Best Selling Books by Nigel West

This book is based on the only complete set of decrypts held in Britain outside Whitehall, supplemented by interviews with most of the principal players in the VENONA drama.

In a surprising number of espionage cases sex has played a significant role-often only in the background-possibly as a reason why a particular individual has lived beyond his means and is in desperate need of cash. FBI agent Earl Pitts sold secrets to the Soviets to ease his financial burdens, which came from his habitually heavy use of male and female prostitutes. Yuri Nosenko collaborated with the CIA after having misappropriated KGB funds to entertain expensive women while on official duties in Geneva, and Aleksandr Ogorodnik of the Soviet foreign ministry was persuaded to become a spy by his pregnant Spanish lover, an agent recruited by the CIA. In the realm of human behavior, sex can be the catalyst for risky or reckless conduct. The A to Z of Sexspionage explores this behavior through a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the secret agencies, operations, and events. From Delilah''s seduction of Samson in 1161 BC to State Department official Donald Keyser''s conviction of passing secrets to Isabelle Cheng, a Taiwanese intelligence officer, in 2007, Nigel West recounts the history of sexspionage.

"...presents an excellent and concise narrative of the Abwehr''s global intelligence network. West draws from hundreds of firsthand debriefing and summary reports including disclosed sources not previously available to scholars."—American Intelligence Journal Modern historians have consistently condemned the Abwehr, Germany’s military intelligence service, and its SS equivalent, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), as incompetent and even corrupt organizations. However, newly declassified MI5, CIA and US Counterintelligence Corps files shed a very different light on the structure, control and capabilities of the German intelligence machine in Europe, South America, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. It is usually stated that, under Admiral Canaris, the Abwehr neglected its main functions, its attention being focused more on trying to bring down Hitler. Yet Canaris greatly expanded the Abwehr from 150 personnel into a vast world-wide organisation which achieved many notable successes against the Allies. Equally, the SD’s tentacles spread across the Occupied territories as the German forces invaded country after country across Europe. In this in-depth study of the Abwehr’s rise to power, 1935 to 1943, its activities in Russia, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Japan, China, Manchuko and Mongolia are examined, as well as those in Thailand, French Indo-China, the Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, and the Arab nations. In this period, the Abwehr built a complex network of individual agents with transmitters operating from commercial, diplomatic and consular premises. Before, and in the early stages of the war, it later became apparent, the Abwehr was controlling a number of agents in Britain. Indeed, it was only after the war that the scale of the Abwehr’s activities became known, the organisation having of around 20,000 members. For the first time, the Abwehr’s development and the true extent of its operations have been laid bare, through official files and even of restored documents previously redacted. The long list of operations and activities of the Abwehr around the world includes the efforts of an agent in the USA who was arrested after a bizarre attempt to obtain a quantity of blank American passports by impersonating a senior State Department official, Edward Weston, an Under-Secretary of State. Also, former U.S. Marine, Kurt Jahnke, who was recruited to collect information about the American munitions production and send it on to Germany. These are just two of the numerous and absorbing accounts in this all-embracing study.

Known as “the Great War,” the world’s first truly global conflict is remarkable in what might now be termed modern espionage. World War I was witness to plenty of ”firsts.” Apart from the contribution made by aerial reconnaissance and the interception of wireless telegraphy, telephone and cable traffic, there was the scientific aspect, with new machines of war, such as the submarine, sea-mine, torpedo, airship, barbed wire, armored tank and mechanized cavalry in a military environment that included mustard gas, static trench warfare, the indiscriminate bombardment of civilian population centers and air-raids. Large-scale sabotage and propaganda, the manipulation of news and of radio broadcasts, and censorship, were all features of a new method of engaging in combat, and some ingenious techniques were developed to exploit the movement of motor and rail transport, and the transmission of wireless signals. The hitherto unknown disciplines of train-watching, bridge-watching, airborne reconnaissance and radio interception would become established as routine collection methods, and their impact on the conflict would prove to be profound. The Historical Dictionary of World War I Intelligencerelates this history through a chronology, an introductory essay, an appendix, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 400 hundred cross-referenced entries on intelligence organizations, the spies, and the major cases and events of World War I. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the world of intelligence in World War I.

