It was in 1972 when the seemingly ordinary Craig Williamson registered at Wits University and joined the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). Williamson was elected NUSAS’s vice president and in January 1977, when his career in student politics came to an abrupt end, he fled the country and from Europe continued his anti-apartheid ‘work’. But Williamson was not the activist his friends and comrades thought he was. In January 1980, Captain Williamson was unmasked as a South African spy.

Williamson returned to South Africa and during the turbulent 1980s worked for the foreign section of the South African Police’s notorious Security Branch and South Africa’s ‘super-spy’ transformed into a parcel-bomb assassin.

Through a series of interviews with the many people Williamson interacted with while he was undercover and after his secret identity was eventually exposed, Jonathan Ancer details Williamson’s double life, the stories of a generation of courageous activists, and the book eventually culminates with Ancer interviewing South Africa’s ‘super-spy’ face-to-face. It deals with crucial issues of justice, reconciliation, forgiveness, betrayal and the consequences of apartheid that South Africans are still grappling with.

In the world of espionage, truth is the first victim and nothing is as it seems. Here, for the first time, South Africa’s most notorious apartheid spy, Olivia Forsyth, lays bare the story of her remarkable life. With remarkable courage and brutal honesty she attempts to set the record straight.

Olivia Forsyth was a romantic young woman in search of adventure when she joined the Security Police with visions of international derring-do. But Craig Williamson, her unit head, had other ideas. Olivia was trained to spy on students before being dispatched to Rhodes University, a supposed ‘hotbed’ of anti-apartheid radicalism. It wasn’t long before Olivia had infiltrated various student organisations, feeding vital information back to her handler.

She came to hold prominent positions on campus and, as reward, was promoted to Lieutenant. Having reached the end of her studies, Olivia set her sights on a much more ambitious – and dangerous – target: the ANC in exile. But what should have been her greatest triumph as a spy turned into disaster when the ANC threw her into Quatro, the notorious internment camp in Angola. This is a riveting story set in the final years of apartheid.

The authorised illustrated history of the SAS by the number one bestselling author of Dunkirk, Joshua Levine. With never-before-seen photographs and unheard stories, this is the SAS’s wartime history in vivid and astonishing detail. The SAS began as a lie, a story of a British parachute unit in the North African desert, to convince the Axis they were under imminent threat. The lie was so effective that soon a small band of men were brought together to make it real. These recruits were the toughest and brightest of their cohort, the most resilient, most dynamic and most self-sufficient. Their first commanders, David Stirling and Paddy Mayne, would go down in history as unorthodox visionaries. Yet this book tells much more than the usual origin story of the unit and seeks out less well-known leaders like Bill Fraser, who was essential in helping the SAS achieve fame for their devastating raids. By looking beyond the myth, this book brings back to life a group of men who showed immense bravery and endured unimaginable risks behind enemy lines. Written with the full cooperation of the SAS and with exclusive access to SAS archives, Levine draws on individual stories and personal testimony, including interviews with veterans and family members. On every page, the book gives a visceral sense of what it was like to fight and train in the SAS in both North Africa and Europe during the Second World War, focusing on their failures as well as their successes. This book is vivid with the characters of the men, their eclectic personalities, their strengths, weaknesses and many disagreements. Levine has uncovered a remarkable portrait of this enigmatic unit with photographs and stories long thought lost to history

This book examines the digital explosion that has ripped across the battlefield, weaponising our attention and making everyone a participant in wars without end. 'Smart' devices, apps, archives and algorithms remove the bystander from war, collapsing the distinctions between audience and actor, soldier and civilian, media and weapon. This has ruptured our capacity to make sense of war. Now we are all either victims or perpetrators. In 'Radical War', Ford and Hoskins reveal how contemporary war is legitimised, planned, fought, experienced, remembered and forgotten in a continuous and connected way, through digitally saturated fields of perception. Plotting the emerging relationship between data, attention and the power to control war, the authors chart the complex digital and human interdependencies that sustain political violence today. Through a unique, interdisciplinary lens, they map our disjointed experiences of conflict and illuminate this dystopian new ecology of war.

