Stella Rimington was educated at Nottingham Girls' High School, and Edinburgh and Liverpool Universities. In 1959 she started work in the Worcestershire County Archives, moving in 1962 to the India Office Library in London, as Assistant Keeper responsible for manuscripts relating to the period of the British rule in India. In 1965 she joined the Security Service (MI5) part-time, while she was in India accompanying her husband on a posting to the British High Commission in New Delhi. On her return to the UK she joined MI5 as a full-time employee. During her career in MI5, which lasted from 1969 to 1996, Stella Rimington worked in all the main fields of the Service's responsibilities - counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism - and became successively Director of all three branches. She was appointed Director-General of MI5 in 1992. She was the first woman to hold the post and the first Director-General whose name was publicly announced on appointment.

During her time as DG she pursued a policy of greater openness for MI5, giving the 1994 Dimbleby Lecture on BBC TV and several other public lectures and publishing a booklet about the Service. She was made a Dame Commander of the Bath (DCB) in 1995 and has been awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws by the Universities of Nottingham and Exeter. Following her retirement from MI5 in 1996, she has become a Non-Executive Director of Marks & Spencer, BG Group plc and Whitehead Mann GKR. She is Chairman of the Institute of Cancer Research and a member of the Board of the Royal Marsden NHS Trust. She has two daughters and a granddaughter.

China's emergence as a great power in the twenty-first century is strongly enabled by cyberspace. Leveraged information technology integrates Chinese firms into the global economy, modernizes infrastructure, and increases internet penetration which helps boost export-led growth. China's pursuit of "informatization " reconstructs industrial sectors and solidifies the transformation of the Chinese People's Liberation Army into a formidable regional power. Even as the government censors content online, China has one of the fastest growing internet populations and most of the technology is created and used by civilians. Western political discourse on cybersecurity is dominated by news of Chinese military development of cyberwarfare capabilities and cyber exploitation against foreign governments, corporations, and non-governmental organizations. Western accounts, however, tell only one side of the story. Chinese leaders are also concerned with cyber insecurity, and Chinese authors frequently note that China is also a victim of foreign cyber--attacks--predominantly from the United States. China and Cybersecurity: Political, Economic, and Strategic Dimensions is a comprehensive analysis of China's cyberspace threats and policies. The contributors--Chinese specialists in cyber dynamics, experts on China, and experts on the use of information technology between China and the West--address cyberspace threats and policies, emphasizing the vantage points of China and the U.S. on cyber exploitation and the possibilities for more positive coordination with the West. The volume's multi-disciplinary, cross-cultural approach does not pretend to offer wholesale resolutions. Contributors take different stances on how problems may be analyzed and reduced, and aim to inform the international audience of how China's political, economic, and security systems shape cyber activities. The compilation provides empirical and evaluative depth on the deepening dependence on shared global information infrastructure and the growing willingness to exploit it for political or economic gain.

This is the history of an unprecedented deception operation - the biggest KGB deception of all time. It has never been told in full until now. There are almost certainly people who would like it never to be told. It is the story of General Alexander Orlov. Stalin's most loyal and trusted henchman during the Spanish Civil War, Orlov was also the Soviet handler controlling Kim Philby, the British spy, defector, and member of the notorious 'Cambridge Five'. Escaping Stalin's purges, Orlov fled to America in the late 1930s and lived underground. He only dared reveal his identity to the world after Stalin's death, in his 1953 best-seller The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes, after which he became perhaps the best known of all Soviet defectors, much written about, highly praised, and commemorated by the US Congress on his death in 1973. But there is a twist in the Orlov story beyond the dreams of even the most ingenious spy novelist: 'General Alexander Orlov' never actually existed. The man known as 'Orlov' was in fact born Leiba Feldbin. And while he was a loyal servant of Stalin and the controller of Philby, he was never a General in the KGB, never truly defected to the West after his 'flight' from the USSR, and remained a loyal Soviet agent until his death. The 'Orlov' story as it has been accepted until now was largely the invention of the KGB - and one perpetuated long after the end of the Cold War. In this meticulous new biography, Boris Volodarsky, himself a former Soviet intelligence officer, now tells the true story behind 'Orlov' for the first time. An intriguing tale of Russian espionage and deception, stretching from the time of Lenin to the Putin era, it is a story that many people in the world's intelligence agencies would almost definitely prefer you not to know about.

