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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > Espionage & secret services
The true history of the secret world of spooks, the people they spied on, and those they betrayed--includes declassified MI5 info and new evidence from previously unpublished memoirsThe shadowy world of espionage has an enduring fascination for us all. "Spy and Counterspy "explores the tangled web of agents and double-agents that spanned the globe before, during, and after World War II. It sheds new light on those who worked for, and against, such covert organizations as Britain's MI5 and MI6; America's OSS and its successor, the CIA; the Soviet NKVD; the Nazi security services; and the dreaded Japanese Tokko or "thought police." They were men and women who lived extraordinary lives, always on the edge of exposure and at risk of death. Many of them were so in love with the Great Game of spying that some betrayed their countries without a qualm; others penetrated to the very heart of the governments they were spying on. Just as important as HUMINT (human intelligence) in this war of subterfuge was SIGINT (signals intelligence), and the contribution of brilliant cryptographers is not overlooked here. With the help of ULTRA intelligence and, later, VERONA, their expertise exposed the extraordinary extent of spy rings in both Britain and the United States, in peace as well as war. Using new information from previously unpublished sources and declassified documents, "Spy and Counterspy" vividly depicts this conflict in the shadows which still continues to this day.
This book examines ways in which intelligence develops its characteristic standards of accuracy and duty. It considers the effects of formal legal codes and democratic oversight, but a principal conclusion emerging from it is the importance of professional training. Its implicit sub-text is indeed that standards of intelligence analysis and integrity should be properly taught, and not just caught by osmosis from one's seniors. It also examines intelligence professionalism in a laboratory almost completely unknown to Anglo-Saxon readers, certainly to this one. Intelligence institutions have evolved in the last decade in the new, democratic Latin America at roughly the same pace as the successor systems that developed at the same time in the former Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern and Central Europe; and the two sets of development are of comparable international significance. Yet hardly anyone in Europe knows anything about Latin American intelligence, and the same ignorance exists in considerable measure in the United States. The gap is filled here by accounts of intelligence structures and recent developments in seven of the Latin American countries, along with 5 three conceptual articles that relate these country-by-country accounts to the semi-hemisphere as a whole..
Teaching Intelligence at Colleges and Universities- Conference Proceedings: 18 June 1999
How academics, novelists, conspiracy theorists and former spies write about intelligence. Secrecy has never stopped people from writing about intelligence. From memoirs and academic texts to conspiracy-laden exposes and spy novels, writing on intelligence abounds despite the intelligence services' reluctance to open their activities up to public scrutiny. Now, this new account uncovers intelligence historiography's hugely important role in shaping popular understandings of intelligence. In this, the first introduction to these official and unofficial histories, a range of leading contributors narrate and interpret the development of intelligence studies as a discipline. Each chapter showcases new archival material, looking at a particular book or series of books and considering issues of production, censorship, representation and reception. It explores topics such as CIA historiography, MI5/MI6 historiography, the literature of eavesdropping and the importance of film in constructing proto-or counter-histories of intelligence. It offers original insights into intelligence through an engagement with its past formulation and emerging patterns.
The press called him a "real-life James Bond." Fidel Castro called him "the most dangerous CIA agent." History remembers him as a Watergate burglar, yet the Watergate break-in was his least perilous mission. Frank Sturgis--using more than thirty aliases and code names--trained guerilla armies in twelve countries on three continents and spearheaded assassination plots to overthrow foreign governments including those of Cuba, Panama, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. " Warrior "follows the shocking, often unbelievable adventures of Sturgis, brought to life by his nephew, Jim Hunt, and his cowriter, Bob Risch. Also included are never-before-seen personal photos of Sturgis and his compatriots. Frank Sturgis was well-versed in a life of shadows: familiar to world leaders and underground kingpins, to spies and couterspies..."Warrior" is his story.
