|
Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > Espionage & secret services
This lavishly illustrated and authoritative book presents the
secret history of Stasi and Warsaw Pact subminiature spy cameras
used during the Cold War. It is a history that could have been
written only through the collaboration of veteran Stasi technical
intelligence officers and the world's foremost historians on Cold
War spy cameras and tradecraft. With more than 450 photographs, the
book reveals the history, development, and operational use of more
than 70 secret cameras as used by one of the worlds most formidable
intelligence servicesEast German Stasi, or MfSfor secretly copying
documents, and for surveillance and compromise. Every major camera
system used by the Stasi is covered. A bonus at the end of the book
is an exhaustive glossary of Stasi and Warsaw Pact photographic
systems and optical devices. This book is a must-have for camera
collectors, military enthusiasts, historians, and
counterintelligence officers.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist's revelatory look inside the
sinister world of private spies. A spy story like no other. Private
spies are the invisible force that shapes our modern world: they
influence our elections, effect government policies and shape the
fortunes of companies. More deviously, they are also peering into
our personal lives as never before. Spooked takes us on a journey
into a secret billion-dollar industry in which information is
currency and loyalties are for sale. An industry so tentacular it
reaches from the Steele dossier written by a British ex-spy to
Russian oligarchs in Mayfair mansions, from the devious tactics of
Harvey Weinstein to the growing role of corporate spies in politics
and the threat to future elections. Spooked reads like the best
kind of spy story: a gripping tale packed with twists and turns,
uncovering a secret side of our modern world.
The first complete account of the fiercely guarded secrets of
London's clandestine interrogation center, operated by the British
Secret Service from 1940 to 1948 Behind the locked doors of three
mansions in London's exclusive Kensington Palace Gardens
neighborhood, the British Secret Service established a highly
secret prison in 1940: the London Cage. Here recalcitrant German
prisoners of war were subjected to "special intelligence
treatment." The stakes were high: the war's outcome could hinge on
obtaining information German prisoners were determined to withhold.
After the war, high-ranking Nazi war criminals were housed in the
Cage, revamped as an important center for investigating German war
crimes. This riveting book reveals the full details of operations
at the London Cage and subsequent efforts to hide them. Helen Fry's
extraordinary original research uncovers the grim picture of
prisoners' daily lives and of systemic Soviet-style mistreatment.
The author also provides sensational evidence to counter official
denials concerning the use of "truth drugs" and "enhanced
interrogation" techniques. Bringing dark secrets to light, this
groundbreaking book at last provides an objective and complete
history of the London Cage.
"We cannot discount the risk, in light of the lessons of our own
history, that at some point in the future, high-level government
officials will decide that this massive database of extraordinarily
sensitive private information is there for the plucking. Americans
must never make the mistake of wholly 'trusting' our public
officials."--The NSA Report This is the official report that is
helping shape the international debate about the unprecedented
surveillance activities of the National Security Agency.
Commissioned by President Obama following disclosures by former NSA
contractor Edward J. Snowden, and written by a preeminent group of
intelligence and legal experts, the report examines the extent of
NSA programs and calls for dozens of urgent and practical reforms.
The result is a blueprint showing how the government can reaffirm
its commitment to privacy and civil liberties--without compromising
national security.
In this new biography, published to coincide with the 100th
anniversary of her execution, Mata Hari is revealed in all of her
flawed eccentricity; a woman whose adult life was a fantastical web
of lies, half-truths and magnetic sexuality that captivated men.
Following the death of a young son and a bitter divorce, Mata Hari
reinvented herself as an exotic dancer in Paris, before finally
taking up the life of a courtesan. She could have remained a
half-forgotten member of France's grande horizontale were it not
for the First World War and her disastrous decision to become
embroiled in espionage. What happened next was part farce and part
tragedy that ended in her execution in October 1917. Recruited by
both the Germans and the French as a spy, Mata Hari - codenamed
H-21 - was also almost recruited by the Russians. But the harmless
fantasies and lies she had told on stage had become part of the
deadly game of double agents during wartime. Struggling with the
huge cost of war, the French authorities needed to catch a spy.
