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 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.

"MI6 and the Machinery of Spying "traces the development of the agency's internal structure from its inception until the end of the Cold War. The analysis examines how its management structure has been driven by its operational environment on the one hand and its position within the machinery of British central government on the other. Close attention is paid to the agency's institutional links to its consumers in Whitehall and Downing Street, as well as to the causes and consequences of its operational organization and provisions for counter-espionage and security.
The book presents a detailed response to assertions that the SIS was historically chronically mismanaged and badly organized, and to claims that it is unaccountable to political and public oversight. It also argues that where SIS activities have resulted in public disasters and scandals the reason has usually been less its lack of accountability and control than the very high degree of control and direction exercised by opportunistic politicians and the senior Civil Servants.

The vital ingredient in the formulation and execution of a successful foreign policy is intelligence. For the USA, as the Bay of Pigs incident and the Iran-Contra affair have shown, controlling intelligence is a problem which policy-makers and concerned citizens have rarely examined and imperfectly understood. Of the seven contributors, five have direct experience of working with or in intelligence, and all have written extensively on the subject.

"MI6 and the Machinery of Spying "traces the development of the agency's internal structure from its inception until the end of the Cold War. The analysis examines how its management structure has been driven by its operational environment on the one hand and its position within the machinery of British central government on the other. Close attention is paid to the agency's institutional links to its consumers in Whitehall and Downing Street, as well as to the causes and consequences of its operational organization and provisions for counter-espionage and security.
The book presents a detailed response to assertions that the SIS was historically chronically mismanaged and badly organized, and to claims that it is unaccountable to political and public oversight. It also argues that where SIS activities have resulted in public disasters and scandals the reason has usually been less its lack of accountability and control than the very high degree of control and direction exercised by opportunistic politicians and the senior Civil Servants.

"The history of Civil War espionage is usually mentioned only in passing in general accounts of the war. Lying under a cloud of romanticism, its details have had to be ferreted out in specialized sources. For his complete account of the subject, Markle draws upon just about all the available material and summarizes it with judgment, balance, clarity, and occasional wit. Among the subtopics are technology (photography for mapmaking and Confederate use of a forerunner of microfilm), the value of women spies (less subject to suspicion, they could move with greater freedom than male spies), and the roles of blacks as spies. A good case could be made that this volume is the single most valuable contribution to general Civil War literature so far this year. "--Booklist

During the late 1940s the newly created CIA, in a loose alliance with anti-communist intellectuals and trade unionists, launched a massive, clandestine effort to win the Cold War allegiance of the European left. Drawing on numerous personal interviews and document collections on both sides of the Atlantic, this book examines in detail the origins of the CIA's covert campaign and assesses it's impact on the US's principal Cold War ally, Britain, focusing particularly on attempts to combat communist penetration of British trade unions, stimulate support within the Labour party for key American strategic aims, such as European union, and influence the politics of Bloomsbury literati. The results of this secret intervention were complex and far-reaching. CIA support for such ventures as the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its London-based magazine, Encounter, subtly transformed the political culture of the British left, making it more Atlanticist and less socialist. In other ways, however, the hidden hand of American intelligence failed to control its British assets, whose behaviour often frustrated their secretive patrons in Washington. For that matter, not even the CIA's agen

This volume investigates the connection between intelligence history, domestic policy, military history and foreign relations in a time of increasing bureaucratization of the modern state. The issues of globalization of foreign relations and the development of modern, electronic means of communication are also discussed.

This volume investigates the connection between intelligence history, domestic policy, military history and foreign relations in a time of increasing bureaucratization of the modern state. The issues of globalization of foreign relations and the development of modern, electronic means of communication are also discussed.

In the second half of 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. It was an event of major historic and global dimensions, yet this strategic transformation of international relations took the entire world totally by suprise - despite the fact that the West saw in the Communist power an ideological foe and a major military threat.
During the 1980s Western intelligence services spent about $40 billion every year, most of it to monitor the Soviet Union and its satellites. Yet all of them, without exception, were taken by surprise when the red empire crumbled. The American CIA, Britain's MI-6, Germany's BND and the French DGSE all failed to comprehend that the Soviet Union was approaching the end of its imperial existence. A handful of honest intelligence professionals who identified the signs of weakness and distress were shunted aside.
The authors of this book interviewed dozens of people who dealt with Soviet affairs in the 1980s, most of them in the United States, some in Europe, the Soviet Union and Israel. The interviewees included high ranking government officials, academics and journalists, but mostly intelligence personnel. All admitted having been caught off guard, but differed over the reasons for their surprise, and who was responsible for it.