The publication of The 9/11 Commission Report, the war in Iraq, and subsequent negotiation of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 have provoked the most intense debate over the future of American intelligence since the end of World War II. For observers of this national discussion-as well as of future debates that are all but inevitable-this paper offers a historical perspective on reform studies and proposals that have appeared over the course of the US Intelligence Community's evolution into its present form. We have examined the origins, context, and results of 14 significant official studies that have surveyed the American intelligence system since 1947. We explore the reasons these studies were launched, the recommendations they made, and the principal results that they achieved. It should surprise no one that many of the issues involved-such as the institutional relationships between military and civilian intelligence leaders-remain controversial to the present time. For this reason, we have tried both to clarify the perennial issues that arise in intelligence reform efforts and to determine those factors that favor or frustrate their resolution. Of the 14 reform surveys we examined, only the following achieved substantial success in promoting the changes they proposed: the Dulles Report (1949), the Schlesinger Report (1971), the Church Committee Report (1976), and the 9/11 Commission Report (2004). Having examined these and other surveys of the Intelligence Community, we recognize that much of the change since 1947 has been more ad hoc than systematically planned. Our investigation indicates that to bring about significant change, a study commission has had to get two things right: process and substance. Two studies that had large and comparatively rapid effects-the 1949 Dulles Report and the 1971 Schlesinger Report-were both sponsored by the National Security Council. The 9/11 Commission, with its public hearings in the midst of an election season, had even more impact, while the Church Committee's effects were indirect but eventually powerful. It's perhaps worth noting that a study commission whose chairman later became DCI, as in the case of Allen Dulles and James Schlesinger, is also likely to have a lasting influence. Finally, studies conducted on the eve of or during a war, or in a war's immediate aftermath, are more likely to lead to change. The 1947 National Security Act drew lessons from World War II, and it was the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 that brought about the intelligence reforms the Dulles Report had proposed over a year earlier. The 1971 Schlesinger Report responded to President Nixon's need to cut spending as he extracted the United States from the Vietnam War. The breakdown of the Cold War defense and foreign policy consensus during the Vietnam War set the scene for the Church Committee's investigations during 1975-76, but the fact that US troops were not in combat at the time certainly diminished the influence of its conclusions. In contrast, the 9/11 Commission Report was published at the height of a national debate over the War on Terror and the operations in Iraq, which magnified its salience. Finally, in the substance of these reports, one large trend is evident over the years. Studies whose recommendations have caused power in the Intelligence Community to gravitate toward either the Director of Central Intelligence or the Office of the Secretary of Defense-or both-have generally had the most influence. This pattern of increasing concentration of intelligence power in the DCI and Secretary of Defense endured from the 1940s through the 1990s, whether Democrats or Republicans controlled the White House or Congress. When a new pattern of influence and cooperation forms, we are confident that future reform surveys will not hesitate to propose ways to improve it.
To his friends and neighbors, Glenn L. Carle was a wholesome,
stereotypical New England Yankee, a former athlete struggling
against incipient middle age, someone always with his nose in an
abstruse book. But for two decades Carle broke laws, stole, and
lied on a daily basis about nearly everything. I was almost never
who I said I was, or did what I claimed to be doing. He was a CIA
spy. He thrived in an environment of duplicity and ambiguity,
flourishing in the gray areas of policy.
Kim Philby is perhaps the most notorious traitor in British History and the archetypal spy: ingenious, charming and deceitful. The reluctance of the British and Russian governments to reveal full details of his career meant that for many years a shortage of evidence fuelled controversy. Was Philby an ideological spy, working for the Soviet Union out of Communist conviction, or was he prompted by a personality defect to choose a life of treachery? Was Philby the perfect agent, the 'KGB masterspy', or just plain lucky? In this new biography, Edward Harrison re-examines the crucial early years of Philby's work as a Soviet agent and British intelligence officer using documents from the United Kingdom National Archives, and private papers. He shows how Philby established an early pattern of deceit and betrayed his father St John Philby. But the book also demonstrates how in all the major decisions Philby slavishly sought to emulate his father. This contradicts the myth of independence Philby sought to propagate in 'My Silent War' (his memoirs), along with other deceptions. Later chapters offer the first detailed study of Philby's work as a counter-espionage officer during the Second World War, examining his rapid promotion and providing a substantial explanation of why he was appointed head of the anti-Soviet section of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Harrison also explains that Philby was never wholly trusted by the Soviet secret service.