With the recent declassification of secret documents new light has been shed on old mysteries. For example, we now know that what might be termed the "JFK assassination conspiracy industry" was deliberately fueled and manipulated by the KGB so as to distract the CIA and undermine confidence in successive U.S. administrations. Also, new evidence continues to emerge of Vladimir Putin’s commitment to the extra-judicial elimination of "extremists" overseas, as legitimized by the Duma in July 2006. Controversially, the legislation included a definition of “extremists” as "those slandering the individual occupying the post of president of the Russian Federation”. The Encyclopedia of Political Assassinations contains a chronology, an introduction, and appendixes. The encyclopedia section has more than 700 cross-referenced entries on assassinations, intelligence agencies, politics and foreign relations.

The Cold War, with its air of mutual fear and distrust and the shadowy world of spies and secret agents, gave publishers the chance to produce countless stories of espionage, treachery and deception. What Nigel West has discovered is that the most egregious deceptions were in fact the stories themselves. In this remarkable investigation into the claims of many who portrayed themselves as key players in clandestine operations, the author has exposed a catalogue of misrepresentations and falsehoods. Did Greville Wynne really exfiltrate a GRU defector from Odessa? Was the frogman Buster Crabb abducted during a mission in Portsmouth Harbour? Did the KGB run a close-guarded training facility, as described by J. Bernard Hutton in School for Spies, which was modelled on a typical town in the American mid-west, so agents could be acclimatised to a non-Soviet environment? With the help of witnesses with first-hand experience, and recently declassified documents, Nigel West answers these and other fascinating questions from a time when secrecy and suspicion allowed the truth to be concealed.

Over the past fifty years, Nigel West has been involved in almost every espionage-related investigation, breakthrough or revelation that you can think of. His molehunts have led to the unmasking of spies within MI5, MI6 and the CIA and the identification of numerous others – some of whom were crucial to the Allied victory in the Second World War and would have died without any public recognition if not for him. His first encounter with the intelligence community was a lecture given at his school by John le Carré, the guest of a Benedictine monk who had recently retired from MI6. Later, West worked as a researcher for SOE agent Ronnie Seth, who was sentenced to death by the Nazis after being captured during Operation blunderhead, and exposed two of the Cambridge spies recruited by Anthony Blunt. For the fortieth anniversary of the D-Day landings, West traced the double agent codenamed garbo and brought him to London so he could be decorated at Buckingham Palace. As action-packed as the lives of the spies he has written about, this is the story of the most enthralling and significant post-war intelligence revelations as told by Britain''s most authoritative writer on espionage and the secret services.

On Monday, 4 March 2019, Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia collapsed in the centre of Salisbury in Wiltshire. Both were suffering the effects of A-234, a third-generation Russian-manufactured military grade Novichok nerve agent. As three suspects, all GRU officers, were quickly identified, it was also established that the door handle to the Skripals’ suburban home had been contaminated with the toxin. Whilst the Skripals had lived in the cathedral city for the past seven years, what Sergei’s neighbours did not know was that he had once been a colonel in the Russian Federation’s military intelligence service. Back in July 1996, he had been posted under diplomatic cover to Madrid where he was subsequently cultivated by Pablo Miller, an MI6 officer operating as a businessman under the alias Antonio Alvares de Idalgo. Sergei’s recruitment by Miller was one of many successes achieved by Western agencies following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. These counter-intelligence triumphs had their origins in a joint FBI/CIA project codenamed COURTSHIP which was based on the rather risky tactic of making an approach to almost any identified KGB or GRU officer, in almost any environment – a technique known as a ‘cold pitch’. It soon yielded results; within five years COURTSHIP had netted about twenty assets. Codenamed FORTHWITH, Sergei was betrayed in December 2001. Arrested in 2004, he was convicted of high treason in Russia, but was subsequently included in a prisoner swap in July 2010 and brought to the UK. The journey to the attempt on his life had begun. The Vienna spy swap was the culmination of a CIA plan to free a specific individual, Gennadi Vasilenko, who had been the Agency’s key mole inside the KGB since March 1979. To acquire the necessary leverage, the FBI swooped on a large network in the United States, bringing to an end a surveillance operation, codenamed GHOST STORIES, that lasted ten years. Anxious to avoid further embarrassment over the arrests, Vladimir Putin personally authorised an exchange, unaware of Vasilenko’s true status. It was only after the transaction had been completed, and two further Russian spies were exfiltrated from Moscow, that the Kremlin learned of Vasilenko’s value, and the scale of the deception. For the very first time, a Russian government had been persuaded to release four traitors and send them to the West. The humiliation was complete. As Spy Swap reveals, Putin’s retribution would manifest itself in a quiet Wiltshire market town.