WINNER OF THE FT & McKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2021 The instant New York Times bestseller A Financial Times and The Times Book of the Year 'A terrifying expose' The Times 'Part John le Carre . . . Spellbinding' New Yorker We plug in anything we can to the internet. We can control our entire lives, economy and grid via a remote web control. But over the past decade, as this transformation took place, we never paused to think that we were also creating the world's largest attack surface. And that the same nation that maintains the greatest cyber advantage on earth could also be among its most vulnerable. Filled with spies, hackers, arms dealers and a few unsung heroes, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is an astonishing and gripping feat of journalism. Drawing on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, Nicole Perlroth lifts the curtain on a market in shadow, revealing the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyber arms race to heel.

Bletchley Park was where one of the war's most famous - and crucial - achievements was made: the cracking of Germany's "Enigma" code in which its most important military communications were couched. This country house in the Buckinghamshire countryside was home to Britain's most brilliant mathematical brains, like Alan Turing, and the scene of immense advances in technology - indeed, the birth of modern computing. The military codes deciphered there were instrumental in turning both the Battle of the Atlantic and the war in North Africa. But, though plenty has been written about the boffins, and the codebreaking, fictional and non-fiction - from Robert Harris and Ian McEwan to Andrew Hodges' biography of Turing - what of the thousands of men and women who lived and worked there during the war? What was life like for them - an odd, secret territory between the civilian and the military? Sinclair McKay's book is the first history for the general reader of life at Bletchley Park, and an amazing compendium of memories from people now in their eighties - of skating on the frozen lake in the grounds (a depressed Angus Wilson, the novelist, once threw himself in) - of a youthful Roy Jenkins, useless at codebreaking, of the high jinks at nearby accommodation hostels - and of the implacable secrecy that meant girlfriend and boyfriend working in adjacent huts knew nothing about each other's work.

The gripping, behind-the scenes story of one of the most sophisticated surveillance weapons ever created – and an existential threat to democracy and human rights.

Pegasus is widely regarded as the most powerful cyber-surveillance system on the market – available to any government that can afford its multimillion-dollar price tag. The system’s creator, the NSO group, a private corporation headquartered in Israel, boasts about its ability to thwart terrorists and criminals.

But the Pegasus system doesn’t only catch terrorists and criminals.

Pegasus has been used by repressive regimes to spy on thousands of innocent people around the world: heads of state, diplomats, human rights defenders, lawyers, political opponents, and journalists.

Virtually undetectable, the system can track a person’s daily movement in real time, gain control of the device’s microphones and cameras at will, and capture all videos, photos, emails, texts, and passwords – encrypted or not. Its full reach is not even known.

This is the gripping story of how Pegasus was uncovered, written by Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud, the two intrepid reporters who revealed the scandal in collaboration with an international consortium of journalists. Their findings shook the world.

Tense and compelling, Pegasus reveals how thousands of lives have been turned upside down by this unprecedented threat, and exposes the chilling new ways governments and corporations are laying waste to human rights – and silencing innocent citizens.

With a Foreword by Lord Hague of Richmond The Intelligence Corps is one of the smallest and most secretive elements of the British Army. It has existed in various guises since the early twentieth century, but it was only formally constituted in July 1940. In this book, Michael Ashcroft tells the astonishing stories of some of its most courageous and ingenious figures, who have operated all over the world from the First World War to the present day. Whether carrying out surveillance work on the street, monitoring and analysing communications, working on overseas stakeouts, receiving classified information from a well-placed contact or interrogating the enemy in the heat of war, a hugely diverse range of people have served in the Corps, often supplementing their individual professional skills with original thinking and leadership in the name of the Crown. This book pays tribute to them and shows why, in the words of the 1st Duke of Marlborough, 'No war can be conducted successfully without early and good intelligence.'