It is a rare season when the intelligence story in the news concerns intelligence analysis, not secret operations abroad. The United States is having such a season as it debates whether intelligence failed in the run-up to both September 11 and the second Iraq war, and so Rob Johnston's wonderful book is perfectly timed to provide the back-story to those headlines. The CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence is to be commended for having the good sense to find Johnston and the courage to support his work, even though his conclusions are not what many in the world of intelligence analysis would like to hear. He reaches those conclusions through the careful procedures of an anthro-pologist-conducting literally hundreds of interviews and observing and participating in dozens of work groups in intelligence analysis-and so they cannot easily be dismissed as mere opinion, still less as the bitter mutterings of those who have lost out in the bureaucratic wars. His findings constitute not just a strong indictment of the way American intelligence performs analysis, but also, and happily, a guide for how to do better. Johnston finds no baseline standard analytic method. Instead, the most com-mon practice is to conduct limited brainstorming on the basis of previous analy-sis, thus producing a bias toward confirming earlier views. The validating of data is questionable-for instance, the Directorate of Operation's (DO) "clean-ing" of spy reports doesn't permit testing of their validity-reinforcing the tendency to look for data that confirms, not refutes, prevailing hypotheses. The process is risk averse, with considerable managerial conservatism. There is much more emphasis on avoiding error than on imagining surprises. The analytic process is driven by current intelligence, especially the CIA's crown jewel analytic product, the President's Daily Brief (PDB), which might be caricatured as "CNN plus secrets." Johnston doesn't put it quite that way, but the Intelligence Community does more reporting than in-depth analysis. None of the analytic agencies knows much about the analytic techniques of the others. In all, there tends to be much more emphasis on writing and communication skills than on analytic methods. Training is driven more by the druthers of individual analysts than by any strategic view of the agencies and what they need. Most training is on-the-job. Johnston identifies the needs for analysis of at least three different types of consumers-cops, spies, and soldiers. The needs of those consumers produce at least three distinct types of intelligence-investigative or operational, stra tegic, and tactical. The research suggests the need for serious study of analytic methods across all three, guided by professional methodologists. Analysts should have many more opportunities to do fieldwork abroad. They should also move much more often across the agency "stovepipes" they now inhabit. These movements would give them a richer sense for how other agencies do analysis. Together, the analytic agencies should aim to create "communities of practice," with mentoring, analytic practice groups, and various kinds of on-line resources, including forums on methods and problem solving. These communities would be linked to a central repository of lessons learned, based on after-action post-mortems and more formal reviews of strategic intelligence products. These reviews should derive lessons for individuals and for teams and should look at roots of errors and failures. Oral and written histories would serve as other sources of wherewithal for lessons. These communities could also begin to reshape organizations, by rethinking organizational designs, developing more formal socialization programs, testing group configurations for effectiveness, and doing the same for management and leadership practices. Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency.
These documents (released by the Combating Terrorism Center) provide a fascinating and chilling look into the minds of the world's worst terrorist **** These top secret papers captured by US forces during the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad provide a previously unimaginable glimpse into the workings of Al Qaeda and their slain leader. **** This book contains the complete text of the seventeen documents released by the Combating Terrorism Center on May 3, 2012.
This primer highlights structured analytic techniques-some widely used in the private sector and academia, some unique to the intelligence profession. It is not a comprehensive overview of how intelligence officers conduct analysis. Rather, the primer highlights how structured analytic techniques can help one challenge judgments, identify mental mindsets, stimulate creativity, and manage uncertainty. In short, incorporating regular use of techniques such as these can enable one to structure thinking for wrestling with difficult questions.
Protecting information, identifying undercover agents, and operating clandestinely -- efforts known as counterintelligence -- are the primary objectives of terrorist groups evading detection by intelligence and law enforcement officials. Some strategies work well, some fail, and those tasked with tracking these groups are deeply invested in the difference. Discussing the challenges terrorist groups face as they multiply and plot international attacks, while at the same time providing a framework for decoding the strengths and weaknesses of their counterintelligence, Blake W. Mobley provides an indispensable text for the intelligence, military, homeland security, and law enforcement fields. He outlines concrete steps for improving the monitoring, disruption, and elimination of terrorist cells, primarily by exploiting their mistakes in counterintelligence. A key component of Mobley's approach is to identify and keep close watch on areas that often exhibit weakness. While some counterintelligence pathologies occur more frequently among certain terrorist groups, destructive bureaucratic tendencies, such as mistrust and paranoia, pervade all organizations. Through detailed case studies, Mobley shows how to recognize and capitalize on these shortcomings within a group's organizational structure, popular support, and controlled territory, and he describes the tradeoffs terrorist leaders make to maintain cohesion and power. He ultimately shows that no group can achieve perfect secrecy while functioning effectively and that every adaptation or new advantage supposedly attained by these groups also produces new vulnerabilities.
