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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > Espionage & secret services
In the decades following the Mexican Revolution, regional strongmen vied with powerful generals and popular rebels for control of Mexico's future. During this era of uprisings, government corruption, and political intrigue, Mexico took its first, faltering steps toward democracy. In the midst of the turmoil, plainclothes agents, traveling under multiple aliases and reporting in code to their superiors, served as "the eyes and ears" of the national government. In "Spies, Politics, and Power: El Departamento Confidencial en Mexico, 1922-1946," Joseph A. Stout traces the development of Mexico's Departamento Confidencial (Confidential Department) from the years of its infancy to its later incarnation as a fully fledged international espionage agency on the order of the CIA, Russian KGB, and German Gestapo. Stout charts the department's evolution under the administration of several powerful presidents--and a handful of puppets--from the postrevolutionary period through World War II, when the agency turned its attention from monitoring internal threats to focus on matters of national security. Stout devotes special attention to the agency's wartime role in the investigation and containment of individuals whose Axis ties made them objects of government suspicion. Offering a twist on conventional history, Stout takes us behind the political curtain to illuminate the crucial role played by an unlikely assortment of government bureaucrats, international spies, low-ranking agents, and office clerks within the drama of Mexican nationhood. In his comprehensive and thoroughly researched account, Stout offers a narrative propelled not by the back-and-forth of rebel violence and brutal reprisal--though there is no dearth of such material--but by a story driven by the power of information. For Stout, intelligence, as much as military might, is the key to political power and the engine of national formation. A work rich in primary sources, "Spies" integrates details culled from archived letters and agent reports into the broader framework of Mexican politics and society in the first half of the twentieth century. In his unconventional approach, Stout sheds new light on the means and motivations of some of the period's most influential figures.
Intelligence and Espionage: Secrets and Spies provides a global introduction to the role of intelligence - a key, but sometimes controversial, aspect of ensuring national security. Separating fact from fiction, the book draws on past examples to explore the use and misuse of intelligence, examine why failures take place and address important ethical issues over its use. Divided into two parts, the book adopts a thematic approach to the topic, guiding the reader through the collection and analysis of information and its use by policymakers, before looking at intelligence sharing. Lomas and Murphy also explore the important associated activities of counterintelligence and the use of covert action, to influence foreign countries and individuals. Topics covered include human and signals intelligence, the Cuban Missile Crisis, intelligence and Stalin, Trump and the US intelligence community, and the Soviet Bloc. This analysis is supplemented by a comprehensive documents section, containing newly released documents, including material from Edward Snowden's leaks of classified material. Supported by images, a comprehensive chronology, glossary, and 'who's who' of key figures, Intelligence and Espionage is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the role of intelligence in policymaking, international relations and diplomacy, warfighting and politics to the present day.
Aisin Gioro Xianyu (1907-1948) was the fourteenth daughter of a Manchu prince and a legendary figure in China's bloody struggle with Japan. After the fall of the Manchu dynasty in 1912, Xianyu's father gave his daughter to a Japanese friend who was sympathetic to his efforts to reclaim power. This man raised Xianyu, now known as Kawashima Yoshiko, to restore the Manchus to their former glory. Her fearsome dedication to this cause ultimately got her killed. Yoshiko had a fiery personality and loved the limelight. She shocked Japanese society by dressing in men's clothes and rose to prominence as Commander Jin, touted in Japan's media as a new Joan of Arc. Boasting a short, handsome haircut and a genuine military uniform, Commander Jin was credited with many daring exploits, among them riding horseback as leader of her own army during the Japanese occupation of China. While trying to promote the Manchus, Yoshiko supported the puppet Manchu state established by the Japanese in 1932-one reason she was executed for treason after Japan's 1945 defeat. The truth of Yoshiko's life is still a source of contention between China and Japan: some believe she was exploited by powerful men, others claim she relished her role as political provocateur. China holds her responsible for unspeakable crimes, while Japan has forgiven her transgressions. This biography presents the richest and most accurate portrait to date of the controversial princess spy, recognizing her truly novel role in conflicts that transformed East Asia.