The Gestapo was the most feared instrument of political terror in the Third Reich, brutally hunting down and destroying anyone it regarded as an enemy of the Nazi regime: socialists, Communists, Jews, homosexuals, and anyone else deemed to be an 'anti-social element'. Its prisons soon became infamous - many of those who disappeared into them were never seen again - and it has been remembered ever since as the sinister epitome of Nazi terror and persecution. But how accurate is it to view the Gestapo as an all-pervasive, all-powerful, all-knowing instrument of terror? How much did it depend upon the cooperation and help of ordinary Germans? And did its networks extend further into the everyday life of German society than most Germans after 1945 ever wanted to admit? Answering all these questions and more, this book uses the very latest research to tell the true story behind this secretive and fearsome institution. Tracing the history of the organization from its origins in the Weimar Republic, through the crimes of the Nazi period, to the fate of former Gestapo officers after World War II, Carsten Dams and Michael Stolle investigate how the Gestapo really worked - and question many of the myths that have long surrounded it.

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.

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.

Drawing on extensive interviews and archival research, this biography uncovers the motivations and ideals that informed Smiley's commitment to covert action and intelligence during the Second World War and early part of the Cold War, often among tribally based societies. With particular reference to operations in Albania, Oman and Yemen, it addresses the wider issues of accountability and control of clandestine operations.

In the annals of espionage, one name towers above all others: that of H. A. R. "Kim" Philby, the ringleader of the legendary Cambridge spies. A member of the British establishment, Philby joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1940, rose to the head of Soviet counterintelligence, and, as M16's liaison with the CIA and the FBI, betrayed every secret of Allied operations to the Russians, fatally compromising covert actions to roll back the Iron Curtain in the early years of the Cold War. Written from Moscow in 1967, My Silent War shook the world and introduced a new archetype in fiction: the unrepentant spy. It inspired John Le Carre's Smiley novels and the later espionage novels of Graham Greene. Kim Philby was history's most successful spy. He was also an exceptional writer who gave us the great iconic story of the Cold War and revolutionized, in the process, the art of espionage writing.

Combining his expertise as a national security correspondent and research academic, Paul Lashmar reveals how and why the media became more critical in its reporting of the Secret State. He explores a series of major case studies including Snowden, WikiLeaks, Spycatcher, rendition and torture, and MI5's vetting of the BBC - most of which he reported on as they happened. He discusses the issues that news coverage raises for democracy and gives you a deeper understanding of how intelligence and the media function, interact and fit into structures of power and knowledge.

This is the true story of the Englishman allegedly freed from a French prison after meeting John Amery, the treacherous son of a Cabinet minister, and sent back to Britain to spy - only to be caught, prosecuted and hanged as a traitor. In November 1943, with the Second World War at its height, a fifty-eight-year-old London-born man claiming to be a refugee from the Nazis arrived by flying boat at Poole Harbour. His name was Oswald John Job and he said he had escaped from internment by the Germans in Paris, then fled to Spain. But hidden inside his keys and razor was invisible ink, and on him he carried a jewelled tiepin and a ring with eighteen diamonds sent by the Germans as payment to an agent in London. What Job did not know was that this man was a double agent, working for MI5. Within four months Job would be hanged as a traitor. He claimed to the end that he had accepted the German offer purely to get back to Britain and never intended to spy. As an English traitor who was caught and executed, Job is a fascinating figure in the story of Second World War intelligence and counter-intelligence. Utilising archives in both Britain and France, Britain's Forgotten Traitor is a fresh look at treachery and secret agents. This 'spy' always claimed to have lied simply in order to come home. Was he telling the truth?

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.

Repeated intelligence failures in Iraq, Libya and across the Middle East and North Africa have left many critics searching for a smoking gun. Amidst questions of who misread - or manipulated - the intel, a fundamental truth goes unaddressed: western intelligence is not designed to understand the world. In fact, it cannot. In The Covert Colour Line, Oliver Kearns shows how the catastrophic mistakes made by British and US intelligence services since 9/11 are underpinned by orientalist worldviews and racist assumptions forged in the crucible of Cold War-era colonial retreat. Understanding this historical context is vital to explaining why anglophone state intelligence is unable to grasp the motives and international solidarities of 'adversaries'. Offering a new way of seeing how intelligence contributes to world inequalities, and drawing on a wealth of recently declassified materials, Kearns argues that intelligence agencies’ imagination of 'non-Western' states and geopolitics fundamentally shaped British intelligence assessments which would underpin the 2003 invasion of Iraq and subsequent interventions.