In today's Russia, information technical solutions influence the way they do businesses and how they govern their state. The information age has created incredible possibilities concerning how societies use information. However, technical development seldom means only advantages; it also means challenges. This book examines how Russia faces these challenges. In particular, which threats against its information society the Russian governmental power considers valid, if the threats have changed over time, and if this discussion of threats is a prioritised question in Russia. The author also identifies which authorities that currently are working with these issues or have in the past, and whether Russia is participating in international cooperations in order to combat threats against its information society. Finally, the author examines how the Russian political elite view threats against its information society, and compares how that perception differs from to real, existing threats.
On a warm Saturday night in July 1973 in Bethesda, Maryland, a gunman stepped out from behind a tree and fired five point-blank shots into Joe Alon, an unassuming Israeli Air Force pilot and family man. Alon's sixteen-year-old neighbor, Fred Burton, was deeply shocked by this crime that rocked his sleepy suburban neighborhood. As it turned out, Alon wasn't just a pilot - he was a high-ranking military official with intelligence ties. The assassin was never found and the case was closed. In 2007, Fred Burton - who had since become a State Department counterterrorism special agent - reopened the case. Published to widespread praise, Chasing Shadows spins a gripping tale of the secret agents, double dealings, terrorists, and heroes he encounters as he chases leads around the globe in an effort to solve this decades-old murder.
This is a study of the CIA's relationship with Congress. It encompasses the period from the creation of the Agency until 2004-the era of the DCIs. When Congress created a new position in December 2004-the director of national intelligence-to supersede the director of central intelligence (DCI) as head of the US Intelligence Community, it necessarily changed the dynamic between the CIA and the Congress. While the director of the Agency would continue to represent its interests on Capitol Hill, he or she would no longer speak as the head of US intelligence. While 2008 is too early to assess how this change will affect the Agency's relationship with Congress, it is safe to say it will never be quite the same. This study is not organized as one might expect. It does not describe what occurred between the Agency and Congress in chronological order nor does it purport to describe every interaction that occurred over the period encompassed by the study. Rather it attempts to describe what the relationship was like over time and then look at what it produced in seven discrete areas. The study is divided into two major parts. Part I describes how Congress and the Agency related to each other over the period covered by the study. As it happens, this period conveniently breaks down into two major segments: the years before the creation of the select committees on intelligence (1946-76) and the years after the creation of these committees (1976-2004). The arrangements that Congress put in place during the earlier period to provide oversight and tend to the needs of the Agency were distinctly different from those put in place in the mid-1970s and beyond. Over the entire period, moreover, the Agency shared intelligence with the Congress and had other interaction with its members that affected the relationship. This, too, is described in part I. Part II describes what the relationship produced over time in seven discrete areas: legislation affecting the Agency; programs and budget; oversight of analysis; oversight of collection; oversight of covert action; oversight of security and personnel matters; and the Senate confirmation process. It highlights what the principal issues have been for Congress in each area as well as how those issues have been handled. Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, DC, 2008.
The CIA's Greatest Hits details how the CIA: * hired top Nazi war criminals, shielded them from justice and learned--and used--their techniques * has been involved in assassinations, bombings, massacres, wars, death squads, drug trafficking, and rigged elections all over the world * tortures children as young as 13 and adults as old as 89, resulting in forced "confessions" to all sorts of imaginary crimes (an innocent Kuwaiti was tortured for months to make him keep repeating his initial lies, and a supposed al-Qaeda leader was waterboarded 187 times in a single month without producing a speck of useful information) * orchestrates the media--which one CIA deputy director liked to call "the mighty Wurlitzer"--and places its agents inside newspapers, magazines and book publishers * and much more. The CIA's crimes continue unabated, and unpunished. The day before General David Petraeus took over as the twentieth CIA director, federal prosecutors announced that they were dropping 99 investigations into the deaths of people in CIA custody, leaving just two active cases they're willing to pursue. The first edition of The CIA's Greatest Hits sold more than 38,000 copies. This fully revised and updated second edition contains six completely new chapters.
From literary journalist Sara Mansfield Taber comes a deep and wondrous memoir of her exotic childhood as the daughter of a covert CIA operative. Born under an Assumed Name portrays the thrilling and confusing life of a girl growing up abroad in a world of secrecy and diplomacy-and the heavy toll it takes on her and her father. As Taber leads us on a tour through the alluring countries to which her father is assigned, we track two parallel stories-those of young Sara and her Cold War spy father. Sara struggles for normalcy as the family is relocated to cities in North America, Europe, and Asia, and the constant upheaval eventually exacts its price. Only after a psychiatric hospitalization at age sixteen in a U.S. Air Force hospital with shell-shocked Vietnam War veterans does she come to a clear sense of who she is. Meanwhile, Sara's sweet-natured, philosophical father becomes increasingly disillusioned with his work, his agency, and his country. This is the question at the heart of this elegant and sophisticated work: what does it mean to be an American? In this fascinating, painful, and ultimately exhilarating coming-of-age story, young Sara confronts generosity, greatness, and tragedy-all that America heaps on the world.