This book details MI5''s interception and exploitation of secret Comintern wireless traffic, which revealed the first evidence of widescale Soviet espionage in Britain.

The author of The Kompromat Conspiracy reveals the truth behind Great Britain’s secret World War II group. What did SOE really achieve during the Second World War? Why were so many agents parachuted into enemy hands? Who chose to back Communist guerrillas in Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Albania, Greece and Malaya in preference to other anti-Axis movements? In this newly revised edition, Nigel West strips away the secrecy that has surrounded the Special Operations Executive since it was officially wound up in 1946, and reveal the breathtaking political naivety, operational incompetence, and ruthless manipulation. Despite the heroism of individual agents who suffered appalling privation to further the organization’s dubious objectives, there is an underlying tragedy of dreadful proportions. Secret War is a detailed analysis of SOE’s structure and performance and describes its successes and failures across the globe. The book casts doubt on the official histories authorized by the Cabinet Office, offers evidence of the setbacks that jeopardized D-Day, and gives an account of the paramilitary units dropped behind enemy lines immediately after the invasion, which saved SOE’s reputation. This book is a highly provocative but authoritative history of the organization that existed for less than six years but had a lasting impact on the world’s postwar development. “Secret War is important, even necessary in political terms.” —Financial Times

The Cold War was a sophisticated conflict fought by the west, principally the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, with support from NATO, CENTO and SEATO, to confront the Kremlin and its Warsaw Pact satellites. The battlegrounds extended from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Byelorussia and Albania to Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, and resulted in conventional, proxy wars fought in Vietnam, Egypt and Korea. Only now, thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, can these issues be examined through the prism of the secret files generated by the intelligence agencies on both sides which have been declassified. This Historical Dictionary of Cold War Intelligence contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on crucial operations spies, defectors, moles, double and triple agents, and the tradecraft they apply. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about intelligence during the Cold War.

Analyzes nine wartime and postwar defections, highlighting motivations, risks, and counter-intelligence significance. A well-informed defector is the most dangerous counter-intelligence commodity because it takes a spy to catch a spy. Very occasionally, an agent, especially a mole or an intelligence professional, will make a mistake and incriminate themselves, but usually it is a denunciation, a tip, or a vague clue from a defector that will provide the vital information required to expose the source of a leak. Relying on recently-declassified intelligence files and interviews with defectors, their handlers, their families, and their victims, Nigel West has analyzed nine examples of wartime and postwar defections to shed new light on the phenomenon. Defectors are notoriously difficult to handle, and resettle, because of the range of genuine or invented motives that led them to take such drastic action. Some will provide a noble political motive, seeking to impress their host, while others may be driven by less worthy compulsions – perhaps greed, revenge, career disappointment, envy, anger, or nothing more complicated that a desire to start a life afresh with a different partner. Defectors are the stock-in-trade for all counter-intelligence specialists who seek the background and context of corridor gossip and water-cooler chat cannot be substituted by any amount of technical surveillance, overhead reconnaissance or hard to-interpret intercepted communications. This is the essence of Human Intelligence, and goes to the heart of loyalty, trust, betrayal and deception – the very DNA of espionage. These nine examples of switching sides all involve intelligence professionals who followed the example of Erich Vermehren. Because of his religious convictions, Vermehren felt compelled to desert the Abwehr in January 1944, even though this meant the arrest of his parents and siblings who were consigned to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. West traced Vermehren, then living under an alias in Switzerland, to hear his story first-hand. He then interviewed the British MI6 officer who had engineered the covert exfiltration from Istanbul of both the German and his wife. Sometimes a defection may be the result of a period of cultivation, as happened with Vladimir Petrov, who was gently persuaded over many months by his Polish dentist to abandon his clandestine role as rezident in Canberra for a chicken farm. The intermediary, Dr Michael Bialoguski, admitted to the author that right up to the moment of his defection, he and his Australian Security Intelligence organization colleagues were not entirely sure of Petrov’s true status. Once resettled, a defector’s life has daily challenges, as was explained by Yuri Rastvorov’s widow, herself a CIA counter-intelligence officer, who recalled the day she had to tell their two daughters that their father was not a Czech tennis coach, but an NKVD defector who had been based in Tokyo.