Veteran investigative journalist Sherry Sontag and award-winning New Y ork Times reporter Christopher Drew finally reveal the exciting, epic story of adventure, ingenuity, courage and disaster beneath the sea. Blind Man's Bluff shows for the first time how the American Navy sent submarines wired with self-destruct charges into the heart of Soviet s eas to tap crucial underwater telephone cables. Sontag and Drew unvei l new evidence that the Navy's own negligence might have been responsi ble for the loss of the USS Scorpion, a submarine that disappeared, al l hands lost, thirty years ago. They disclose for the first time deta ils of the bitter war between the CIA and the Navy and how it threaten ed to sabotage one of America's most important undersea missions. The y tell the complete story of the audacious attempt to steal a Soviet s ubmarine with the help of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, and how it was doomed from the start. And Sontag and Drew reveal how the Nav y used the comforting notion of deep-sea rescue vehicles to hide opera tions that were more James Bond than Jacques Cousteau. Stretching from the years immediately after World War II to the presen t-day spy operations of the Clinton Administration, Blind Man's Bluff reads like a spy thriller, but with one important difference - everyth ing in it is true.
Based on hundreds of interviews with CIA officials, national
security experts, and legislators, as well as a thorough culling of
the archival record, America's Secret Power offers an illuminating
and up-to-date picture of the CIA, stressing the difficult balance
between the genuine needs of national security and the protection
of individual liberties. Loch Johnson, who has studied the workings
of the CIA at first hand as a legislative overseer, presents a
comprehensive examination of the Agency and its relations with
other American institutions, including Congress and the White
House, and looks closely at how it pursues its three major
missions--intelligence analysis, counterintelligence, and covert
action.
During the Second World War hundreds of Hollywood filmmakers under the command of the legendary director John Ford enlisted in the OSS to produce training, reconnaissance and propaganda films. This wartime bond continued into the post-war period, when a number of studios produced films advocating the creation of a permanent peacetime successor to the OSS: what became the Central Intelligence Agency. By the 1960s however, Hollywood's increasingly irreverent attitude towards the CIA reflected a growing public anxiety about excessive US government secrecy. In Secrecy's Shadow provides the first comprehensive history of the birth and development of Hollywood's relationship with American intelligence. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, synthesizing literatures and methodologies from diplomatic history, film studies and cultural theory, and it presents new perspectives on a number of major filmmakers including Darryl F. Zanuck, Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford. Based on research conducted in over 20 archival repositories across the United States and UK, In Secrecy's Shadow explores the revolution in the relationship between Hollywood and the secret state, from unwavering trust and cooperation to extreme scepticism and paranoia, and demonstrates the debilitating effects of secrecy upon public trust in government and the stability of national memory.
The world first heard of Klaus Fuchs, the head of theoretical physics at the British Research Establishment at Harwell in February 1950 when he appeared at the Old Bailey, accused of passing secrets to the Soviet Union. For over sixty years disinformation and lies surrounded the story of Klaus Fuchs as the Governments of Britain, the United States and Russia all tried to cover up the truth about his treachery. Piecing together the story from archives in Britain, the United States, Russia and Germany, The Spy Who Changed the World unravels the truth about Fuchs and reveals for the first time his long career of espionage. It proves that he played a pivotal role in Britain's bomb programme in the race to keep up with the United States in the atomic age, and that he revealed vital secrets about the atom bomb, as well as the immensely destructive hydrogen bomb to the Soviet Government. It is a dramatic tale of clandestine meetings, deadly secrets, family entanglements and illicit love affairs, all set against the tumultuous years from the rise of Hitler to the start of the Cold War.