Mata Hari, the dancer, the courtesan, the fantasist, became the
prize catch.
Armies of Arabia is the first comprehensive analysis of the Gulf
monarchies' armed forces, including their political, social, and
economic characteristics, foreign relations, and battleground
performance. The Arabian Peninsula is among the most strategically
and economically important areas in the world, but its militaries
remain terra incognita. In Armies of Arabia - the first book to
comprehensively analyze the Gulf monarchies' armed forces - Zoltan
Barany explains their notorious ineffectiveness with a combination
of political-structural and sociocultural factors. Drawing on over
150 interviews and meticulous multidisciplinary research, Barany
paints a fascinating portrait of Arabia's armies from Ibn Saud's
Ikhwan to the present. He explores the methods ruling families
employ to ensure their armies' loyalty, examines the backgrounds
and career trajectories of soldiers and officers, and explains the
monarchies' reliance on mercenaries and the enduring importance of
tribal networks. Even though no other world region spends more on
security, Arabia's armies remain ineffective because of an absence
of meritocracy, the domination of personal connections over
institutional norms, insipid leadership, a casual work ethic, and
training that lacks intensity, frequency, and up-to-date scenarios.
Massive weapons acquisitions are primarily pay-offs to the US for
protecting them and have resulted in bloated and inappropriate
arsenals and large-scale corruption. Barany explains why the Gulf
Cooperation Council has been a squandered opportunity and examines
the kingdoms' military relationships with the Arab world and
beyond. The performance of the Saudi-led coalition's disastrous war
in Yemen starkly illustrates the Gulf armies' humiliating combat
record. The book concludes with thoughts on waste (of human
potential, resources, institutions) as a dominant theme of Gulf
military affairs, considers likely changes in response to long-term
weakening demand for oil, and suggests ways in which the armies'
effectiveness could be raised. Chock-full of insights and stories
from the field and written with a general audience in mind, Armies
of Arabia will be essential reading for anyone interested in
military affairs and Middle Eastern politics, society, and
international relations.
Internationally, the profession of intelligence continues to
develop and expand. So too does the academic field of intelligence,
both in terms of intelligence as a focus for academic research and
in terms of the delivery of university courses in intelligence and
related areas. To a significant extent both the profession of
intelligence and those delivering intelligence education share a
common aim of developing intelligence as a discipline. However,
this shared interest must also navigate the existence of an
academic-practitioner divide. Such a divide is far from unique to
intelligence - it exists in various forms across most professions -
but it is distinctive in the field of intelligence because of the
centrality of secrecy to the profession of intelligence and the way
in which this constitutes a barrier to understanding and openly
teaching about aspects of intelligence. How can co-operation in
developing the profession and academic study be maximized when
faced with this divide? How can and should this divide be
navigated? The Academic-Practitioner Divide in Intelligence
provides a range of international approaches to, and perspectives
on, these crucial questions.
In this "thoughtful, entertaining, and often insightful" book, a
former CIA director explores the delicate give-and-take between the
Oval Office and Langley.
With the disastrous intelligence failures of the last few years
still fresh in Americans minds--and to all appearances still
continuing--there has never been a more urgent need for a book like
this.
In Burn Before Reading, Admiral Stansfield Turner, the CIA director
under President Jimmy Carter, takes the reader inside the Beltway
to examine the complicated, often strained relationships between
presidents and their CIA chiefs. From FDR and "Wild Bill" Donovan
to George W. Bush and George Tenet, twelve pairings are studied in
these pages, and the results are eye-opening and provocative.
Throughout, Turner offers a fascinating look into the machinery of
intelligence gathering, revealing how personal and political issues
often interfere with government business--and the nation's safety.
