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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > Espionage & secret services
During WW2 there was a rumour that German spies were landing by parachute in Britain, dressed as nuns... Conradin Muller was an unusual spy. He was recruited in Hamburg in June 1943, much against his will, and sent on his first, and only, mission in late September that year. He failed to send a single report back to Germany, and when the War came to an end in May 1945, he fell to his knees and wept with relief. From a highly reluctant German spy who is drawn to an East Anglian nunnery as his only means of escape, to the strange tale of one of the Cambridge spy ring's adventures with a Russian dwarf, these are Alexander McCall Smith's intriguing and typically inventive stories from the world of espionage.
In this enlightening new book, former FBI Special Agent William E. Duff offers a gripping portrait of Theodore Stephanovich Mally and the historical and psychological factors that influenced and motivated him. By examining this instrumental yet largely ignored figure, Duff provides a unique glimpse into the rapidly evolving world of prewar Soviet intelligence, its people, and its tradecraft.
Sex, Spies and Scandal is the story of John Vassall, a civil servant who was unmasked as a Soviet spy in 1962. Having been photographed in compromising positions while working at the British embassy in Moscow in 1954, Vassall was blackmailed into handing over secrets from the British Admiralty to his Soviet handlers, both in Moscow and in London, for more than seven years. There has been a rash of successful recent books and film adaptations on the Profumo, Thorpe and Duchess of Argyll affairs. The story of John Vassall, who was responsible for a far more serious intelligence breach than Profumo, is ripe for retelling. It has got the lot - a honeytrap, spying on an industrial scale, journalists jailed for not revealing their sources, and the first modern tabloid witch-hunt, which resulted in a ministerial resignation and almost brought down Harold Macmillan's government. With access to newly released MI5 files and interviews with people who knew Vassall from the 1950s until his death in 1996, this book sheds new light on the neglected spy scandal of the early 1960s. Despite having been drugged and then raped by the KGB in Moscow, as a gay man John Vassall was shown no mercy by the British press or the courts. Sentenced to eighteen years in jail, he served ten years despite telling MI5 everything about his spying. Outside, he found that many of his old friends and lovers had been persecuted or dismissed from the civil service in Britain, the US and Australia. Unlike the Cambridge Five, who courted attention, on leaving prison Vassall had to change his name to avoid the press and lived quietly in London. Including atmospheric detail on Dolphin Square in the 1950s and '60s - a hotbed of political intrigue but also a safe haven for members of the LGBT community - this is an explosive tale of sexual violence, betrayal, cover-up, homophobia and hypocrisy that blows open some of the British establishment's darkest secrets.
The US intelligence community as it currently exists has been deeply influenced by the press. Although considered a vital overseer of intelligence activity, the press and its validity is often questioned, even by the current presidential administration. But dating back to its creation in 1947, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has benefited from relationships with members of the US press to garner public support for its activities, defend itself from its failures, and promote US interests around the world. Many reporters, editors, and publishers were willing and even eager to work with the agency, especially at the height of the Cold War. That relationship began to change by the 1960s when the press began to challenge the CIA and expose many of its questionable activities. Respected publications went from studiously ignoring the CIA's activities to reporting on the Bay of Pigs, CIA pacification programs in Vietnam, the CIA's war in Laos, and its efforts to use US student groups and a variety of other non-government organizations as Cold War tools. This reporting prompted the first major congressional investigation of the CIA in December 1974. In The Rising Clamor: The American Press, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Cold War, David P. Hadley explores the relationships that developed between the CIA and the press, its evolution over time, and its practical impact from the creation of the CIA to the first major congressional investigations of its activities in 1975--76 by the Church and Pike committees. Drawing on a combination of archival research, declassified documents, and more than 2,000 news articles, Hadley provides a balanced and considered account of the different actors in the press and CIA relationships, how their collaboration helped define public expectations of what role intelligence should play in the US government, and what an intelligence agency should be able to do.
This is the first work to examine the phenomena of citizen espionage from the point of view of trust betrayal. Here is an effort to illuminate the social, political, and psychological conditions that influence trusted American citizens to spy against their country. The volume combines historical inquiry, sociological studies, psychological insights, and criminological analysis. It is especially timely when many nations, friend and foe alike, have instituted programs to obtain trade secrets and classified technology from American military and industrial sources.