From Ukraine to Afghanistan and beyond, occupations and exit dilemmas permeate contemporary geopolitics. However, the existing literature on territorial conflict rarely scrutinizes a pivotal, related question: what makes a state withdraw from an occupied territory, or entrench itself within it? In Understanding Territorial Withdrawal, Rob Geist Pinfold addresses this research gap. He focuses primarily on Israel, a unique but important milieu that offers pertinent lessons for other states facing similar policy problems. As Pinfold demonstrates, occupiers choose to either perpetuate or abandon an occupation because of three factors: their relations with the occupied, interactions with third parties, and the occupier's domestic politics. He argues that each withdrawal is the culmination of a gradual process of policy re-assessment. Critically, it is a combination of local violence and international pressure that causes popular and elite opinion within the occupier to endorse an exit, rather than perpetuate the status quo. To affirm this pattern, Pinfold constructs a generalizable framework for understanding territorial withdrawal. He then applies this framework to multiple case studies, which include: Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula between 1974-1982; its "unilateral" withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000; and its "unilateral disengagement" from the Gaza Strip in 2005, as well as Israel's non-withdrawals from the West Bank and Golan Heights. Overall, Understanding Territorial Withdrawal delineates commonalities that manifested in each exit yet were absent in the cases of occupation without exit. A powerful analysis of a central concern for the study of international security, territorial conflict, and the Arab-Israel conflict alike, this book provides a critical intervention that identifies why occupiers either retain, or leave, occupied territory.
When do we see social movements mobilize against the American military overseas, and what explains their varying intensity? Despite increasing interest in the vast network of U.S. military bases on foreign soil, it is still not well understood why some host communities resist the bases in their backyards, while others remain compliant. In Base Towns, Claudia Junghyun Kim addresses this puzzle by investigating the contentious politics surrounding twenty U.S. military bases across Korea and Japan. In particular, she looks at municipalities hosting these bases and differing levels of community acceptance and resistance over time. Drawing on fieldwork interviews, participant observation, and protest event data from 2000-2015, Kim shows that activists occasionally manage to join hands with the otherwise politically inactive local populations when they deliberately subordinate their radical movement goals to more immediate, mundane demands that form the basis of everyday local grievances. Specifically, the activists in base towns successfully build broad anti-base movements when they take advantage of quotidian disruption, adopt culturally resonant movement frames, and ally with local political elites. These activist strategies, however, sometimes end up reinforcing the widely presumed inevitability of the American presence. In examining activist actions, strategies, and dilemmas, this book sheds light on marginalized actors in domestic and international politics-far removed from elite decision-making processes that shape interstate base politics and yet living with their consequences-who sometimes manage to complicate the operations of America's military behemoth.
Traditionally the military community held the intelligence profession in low esteem, spying was seen as dirty work and information was all to often ignored if it conflicted with a commander's own view. Handel examines the ways in which this situation has improved and argues that co-operation between the intelligence adviser and the military decision maker is vital.
As one of al-Qaeda’s most respected bomb-makers, Aimen Dean rubbed shoulders with the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden. As a double agent at the heart of al-Qaeda’s chemical weapons programme, he foiled attacks on civilians and saved countless lives, brushing with death so often that his handlers began to call him their spy with nine lives. This is the story of how a young Muslim, determined to defend his faith, found himself fighting on the wrong side – and his fateful decision to work undercover for his sworn enemy. From the killing fields of Bosnia to the training camps of Afghanistan, from running money and equipment in Britain to dodging barrel bombs in Syria, we discover what life is like inside the global jihad, and what it will take to stop it once and for all.
In June 1952, a woman was murdered by an obsessive colleague in a hotel in South Kensington. Her name was Christine Granville. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising, but that she had survived the Second World War was remarkable. The daughter of a feckless Polish aristocratic and his wealthy Jewish wife, she would become one of Britain's most daring and highly decorated secret agents. Having fled Poland on the outbreak of war, she was recruited by the intelligence services long before the establishment of the SOE, and took on mission after mission. She skied over the hazardous High Tatras into Poland, served in Egypt and North Africa and was later parachuted into Occupied France, where an agent's life expectancy was only six weeks. Her courage, quick wit and determination won her release from arrest more than once, and saved the lives of several fellow officers, including one of her many lovers, just hours before their execution by the Gestapo. More importantly, perhaps, the intelligence she gathered was a significant contribution to the Allied war effort and her success was reflected in the fact that she was awarded the George Medal, the OBE and the Croix de Guerre.
