perpetrated by a FRINGE group of NEOCONS who were later PURGED in the 60 year-old BOY KING’s second term by the mainstream American imperialists. But again, I don’t fault him for what I believe to be misleading analysis because the real center of this book is his personal memories in all this skullduggery and not some academic paper on the game of nations. The book succeeds far more in the former than it does in the latter.

Deserves far more attention that it is currently receiving. A best kept secret that should no longer be kept.

The 3rd installment in the NOC trilogy could have been called Knock-Out Effect as this book pulls no punches. Don’t bother reading the Chilcot Report and read this instead. Many questions surrounding the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq are answered here, with many more alarming questions raised about the insidious influence of shadow governments. This book compared to the previous two, is perhaps more linear and as one previous reviewer stated, suited to a filmed adaptation. There is strong verisimilitude created as Nicholas describes his team of specialists’ rapport, humour and difficulties they experience on their missions. As before, Nicholas’ strengths as a story teller are remarkable. He is able to cram in huge amounts of detail that in no way slow down the narrative thrust but rather reinforces his authority on his subject matter, with a seemingly photographic memory of events. I have particularly liked his internal thought process, which he italicizes in his prose, that adds another commentary to events as he sees them. One can only hope we have not heard the last from Mr. Anderson.

11/10: Absolute cracker of a book. Nick is a man of the world, and he takes you for a walk across geographical and cultural borders. The first section tells the story of Nick’s knife-edge deep cover work with his paramilitary unit in post-invasion Iraq, might I add this section does not lack any value in entertainment or engagement thanks to the larrikin-like and hard nosed operators that made up the unit. Following this, there are a few more sections with the same/similar units on hostage recovery ops. A final extended essay spanning last chapter and few sections throws the knock out punch at the UK/US establishments (executive governmental, legal and corporate circles of those nations); quite pointedly at the UK intelligence community, understandably so given the author’s experience with the latter.

This third installment of the trilogy focuses more heavily on international corruption and treachery than in the previous two. I found this to be particularly relevant given its topical focus on the Iraq war. How can anyone honestly write about the Iraq war without first mentioning Bush-Cheney’s financial interests?

One particular highlight for me was how Nick writes to his audience as if they are rational animals who harbour reasonable suspicion of the information that is fed to them. And, that is a topic central to the whole trilogy: Perception Management (PM). Too much non-fiction is written under the cover of the narratives that mass media corporations float. This book bursts through that umbrella. As another reviewer said, “Forget the Chilcott Report, this is it!”

I have recently finished reading the whole trilogy, and can write with my hand on my heart, that they are some of the most engaging pieces of writing I have read. Not only is this book the well written memoir of a fascinating life, it too is a honest, realistic and well informed indictment of the US’ actions post-9/11. Halliburton, the TAPI Pipeline, inflation of the Iranian nuclear threat, incongruency in the narrative of UBL’s assassination, funny business-smoke’n’mirrors in The Ukraine under Putin… it has it all.

You should have named this book ‘NOC-OUT’ because that is exactly what it is, a knockout read. I’m starting to sound like a scratched record after completing this authors books, however i have to be honest and give praise & respect where it’s due. OUTSTANDING READ!!

Excellent book written by a real person who was deeply into international spying. If you are a James Bond,, fan, this book brings you the real thing. A must read.

Nicholas Anderson’s Trilogy NOC has been a fascinating, informative and profound read. I have learned so much from these three books and admire the courage, intelligence, insights and humanity of this man. It must have been a long and lonely road travelled endeavouring to expose injustice in its many forms and help to make a difference somehow by telling his story. Albert Einstein said “Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act” and indeed NA has done so to his cost. An unsung hero in my heart!