The A to Z of British Intelligence offers insight into the history and operations of British Intelligence through its more than 1,800 entries, covering a vast and varied cast of characters: the spies and their handlers, the moles and defectors, the political leaders, the top brass, the techniques and jargon, and the many different offices and organizations.

While many of President Xia Jinping’s increasingly aggressive foreign policies, manifested by expansion into the South China Sea, trade confrontation with Australia, and political suppression in Hong Kong, have become obvious, there has been a covert dimension that has gone largely unreported outside the Allied intelligence community. Beijing’s Ministry of State Security, or MSS, has increasingly shifted its priorities to hostile penetration of the CIA. That this is the case has been demonstrated by the recent cases of individuals such as Glenn Shriver, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, Ron Rockwell Hansen, Kevin Mallory, Dickson Yeo, and Alexander Yuk Ching Ma. Of these, Shriver, an American student studying in China, became, as the FBI itself points out, ‘a target of Chinese intelligence services and crossed the line when he agreed to participate in espionage-type activity’. For his actions, in 2019 Ron Rockwell Hansen, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, pleaded guilty to attempting to spying for the People’s Republic of China and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Similarly, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA case officer, was sentenced to nineteen years in prison for conspiring to communicate, deliver and transmit sensitive US information to the People’s Republic of China. Hitherto the MSS had concentrated, at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party, on the collection of foreign technology and proprietary information, while also monitoring political dissidents, Tibetan and Taiwanese nationalists, and Uyghur and Falun Gong religious activists. The MSS also tended to recruit ethnic Chinese and were less interested in the collection of political intelligence or mounting influence operations. However, as Nigel West reveals, the MSS has undergone a radical change in doctrine, and, having consolidated its grip on supposedly independent commercial joint ventures and academic research institutions, is leveraging control over these ostensibly legitimate enterprises to access intelligence agencies now perceived as adversaries, such as the CIA and FBI. As the rhetoric and tensions between the West and China mounts, and with the current US administration calling America’s relationship with Beijing ‘the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century’, China’s unseen espionage offensive is one of the most serious developments in recent times. Its extent and effectiveness are explored in this absorbing – and chilling – new exposé.

Tradecraft: as intriguing as it is forbidden ... Tradecraft is the term applied to techniques used by intelligence personnel to assist them in conducting their operations and, like many other professions, the espionage business has developed its own rich lexicon. In the real, sub rosa world of intelligence-gathering, each bit of jargon acts as a veil of secrecy over particular types of activity, and in this book acclaimed author Nigel West explains and give examples of the lingo in action. He draws on the first-hand experience of defectors to and from the Soviet Union; surveillance operators who kept terrorist suspects under observation in Northern Ireland; case officers who have put their lives at risk by pitching a target in a denied territory; the NOCs who lived under alias to spy abroad; and much more. Turn these pages and be immersed in the real world of James Bond: assets, black operations, double agents, triple agents ... it''s all here.

Spies have made an extraordinary impact on the history of the 20th Century, but fourteen in particular can be said to have been demonstrably important. As one might expect, few are household names, and it is only with the benefit of recently declassified files that we can now fully appreciate the nature of their contribution. The criteria for selection have been the degree to which each can now be seen to have had a very definite influence on a specific course of events, either directly, by passing vital classified material, or indirectly, by organizing or managing a group of spies. Those selected were active in the First World War, the inter-war period, the Second World War, the Cold War and even the post-Cold War era. These include Walther Dewé who formed a spy ring in German-occupied Belgium during the First World War. This train-watching network, known as ‘White Lady’, reported on German troop deployments and possible weaknesses in the German defences. Extending its operations into northern France, the ring provided 75 per cent of the information received by GHQ, British Expeditionary Force. By the time of the Armistice in 1918, Dewé’s group had a staggering 1,300 members. Olga Gray, the 27-year-old daughter of a Daily Mail journalist, was employed as a secretary by the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1931 she undertook a mission for MI5 to penetrate the organization and discover its secret channel of communication with Moscow. Gray learned that the Party’s cipher was based on Treasure Island and this breakthrough enabled the Party’s messages to be read by Whitehall cryptographers. Renato Levi, an Italian playboy, was the longest-serving British agent of the Second World War and is credited with creating the concept of strategic deception. While operating in Cairo as a double agent working for the Abwehr and the British he was instrumental in misleading the Axis about Allied strength across the Middle East and helped Montgomery achieve his victory over Rommel’s Afrika Korps at El Alamein. So successful was Levi in this and other deceptions, he was employed to persuade the Germans that the D-Day landings in Normandy were a diversionary feint, in anticipation of an invasion in the Pas-de-Calais. These, and other surprising stories, are revealed in this fascinating insight into a secret world inhabited by mysterious and shadowy characters, all of whom, though larger than life, really did exist.

