Les is an award-winning professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook who explores the role of intelligence organizations in a democratic society, the conflict between necessary secrecy and public accountability, and examples of intelligence operations that influenced history and international relations. He is former Marine intelligence officer whose cruise talks attract audiences interested in learning more about a world of intelligence and espionage often described as a “wilderness of mirrors.”

Les Paldy’s presentations include:

1. Intrepid Women: Women of Britain's Special Operations Executive parachuted and flew into occupied France to support the Resistance, paving the way for D-Day. Not all returned.

2. Women Submarine Hunters: A little-known group of Royal Navy women was key to the defeat of Nazi submarines, making D-Day possible.

3. A Poem for Yacov Eisenberg
A CIA operation to determine if a Ukrainian company was delivering missile parts to Iran was about to succeed when a blunder ended it.

4. A Tunnel in Berlin: Espionage and Betrayal
A CIA-MI6 operation to tap Soviet communications illustrates an environment memorably described as “a wilderness of mirrors.”

5. The Nuclear Black Swan:
False alerts, system complexity, and human frailty could lead to nuclear catastrophe.

6. CIA Covert Action: The President's Hidden Hand
Covert actions to advance U.S. foreign policy objectives began in 1947. Some had unintended and disastrous consequences.

7. Raising the K-129
The CIA’s top secret effort to recover a sunken Soviet submarine and its nuclear missiles.

8. Into the Mouth of the Bear
U.S. submarines penetrated the Sea of Okhotsk to tap undersea Soviet communications in daring Cold War intelligence operations.

9. Iran, Nuclear Weapons, and Intelligence
The U.S. may rejoin the nuclear agreement with Iran. What role can intelligence play?

10. North Korea and Nuclear Weapons: What Next?
What can be done to reduce nuclear threats on the Korean peninsula.

11. The Bomb Next Door
Could terrorists build an improvised nuclear explosive?

12. Operation Gunnerside: Stopping Hitler's Nuclear Weapon Program
A Norwegian resistance raid slowing the Nazi nuclear weapons effort was the most important sabotage action of WW II.

13. Fair Wind to Norway: The Shetland Bus Operation
Norwegian seaman braved the North Sea to bring weapons, and saboteurs to Norway and extract fugitives sought by the Gestapo.

14. Nazi Doctors, Nuremberg, and Medical Consent
Nuremberg war crime trials led to the adoption of medical ethics requiring informed consent.

15. Holocaust and Resistance in Norway
Norwegians debate whether the resistance could have saved more of Norway’s Jews.

16. Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962. A Soviet gambit almost resulted in a nuclear war.

17. Disarming Nuclear Ukraine. A US 1992 policy may not look so wise now.

18. Stopping Chinese Technology Theft: A vigorous FBI program stumbled but is recovering.

19. Inside the CIA. A look at the organization and mission of the CIA. It’s not like the movies

20. Caribbean Tax Havens: They can be used legally or illegally. Can they also provide tools for spies?

21. CIA Covert Action in Central America and the Caribbean: A long history of US covert actions authorized
by presidents and executed by the CIA have had unintended consequences.

Three cruises on Queen Mary 2, one on Crystal Serenity , one on Viking, and one on Azamara. speaking on intelligence and espionage topics. (I am a former Marine intelligence officer.)

The following recent Cruise History has been recorded for this candidate.