"If anything is more corrupting than power, it is power exercised in secret. Angus Mackenzie's magnificently researched, lucidly written study of the CIA's outrageous threats to freedom in America over the years is a summons to vigilance to protect our democratic institutions."--Daniel Schorr "The late Angus Mackenzie has left an appropriate legacy in Secrets: The CIA's War at Home, a fitting capstone to his long career of exposing government secrecy and manipulation of public information. Secrets is a detailed, fascinating and chilling account of the agency's program of disinformation and concealment of public information against its own citizens."--Ben H. Bagdikian, author of "The Media Monopoly "Scrupulously reported, fleshed out with a fascinating cast of characters, skillfully illuminating a subject the news media seldom looked into and never got straight, Angus Mackenzie's last and best work richly deserves a posthumous Pulitzer--for nonfiction, history, or both."--Jon Swan, former senior editor, "Columbia Journalism Review "This courageous, uncompromising book belongs on the bookshelf of every serious student of journalism and the First Amendment."--Tom Goldstein, Dean, Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University
Acts of terrorist violence and foreign espionage may pose a serious threat to the security of the United States; yet recent disclosures demonstrate the great risk in giving an agency such as the FBI unlimited authority for gathering intelligence about terrorists and spies. Taking into account the findings and recommendations of the post-Watergate inquiries into FBI operations, John Elliff analyzes the legal and policy questions posed by a "security police" in a nation committed to constitutional government and the rule of law. The author draws on his experience both as principal consultant for the Police Foundation's research on FBI intelligence operations and as head of the Church committee's congressional staff task force on domestic intelligence. He examines the changes made in the structure and policy framework for FBI intelligence operations, including issues not fully resolved by reorganization and new guidelines. He also covers the standards and procedures for dealing with misconduct by FBI personnel. Dr. Elliff concludes that the present restrictions on FBI activities are necessary and that close supervision and control by the Attorney General will allow the Bureau to operate effectively without depriving law-abiding persons of their privacy or their freedom. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Reproduces and contextualises the intelligence documents that
influenced crucial UK Government decisions
In essays that illuminate not only the recent past but shortcomings in today's intelligence assessments, sixteen experts show how prospective antagonists appraised each other prior to the World Wars. This cautionary tale, warns that intelligence agencies can do certain things very well--but other things poorly, if at all. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
During the spring and summer of 1918, with World War I still undecided, British, French and American agents in Russia developed a breathtakingly audacious plan. Led by Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart, a dashing, cynical, urbane 30-year-old Scot, they conspired to overthrow Lenin's newly established Bolshevik regime, and to install one that would continue the war against Germany on the Eastern Front. Lockhart's confidante and chief support, with whom he engaged in a passionate love affair, was the mysterious, alluring Moura von Benkendorff, wife of a former aide-de-camp to the Tsar. The plotters' chief opponent was 'Iron Felix' Dzerzhinsky. He led the Cheka, 'Sword and Shield' of the Russian Revolution and forerunner of the KGB. Dzerzhinsky loved humanity - in the abstract. He believed socialism represented humanity's best hope. To preserve and protect it he would unleash unbounded terror. Revolutionary Russia provided the setting for the ensuing contest. In the back streets of Petrograd and Moscow, in rough gypsy cabarets, in glittering nightclubs, in cells beneath the Cheka's Lubianka prison, the protagonists engaged in a deadly game of wits for the highest possible stakes - not merely life and death, but the outcome of a world war and the nature of Russia's post-war regime. Confident of success, the conspirators set the date for an uprising, September 8, 1918, but the Cheka had penetrated their organization and pounced just beforehand. The Lockhart Plot could have been a turning point in world history. Instead, its failure has left us with one of the great 'what ifs?' of twentieth century history, which is why it has until now remained shrouded in mystery. But it was a plot on whose outcome rested both the fate of the Revolution and the future shape of world history - and the story behind it is a thrilling one that continues to resonate in the early 21st century.