The postwar era as seen by a master of counterespionage—with an insight into his professional downfall. Guy Liddell was the director of MI5’s counterespionage B Division throughout the Second World War, during which he wrote a confidential personal diary, detailing virtually every important event with intelligence significance. Those recently declassified diaries, which were edited by Nigel West, have now been followed by a postwar series which covers the period from the German surrender until Liddell’s sudden resignation in May 1953. These eight years contain many disturbing secrets, such as the cache of incriminating Nazi documents which was supposed to be destroyed by the SS. When these were recovered intact, the British government went to considerable lengths to keep them from being disclosed, for they provided proof of the Duke of Windsor’s contact, through a Portuguese intermediary, with the enemy during the crucial period in 1940 when the ex-king declared himself ready to fly back from the Bahamas and be restored to the throne. One of Liddell’s first tasks, at the request of Buckingham Palace, was to retrieve and suppress the damaging material. Liddell’s diaries were never intended for publication—and are filled with indiscretions that shed new light on MI5 investigations he supervised after his promotion to deputy director general. In addition to such behind-the-scenes stories, this book includes details about the end of Liddell’s career and the mistakes that led to it. Despite Liddell’s manifest failings, and his reluctance to believe in the disloyalty of men he regarded as friends, he was probably the single most influential British intelligence officer of his era. “[Nigel West’s] information is often so precise that many people believe he is the unofficial historian of the secret services.” —The Sunday Times

In August 1909, a kindly, balding, figure named Mansfield Smith-Cumming was summoned to London by Admiral Alexander Bethell, Director of Naval Intelligence. He was to assume the inaugural position of Chief – more famously known as ‘C – of what has become

"Nigel West has presented the most complete account of the Abwehr to date. It will serve as a valuable reference work." — Studies in Intelligence As the Second World War progressed and defeat for Hitler’s Third Reich in all theatres became ever more certain, the tight Abwehr network, built so effectively by its head, Admiral Canaris, began to unravel. High-level defections to the Allies and bitter disputes with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) added to a collapse in morale. Most notably was the increasing opposition within the officer ranks of the Army to Hitler fermented by Canaris and his deputy Generalmajor Hans Oster. The final years of the Abwehr were marked by the Abwehr’s efforts to undermine the regime, which came to a bloody conclusion following the Valkyrie assassination attempt of 20 July 1944. This saw the arrest of many Abwehr officials and the execution of Canaris and Oster. In this penetrating study of the final years of the Abwehr, Nigel West, a world-renowned specialist in the field, pieces together the gradual decline in the organization’s role and importance with Hitler and his acolytes paying little heed to reports that were increasingly cautionary. Among the many previously undisclosed stories are details gleaned from recently opened files which tell of a hitherto unknown spy-swap. This was the exchange of Berthold Shulze-Holthus, a German spy detained in Iran, for Ferdinand Rodriguez, a British radio operator captured in France. This was the only such exchange that took place during the whole of the Second World War – though the fact that the swap took place at all suggests that a previously unsuspected degree of communication existed between the Allies and Nazi Germany. Perhaps most tantalizingly of all, is the new night light thrown upon the role the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, had, in league with the Abwehr, in the Valkyrie bombing which almost killed Hitler.

The Second World War saw the role of espionage, secret agents and spy services increase exponentially as the world was thrown into a conflict unlike any that had gone before it. At this time, no one in government was really aware of what MI5 and its brethren did. But with Churchill at the country''s helm, it was decided to let him in on the secret, providing him with a weekly report of the spy activities. These reports were so classified that he was handed each report personally and copies were never allowed to be made, nor was he allowed to keep hold of them. Even now, the documents only exist as physical copies deep in the archives, many pages annotated by hand by ''W.S.C.'' himself. In Churchill''s Spy Files intelligence expert Nigel West unravels the tales of hitherto unknown spy missions, using this groundbreaking research to paint a fresh picture of the worldwide intelligence scene of the Second World War.