Many studies have covered aspects of military intelligence available to Britain and her allies during the Second World War. This distinguished book provides a succinct and authoritative survey of the vital role Ultra played in achieving final victory., When war began Britain was as ill-prepared in intelligence as armaments. Civilian scientists had discovered the principle of radar in the mid-1930s, but everything had to be learned from scratch in the heat of emergency. First signs of improvement came in mid-1941, when Ultra targeted naval vessels and bomber aircraft onto so many of Rommel's supply ships that the Africa Corps almost withered on the vine. From then on intelligence played an increasingly indispensable part in final victory. Ultra won the Battle of the Atlantic, driving U-boats back to coastal waters by June 1943. Ultra confirmed the whereabouts of the German tanks as Montgomery planned the breakthrough to Alamein. Only 'Bomber' Harris refused to give intelligence the credit it deserved; on the basis of new evidence this fascinating book strongly reinforces criticism this costly mistake.

The incredible true story of the only woman to have worked during the Second World War as a codebreaker at both Bletchley Park and the Pentagon    Betty Webb is the only surviving codebreaker to have worked on both Nazi and Japanese codes at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. This is the tale of her extraordinary life.  Betty has had a ringside seat to history. Born one hundred years ago, she spent her childhood in the Shropshire countryside during the 1920s – without heating, electricity or running water. As a schoolgirl, thanks to her mother’s desire for her to learn to speak German proficiently, she took part in an exchange programme and spent time in Nazi Germany. It was 1937 and Germany was on the cusp of war. As a small act of rebellion, she refused to give the Nazi salute alongside her classmates.  Back in England, after graduating from school, Betty faced the usual limited opportunities for employment on offer to women at the time. However, with the war in full swing, fate intervened and in 1941, wanting to play her part in the war effort, Betty joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (Women’s Army). After being interviewed by an intelligence officer, she found herself at Euston station with her kit-bag, a travel warrant in her pocket and instructions to get off the train at Bletchley Park. There, having signed the Official Secrets Act with a gun laid next to her on the table highlighting the enormous importance of the work she was about to do, she joined the ranks of the other men and women ‘codebreakers’.  Between 1941 and 1945 Betty Webb played a vital role in the top-secret efforts being made to decipher the secret communications of the Germans and later the Japanese. In 1945, as other members of the forces returned home from the war in Europe, she was sent to the Pentagon and was in Washington DC when the atomic bombs fell and when Eisenhower announced the end of the war.  Betty was unable to reveal the true nature of her work, even to her parents, until years later. In this fascinating book, she revisits the key moments of her life and recounts the incredible stories from her time at Bletchley Park.

A CUNNING CHRONICLE OF THE 50 CODES THAT ALTERED THE COURSE OF HISTORY AND CHANGED THE WORLD From the bestselling author of Bletchley Park Brainteasers and The Scotland Yard Puzzle Book. There have been secret codes since before the Old Testament, and there were secret codes in the Old Testament too. Almost as soon as writing was invented, so too were the devious means to hide messages and keep them under the wraps of secrecy. In 50 Codes that Changed the World, Sinclair McKay explores these uncrackable codes, secret cyphers and hidden messages from across time to tell a new history of a secret world. From the temples of Ancient Greece to the court of Elizabeth I; from antique manuscripts whose codes might hold prophecies of doom to the modern realm of quantum mechanics, you will see how a few concealed words could help to win wars, spark revolutions and even change the faces of great nations. Here is the complete guide to the hidden world of codebreaking, with opportunities for you to see if you could have cracked some of the trickiest puzzles and lip-chewing codes ever created. ----------------------- Praise for Sinclair McKay's books: 'This book [The Secret Life of Bletchley Park] seems a remarkably faithful account of what we did, why it mattered, and how it all felt at the time by someone who couldn't possibly have been born then. - THE GUARDIAN [Bletchley Park Brainteasers] is outrageously difficult but utterly fascinating. - THE EXPRESS 'Sinclair McKay's account of this secret war of the airwaves in [Secret Listeners] is as painstakingly researched and fascinating as his bestselling The Secret Life Of Bletchley Park, and an essential companion to it.' - DAILY MAIL

EUROPE, 1940. NAZI FORCES SWEEP ACROSS THE CONTINENT, WITH A BRITISH INVASION LIKELY ONLY WEEKS AWAY. NEVER BEFORE HAS A RESISTANCE MOVEMENT BEEN SO CRUCIAL TO THE WAR EFFORT. In this definitive appraisal of Anglo-Norwegian cooperation in the Second World War, Tony Insall reveals how some of the most striking successes of the Norwegian resistance were the reports produced by the heroic SIS agents living in the country's desolate wilderness. Their coast-watching intelligence highlighted the movements of the German fleet and led to counter-strikes which sank many enemy ships - most notably the Tirpitz in November 1944. Using previously unpublished archival material from London, Oslo and Moscow, Insall explores how SIS and SOE worked effectively with their Norwegian counterparts to produce some of the most remarkable achievements of the Second World War.

