A vastly entertaining and unique history of the interaction between spying and showbiz, from the Elizabethan age to the Cold War and beyond. 'A treasure trove of human ingenuity' The Times Written by two experts in their fields, Stars and Spies is the first history of the extraordinary connections between the intelligence services and show business. We travel back to the golden age of theatre and intelligence in the reign of Elizabeth I. We meet the writers, actors and entertainers drawn into espionage in the Restoration, the Ancien Régime and Civil War America. And we witness the entry of spying into mainstream popular culture throughout the twentieth century and beyond - from the adventures of James Bond to the thrillers of John le Carré and long-running TV series such as The Americans. 'Thoroughly entertaining' Spectator 'Perfect...read as you settle into James Bond on Christmas afternoon.' Daily Telegraph

The end of the Cold War presented a paradoxical dilemma for the Intelligence Community (IC). The demise of the Soviet Union brought about a significant downsizing of the nation's intelligence apparatus while concurrently necessitating a major reallocation of intelligence resources to cover a more complex array of trans-national threats such as counter-proliferation, terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking, and ethnopolitical conflict. The combination of shrinking budgets and expanding analytical requirements placed enormous demands on the Community. Among the most pressing challenges was the need for an on-demand, surged intelligence capability for coverage over a diverse range of operational requirements. A key recommendation of a 1996 House Permanent Select Committee investigation of the nation's intelligence capabilities called for the creation of a dynamic surge capacity for crisis response. The Committee concluded that such resources "need not be self-contained within the IC," but must be quickly marshaled "without undue concerns about who owns the assets." Several other independent reform studies at the time proposed initiatives to satisfy surged collection demands by leveraging nongovernmental resources. Despite these recommendations, during the 1990s there was little effort to create such a surge capacity. Bureaucratic inertia and lack of clear consensus on an intelligence reform agenda made major initiatives impossible. With the enormous intelligence demands of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) the issue of surge capacity has reemerged as a critical issue for community leaders. Collection management, remote sensing, linguistic support, document exploitation, interrogation, and technical analysis are just some intelligence support functions currently being performed by private contractors. This ad hoc response to meet the intelligence requirements of GWOT operations has produced mixed results. One report strongly recommended the permanent integration of commercial imagery products into the conventional collection management cycle for operational commanders. Conversely, a key fi nding of the Army Inspector General's report on OIF detainee operations in Iraq clearly identifi ed poor training and misuse of contract interrogators as a contributing factor in detainee abuse. These examples speak to both the promise and the liability of utilizing commercial augmentation for intelligence surge capacity. Given the current mismatch between operational requirements and intelligence force structure, there will be continuing reliance on commercial augmentation. As critical intelligence requirements are increasingly resourced through commercial augmentation, IC leaders must determine the appropriate roles for private sector firms and provide effective plans for legal oversight, operational integration, and management of contracted support. To date, few studies have adequately considered the policy implications of integrating non-governmental providers into the operational intelligence cycle. GWOT operations have required significant reliance on private sector resources for intelligence collection and analysis but have done so without sufficient measures for effective acquisition, management and accountability over commercial providers. This study assesses the value of current commercial activities used within DoD elements of the Intelligence Community, particularly dealing with operational functions such as analysis, collection management, document exploitation, interrogation, production, and linguistic support. These functions were selected due to the extensive use of commercial augmentation in these areas during recent GWOT operations.

This fascinating account of how two young Americans turned traitor during the Cold War is an "absolutely smashing real-life spy story" (The New York Times Book Review). At the height of the Cold War, some of the nation's most precious secrets passed through a CIA contractor in Southern California. Only a handful of employees were cleared to handle the intelligence that came through the Black Vault. One of them was Christopher John Boyce, a hard-partying genius with a sky-high IQ, a passion for falconry, and little love for his country. Security at the Vault was so lax, Boyce couldn't help but be tempted. And when he gave in, the fate of the free world would hang in the balance. With the help of his best friend, Andrew Daulton Lee, a drug dealer with connections south of the border, Boyce began stealing classified documents and selling them to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. It was an audacious act of treason, committed by two spoiled young men who were nearly always drunk, stoned, or both--and were about to find themselves caught in the middle of a fight between the CIA and the KGB. This Edgar Award-winning book was the inspiration for the critically acclaimed film starring Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn--a true story as thrilling as any dreamed up by Ian Fleming or John le Carre. Before Edward Snowden, there were Boyce and Lee, two of the most unlikely spies in the history of the Cold War.

At an auction in Edinburgh in 2010, the sale of an old walking stick belonging to a British officer, Captain Gill, shed new light on one of the mysterious crimes of the Victorian era. Captain William Gill and his companions, the noted Arabist Professor Edward Palmer of Cambridge University and a young naval lieutenant, Harold Charrington, were killed in an ambush by Bedouin in the Sinai Desert in 1883. The trio had been tasked with informal diplomacy in the region, specifically to prevent the Arab sheikhs from joining the Egyptian rebels and to secure their non-interference with the Suez Canal. The gruesome murders shocked late-Victorian Britain, and led to pressure from the Queen, Parliament and the Press for the British government to launch a manhunt for the killers in a vast desert area with mountainous terrain. This book traces the story behind the murder of the three men, uncovering the reason for their journey to the desert, the story of the murder itself and the backlash home in England. It shines light on a fascinating, forgotten crime, as well as on early intelligence operations in the Middle East.

Dr. Bodnar builds on the earlier work and isight of Cynthia Grabo, whose book Anticipating Surprise; Analysis for Strategic Warning was recently published by the Joint Military Intelligence College's Center for Strategic Intelligence Research. The author also usefully integrates into this book the often-cited but rarely-seen original work of the USAF's strategic and operational philosopher Col. John Boyd. This book reaches farther than any other toward the objective of bringing together substantive expertise with an accessible, methodologically sound analytical strategy in the ervice of the U.S. Intelligence Community.