War and Enlightenment in Russia explores how members of the military during the reign of Catherine II reconciled Enlightenment ideas about the equality and moral worth of all humans with the Russian reality based on serfdom, a world governed by autocracy, absolute respect for authority, and subordination to seniority. While there is a sizable literature about the impact of the Enlightenment on government, economy, manners, and literature in Russia, no analytical framework that outlines its impact on the military exists. Eugene Miakinkov's research addresses this gap and challenges the assumption that the military was an unadaptable and vertical institution. Using archival sources, military manuals, essays, memoirs, and letters, the author demonstrates how the Russian militaires philosophes operationalized the Enlightenment by turning thought into reality.

Decisions about defence and security are becoming increasingly open to public influence. This book therefore aims to give both the voter and the decision maker a new vision of how to manage crises and avert hostilities with non-traditional means.

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.

From the 1930's to the 1950's a significant number of left-wing men and women in the United States, Britain, Europe, Australia and Canada were recruited to the Soviet intellgence services.
These people were amateurs, rather than professional intelligence workers and the reason for their success is intriguing and has never been satisfactorily explained.
Using recently released Soviet archives, this book seeks to explore the foundations for these successes in the deliberately concealed tradition of underground political activity which was part of the communist movement. This tradition, which became extremely useful to Soviet intelligence, also explains the origins of the "tradecraft" of espionage. The book seeks to contribute to the study of the causes of the early Cold War, by explaining how this underground tradition lead to espionage.
This title shows that while allegations of disloyalty during the Cold War were often part of a witch-hunt, the Left and their liberal allies sometimes unwittingly had a number of skeletons in their closet.

Concentrates on the economic and political aspects of China's security agenda, which have, to a certain extent, been given less prominence in most security studies on China.

Security intelligence continues to be of central importance to the contemporary world: individuals, organizations and states all seek timely and actionable intelligence in order to increase their sense of security. But what exactly is intelligence? Who seeks to develop it and to what ends? How can we ensure that intelligence is not abused? In this third edition of their classic text, Peter Gill and Mark Phythian set out a comprehensive framework for the study of intelligence, discussing how states organize the collection and analysis of information in order to produce intelligence, how it is acted upon, why it may fail and how the process should be governed in order to uphold democratic rights. Fully revised and updated throughout, the book covers recent developments, including the impact of the Snowden leaks on the role of intelligence agencies in Internet and social media surveillance and in defensive and offensive cyber operations, and the legal and political arrangements for democratic control. The role of intelligence as part of 'hybrid' warfare in the case of Russia and Ukraine is also explored, and the problems facing intelligence in the realm of counterterrorism is considered in the context of the recent wave of attacks in Western Europe. Intelligence in an Insecure World is an authoritative and accessible guide to a rapidly expanding area of inquiry - one that everyone has an interest in understanding.

Intelligence was a central element of the Cold War and the need for it was expected to diminish after the USSR's collapse, yet in recent years it has been in greater demand than ever. The atrocities of 11 September and the subsequent "war on terrorism" now call for an even more intensive effort. Important questions arise on how intelligence fits into the world of increased threats, globalization and expanded international action. This volume contains the recent work on this subject by Michael Herman, British intelligence professional for 35 years and Oxford University academic. It compares intelligence with other government information services, and discusses the British intelligence system and the case for its reform. It also addresses the ethical issues raised by intelligence's methods and results: "do they on balance make for a better world or a worse one?." Other chapters explore a wide range of intelligence topics past and present, including the transatlantic relationship, the alliance strategies of Norway and New Zealand, Mrs Thatcher's "de-unionization" of British Sigint, and personal memories of the British Cabinet Office in the 1970s.
Michael Herman argues for intelligence professionalism as a contribution to international security and for its encouragement as a world standard. The modern challenge is for intelligence to support international cooperation in ways originally developed to advance national interests, while at the same time developing some restraint and international "rules of the game," in the use of intrusive and covert methods on its traditional targets. The effects of 11 September on this challenge are discussed in a thoughtful afterword.

Contrary to popular misconceptions and public branding as "dirty tricks," covert action and counterintelligence can have considerable value. Democracies, while wary of these instruments, have benefited significantly from their use, saving lives, treasure, and gaining strategic advantage. As liberal democracies confront the post-Cold War mix of rogue states and non-state actors, such as criminals and terrorists, and weapons of mass destruction and mass disruption, these clandestine arts may prove to be important tools of statecraft, and perhaps trump cards in the twenty-first century.

Godson defines covert action as influencing events in other parts of the world without attribution, and counterintelligence as identifying, neutralizing, and exploiting the secret activities of others. Together they provide the capability to resist manipulation and control others to advantage. Counterintelligence protects U.S. military, technological, and diplomatic secrets and turns adversary intelligence to U.S. advantage. Covert action enables the United States to weaken adversaries and to assist allies who may be hampered by open acknowledgment of foreign support.