A highly valuable resource for students of intelligence studies, strategy and security, and foreign policy, this volume provides readers with an accessible and comprehensive exploration of U.S. espionage activities that addresses both the practical and ethical implications that attend the art and science of spying. Essentials of Strategic Intelligence investigates a subject unknown to or misunderstood by most American citizens: how U.S. foreign and security policy is derived from the information collection operations and data analysis by the sixteen major U.S. intelligence agencies. The essays in this work draw back the curtain on the hidden side of America's government, explaining the roles of various intelligence missions, justifying the existence of U.S. intelligence agencies, and addressing the complex moral questions that arise in the conduct of secret operations. After an introductory overview, the book presents accessibly written essays on the key topics: intelligence collection-and-analysis, counterintelligence, covert action, and intelligence accountability. Readers will understand how intelligence directly informs policymakers and why democracies need secret agencies; learn how the CIA has become deeply involved in the war-like assassination operations that target suspected foreign terrorists, even some individuals who are American citizens; and appreciate how the existence of-and our reliance on-these intelligence agencies poses challenges for democratic governance. Provides a comprehensive, up-to-date examination of all aspects of intelligence by experts in the field, from collection-and-analysis and counterintelligence to covert action and accountability Probes into how the United States' intelligence agencies attempt to protect the nation from cyberattacks by foreign nations and terrorist groups-and documents the successes and failures Documents the involvement of the National Security Agency (NSA) in bulk "metadata" collection of information on the telephone records and social media communications of American citizens Examines the effects that have resulted from major leaks in the U.S. government, from Wikileaks to the NSA Snowden leaks
Are IQ tests racially and culturally biased? That was the controversial question in two landmark lawsuits: the California case of Larry P. v. Riles (1979) and the Chicago case of PASE v. Hannon (1980). Litigating Intelligence is a detailed analysis and comparison of these complex cases--the background, evidence, testimony, arguments, and surprising outcomes. It is also an important case study of the role of social science testimony in the courtroom and the role of the courts in setting social policy.
The debate over cyber technology has resulted in new considerations for national security operations. States find themselves in an increasingly interconnected world with a diverse threat spectrum and little understanding of how decisions are made within this amorphous domain. With The Decision to Attack, Aaron Franklin Brantly investigates how states decide to employ cyber in military and intelligence operations against other states and how rational those decisions are. In his examination, Brantly contextualizes broader cyber decision-making processes into a systematic expected utility-rational choice approach to provide a mathematical understanding of the use of cyber weapons at the state level. Topics Discussed: The Key Concepts of Cyber The Motivation and Utility for Covert Action Digital Power Anonymity and Attribution in Cyberspace Cyber and Conventional Operations: The Dynamics of Conflict Defining the Role of Intelligence in Cyberspace How actors decide to use cyber-a rational choice approach Cognitive Processes and Decision-Making in Cyberspace Finding meaning in the expected utility of international cyber conflict
"Kati Marton's True Believer is a true story of intrigue, treachery, murder, torture, fascism, and an unshakable faith in the ideals of Communism....A fresh take on espionage activities from a critical period of history" (Washington Independent Review of Books). True Believer reveals the life of Noel Field, once a well-meaning and privileged American who spied for Stalin during the 1930s and forties. Later, a pawn in Stalin's sinister master strategy, Field was kidnapped and tortured by the KGB and forced to testify against his own Communist comrades. How does an Ivy League-educated, US State Department employee, deeply rooted in American culture and history, become a hardcore Stalinist? The 1930s, when Noel Field joined the secret underground of the International Communist Movement, were a time of national collapse. Communism promised the righting of social and political wrongs and many in Field's generation were seduced by its siren song. Few, however, went as far as Noel Field in betraying their own country. With a reporter's eye for detail, and a historian's grasp of the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century, Kati Marton, in a "relevant...fascinating...vividly reconstructed" (The New York Times Book Review) account, captures Field's riveting quest for a life of meaning that went horribly wrong. True Believer is supported by unprecedented access to Field family correspondence, Soviet Secret Police records, and reporting on key players from Alger Hiss, CIA Director Allen Dulles, and World War II spy master, "Wild Bill" Donovan-to the most sinister of all: Josef Stalin. "Relevant today as a tale of fanaticism and the lengths it can take one to" (Publishers Weekly), True Believer is "riveting reading" (USA TODAY), an astonishing real-life spy thriller, filled with danger, misplaced loyalties, betrayal, treachery, and pure evil, with a plot twist worthy of John le Carre.