The U.S. government spends enormous resources each year on the gathering and analysis of intelligence, yet the history of American foreign policy is littered with missteps and misunderstandings that have resulted from intelligence failures. In Why Intelligence Fails, Robert Jervis examines the politics and psychology of two of the more spectacular intelligence failures in recent memory: the mistaken belief that the regime of the Shah in Iran was secure and stable in 1978, and the claim that Iraq had active WMD programs in 2002. The Iran case is based on a recently declassified report Jervis was commissioned to undertake by CIA thirty years ago and includes memoranda written by CIA officials in response to Jervis's findings. The Iraq case, also grounded in a review of the intelligence community's performance, is based on close readings of both classified and declassified documents, though Jervis's conclusions are entirely supported by evidence that has been declassified. In both cases, Jervis finds not only that intelligence was badly flawed but also that later explanations analysts were bowing to political pressure and telling the White House what it wanted to hear or were willfully blind were also incorrect. Proponents of these explanations claimed that initial errors were compounded by groupthink, lack of coordination within the government, and failure to share information. Policy prescriptions, including the recent establishment of a Director of National Intelligence, were supposed to remedy the situation. In Jervis's estimation, neither the explanations nor the prescriptions are adequate. The inferences that intelligence drew were actually quite plausible given the information available. Errors arose, he concludes, from insufficient attention to the ways in which information should be gathered and interpreted, a lack of self-awareness about the factors that led to the judgments, and an organizational culture that failed to probe for weaknesses and explore alternatives. Evaluating the inherent tensions between the methods and aims of intelligence personnel and policymakers from a unique insider's perspective, Jervis forcefully criticizes recent proposals for improving the performance of the intelligence community and discusses ways in which future analysis can be improved."
"In Bad Company" is a historical retrospective of covert political and direct action operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. Clandestine operations from the 1940s up to the hunt for al-Qaeta are reviewed. In Bad Company includes historical documentation and interviews of clandestine and covert operations by CIA involving military and political action, domestic surveillance, and cold war espionage. Some operations reviewed include Paperclip, ALSOS, PBJOINTLY, Mockingbird, MKULTRA, SCANETE, CHAOS, Phoenix Program, Watch Tower, Condor, and Anaconda.
Corporate espionage is an inescapable reality of the modern global business world. The Grey Line is the comprehensive examination of how modern day private sector spies operate, who they target, how they penetrate secure systems and subvert vulnerable employees. Additionally, the book provides invaluable resources for companies and individuals to use in deterring and defeating corporate spies.
This book presents frightening, but truthful, facts that will shake many of your deepest beliefs to the core. A dark plan, put into place centuries ago, has come to fruition. Consider Battle Hymn your wake-up call... Painstakingly researched through hundreds of sources and interviews, Battle Hymn rips the cover off the invisible government that controls our leaders and soon, our very lives. Composed of just a few hundred powerful but unelected people, this elite cadre seeks to create a one-world government to complete its already advanced globalist plans to end the sovereignty of all nations--including the United States. Its ultimate goal is complete control through a New-World Order where a socialist dictatorship ensures that every citizen is tagged, mollified and productive. www.battlehymn.com
Finding Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, had long been the U.S. military's top priority--trumping even the search for Osama bin Laden. No brutality was spared in trying to squeeze intelligence from Zarqawi's suspected associates. But these "force on force" techniques yielded exactly nothing, and, in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the military rushed a new breed of interrogator to Iraq. Matthew Alexander, a former criminal investigator and head of a handpicked interrogation team, gives us the first inside look at the U.S. military's attempt at more civilized interrogation techniques--and their astounding success. Matthew and his team decided to get to know their opponents. Who were these monsters? Who were they working for? Every day the "'gators" matched wits with a rogues' gallery of suspects brought in by Special Forces: egomaniacs, bloodthirsty adolescents, opportunistic stereo repairmen, Sunni clerics horrified by the sectarian bloodbath, al Qaeda fanatics, and good people in the wrong place at the wrong time. This account is an unputdownable thriller--more of a psychological suspense story than a war memoir--and a reminder that we don't have to become our enemy to defeat him. |
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