Spies in the Congo is the untold story of one of the most tightly-guarded secrets of the Second World War: America's desperate struggle to secure enough uranium to build its atomic bomb.The Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo was the most important deposit of uranium yet discovered anywhere on earth, vital to the success of the Manhattan Project. Given that Germany was also working on an atomic bomb, it was an urgent priority for the US to prevent uranium from the Congo being diverted to the enemy - a task entrusted to Washington's elite secret intelligence agents. Sent undercover to colonial Africa to track the ore and to hunt Nazi collaborators, their assignment was made even tougher by the complex political reality and by tensions with Belgian and British officials. A gripping spy-thriller, Spies in the Congo is the true story of unsung heroism, of the handful of good men -- and one woman -- in Africa who were determined to deny Hitler his bomb.

This is the story of one of the most enduring conspiracy theories in British politics, an intrigue that still has resonance nearly a century after it was written: 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, the subject of major Whitehall investigations in the 1960s and 1990s, and cropping 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.

The true story of Crabb's colourful life and his mysterious disappearance in 1945.

It was inevitable that the Allies would invade France in the summer of 1944: the Nazis just had to figure out where and when. This job fell to the Abwehr and several other German intelligence services. Between them they put over 30,000 personnel to work studying British and American signals traffic, and achieved considerable success in intercepting and decrypting enemy messages. They also sent agents to England - but they weren't to know that none of them would be successful. Until now, the Nazi intelligence community has been disparaged by historians as incompetent and corrupt, but newly released declassified documents suggest this wasn't the case - and that they had a highly sophisticated system that concentrated on the threat of an Allied invasion. Written by acclaimed espionage historian Nigel West, Codeword Overlord is a vital reassessment of Axis behaviour in one of the most dramatic episodes of the twentieth century.

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.

"Better to fight for something than live for nothing." - General George S. Patton It is 75 years since the end of WW II and the strange, mysterious death of General George S. Patton, but as in life, Patton sets off a storm of controversy. The Tragedy of Patton: A Soldier's Date With Destiny asks the question: Why was General Patton silenced during his service in World War II? Prevented from receiving needed supplies that would have ended the war nine months earlier, freed the death camps, prevented Russian invasion of the Eastern Bloc, and Stalin's murderous rampage. Why was he fired as General of the Third Army and relegated to a governorship of post-war Bavaria? Who were his enemies? Was he a threat to Eisenhower, Montgomery, and Bradley? And is it possible as some say that the General's freakish collision with an Army truck, on the day before his departure for US, was not really an accident? Or was Patton not only dismissed by his peers, but the victim of an assassin's bullet at their behest? Was his personal silence necessary? General George S. Patton was America's antihero of the Second World War. Robert Orlando explores whether a man of such a flawed character could have been right about his claim that because the Allied troops, some within 200 miles of Berlin, or just outside Prague, were held back from capturing the capitals to let Soviet troops move in, the Cold War was inevitable. Patton said it loudly and often enough that he was relieved of command and silenced. Patton had vowed to "take the gag off" after the war and tell the intimate truth and inner workings about controversial decisions and questionable politics that had cost the lives of his men. Was General Patton volatile, bombastic, self-absorbed, reckless? Yes, but he was also politically astute and a brilliant military strategist who delivered badly needed wins. Questions still abound about Patton's rise and fall. The Tragedy of Patton seeks to answer them.

After Dunkirk the British Army was broken, the country isolated and invasion imminent. German Military Intelligence was sat the task of recruiting collaborators from among Welsh nationalists to sabotage military and civilian installations ahead of the landing. Strategic deception was one of the few weapons left. To fool the Germans into believing Britain was ready and able to repel invaders when in fact it had only the weapons salvaged from Dunkirk, MI5 invented an imaginary cell of Welsh saboteurs led by a retired police inspector.

He's out of options. Kill. Or be killed. A searing thriller that will leave you reelingDisgraced Navy SEAL Finn is on the run. A wanted man, he's sought for questioning in connection to war crimes committed in Yemen by a rogue element in his SEAL team. But he can remember nothing. Finn learns that three members of his team have been quietly redeployed to Iceland, which is a puzzle in itself; the island is famous for being one of the most peaceful places on the planet. His mission is simple: track down the three SEALs and find out what really happened in Yemen. But two problems stand in his way. On his first night in town a young woman mysteriously drowns-and a local detective suspects his involvement. Worse, a hardened SEAL-turned-contract-killer has been hired to stop him. And he's followed Finn all the way to the icy north. The riveting follow-up to Steel Fear, from the New York Times bestselling writing team, combat decorated Navy SEAL Brandon Webb and award-winning author John David Mann, comes a gripping thriller perfect for fans of Lee Child and Brad Thor.

An urgent new warning from two bestselling security experts - and a gripping inside look at how governments, firms, and ordinary citizens can confront and contain the tyrants, hackers, and criminals bent on turning the digital realm into a war zone.