A RICHARD AND JUDY BOOK CLUB SELECTION A SUNDAY TIMES NO 1. BESTSELLER 'Astonishing ... Sheds riveting new light on this breathtaking plan' Daily Mail 'A rollicking read' Max Hastings, Sunday Times 'Brilliant and almost absurdly entertaining' Malcolm Gladwell, New Yorker ____________________ April, 1943: a sardine fisherman spots the corpse of a British soldier floating in the sea off the coast of Spain and sets off a train of events that would change the course of the Second World War. Operation Mincemeat was the most successful wartime deception ever attempted, and certainly the strangest. It hoodwinked the Nazi espionage chiefs, sent German troops hurtling in the wrong direction, and saved thousands of lives by deploying a secret agent who was different, in one crucial respect, from any spy before or since: he was dead. His mission: to convince the Germans that instead of attacking Sicily, the Allied armies planned to invade Greece. The brainchild of an eccentric RAF officer and a brilliant Jewish barrister, the great hoax involved an extraordinary cast of characters including a famous forensic pathologist, a gold-prospector, an inventor, a beautiful secret service secretary, a submarine captain, three novelists, an irascible admiral who loved fly-fishing, and a dead Welsh tramp. This is the true story of the most extraordinary deception ever planned by Churchill's spies: an outrageous lie that travelled from a Whitehall basement all the way to Hitler's desk.

This book, first published in 1985, is an in-depth analysis of the Luftwaffe in the Second World War, using previously untapped German archives and newly-released 'Ultra' intelligence records. It looks at the Luftwaffe within the context of the overall political decision-making process within the Third Reich. It is especially valuable for its careful study of industrial production and pilot losses in the conduct of operations.

With intensified threats to global security from international terrorism worldwide, education systems themselves face these same unprecedented security threats. Schools and universities have become marked loci of interest for the monitoring of extremism and counter-terrorism by security and intelligence agencies. The relationship between education systems and national security is nothing new though - it extends in surprising and unexpected ways into territory which is by turns open and covert, even secret. Acknowledging the genuine political and security concerns which have drawn educational systems ever closer to the intelligence community, this book shows how and why this has happened, and explains why the relationship between education and the security and intelligence communities extends beyond contemporary concerns with counter-terrorism. As the title of this book demonstrates, this is as much an intellectual challenge as a security struggle. Education, Security and Intelligence Studies thus critically engages with multi-disciplinary perspectives on a complex and contentious interface: between systems of often secret and covert national security and intelligence and open systems of national education. Delving into difficult to access and often closely guarded aspects of public life, the book provides the pathfinding groundwork and theoretical modelling for research into a complex of little explored institutional and epistemological interconnectedness between universities and the security and intelligence agencies. This book was originally published as a special issue of the British Journal of Educational Studies.

The Very Best Men tells the story of the four men who ran covert operations for the CIA from World War II to Vietnam. Frank Wisner was a wealthy southern gentleman who arrived in Washington via Wall Street and whose wife ran the most active salon in Georgetown. He was the creator of the Office of Policy Coordination, the CIA's covert action wing. Wisner helped foment the failed revolution in Hungary in 1956. Wisner had a breakdown, and committed suicide in 1965. Richard Bissell took over the OPC after Wisner's breakdown, and presided over the Agency's wildest days. He ordered the assassination of several foreign leaders and organised a series of attempted coups. When John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960, Bissell introduced himself to the new president as 'your basic man-eating shark'. Five months later Bissell was forced to resign over the Bay of Pigs. Tracy Barnes served under Wisner and Bissell, and oversaw the Bay of Pigs operation. With Bissell he hired the mafia to kill Castro. He was never at a loss for ideas. Unfortunately, he had trouble telling the good ones from the bad. He was quietly dismissed from the Agency in 1966. Desmond Fitzgerald ran the secret wars in Laos and Tibet. Later, he organised assassination plots against Castro. He was also responsible for covering them up, fearing that the CIA would be linked to Kennedy's assassination. Drawing on extensive interviews with former operatives, Thomas has written a highly readable narrative that brings to life a crucial period of American history. About the Author Evan Thomas is assistant managing editor of Newsweek. He has written more than a hundred cover stories on national and international news. He has won two National Magazine Awards and he has taught writing at Harvard and Princeton. He has written seven books, one of which, John Paul Jones, was a New York Times bestseller. He is a fellow of the Society of American Historians. He lives in Washington DC.

