Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies

How can the author deliver a believable view of a sorted industry when he thinks the past Presidential election was fair and honest? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of questioning a dogmatic narrative. I was very disappointed throughout as his dislike of Trump showed up over and over. How about the facts, only the facts. If the election was fair, present the facts. Don’t end you book stating the contrary.

Outstanding book on the workings of private international spying organizations and their manipulation of the media and public opinion. Great detail concerning the flaws in the Steele dossier. Inside scoop on Harvey Weinstein's failed use of Black Cube spies to discredit his sex abuse accusers. This revealing, candid look at a dark, deceitful, ruthless industry will thrill and disgust you all at once.

The box was soaking wet, the book inside the box was waterlogged. Amazon should consider more protection for merchandise like books and things that are not already in a plastic bag (like most of the clothing I get from Amazon). The pages inside the are readable, but all curled and wrinkled. The binding will probably not last long either.

A book like Spooked is a necessity in today's lie-o-verse, but Spooked, though it sort of tries to get there, is not that book. For those totally unfamiliar with the fact that private spies are "a thing" and that they often are hired to manipulate the media, this is probably a pretty good primer, and in that sense is a service, so maybe it deserves more than two stars.However, for those I would assume are more inclined to pick up this book, a whole lot of what Meier writes, though carefully researched, is pretty far towards the "no, duh" side. We know the Trump "pee" dossier was a fake or the next thing to it, and that it can be basically boiled down to a single source who can fairly be described as "some guy." Not Christopher Steele, his "source," who Meier correctly points out was basically talking to random old buddies from Russia and reporting rumors, which Steele then put in "dossier" form, which was then laundered to the FBI and the media through Buzzfeed and friendly and unskeptical reporters.Where Meier falls down is in exploring more about why this happened when it came to the Trump dossier. He tells the general facts that are known about it, but doesn't explore a lot more. For instance, why were Simpson and Steele so obsessed with proving Trump was a Russian agent when we now know that they had no factual reason to actually believe that was true? Meier kind of suggests some possibilities at the end and I won't spoil them, but blink and you will miss it. Further, while Meier seems legitimately irritated that his cohorts in journalism are falling for what they're being sold by private spies, he doesn't explore why that would be, other than the lame "they're looking for a scoop" excuse. Yet the fact that the biggest scoop possible would have been the early revelation that the dossier was basically one Russian-American guy's "Dude, trust me" moment and that the President of the United States was probably NOT a Russian agent goes totally unexplained.What I am suggesting, because Meier doesn't, is that reporters are plenty capable of skepticism when they hear something from a private spy or anyone else that they don't want to believe, and that a big reason the private spies keep trying to con them (and people pay them to do so) is that reporters are total suckers (or just colluding) when they do want to believe. If that stopped, a lot of the business Meier hates would be stopped cold. Again, he sort of suggests this, but in the most milquetoast manner possible.He also goes through the usual now-required religious affirmations that Trump is bad, there was no election fraud, etc., without (of course) supporting this, presumably because all right-thinking people think so and you have to say it because if you don't bring it up a propos of nothing, liberals will assume you are not one of them. So if you find that irritating, well, get used to it because it's literally everywhere now, and you will find it here too, though thankfully not to the extent that one sometimes does.I am conscious that I may be criticizing Meier to some extent for not writing the book I would have wanted him to write. Fair enough. But I do think that for many people who would otherwise read it, it will be too dissatisfying to read what he wrote rather than the more robust treatment they were probably expecting, hence this review.I listened to this on Audible, but it was unabridged.

A bit tricky for me to get it set up with not much guidance on installation. Once set up the signal is strong. Glad I made the purchase.

Yes, we now have private spies for hire. Meier does a great job scratching the surface of this new industry. But we've always had private investigators, propagandists, and dirty tricks operatives. What's new is the government using these spies to circumvent our Constitutional protections, specifically, our 4th, 5th and Due Process rights. Meier also describes nefarious government use of these spies to violate our rights.For example, to spy on private conversations, the government must obtain a search warrant. But if the government gets a private company to do it with a "wink and nod," there is no obvious governmental action. As the corrupt Mueller-Comey racketeering enterprise demonstrated, some government gangsters will not hesitate to use ill-gotten or even fake evidence to fabricate cases against political opponents. The government racketeers then defend themselves by stating how the evidence was obtained, "is outside our purview." Members of the media also work with these spies and government employees to obtain and leak sensitive information and violate rights.But private spying is just the tip of the iceberg in how the current government is moving its activities outside the government in order to bypass democracy and violate the rights of citizens with impunity. For example, the government invented the Internet, but then moved it to private corporations, and protected the corporations with immunity from lawsuits, all so citizens could be censored and silenced, and the First Amendment, Free Speech rights of citizens could be violated.There is now a totalitarian racketeering enterprise consisting of government, media, academia, and business all designed to bypass democracy and the U.S. Constitution. I call it the Government-Business- Media- Academia Complex.