The author of The Kompromat Conspiracy shares the history of MI5, from its beginnings in 1909 to 1945 and its role in the Second World War. MI5 is arguably the most secret and misunderstood of all the British government departments. Its enigmatic title—much more than its proper name, the Security Service—stands in the public mind for the dark world of the secret services. In reality it has a very specific responsibility: counterintelligence. Its purpose is to combat espionage and subversion directed against the UK. Nigel West’s book traces the history of MI5 from its modest beginnings in 1909 until 1945, focusing on the important role it played in World War II. This includes the story of the sixteen enemy agents rounded up in Britain who were either hanged or shot; the manipulation of the Axis espionage networks by the use of “turned” Abwehr agents (the famous Double Cross System) and the all-important check on its success provided by the intercepted German signals decoded at Bletchley; and the various deceptions practiced on the German High Command. Laced with true anecdotes as bizarre and compulsively readable as any John Le Carré novel, this book is the fruit of years of painstaking research. West has traced and interviewed more than a hundred people who figure prominently in the story: German and Soviet agents, counterintelligence officers, and even more than a dozen double agents. In this newly revised edition, Nigel West details the organizational charts which show the structure of the wartime security apparatus, in the most accurate and informative account ever written of MI5 before and during the Second World War.

"Historical dictionary in intelligence series (with index)"--Provided by publisher.

The author of GCHG describes covert missions that “are worthy of spy fiction, but the entire book is utterly fascinating and informative. Brilliant!” (Books Monthly) Written by the renowned expert Nigel West, this book exposes the operations of Britain’s overseas intelligence-gathering organization, the famed Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and traces its origins back to its inception in 1909. In this meticulously researched account, its activities and structure are described in detail, using original secret service documents. The main body of the book concerns MI6’s operations during the Second World War, and includes some remarkable successes and failures, including how MI6 financed a glamorous confidant of the German secret service; how a suspected French traitor was murdered by mistake; how Franco’s military advisors were bribed to keep Spain out of the war; how members of the Swedish secret police were blackmailed into helping the British war effort; how a sabotage operation in neutral Tangiers enabled the Allied landings in North Africa to proceed undetected; and how Britain’s generals ignored the first ULTRA decrypts because MI6 said that the information had come from “a well-placed source called BONIFACE.” In this new edition, operations undertaken by almost all of MI6’s overseas stations are recounted in extraordinary detail. They will fascinate both the professional intelligence officer and the general reader. The book includes organizational charts to illustrate MI6’s internal structure and its wartime network of overseas stations. Backed by numerous interviews with intelligence officers and their agents, this engaging inside story throws light on many wartime incidents that had previously remained unexplained. “[An] extraordinary book.” —The Daily Telegraph “Fascinating reading.” —Firetrench

In the years immediately following World War II, information was disclosed about what has been termed the shadow war of the existence of hitherto secret agencies. In Germany it was the Abwehr and the Sicherheitsdienst; in Britain it was MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Special Operations Executive (SOE); in the United States it was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Special Intelligence Service (SIS) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); in Japan it was the Kempet''ai; and in Italy the Servicio di Informazione Militare (SIM). Sixty years after World War II secrets are still being revealed about the covert activities that took place. Many countries had secret agencies maintaining covert operations, but even ostensibly neutral countries also conducted secret operations. Changes in American, British, and even Soviet official attitudes to declassification in the 1980s allowed thousands of secret documents to be made available for public examination, and the result was extensive revisionism of the conventional histories of the conflict, which previously had excluded references to secret intelligence sources. The Historical Dictionary of World War II Intelligence tells the emerging history of the intelligence world during World War II. This is done through a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the secret agencies, operations, and events. The world of double agents, spies, and moles during WWII is explained in the most comprehensive reference currently available.

Based on documents newly released from KGB archives, this lively account of Soviet foreign intelligence activity in Great Britain during the Cold War provides much new information on the activities of the well-known British pro-Soviet spies as well as many lesser-known spymasters and recruiters. Illustrations.

