Author : Richard Aldrich
Publisher : HarperCollins UK
Page : 831 pages
File Size : 18,9 MB
Release : 2016-04-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0007555458
The Black Door explores the evolving relationship between successive British prime ministers and the intelligence agencies, from Asquith’s Secret Service Bureau to Cameron’s National Security Council.
Author : Richard James Aldrich
Publisher : Collins
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 50,94 MB
Release : 2016
Category : History
ISBN : 9780007555468
The Black Door explores the evolving relationship between successive British prime ministers and the intelligence agencies, from Asquith s Secret Service Bureau to Cameron s National Security Council. At the beginning of the 20th Century the British intelligence system was underfunded and lacked influence in government. But as the new millennium dawned, intelligence had become so integral to policy that it was used to make the case for war. Now, covert action is incorporated seamlessly into government policy, and the Prime Minister is kept constantly updated by intelligence agencies. But how did intelligence come to influence our government so completely? The Black Door explores the murkier corridors of No. 10 Downing Street, chronicling the relationships between intelligence agencies and the Prime Ministers of the last century. From Churchill s code-breakers feeding information to the Soviets to Eden s attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, from Wilson s paranoia of an MI5-led coup d etat to Thatcher s covert wars in Central America, Aldrich and Cormac entertain and enlighten as they explain how our government came to rely on intelligence to the extent that it does today."
Author : Rory Cormac
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 407 pages
File Size : 14,85 MB
Release : 2018-05-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0191087521
Disrupt and Deny is the untold story behind Britain's secret scheming against both enemies and friends from 1945 to the present day. British leaders use spies and Special Forces to interfere in the affairs of others discreetly and deniably. Since 1945, MI6 has spread misinformation designed to divide and discredit targets from the Middle East to Eastern Europe and Northern Ireland. It has instigated whispering campaigns and planted false evidence on officials working behind the Iron Curtain, tried to foment revolution in Albania, blown up ships to prevent the passage of refugees to Israel, and secretly funnelled aid to insurgents in Afghanistan and dissidents in Poland. MI6 has launched cultural and economic warfare against Iceland and Czechoslovakia. It has tried to instigate coups in Congo, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and elsewhere. Through bribery and blackmail, Britain has rigged elections as colonies moved to independence. Britain has fought secret wars in Yemen, Indonesia, and Oman - and discreetly used Special Forces to eliminate enemies from colonial Malaya to Libya during the Arab Spring. This is covert action: a vital, though controversial, tool of statecraft and perhaps the most sensitive of all government activity. If used wisely, it can play an important role in pursuing national interests in a dangerous world. If used poorly, it can cause political scandal - or worse. In Disrupt and Deny, Rory Cormac tells the remarkable true story of Britain's secret scheming against its enemies, as well as its friends; of intrigue and manoeuvring within the darkest corridors of Whitehall, where officials fought to maintain control of this most sensitive and seductive work; and, above all, of Britain's attempt to use smoke and mirrors to mask decline. He reveals hitherto secret operations, the slush funds that paid for them, and the battles in Whitehall that shaped them.
Author : Rory Cormac
Publisher : Atlantic Books
Page : 500 pages
File Size : 17,25 MB
Release : 2021-10-07
Category : History
ISBN : 1786499134
A Daily Mail Book of the Year and a The Times and Sunday Times Best Book of 2021 'Monumental.. Authoritative and highly readable.' Ben Macintyre, The Times 'A fascinating history of royal espionage.' Sunday Times 'Excellent... Compelling' Guardian For the first time, Spying and the Crown uncovers the remarkable relationship between the Royal Family and the intelligence community, from the reign of Queen Victoria to the death of Princess Diana. In an enthralling narrative, Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac show how the British secret services grew out of persistent attempts to assassinate Victoria and then operated on a private and informal basis, drawing on close personal relationships between senior spies, the aristocracy, and the monarchy. This reached its zenith after the murder of the Romanovs and the Russian revolution when, fearing a similar revolt in Britain, King George V considered using private networks to provide intelligence on the loyalty of the armed forces - and of the broader population. In 1936, the dramatic abdication of Edward VIII formed a turning point in this relationship. What originally started as family feuding over a romantic liaison with the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, escalated into a national security crisis. Fearing the couple's Nazi sympathies as well as domestic instability, British spies turned their attention to the King. During the Second World War, his successor, King George VI gradually restored trust between the secret world and House of Windsor. Thereafter, Queen Elizabeth II regularly enacted her constitutional right to advise and warn, raising her eyebrow knowingly at prime ministers and spymasters alike. Based on original research and new evidence, Spying and the Crown presents the British monarchy in an entirely new light and reveals how far their majesties still call the shots in a hidden world. Previously published as The Secret Royals.
Author : Christopher Andrew
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 698 pages
File Size : 23,32 MB
Release : 2019-07-26
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0429647360
The second edition of Secret Intelligence: A Reader brings together key essays from the field of intelligence studies, blending classic works on concepts and approaches with more recent essays dealing with current issues and ongoing debates about the future of intelligence. Secret intelligence has never enjoyed a higher profile. The events of 9/11, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the missing WMD controversy, public debates over prisoner interrogation, together with the revelations of figures such as Edward Snowden, recent cyber attacks and the rise of 'hybrid warfare' have all contributed to make this a ‘hot’ subject over the past two decades. Aiming to be more comprehensive than existing books, and to achieve truly international coverage of the field, this book provides key readings and supporting material for students and course convenors. It is divided into four main sections, each of which includes full summaries of each article, further reading suggestions and student questions: • The intelligence cycle • Intelligence, counter-terrorism and security • Ethics, accountability and secrecy • Intelligence and the new warfare This new edition contains essays by leading scholars in the field and will be essential reading for students of intelligence studies, strategic studies, international security and political science in general, and of interest to anyone wishing to understand the current relationship between intelligence and policy-making.