This is the first detailed study of Britain's open source intelligence (OSINT) operations during the Second World War, showing how accurate and influential OSINT could be and ultimately how those who analysed this intelligence would shape British post-war policy towards the Soviet Union. Following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the enemy and neutral press covering the German occupation of the Baltic states offered the British government a vital stream of OSINT covering the entire German East. OSINT was the only form of intelligence available to the British from the Nazi-occupied Soviet Union, due to the Foreign Office suspension of all covert intelligence gathering inside the Soviet Union. The risk of jeopardising the fragile Anglo-Soviet alliance was considered too great to continue covert intelligence operations. In this book, Wheatley primarily examines OSINT acquired by the Stockholm Press Reading Bureau (SPRB) in Sweden and analysed and despatched to the British government by the Foreign Research and Press Service (FRPS) Baltic States Section and its successor, the Foreign Office Research Department (FORD). Shedding light on a neglected area of Second World War intelligence and employing useful case studies of the FRPS/FORD Baltic States Section's Intelligence, British Intelligence and Hitler's Empire in the Soviet Union, 1941-1945 makes a new and important argument which will be of great value to students and scholars of British intelligence history and the Second World War.
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. American Kompromat unravels the Russian-influenced operations that amassed the dirty little secrets of the richest and most powerful men on earth. American Kompromat is based on extended and exclusive interviews with high-level sources in the KGB, CIA, and FBI, as well as lawyers at white-shoe Washington firms, associates of Jeffrey Epstein, and thousands of pages of FBI reports, police investigations, and news articles in English, Russian, and Ukrainian. A narrative offering jaw-dropping context, and set in Upper East Side mansions and private Caribbean islands, gigantic yachts, and private jets, American Kompromat shows that, from Donald Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, Russian operations transformed the darkest secrets of the most powerful people in the world into potent weapons that served its interests. Among its many revelations, American Kompromat addresses what may be the single most important unanswered question of the entire Trump era - and one that Unger argues is even more important now that Trump is out of office: Was Donald Trump a Russian asset? Just how compromised was he? And how could such an audacious feat have been accomplished? To answer these questions and more, Craig Unger reports, is to understand kompromat - operations that amassed compromising information on the richest and most powerful men on earth, and that leveraged power by appealing to what is, for some, the most prized possession of all: their vanity. This is a story that transcends the end of the Trump administration, illuminating a major underreported aspect of Trump's corruption that has profoundly damaged American democracy.
During the Cold War, writers and artists were faced with a huge challenge. In the Soviet world, they were expected to turn out works that glorified militancy, struggle and relentless optimism. In the West, freedom of expression was vaunted as liberal democracy's most cherished possession. But such freedom could carry a cost. This book documents the extraordinary energy of a secret campaign in which some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West became instruments - whether they knew it or not, whether they liked it or not - of America's secret service.
The Stasi were among the most successful security and intelligence services in the Cold War. Behind the Berlin Wall, colleagues, friends, husbands and wives, informed on each other. Stasi chief, General Mielke, prided himself on this situation. Under Marcus Wolf, Stasi agents were spectacularly successful in gaining entry into the West German Establishment and NATO. Some remain undiscovered. Now, for the first time in English, two British experts reveal how the Stasi operated. Based on a wealth of sources, including interviews with former Stasi officers and their victims, the book tells a fascinating yet frightening story of unbridled power, misguided idealism, treachery, widespread opportunism and lonely courage.
When Russia was in the throes of Joseph Stalin's campaign for the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, a young boy named Pavlik Morozov informed the OGPU (now called the KGB) that his father was an enemy of the regime. As a result, Pavlik's father was arrested and disappeared in a Soviet concentration camp. Enemies of the party later killed the boy, whereupon people proclaimed him their hero. Informer 001 is the first exhaustive, secret, independent study of the Morozov affair and is Yuri Druzhnikov's search for the truth about his life, death, and the perpetuation of his legacy. Druzhnikov examined documents, visited museums, and interviewed virtually everyone who knew Morozov during his short lifetime. In book after book, he discovered inconsistencies in every fact, from where Morozov was born to how old he was at the time of his death. Photographs of the hero, when compared, turned out to be of different people. Historical archives contained no documents of Morozov. Memorial museums displayed no personal relics; instead they contained pictures, books, and newspaper clippings. Attempts by Druzhnikov to interview living witnesses were met with resistance - he was even followed constantly. The subject of Pavlik Morozov was "officially untouchable". As Druzhnikov pieced together the story about Morozov's life, death, and legacy from interviews, books, court documents, and newspaper reports, it became clear that the campaign to keep Morozov a hero was centrally directed. Informer hero number 001, as Morozov came to be known, remained a fearful reminder to all: to those who inform, and those who become the victims of denunciations. Informer 001 offers Western readers astep-by-step detective story, and at the same time gives a unique glimpse into the behind-the-scenes operations of Soviet political history.