Once dubbed espionage, the practice of intelligence has never been more important nor more sophisticated than it is today. Its coming-of-age began during World War II, which saw the birth of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in the United States and the XX Committee to supervise the activities of double agents in Great Britain, and during the Cold War, where its rapid technological advances forever changed intelligence-gathering methods. Today, with the growing concern for terrorism, intelligence is more vital than ever and is needed not only by major powers but virtually all countries. In this time of change, it is essential to consider the evolution of intelligence, and how well it is coping at present. That, among other things, is the contribution of the Historical Dictionary of International Intelligence. Author Nigel West''s second contribution to the series includes a list of acronyms, a chronology, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the agencies and agents, the operations and equipment, the tradecraft and jargon, and many of the countries involved. No military reference collection is complete without it.

British Intelligence is the oldest, most experienced organization of its kind in the world, the unseen hand behind so many world events, and glamorized by James Bond. Despite the change in role, from a global power controlling an Empire that covered much of the world, to a mere partner in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union, the country’s famed security and intelligence apparatus continues largely intact, and recognized as “punching above its weight.” Feared by the Soviets, admired and trusted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), British Intelligence has provided the hidden dimension to the conduct of domestic and foreign policy, with the added mystique of Whitehall secrecy, a shroud that for years protected the identities of the shadowy figures who recruited the sources, broke the codes, and caught the spies. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of the British Intelligence covers the history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1,000 cross-referenced entries on specific operations, spies and their handlers, the moles and defectors, top leaders, and main organizations. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the British Intelligence.

As part of the infamous Double Cross operation, Jewish double agent Renato Levi proved to be one of the Allies'' most devastating weapons in World War Two. ln 1941, with the help of Ml6, Levi built an extensive spy-ring in North Africa and the Middle East. But, most remarkably, it was entirely fictitious. This network of imagined informants peddled dangerously false misinformation to Levi''s unwitting German handlers. His efforts would distort any enemy estimates of Allied battle plans for the remainder of the war. His communications were infused with just enough truth to be palatable, and just enough imagination to make them irresistible. ln a vacuum of seemingly trustworthy sources, Levi''s enemies not only believed in the CHEESE network, as it was codenamed, but they came to depend upon it. And, by the war''s conclusion, he could boast of having helped the Allies thwart Rommel in North Africa, as well as diverting whole armies from the D-Day landing sites. He wielded great influence and, as a double agent, he was unrivalled. Until now, Levi''s devilish deceptions and feats of derring-do have remained completely hidden. Using recently declassified fi les, Double Cross in Cairo uncovers the heroic exploits of one of the Second World War''s most closely guarded secrets.

Naval intelligence is one of the most vital, and sometimes decisive, forms of intelligence. Over the centuries, and with particular velocity over recent decades, the techniques of detecting and destroying military (and commercial) shipping have improved, leapfrogging the equally frantic race to keep ahead of them and safeguard the huge investments involved. Today the new challenges range from an increasingly aggressive strategy adopted by Pyongyang''s submarine fleet and the exclusion of illegal immigrants heading for Australia and southern Europe to the capture of cocaine-laded submarines in the Caribbean and the interdiction of Somali pirates off the Gulf of Aden. Any accurate assessment of the comparative threat these activities pose is just as dependent on good intelligence today as it was to Admiral Lord Nelson in the days of sail. The Historical Dictionary of Naval Intelligence relates the long and fascinating history of naval intelligence through a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the organizations, operations, and events that made Naval intelligence what it is today.

The go-to intelligence expert and author of MI6 has “provided the clearest review of GCHQ and its predecessors in a publicly available book” (Firetrench). Signal intelligence is the most secret, and most misunderstood, weapon in the modern espionage arsenal. As a reliable source of information, it is unequalled, which is why Government Communications Headquarters, almost universally known as GCHQ, is several times larger than the two smaller, but more familiar, organizations, MI5 and MI6. Because of its extreme sensitivity, and the ease with which its methods can be compromised, GCHQ’s activities remain cloaked in secrecy. In GCHQ: The Secret Wireless War 1900-1986, the renowned expert Nigel West traces GCHQ’s origins back to the early days of wireless and gives a detailed account of its development since that time. From the moment that Marconi succeeded in transmitting a radio signal across the Channel, Britain has been engaged in a secret wireless war, first against the Kaiser, then Hitler and the Soviet Union. Following painstaking research, Nigel West is able to describe all GCHQ’s disciplines, including direction-finding, interception and traffic analysis, and code-breaking. Also explained is the work of several lesser known units such as the wartime Special Wireless Groups and the top-secret Radio Security Service. Laced with some truly remarkable anecdotes, this edition of this important book will intrigue historians, intelligence professionals and general readers alike. “Nigel West is an acknowledged expert in this field of literature and his latest book is fascinating and intriguing.” —Books Monthly “Rich in the kind of detail from which all students of radio and military history can learn.” —The Spectrum Monitor

