Operation Shakespeare

A Pulitzer Prize finalist, investigative reporter John Shiffman, offers an intimate account of an undercover national security operation meant to shield American service members from weapons built with US technology. The story moves across Philadelphia, Shiraz, London, Beverly Hills, Tbilisi and Dubai as a specialized Homeland Security team sets out to keep Iran, Russia, China, Pakistan and North Korea from buying advanced American electronics. Such components can guide missiles, jam radar, and set off everything from wireless roadside bombs to nuclear devices.

The agents face more than foreign middlemen. They also have to contend with American manufacturers and international bankers who, the book suggests, are willing to put profit ahead of national security. The three-year sting builds to a moment when the agents lure an Iranian arms broker to a former Soviet republic with offers of American radar, fighter jet and missile parts, then bring him back to the United States, where he is held in secret for two years. The laptop he carries gives the CIA a detailed map of Tehran's effort to acquire US military technology.

Shiffman had rare access to the government agents running this covert campaign and to the captured broker himself. The result is a fast-paced, wide-ranging look at a hidden contest to protect American military advantage and the troops who depend on it.