Drawing on contemporary and historical literature, broad-ranging contacts with senior intelligence officials in many countries, as well as his own research and experience as a longtime consultant to the U.S. government, Godson traces the history of U.S. covert action and counterintelligence since 1945, showing that covert action works well when it is part of a well-coordinated policy and when policy makers are committed to succeeding in the long-term. Godson argues that the best counterintelligence is an offensive defense. His exposition of the essential theoretical foundations of both covert action and counterintelligence, supported by historical examples, lays out the ideal conditions for their use, as well as demonstrating why they are so difficult to attain.

This book will be of interest to students and general readers interested in political science, national security, foreign policy, and military policy.

This work considers, for the first time, the intelligence relationship between three important North Atlantic powers in the Twenty-first century, from WWII to post-Cold War. As demonstrated in the case studies in this volume, World War II cemented loose and often informal inter-allied agreements on security intelligence that had preceded it, and created new and important areas of close and formal co-operation in such areas as codebreaking and foreign intelligence.

Asia represented the "hottest" theatre of the Cold War, with several declared and undeclared wars always in progress. Examining the Asian dimension of this struggle, this volume describes and analyzes a range of clandestine activities from intelligence and propaganda to special operations and security support. It draws on documents declassified after the end of the Cold War.

This is a history of the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) during the Cold War, based on its secret archives. The author presents detailed descriptions of the build-up of a network of Norwegian signals intelligence stations in the north; border crossings by clandestine agents; the reporting of Norwegian merchant mariners from ports behind the Iron Curtain; the intimate co-operation between the NIS and the secret services of the United States and other countries; as well as the establishment of a stay behind network.

This book examines how the war crime legacy resulting from the Yugoslav war of the 1990s on political and military transformation in Serbia was an impediment to security reform, democratization and the achievement of Western standards in the Belgrade armed forces.Using original empirical research, it traces the processes of restructuring, civilianisation, legal framework and democratic control and security policy communities, in relation to reforming the Serbian military. Crucially, the book focuses on the war crimes legacy from the 1990s, not as a matter of international conditionality, but as a key factor obstructing successful reform. This book, for the first time, examines the networks linked to security, intelligence and military agencies that protected war crimes suspects, such as General Ratko Mladic, delaying democratic control of the armed forces. Only when that network was broken, could the process of democratization begin to be complete.This unique book linking war crimes and security sector reform will appeal to scholars working on Serbia/former Yugoslavia, law and conflict, security and development, civil-military relations and Central and Eastern European politics.

Shortly after the end of the First World War, General Sir George Macdonagh, wartime director of British Military Intelligence, revealed that Lord Allenby's victory in Palestine had never been in doubt because of the success of his intelligence service. Seventy-five years later this book explains Macdonagh's statement. Sheffy also adopts a novel approach to traditional heroes of the campaign such as T E Lawrence.

Discover the stories of the brave men and women who worked, trained and fought across the UK, from Bletchley Park in southern England all the way to Arisaig in northern Scotland, in an unbelievable effort to defeat the Nazis and win the Second World War . From the outset of the war, most of Britain felt like a mystery even to those who lived there. All road and railway signs were removed up and down the country to thwart potential enemy spies. An invisible web of cunning spread across the United Kingdom; secret laboratories were hidden in marshes, underground bases were built to conceal key strategic plans and grand country houses became secret and silent locations for eccentric boffins to do their confidential cryptography work. In Secret Britain, Sinclair McKay maps out the UK through the hidden bases and battlegrounds of WWII. These locations are full of history and intrigue, but if you don't know where to look, you might just miss them. Journeying through secret wildernesses, suburbs, underground tunnels and manor houses, Sinclair gives a glimpse into the stories of the incredible people behind the war effort, and shows how you might be able to visit these mysterious and evocative locations yourself. With his trademark warmth and compassion, Sinclair unearths the truths of the war that have remained under layers of secrecy since the war was won in 1945.

Audley End House in Essex - or Station 43 as it was known during the Second World War - was used as the principal training school for SOE's Polish Section between 1942 and 1944. Polish agents at the stately home undertook a series of arduous training courses in guerilla warfare before being parachuted into occupied Europe. In 1943, Audley End was placed exclusively under polish control, a situation unique within SOE. The training was tough and the success rate low, but a total of 527 agents passed through Audley End between 1942 and 1944. Ian Valentine has consulted a wide range of primary sources and interviewed Polish instructors and former agents who trained at Audley End to write the definitive account of this Essex country house and the vital but secret part it played in defeating Hitler. He examines the comprehensive training agents at Audley End and describes the work undertaken by Station 43's agents in Europe, set against the background of Polish wartime history. He also covers the vital link with the RAF's Special Duties squadrons, whose crews risked their lives dropping agents into occupied Europe. Station 43 breaks new ground in telling the hitherto until story of Audley End house and its role as a vital SOE training school.