Was the former Director-General of the Security Service, Sir Roger Hollis, a traitor? What was the events in the 1960s which led to the self-destructive searches for Soviet ''moles''? Why was it that in more than thirty years only one KGB ''illegal'' was ever found in Enlgand by MI5? Who was the defector whose memory of files in Moscow led to the identification of more than a dozen Russian spies in the West? Meticulous research backed by hundreds of hours of interviews with agents, double agents and case officers has resulted in answers to these questions. The account of Britain''s premier counter-intelligence organization is thoroughly documented with names, dates and places.

WALLFLOWERS is the codename given to one of the Security Service’s most treasured possessions, the daily journal dictated from August 1939 to June 1945 by MI5’s Director of Counter-Espionage, Guy Liddell, to his secretary, Margo Huggins. The document was considered so highly classified that it was retained in the safe of successive Directors-General, and special permission was required to read it. Liddell was one of three brothers who all won the Military Cross during the First World War and subsequently joined MI5. He initially first served in the Metropolitan Police Special Branch at Scotland Yard, dealing primarily with cases of Soviet espionage, until he was transferred to MI5 in 1931. His social connections proved important because in 1940 he employed Anthony Blunt as his personal assistant and became a close friend of both Guy Burgess and Victor Rothschild, and was acquainted with Kim Philby. Despite these links, when Liddell retired from the Security Service in 1952 he was appointed security adviser to the Atomic Energy Commission, an extremely sensitive post following the conviction of the physicist Klaus Fuchs two years earlier. No other member of the Security Service is known to have maintained a diary and the twelve volumes of this journal represents a unique record of the events and personalities of the period, a veritable tour d’horizon of the entire subject. As Director, B Division, Liddell supervised all the major pre-war and wartime espionage investigations, maintained a watch on suspected pro-Nazis and laid the foundations of the famous ‘double cross system’ of enemy double agents. He was unquestionably one of the most reclusive and remarkable men of his generation, and a legend within his own organisation.

Nigel West has studied the recently revealed documents about Soviet espionage against the Western Allies during and after World War II and has for the first time painted the complete picture of how the Soviet Union stole the secrets of the atomic bomb. The investigations by the British, Canadian, and US Military counterintelligence services through the Venona intercepts are placed in proper context and made intelligible by a master espionage history writer. What is revealed is the extent of the penetration by the NKVD and KGB of the most secret technologies of the era and how the West protected itself. A new and revised edition.

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.

In a surprising number of espionage cases sex has played a significant role-often only in the background-possibly as a reason why a particular individual has lived beyond his means and is in desperate need of cash. FBI agent Earl Pitts sold secrets to the Soviets to ease his financial burdens, which came from his habitually heavy use of male and female prostitutes. Yuri Nosenko collaborated with the CIA after having misappropriated KGB funds to entertain expensive women while on official duties in Geneva, and Aleksandr Ogorodnik of the Soviet foreign ministry was persuaded to become a spy by his pregnant Spanish lover, an agent recruited by the CIA. In the realm of human behavior, sex can be the catalyst for risky or reckless conduct. The Historical Dictionary of Sexspionage explores this behavior through a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the secret agencies, operations, and events. From Delilah''s seduction of Samson in 1161 BC to State Department official Donald Keyser''s conviction of passing secrets to Isabelle Cheng, a Taiwanese intelligence officer, in 2007, Nigel West recounts the history of sexspionage.

Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) encompasses the various disciplines of wireless interception, cryptanalysis, communications intelligence, electronic intelligence, direction-finding, and traffic analysis. It has become the basis upon which all combat operations are undertaken. It is now widely recognized as an absolutely vital dimension to modern warfare and it has proved to be a vital component in the counter-intelligence war fought between the West and Soviet bloc intelligence agencies. The Historical Dictionary of Signals Intelligence covers the history of SIGINT through a chronology, an introductory essay, an appendix, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on key personnel, SIGINT technology, intelligence operations, and agencies, as well as the tradecraft and jargon. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Signals Intelligence.