Odyssey of an Eavesdropper: My Life in Electronic Countermeasures and My Battle Against the FBI - Softcover

Kaiser III, Martin; Stokes, Robert; Kosteini, Dolores

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786718358 ISBN 13: 9780786718351

Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc, 2006

Synopsis

Martin Kaiser is a legend within the nation's covert electronic surveillance fraternity. Kaiser built devices that could bring down a head of state or provide blackmail for a government agency to smear a well-known civil rights leader. In Odyssey of an Eavesdropper, he tells his own story -- from an abusive childhood in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town to icon status in the black-ops world of U.S. spy operations as the premier producer of electronic surveillance gadgets and dirty tricks, and then his battle for professional and emotional survival, with the FBI bent on his destruction. Kaiser's clients included the FBI, CIA, DEA, Secret Service, Army, Navy, and Air Force Intelligence as well as intelligence services of Egypt, Argentina, and Canada. However, after his testimony before the National Wiretap Commission in l975, the FBI embarked on a vendetta against Kaiser, nearly driving him into bankruptcy and resulting in his indictment on charges of illegal wiretapping, conspiracy, and transporting an illegal eavesdropping device across state lines. Acquitted of all charges, and after reinventing himself, Kaiser tells his personal tale while discussing historic moments in U.S. espionage and the future of privacy and surveillance in America.

About this title

About the Author

MARTIN L. KAISER III is president of Martin L. Kaiser Inc., an electronics company located in Cockeysville, Maryland, specializing in the manufacture of electronic eavesdropping devices, bomb detection, and improvised explosive device detection equipment. He was a senior research technician at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, where he was instrumental in the development of a new link in the U.S. anti-missile system. He has served as a technical adviser on films, including The Conversation, Enemy of the State, the TV show, Threat Matrix, and he was featured in the BBC Emmy Award-winning documentary, Confessions of a Dangerous Man, in the 1980s about the life of fugitive CIA agent Frank Terpil. ROBERT S. STOKES is the author of the novel Walking Wounded. He covered the Vietnam War and the Chicago Seven trial for Newsweek and the Attica Prison riot for Life magazine. Mr. Stokes lives in Westport, Connecticut.

About this edition

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0786718358
• ISBN 13: 9780786718351
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368