'Puts Richard Kerbaj in the front rank of modern authors on espionage. It is, by turns, gripping and shocking and sheds completely new light on the most important intelligence alliance in the world' -- Tim Shipman, author of All Out War The Secret History of The Five Eyes: The untold story of the international spy network, is a riveting and exclusive narrative of the most powerful and least understood intelligence alliance, which has been steeped in secrecy since its formation in 1956. Richard Kerbaj, an award-winning investigative journalist and filmmaker, bypasses the usual censorship channels to tell the definitive account of authoritative but unauthorised stories of the Western world's most powerful but least known intelligence alliance made up of the US, Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. As Kerbaj shows, spy stories are never better than when they are true - and these span from 1930s Nazi spy rings to the most recent developments in Ukraine and China. Through personal interviews with world leaders - including British Prime Ministers Theresa May and David Cameron - and more than 100 intelligence officials, this book explores the complex personalities who helped shape the Five Eyes. They include a Scotland Yard detective who became a spymaster and inspired the first exchanges between MI5 and the FBI. An American home economics teacher who helped create one of the most effective programmes to counter Soviet espionage. The CIA's lone officer in Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution. GCHQ's chief during the Edward Snowden intelligence leak. And the Australian politician turned diplomat whose tip-off to the FBI instigated the inquiry into Russia's meddling in the US presidential contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Richard Kerbaj is able to draw from deep inside the secret corridors of power and his unparalleled access spans all 5 countries. Some of the people he has interviewed include former GCHQ director Sir Iain Lobban, CIA director General David Petraeus, MI5 director-general Eliza Manningham-Buller, NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers, British National Security Advisor Kim Darroch, ASIO chief Mike Burgess, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's chief Richard Fadden, and Ciaran Martin, the official who oversaw Britain's assessments on whether the Chinese telecoms firm, Huawei, should have had a role in the creation of the UK's 5G network. This page-turning book will lift the lid on spy stories from across the English-speaking world, question the future of the alliance, and our place within it.
This book gives the true inside picture of the CIA during the Cold War and how the agency saw the events in which it was involved. Breckinridge started his career with the CIA as a briefing officer (and within a year had become White House Briefing Officer) in 1953 and concluded it as Deputy Inspector General in 1979. The issues Breckinridge reports on--the Bay of Pigs, the Warren Commission Report, Vietnam, Watergate, Chile, plots against foreign leaders, the Ramparts controversy, Laos, the Church and Pike committees--are among the most controversial in the lives of Americans since the mid-twentieth century. Breckinridge demostrates that the CIA was not a "rogue elephant" but an agency acting under high level policy directives, and he reveals a great deal about the internal life of the CIA.
A masterclass in cat-and-mouse espionage suspense - and the last lost novel - from the iconic Number One bestselling author of A SONG FOR THE DARK TIMES 'Ian Rankin is a genius' Lee Child It always starts with a small lie. That's how you stop noticing the bigger ones. After his friend suspects something strange going on at the launch facility where they both work - and then goes missing - Martin Hepton doesn't believe the official line of "long-term sick leave"... Refusing to stop asking questions, he leaves his old life behind, aware that someone is shadowing his every move. The only hope he has is his ex-girlfriend Jill Watson - the only journalist who will believe his story. But neither of them can believe the puzzle they're piecing together - or just how shocking the secret is that everybody wants to stay hidden... A gripping, page-turning suspense masterclass - experience the brilliance of the iconic Ian Rankin.
In today's global culture where the internet has established itself as a main tool of communication, the global system of economy and regulations, as well as data and decisions based on data analysis, have become essential for public actors and institutions. Governments need to be updated and use the latest technologies to understand what society's demands are, and user behavioral data, which can be pulled by intelligent applications, can offer tremendous insights into this. Application of Artificial Intelligence in Government Practices and Processes identifies definitional perspectives of behavioral data science and what its use by governments means for automation, predictability, and risks to privacy and free decision making in society. Many governments can train their algorithms to work with machine learning, leading to the capacity to interfere in the behavior of society and potentially achieve a change in societal behavior without society itself even being aware of it. As such, the use of artificial intelligence by governments has raised concerns about privacy and personal security issues. Covering topics such as digital democracy, data extraction techniques, and political communications, this book is an essential resource for data analysts, politicians, journalists, public figures, executives, researchers, data specialists, communication specialists, digital marketers, and academicians.