The global history of oil politics, from World War I to the
present, can teach us much about world politics, climate change,
and international order in the twenty-first century. When and why
does international order change? The largest peaceful transfer of
wealth across borders in all of human history began with the oil
crisis of 1973. OPEC countries turned the tables on the most
powerful businesses on the planet, quadrupling the price of oil and
shifting the global distribution of profits. It represented a huge
shift in international order. Yet, the textbook explanation for how
world politics works-that the most powerful country sets up and
sustains the rules of international order after winning a major
war-doesn't fit these events, or plenty of others. Instead of
thinking of "the" international order as a single thing, Jeff
Colgan explains how it operates in parts, and often changes in
peacetime. Partial Hegemony offers lessons for leaders and analysts
seeking to design new international governing arrangements to
manage an array of pressing concerns ranging from US-China rivalry
to climate change, and from nuclear proliferation to peacekeeping.
A major contribution to international relations theory, this book
promises to reshape our understanding of the forces driving change
in world politics.
Tradecraft: as intriguing as it is forbidden . . . Tradecraft is
the term applied to techniques used by intelligence personnel to
assist them in conducting their operations and, like many other
professions, the espionage business has developed its own rich
lexicon. In the real, sub rosa world of intelligence-gathering,
each bit of jargon acts as a veil of secrecy over particular types
of activity, and in this book acclaimed author Nigel West explains
and give examples of the lingo in action. He draws on the
first-hand experience of defectors to and from the Soviet Union;
surveillance operators who kept terrorist suspects under
observation in Northern Ireland; case officers who have put their
lives at risk by pitching a target in a denied territory; the NOCs
who lived under alias to spy abroad; and much more. Turn these
pages and be immersed in the real world of James Bond: assets,
black operations, double agents, triple agents ... it's all here.
When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans
they were outraged. Now, in our post 9/11 world, it's accepted that
corporations are vested with human rights, and government agencies
and corporations use computers to monitor our private lives. David
H. Price pulls back the curtain to reveal how the FBI and other
government agencies have always functioned as the secret police of
American capitalism up to today, where they luxuriate in a
near-limitless NSA surveillance of all. Price looks through a
roster of campaigns by law enforcement, intelligence agencies and
corporations to understand how we got here. Starting with J. Edgar
Hoover and the early FBI's alignment with business, his access to
15,000 pages of never-before-seen FBI files shines a light on the
surveillance of Edward Said, Andre Gunder Frank and Alexander
Cockburn, Native American communists and progressive factory
owners. Price uncovers patterns of FBI monitoring and harassing of
activists and public figures, providing the vital means for us to
understanding how these new frightening surveillance operations are
weaponised by powerful governmental agencies that remain largely
shrouded in secrecy.
The complete and authoritative guide to the use of hidden cameras
to expose abuse or wrongdoing. Secret filming is no longer the
preserve of specialists, professional journalists and private
investigators. Drawing on the author's own experience producing
undercover documentaries and wearing secret cameras, this book
explains covert recording for the general public, including
specific advice on the practicalities of using a phone or covert
camera to record evidence. It considers the legal and ethical
issues and provides vital information for anyone who may use or
encounter secret filming, including the people or organisations
that might be filmed, regulators, social workers, local government
officials and anyone who may encounter it in court. It also looks
to the future of covert filming and the implications of
technological advances, such as drone cameras.
The secret history of MI6 - from the Cold War to the present day.
