RONALD KESSLER |
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BIOGRAPHY |
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Ronald Kessler is the New York Times bestselling
author of eighteen non-fiction books. Kessler began his career as a
journalist in 1964 on the Worcester Telegram, followed by three years
as an investigative reporter and editorial writer with the Boston Herald.
In 1968, he joined the Wall Street Journal as a reporter in the New
York bureau. He became an investigative reporter with the Washington Post
in 1970 and continued as a staff writer until 1985. Kessler’s first book was THE LIFE
INSURANCE GAME, an exposé of the life insurance industry published in
1985. His second book, THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD: The Story of Adnan
Khashoggi, is the inside story of the world’s preeminent arms dealer.
Kessler’s next book, SPY vs. SPY: Stalking Soviet Spies in America,
is the only book on the FBI’s secret counterintelligence program and contains
the first interview with Karl Koecher, a Soviet bloc spy who became a mole in
the CIA. Kessler’s fourth book, MOSCOW STATION,
is about the security breaches at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, the involvement
of U.S. Marines, and the resulting investigations. Kessler’s THE SPY IN
THE RUSSIAN CLUB: How Glenn Souther Stole America’s Nuclear War Plans and
Escaped to Moscow is the bizarre tale of one of America’s most
damaging spies who defected to the Soviet Union and committed suicide there. Kessler’s sixth book, ESCAPE FROM THE
CIA: How the CIA Won and Lost the Most Important KGB Spy Ever to Defect to
the U.S., is about the defection and redefection of KGB officer
Vitaly Yurchenko from a restaurant in Washington’s Georgetown section. It
contains the only interview with Yurchenko by a western journalist and portrays
the CIA’s disastrous mishandling of the case. Kessler’s INSIDE THE CIA:
Revealing the Secrets of the World’s Most Powerful Spy Agency depicts
what the CIA really does and was the only book about the agency written with
the CIA’s limited cooperation. For Kessler’s eighth book, THE FBI:
Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency, the FBI gave
Kessler unprecedented access to the bureau. The book revealed for the first
time the defection of Vasili Mitrokhin, whose notes from the KGB’s archives
disclosed the existence over the years of hundreds of spies in the U.S. The
book is the authoritative work on the modern FBI. Its findings led to the
dismissal of William Sessions as FBI director over his abuses. Having probed the CIA and FBI, Kessler was
prepared to take on the modern White House. INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE: The
Hidden Lives of the Modern Presidents and the Secrets of the World’s Most
Powerful Institution depicts what the presidents and first
families are really like and how the White House really operates, as seen by
the Secret Service, Air Force One stewards, and White House aides and
residence staff who know the true story. Kessler’s tenth book, THE SINS OF THE
FATHER: Joseph P. Kennedy and the Dynasty He Founded, is the first
major biography of Joe Kennedy in more than thirty years. Based in part on
the only interview ever given by the surgeon who performed the lobotomy on
her, the book reveals that for political reasons, Joe Kennedy covered up the
fact that his daughter Rosemary was mentally ill rather than retarded, as the
family has long claimed. The book documents payoffs Kennedy made to win the
presidency for Jack. And it reveals an affair with his Hyannis Port secretary
that lasted nine years - three times longer than his affair with movie star
Gloria Swanson. In many ways, Congress is even more powerful
than the president. Only Capitol Police officers, doormen, elevator
operators, pages, professional staffers, and members of Congress themselves know
what goes on behind the scenes and how Congress really works. For Kessler’s
eleventh book, INSIDE CONGRESS: The Shocking Scandals, Corruption, and
Abuse of Power Behind the Scenes on Capitol Hill, more than 350 such
insiders talked for the first time. The book suggests how Americans can take
back their government by electing decent, honorable people. A 3.75-square-mile island, Palm Beach is
known as the most wealthy, glamorous, opulent, sinful spot on earth. It is
home to billionaires like Donald Trump, trust fund babies, women addicted to
staying beautiful, and the sophisticated "walkers" who escort them.
