Martin Kaiser is a legend within the nation's covert electronic surveillance fraternity. Kaiser built devices that could bring down a head of state or provide blackmail for a government agency to smear a well-known civil rights leader. In "Odyssey of an Eavesdropper," he tells his own story -- from an abusive childhood in a Pennsylvania coal-mining town to icon status in the black-ops world of U.S. spy operations as the premier producer of electronic surveillance gadgets and dirty tricks, and then his battle for professional and emotional survival, with the FBI bent on his destruction.
Kaiser's clients included the FBI, CIA, DEA, Secret Service, Army, Navy, and Air Force Intelligence as well as intelligence services of Egypt, Argentina, and Canada. However, after his testimony before the National Wiretap Commission in l975, the FBI embarked on a vendetta against Kaiser, nearly driving him into bankruptcy and resulting in his indictment on charges of illegal wiretapping, conspiracy, and transporting an illegal eavesdropping device across state lines. Acquitted of all charges, and after reinventing himself, Kaiser tells his personal tale while discussing historic moments in U.S. espionage and the future of privacy and surveillance in America.