Codenames were a vital feature of World War II, serving as mental shorthand for those in the know, and obscuring the issues for those who were not. Codenames were used from the highest level, in the planning of grand strategic moves affecting the conduct of the whole war, to the lowest command divisions, in the conduct of small-scale tactical operations. This encyclopedia, first published in 1986, removes the mystery surrounding many of the important code names from the era. With around 3,000 entries drawn from all sides - the U.K., U.S.A., Germany, the U.S.S.R. and Japan - Christopher Chant's work provides a uniquely comprehensive and full overview of major operations, names and code words. Thorough and exciting, this key reference reissue is an exceptionally valuable resource for military historians, enthusiasts and general readers with an interest in World War II.

The Cambridge Spies continue to fascinate - but one of them, John Cairncross, has always been more of an enigma than the others. He worked alone and was driven by his hostility to Fascism rather than to the promotion of Communism. During his war-time work at Bletchley Park, he passed documents to the Soviets which went on to influence the Battle of Kursk. Geoff Andrews gained exclusive access to the Cairncross papers and secrets, and has spoken to friends, relatives and former colleagues. In his portrait, a complex individual emerges – a scholar as well as a spy – whose motivations have often been misunderstood. After his resignation from the Civil Service, Cairncross moved to Italy and there he rebuilt his life as a foreign correspondent, editor and university professor. This gave him new circles and friendships – which included the writer Graham Greene – while he always lived with the fear that his earlier espionage would come to light. The full account of Cairncross's spying, his confession and his dramatic public exposure as the ‘fifth man’ is told here for the first time, unveiling the story of his post-espionage life.

Reliable information on potential security threats is not just the result of diligent intelligence work but also a product of context and culture. The volume explores the nexus between the intelligence process and strategic culture. How can and does the strategic outlook of the United States and the United Kingdom in particular, influence the intelligence gathering, assessment and dissemination process?

This book contains an assessment of how political agendas and ideological outlook have significant influence on both the content and process of intelligence. It looks in particular at the premise of hearts and minds policies, culture and intelligence gathering in counterinsurgency operations; at case studies from imperial Malaya and Iran in the 1950s and at instances of intelligence failure, e.g. the case of Iraq in 2003. How was intelligence, or the lack thereof, a product of political culture and how did it play a role in the political praxis?

The book shows that political agendas and the ideological outlook have a significant influence upon both the content and process of intelligence.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Intelligence and National Security.

How did German intelligence agents in the First World War use dead fish to pass on vital information to their operatives? What did an advertisement for a dog in The Times have to do with the movement of British troops into Egypt? And why did British personnel become suspicious about the trousers hanging on a Belgian woman's washing line? During the First World War, spymasters and their networks of secret agents developed many ingenious - and occasionally hilarious - methods of communication. Puffs of smoke from a chimney, stacks of bread in a bakery window, even knitted woollen jumpers were all used to convey secret messages decipherable only by well-trained eyes. Melanie King retells the astonishing story of these and many other tricks of the espionage trade, now long forgotten, through the memoirs of eight spies. Among them are British intelligence officers working undercover in France and Germany, including a former officer from the Metropolitan Police who once hunted Jack the Ripper. There is also the German Secret Service officer, codenamed Agricola, who spied on the Eastern Front, an American newspaperman and an Austrian agent who disguised himself as everything from a Jewish pedlar to a Russian officer. Drawing on the words of many of the spies themselves, Secrets in a Dead Fish is a fascinating compendium of clever and original ruses that casts new light into the murky world of espionage during the First World War.