Kessler's THE SEASON: Inside Palm Beach and America’s Richest Society
follows four characters through the season: the reigning queen of Palm Beach
society, the night manager of Palm Beach’s trendiest bar and restaurant, a
gay "walker" who escorts wealthy women to balls, and a knockout
gorgeous blonde who says she "can't find a guy in Palm Beach." Bit
parts are played by Trump, who flew with Kessler and his wife on his Boeing
727-100 to spend a weekend with them at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach,
and Gianna Lahainer, who is worth $300 million but put her husband on ice
because he died inconveniently in the middle of the season. After the White
House, Congress, and the Supreme Court, no American institution is as
powerful as the FBI. Yet until Kessler’s THE BUREAU: The Secret History
of the FBI, no book had presented the full story of the FBI from its
beginnings in 1908 to the present. The book is the definitive account of the
FBI, revealing its strengths and weaknesses, triumphs and blunders, methods
and secrets. The book focuses on the directors who have run the bureau, from
J. Edgar Hoover through Louis Freeh and Robert Mueller, and the agents who
have made its cases. The Bureau reveals the dramatic inside story of
the FBI’s response to the attacks of September 11 and why the FBI was
unprepared for those attacks. The book documents Freeh’s colossal
mismanagement of the FBI and how Mueller is restoring the bureau to its place
as the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency. The press has cited the
book for having presented the first credible evidence that Bob
Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's Watergate source dubbed Deep Throat was FBI
official W. Mark Felt. With the CIA at the core of the war on
terror, no agency is as important to preserving America’s freedom. Yet the
CIA is a closed and secretive world - impenetrable to generations of
journalists - and few Americans know what really goes on among the spy
masters who plot America’s worldwide campaign against terrorists. For
Kessler’s THE CIA AT WAR: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror,
the author obtained unprecedented access to the CIA. The book explores
whether the CIA can be trusted, whether its intelligence is politicized, and
whether it is capable of winning the war on terror. In doing so, the book
weaves in the history of the CIA and how it really works. It is the
definitive account of the agency. Kessler’s next
book, A MATTER OF CHARACTER: Inside the White House of George W. Bush,
is a complete biography and inside look at how Bush and his secretive White
House really operated. For the book, Kessler interviewed all the key players
- Andy Card, Karl Rove, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld
-supplemented by interviews with Bush’s close personal friends, Secret
Service sources, and other insiders. Based on extraordinary access approved
by Bush himself, the book demonstrates that much of what appears in the media
about Bush is mythology. Kessler’s sixteenth book, LAURA BUSH:
An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady, is the first to penetrate the
secret world of this famously reserved woman and reveals the tremendous
influence she had on her husband and his administration. The only book to be
written about Laura Bush with White House cooperation, it draws from
interviews with lifelong friends, family members, and administration
heavyweights like Condoleezza Rice and Andrew Card, who talked about the
first lady in-depth for the first time. The book reveals how Laura’s
opinions resulted in budget changes for a range of federal agencies
and affected her husband’s policies, appointments, and world view. Kessler’s next
book, THE TERRORIST WATCH: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next
Attack, presents the chilling story of terrorists’ relentless
efforts to mount another devastating attack on the United States and of the
heroic efforts being made to stop those plots. Drawing on unprecedented
access, the book takes readers inside the war rooms of this battle for our
survival -from the newly created National Counterterrorism Center to FBI
headquarters, from the CIA to the National Security Agency, from the Pentagon
to the Oval Office - to explain why we have gone so long since 9/11 without a
successful attack and to reveal the many close calls we never hear about. The book includes an
exclusive insider’s account from George Piro, an FBI agent who spent
seven months secretly debriefing Saddam Hussein after his capture. From
Saddam’s compulsive hand-washing and use of baby wipes to his strategy during
the 2003 invasion, why no WMD were ever found, and his plans for developing a
nuclear capability, the debriefings unravel mysteries and provide insights
about one of the greatest mass murderers of our time. Kessler and the book
were featured on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of
Newsmax.com, a web site with an average of four million unique
visitors a month, and of Newsmax magazine, which has a readership of 600,000.
His stories for Newsmax have included interviews with President Bush, Donald
Trump, Sam Donaldson, Andy Card, Gen. Michael Hayden, Mitt Romney, Sen.
Joseph Lieberman, Lynne Cheney, Dana Perino, Jim Cramer, Deborah Norville,
Robert S. Mueller III, Margaret Spellings, Brian Lamb, Juan
Williams, Fran Townsend, and Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan. You
can sign up for Kessler’s reports here. Kessler has won sixteen journalism awards,
including two George Polk awards - one for national reporting and one for
community service. He won the top prize for business and financial reporting
given by the Washington chapter of the Sigma Delta Chi society of
professional journalists. Kessler has also won the American Political Science
Association’s Public Affairs Reporting Award, the Associated Press’ Sevellon
Brown Memorial Award, and Washingtonian magazine’s Washingtonian of
the Year award. He is listed in Who’s Who in America. |
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BOOKS |
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