Black List

Click below to watch Brad Thor discussing the inspiration behind Black List.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/hEnlyejMx7Q?rel=0

BRAD THOR is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Full Black (one of Suspense Magazine’s best political thrillers of 2011), The Athena Project, Foreign Influence (one of Suspense Magazine’s best political thrillers of 2010), The Apostle, The Last Patriot (nominated best thriller of the year by the International Thriller Writers Association), The First Commandment, Takedown, Blowback (recognized as one of the “Top 100 Killer Thrillers of All Time” by NPR), State of the Union, Path of the Assassin, and The Lions of Lucerne.

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JACKET DESIGN BY HENRY SENE YEE

JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY KAREN KASMAUSKI

AUTHOR PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN REILLY

BLACK LIST

ALSO BY BRAD THOR

The Lions of Lucerne

Path of the Assassin

State of the Union

Blowback

Takedown

The First Commandment

The Last Patriot

The Apostle

Foreign Influence

The Athena Project

Full Black

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Brad Thor

To Barrett Moore

An exceptional visionary, patriot, and friend

AUTHOR’S NOTE

All of the technology contained in this novel is based on systems currently deployed, or in the final stages of development, by the United States government and its partners.

PREFACE

On August 17, 1975, Senator Frank Church appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press to discuss the results of his full-scale investigation into America’s burgeoning intelligence capabilities.

Senator Church revealed startling information and closed with a dire warning to every citizen of the United States:

[America’s intelligence gathering] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left. Such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.

If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the