The Lenox Library is pleased to welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Barry Meier to talk about his new book Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies at 4:00 p.m. on August 30, 2021. Books will be available for purchase and signing.
In Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies, author Barry Meier details the spy story for our time: the billion-dollar business of private spying that is invading our privacy, profiting from deception, and manipulating the news.
Today, operatives-for-hire are influencing presidential elections, the news media, government policies and the fortunes of companies. They are also peering into our personal lives as never before, using off-the shelf technology to listen to our phone calls, monitor our emails, and decide what we see on social media. Private spying has never been cheaper and the business has never been more lucrative—just as its power has never been more pervasive.
Meier’s portrait of the private investigative world is fascinating and unsettling. He reveals the secret tactics that spies-for-hire use to con their targets, trade hacked and stolen documents, manipulate journalists and influence what we read and see.
Spooked is a fast-paced, disturbing and, at times, hilarious tour through the shadowlands of private spying and its inhabitants. Barry Meier draws on his journalistic expertise and unique access to sources to uncover the secrets private spies want to keep hidden.
About the author: Barry Meier is a former New York Times reporter and a member of the Times’ team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. He is also a two-time winner of the prestigious George Polk Award for Investigative Reporting and other professional honors. Prior to joining the Times in 1989, he worked for The Wall Street Journal and New York Newsday. Meier is the author of Pain Killer, which first chronicled the opioid epidemic through the story of OxyContin, the drug’s maker, Purdue Pharma, and the company’s secretive owners, the Sackler family. He lives in New York City and Tyringham.