This edited book examines the East German foreign intelligence service (Hauptverwaltung Aufkl?rung, or HVA) as a historical problem, covering politics, scientific-technical and military intelligence and counterintelligence.

The contributors broaden the conventional view of East German foreign intelligence as driven by the inter-German conflict to include its targeting of the United States, northern European and Scandinavian countries, highlighting areas that have previously received scant attention, like scientific-technical and military intelligence. The CIA's underestimation of the HVA was a major intelligence failure. As a result, East German intelligence served as a stealth weapon against the US, West German and NATO targets, acquiring the lion's share of critical Warsaw Pact intelligence gathered during the Cold War. This book explores how though all of the CIA's East German sources were double agents controlled by the Ministry of State Security, the CIA was still able to declare victory in the Cold War. Themes and topics that run through the volume include the espionage wars; the HVA's relationship with the Russian KGB; successes and failures of the BND (West German Federal Intelligence Service) in East Germany; the CIA and the HVA; the HVA in countries outside of West Germany; disinformation and the role and importance of intelligence gathering in East Germany.

This book will be of much interest to students of East Germany, Intelligence Studies, Cold War History and German politics in general.

Kristie Macrakis is Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta. Thomas Wegener Friis is an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern Denmark's Centre for Cold War Studies. Helmut M?ller-Enbergs is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Southern Denmark and holds a tenured senior staff position at the German Federal Commission for the STASI Archives in Berlin.

In the winter of 1875, a young British officer set out across central Asia on an unofficial mission to investigate the latest Russian moves in the Great Game. His goal was the mysterious Central Asian city of Khiva, closed to all European travellers by the Russians following their seizure of it two years earlier. His aim was to discover whether this remote and dangerous oasis could be used as a springboard for an invasion of India. An immediate bestseller when first published in 1877, Burnaby s delight in a life of risk and adventure still burns through the pages, as does his spontaneous affection for the Cossack troopers and Tartar, Khirgiz and Turkoman tribesmen that he encounters on his way.

This unique book presents an accurate and reliable assessment of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). It brings together leading authors to examine the organization from a range of key angles. This study shows how historians have built on the first international conference on the SOE at the Imperial War Museum in 1998. The release of many records then allowed historians to develop the first authoritative analyses of the organization's activities and several of its agents and staff officers were able to participate. Since this groundbreaking conference, fresh research has continued and its original papers are here amended to take account of the full range of SOE documents that have been released to the National Archives. The fascinating stories they tell range from overviews of work in a single country to particular operations and the impact of key personalities. SOE was a remarkably innovative organization. It played a significant part in the Allied victory while its theories of clandestine warfare and specialised equipment had a major impact upon the post-war world. SOE proved that war need not be fought by conventional methods and by soldiers in uniform. The organization laid much of the groundwork for the development of irregular warfare that characterized the second half of the twentieth century and that is still here, more potent than ever, at the beginning of the twenty-first. This book will be of great interest to students of World War II history, intelligence studies and special operations, as well as general readers with an interest in SOE and World War II.

This is the first book to describe British wartime success in breaking Japanese codes of dazzling variety and great complexity which contributed to the victory in Burma three months before Hiroshima. Written for the general reader, this first-hand account describes the difficulty of decoding one of the most complex languages in the world in some of the most difficult conditions. The book was published in 1989 to avoid proposed legislation which would prohibit those in the security services from publishing secret information.

This volume covers European intelligence in the first half of the 20th century. It reveals that the Imperial German Government had a remarkable source at the Russian Embassy in London prior to the outbreak of the World War I; describes in detail Swedish-German cryptanalytical co-operation during the Great War in intercepting and solving Russian diplomatic telegram traffic; adds an intriguing new twist to the murder of the Tsar and his family; provides an authoritative account of Swedish cryptanalytical success against German and Soviet traffic during the World War II; and includes an anecdote suggesting that Allied security surrounding Overlord may have in fact been breached, while at the same time offering a reason as to why this leak led nowhere.