Author : Christopher Moran
Publisher : Georgetown University Press
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 37,72 MB
Release : 2018-02-01
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1626165203
In literature and film the spy chief is an all-knowing, all-powerful figure who masterfully moves spies into action like pieces on a chessboard. How close to reality is that depiction, and what does it really take to be an effective leader in the world of intelligence? This first volume of Spy Chiefs broadens and deepens our understanding of the role of intelligence leaders in foreign affairs and national security in the United States and United Kingdom from the early 1940s to the present. The figures profiled range from famous spy chiefs such as William Donovan, Richard Helms, and Stewart Menzies to little-known figures such as John Grombach, who ran an intelligence organization so secret that not even President Truman knew of it. The volume tries to answer six questions arising from the spy-chief profiles: how do intelligence leaders operate in different national, institutional, and historical contexts? What role have they played in the conduct of international relations and the making of national security policy? How much power do they possess? What qualities make an effective intelligence leader? How secretive and accountable to the public have they been? Finally, does popular culture (including the media) distort or improve our understanding of them? Many of those profiled in the book served at times of turbulent change, were faced with foreign penetrations of their intelligence service, and wrestled with matters of transparency, accountability to democratically elected overseers, and adherence to the rule of law. This book will appeal to both intelligence specialists and general readers with an interest in the intelligence history of the United States and United Kingdom.
Author : Matteo Faini
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 164 pages
File Size : 15,83 MB
Release : 2020-08-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1000170101
This book delves into the secret histories of the CIA, the FBI, and British and Italian intelligence to study how policymakers can control intelligence agencies and when these agencies will try to remove their own government. For every government they serve, intelligence agencies are both a threat and a necessity. They often provide vital information for national security, but the secrets they possess can also be used against their own masters. This book introduces subversion paradox theory to provide a social scientific explanation of the unequal power dynamic resulting from an often fraught relationship between agencies and their ‘masters’. The author also makes a case for the existence of ‘deep state’ conspiracies, including in highly developed democracies, and cautions those who denounce their existence that trying to control intelligence by politicizing it is likely to backfire. An important intervention in the field of intelligence studies, this book will be indispensable for intelligence professionals and policymakers in understanding and bridging the cultural divide between these two groups. It will also make for a fascinating and informative read to scholars and researchers of diplomacy, foreign policy, international relations, strategic and defence studies, security studies, political studies, policymaking and comparative politics.
Author : James W. Douglass
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 562 pages
File Size : 42,7 MB
Release : 2010-10-19
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1439193886
THE ACCLAIMED BOOK, NOW IN PAPERBACK, with a reading group guide and a new afterword by the author. At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human history: starting a nuclear war. Horrified by the specter of nuclear annihilation, Kennedy gradually turned away from his long-held Cold Warrior beliefs and toward a policy of lasting peace. But to the military and intelligence agencies in the United States, who were committed to winning the Cold War at any cost, Kennedy’s change of heart was a direct threat to their power and influence. Once these dark "Unspeakable" forces recognized that Kennedy’s interests were in direct opposition to their own, they tagged him as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent cover-up. Douglass takes readers into the Oval Office during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, along on the strange journey of Lee Harvey Oswald and his shadowy handlers, and to the winding road in Dallas where an ambush awaited the President’s motorcade. As Douglass convincingly documents, at every step along the way these forces of the Unspeakable were present, moving people like pawns on a chessboard to promote a dangerous and deadly agenda.
Author : Daniel Golden
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 396 pages
File Size : 13,56 MB
Release : 2017-10-10
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1627796363
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Daniel Golden exposes how academia has become the center of foreign and domestic espionage—and why that is troubling news for our nation's security. Grounded in extensive research and reporting, Spy Schools reveals how academia has emerged as a frontline in the global spy game. In a knowledge-based economy, universities are repositories of valuable information and research, where brilliant minds of all nationalities mingle freely with few questions asked. Intelligence agencies have always recruited bright undergraduates, but now, in an era when espionage increasingly requires specialized scientific or technological expertise, they’re wooing higher-level academics—not just as analysts, but also for clandestine operations. Golden uncovers unbelievable campus activity—from the CIA placing agents undercover in Harvard Kennedy School classes and staging academic conferences to persuade Iranian nuclear scientists to defect, to a Chinese graduate student at Duke University stealing research for an invisibility cloak, and a tiny liberal arts college in Marietta, Ohio, exchanging faculty with China’s most notorious spy school. He shows how relentlessly and ruthlessly this practice has permeated our culture, not just inside the US, but internationally as well. Golden, acclaimed author of The Price of Admission, blows the lid off this secret culture of espionage and its consequences at home and abroad.
Author : James Thomson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 248 pages
File Size : 12,70 MB
Release : 2021-11-11
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1000474879
This book provides an institutional costs framework for intelligence and security communities to examine the factors that can encourage or obstruct cooperation. The governmental functions of security and intelligence require various organisations to interact in a symbiotic way. These organisations must constantly negotiate with each other to establish who should address which issue and with what resources. By coupling adapted versions of transaction costs theories with socio-political perspectives, this book provides a model to explain why some cooperative endeavours are successful, whilst others fail. This framework is applied to counterterrorism and defence intelligence in the UK and the US to demonstrate that the view of good cooperation in the former and poor cooperation in the latter is overly simplistic. Neither is necessarily more disposed to behave cooperatively than the other; rather, the institutional costs created by their respective organisational architectures incentivise different cooperative behaviour in different circumstances. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, organisational studies, politics and security studies.