During the Second World War, the United States benefited greatly from the espionage collaboration between a well-connected ex-professor of economics, Erwin Respondek, and his contact at the U.S. embassy in Berlin, Sam Woods. The intelligence gathered by Respondek and passed on to the U.S. government included the first detailed and accurate warning about the Germans' plans to invade the Soviet Union in 1941. It also included valuable information about German atomic research, military operations, and secret weapons. This espionage work--here described for the first time--forms an intriguing chapter in the history of U.S. intelligence operations during the war and is distinctive for the personalities of the principal figures, their web of high-level connections, and the impact of their achievements. Among the important revelations of this book, which set it apart from previous, passing references to this espionage collaboration, are that Erwin Respondek was one of the United States's most valuable wartime informants in Hitler's Germany, responsible for the famed Barbarossa warning sent to the State Department; that Franz Halder, the German army's chief of staff, was a major source of Respondek's information on the Germans' invasion plan for the Soviet Union; that Du Pont and the German chemical firm IG Farben maintained a secret wartime exchange of scientific findings, up until 1945; that during 1943 and 1944 the German Armaments Ministry supported research leading toward the construction of a new kind of cyclotron; that Sam Woods received from Respondek a tip-off on Japanese war plans in the Pacific; and that Pope Pius XII was peripherally involved in the resistance activities of Respondek and his Berlin-based circle. This book should appeal to students and scholars interested in Nazi Germany and World War II espionage and to a wider, nonspecialist audience as well.
'A darkly entertaining tale about American espionage, set in an era when Washington's fear and skepticism about the agency resembles our climate today.' New York Times At the end of World War II, the United States dominated the world militarily, economically, and in moral standing - seen as the victor over tyranny and a champion of freedom. But it was clear - to some - that the Soviet Union was already executing a plan to expand and foment revolution around the world. The American government's strategy in response relied on the secret efforts of a newly-formed CIA. The Quiet Americans chronicles the exploits of four spies - Michael Burke, a charming former football star fallen on hard times, Frank Wisner, the scion of a wealthy Southern family, Peter Sichel, a sophisticated German Jew who escaped the Nazis, and Edward Lansdale, a brilliant ad executive. The four ran covert operations across the globe, trying to outwit the ruthless KGB in Berlin, parachuting commandos into Eastern Europe, plotting coups, and directing wars against Communist insurgents in Asia. But time and again their efforts went awry, thwarted by a combination of stupidity and ideological rigidity at the highest levels of the government - and more profoundly, the decision to abandon American ideals. By the mid-1950s, the Soviet Union had a stranglehold on Eastern Europe, the US had begun its disastrous intervention in Vietnam, and America, the beacon of democracy, was overthrowing democratically elected governments and earning the hatred of much of the world. All of this culminated in an act of betrayal and cowardice that would lock the Cold War into place for decades to come. Anderson brings to the telling of this story all the narrative brio, deep research, sceptical eye, and lively prose that made Lawrence in Arabia a major international bestseller. The intertwined lives of these men began in a common purpose of defending freedom, but the ravages of the Cold War led them to different fates. Two would quit the CIA in despair, stricken by the moral compromises they had to make; one became the archetype of the duplicitous and destructive American spy; and one would be so heartbroken he would take his own life. Scott Anderson's The Quiet Americans is the story of these four men. It is also the story of how the United States, at the very pinnacle of its power, managed to permanently damage its moral standing in the world.
The Malayan Emergency lasted from 1948 to 1960. During these tumultuous years, following so soon after the Japanese surrender at the end of the Second World War, the whole country was once more turned upside down and the lives of the people changed. The war against the Communist Party of Malaya's determined efforts to overthrow the Malayan government involved the whole population in one form or another. Dr Comber analyses the pivotal role of the Malayan Police's Special Branch, the government's supreme intelligence agency, in defeating the communist uprising and safeguarding the security of the country. He shows for the first time how the Special Branch was organised and how it worked in providing the security forces with political and operational intelligence. His book represents a major contribution to our understanding of the Emergency and will be of great interest to all students of Malay(si)a's recent history as well as counter-guerrilla operations. It can profitably be mined, too, to see what lessons can be learned for counterinsurgency operations in other parts of the world. |
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