This is the story of one of the most enduring conspiracy theories in British politics, an intrigue that still has resonance almost a century later: the Zinoviev Letter of 1924. Almost certainly a forgery, no original has ever been traced, and even if genuine it was probably Soviet 'fake news'. Despite this, the Letter still haunts British politics nearly a century after it was written; it was the subject of major Whitehall investigations in the 1960s and 1990s, and cropped up in the media as recently as during the Referendum campaign and the 2017 general election. The Letter, encouraging the British proletariat to greater revolutionary fervour, was apparently sent by Grigori Zinoviev, head of the Bolshevik propaganda organization, to the British Communist Party in September 1924. Sent to London through British Secret Intelligence Service channels, it arrived during the general election campaign and was leaked to the press. The Letter's publication by the Daily Mail on 25 October 1924 just before the General Election humiliated the first ever British Labour government, headed by Ramsay MacDonald, when its political opponents used it to create a 'Red Scare' in the media. Labour blamed the Letter for its defeat, insisting there had been a right-wing Establishment conspiracy, and many in the Labour Party have never forgotten it. The Zinoviev Letter has long been a symbol of political dirty tricks and what we would now call 'fake news'. But it is also a gripping historical detective story of spies and secrets, fraud and forgery, international subversion and the nascent global conflict between communism and capitalism.
An overarching exploration of the Indian state's approaches, laws, and organizations that maintain order and contain violence. Maintaining order and containing violence-the core constituents of internal security-are fundamental responsibilities of any government. Yet, developing countries find this task especially challenging. In Internal Security in India, Amit Ahuja, Devesh Kapur, and a cast of leading scholars on the subject focus on India's security and the threats it faces. Since Independence, the Indian state has grappled with a variety of internal security challenges, including insurgencies, terrorist attacks, caste and communal violence, riots, and electoral violence. Their toll has claimed more lives than all of India's five external wars put together. As the contributors in this volume analyze how the Indian State has managed the core concern of internal security over time, they address three broad questions: How well has India contained violence and preserved order? How have the approaches and capacity of the State evolved to attain these twin objectives? And what implications do the State's approach towards internal security have for civil liberties and the quality of democracy? A major reinterpretation of order and internal security in India, this book sheds light on an underanalyzed issue of global import given the changing nature of threats that states face.
As increasingly contentious politics in the United States raise concerns over the "politicization" of traditionally non-partisan institutions, many have turned their attention to how the American military has been-and will be-affected by this trend. Since a low point following the end of the Vietnam War, the U.S. military has experienced a dramatic reversal of public opinion, becoming one of the most trusted institutions in American society. However, this trend is more complicated than it appears: just as individuals have become fonder of their military, they have also become increasingly polarized from one another along partisan lines. The result is a new political environment rife with challenges to traditional civil-military norms. In a data-driven analysis of contemporary American attitudes, Dangerous Instrument examines the current state of U.S. civil-military affairs, probing how the public views their military and the effect that partisan tribalism may have on that relationship in the future. Michael A. Robinson studies the sources and potential limits of American trust in the armed services, focusing on the interplay of the public, political parties, media outlets, and the military itself on the prospect of politicization and its associated challenges. As democratic institutions face persistent pressure worldwide, Dangerous Instrument provides important insights into the contemporary arc of American civil-military affairs and delivers recommendations on ways to preserve a non-partisan military.
At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the United States government unleashed covert operations intended to weaken the Soviet Union. As part of these efforts, the CIA committed to supporting Russian exiles, populations uprooted either during World War Two or by the Russian Revolution decades before. No one seemed better prepared to fight in the American secret war against communism than the uprooted Russians, whom the CIA directed to carry out propaganda, espionage, and subversion operations from their home base in West Germany. Yet the American engagement of Russian exiles had unpredictable outcomes. Drawing on recently declassified and previously untapped sources, Cold War Exiles and the CIA examines how the CIA's Russian operations became entangled with the internal struggles of Russia abroad and also the espionage wars of the superpowers in divided Germany. What resulted was a transnational political sphere involving different groups of Russian exiles, American and German anti-communists, and spies operating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Inadvertently, CIA's patronage of Russian exiles forged a complex sub-front in the wider Cold War, demonstrating the ways in which the hostilities of the Cold War played out in ancillary conflicts involving proxies and non-state actors. |
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