The British Secret Service has been cloaked in secrecy and shrouded
in myth since it was created a hundred years ago. Our understanding
of what it is to be a spy has been largely defined by the fictional
worlds of James Bond and John le Carre. THE ART OF BETRAYAL
provides a unique and unprecedented insight into this secret world
and the reality that lies behind the fiction. It tells the story of
how the secret service has changed since the end of World War II
and by focusing on the people and the relationships that lie at the
heart of espionage, revealing the danger, the drama, the intrigue,
the moral ambiguities and the occasional comedy that comes with
working for British intelligence. From the defining period of the
early Cold War through to the modern day, MI6 has undergone a
dramatic transformation from a gung-ho, amateurish organisation to
its modern, no less controversial, incarnation. Gordon Corera
reveals the triumphs and disasters along the way. The grand dramas
of the Cold War and after - the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall,
the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 11 September 2001 attacks and the
Iraq war - are the backdrop for the human stories of the individual
spies whose stories form the centrepiece of the narrative. But some
of the individuals featured here, in turn, helped shape the course
of those events. Corera draws on the first-hand accounts of those
who have spied, lied and in some cases nearly died in service of
the state. They range from the spymasters to the agents they ran to
their sworn enemies. Many of these accounts are based on exclusive
interviews and access. From Afghanistan to the Congo, from Moscow
to the back streets of London, these are the voices of those who
have worked on the front line of Britain's secret wars. And the
truth is often more remarkable than the fiction.
Disrupt and Deny is the untold story behind Britain's secret
scheming against both enemies and friends from 1945 to the present
day. British leaders use spies and Special Forces to interfere in
the affairs of others discreetly and deniably. Since 1945, MI6 has
spread misinformation designed to divide and discredit targets from
the Middle East to Eastern Europe and Northern Ireland. It has
instigated whispering campaigns and planted false evidence on
officials working behind the Iron Curtain, tried to foment
revolution in Albania, blown up ships to prevent the passage of
refugees to Israel, and secretly funnelled aid to insurgents in
Afghanistan and dissidents in Poland. MI6 has launched cultural and
economic warfare against Iceland and Czechoslovakia. It has tried
to instigate coups in Congo, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and
elsewhere. Through bribery and blackmail, Britain has rigged
elections as colonies moved to independence. Britain has fought
secret wars in Yemen, Indonesia, and Oman - and discreetly used
Special Forces to eliminate enemies from colonial Malaya to Libya
during the Arab Spring. This is covert action: a vital, though
controversial, tool of statecraft and perhaps the most sensitive of
all government activity. If used wisely, it can play an important
role in pursuing national interests in a dangerous world. If used
poorly, it can cause political scandal - or worse. In Disrupt and
Deny, Rory Cormac tells the remarkable true story of Britain's
secret scheming against its enemies, as well as its friends; of
intrigue and manoeuvring within the darkest corridors of Whitehall,
where officials fought to maintain control of this most sensitive
and seductive work; and, above all, of Britain's attempt to use
smoke and mirrors to mask decline. He reveals hitherto secret
operations, the slush funds that paid for them, and the battles in
Whitehall that shaped them.
THE PORTLAND SPY RING was one of the most infamous espionage cases
from the Cold War. People the world over were shocked when its
exposure revealed the shadowy world of deep cover KGB 'illegals' -
spies operating under false identities stolen from the dead. The
CIA's revelation to MI5 in 1960 that a KGB agent was stealing
crucial secrets from the world-leading submarine research base at
Portland in Dorset looked initially like a dangerous but contained
lapse of security by a British man and his mistress. But the couple
were tailed by MI5 'watchers' to a covert meeting with a Canadian
businessman, Gordon Lonsdale. The unsuspecting Lonsdale in turn led
MI5's spycatchers to an innocent-looking couple in suburban Ruislip
called the Krogers. But within weeks the CIA rang the alarm - their
critical source of intelligence was to defect within hours - and
MI5 was forced to act immediately. The Krogers were exposed as two
of the most important Russian 'illegals' ever, whom the Americans
had been hunting for years. And Lonsdale was no Canadian, but a
senior KGB controller. This astonishing but true story of MI5's
spyhunt is straight from the world of John le Carre and is told
here for the first time using hitherto secret MI5 and FBI files,
private family archives and original interviews. Its tentacles
stretch around the world - from America, to the USSR, Canada, New
Zealand, Europe and the UK. DEAD DOUBLES is a gripping episode of
Cold War history, and a case that fully justified the West's
paranoia about infiltration and treachery.
|
|