Eye at the Top of the World : Tracing the Steps of the Cold War's Most Daring Covert CIA Operation

by Takeda, Pete

• ISBN13: 9781560258452
• ISBN10: 1560258454
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-09-28
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group

Summary

"Incredibly, in the early 1960s, the CIA decided to put a nuclear-powered spy device on top of Nanda Devi - one of the Himalayas' most remote and forbidding peaks. The goal was to gather information on Chinese troop movements. Some time later, the apparatus stopped sending signals; it was as though it had completely disappeared. The device was never recovered, and as you read these words, nearly four pounds of plutonium, locked in the glacier beneath the mountain, are moving ever closer to the source of the Ganges River. That's enough manmade poison to kill every human on earth, or to produce a bomb capable of flattening a city." "Takeda, an internationally recognized rock, ice, and alpine climber, not only interviewed surviving members of the original expedition - during which the climbers huddled around the spy device for the warmth given off by the decay of radioactive elements - he retraced their steps to the peak itself. An Eye at the Top of the World is both a dramatic history and harrowing present-day account of Takeda's expedition to solve the mystery of Nanda Devi."--BOOK JACKET.

Author Biography

Pete Takeda is a senior contributing editor to Rock and Ice magazine and a contributor to Sports Afield and Backpacker.