The New Spymasters
The New Spymasters

Author: Stephen Grey

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2015-07-14

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0312379226

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The old world of spying that emphasized the human factor--dead letter boxes, microfilm cameras, and an enemy reporting to the Moscow Center--is history. Or is it? In recent times, the spymaster's technique has changed with the enemy. He or she now frequently comes from a culture far removed from Western understanding and is part of a less well-organized group. The new enemy is constantly evolving and prepared to kill the innocent. In the face of this new threat, the spymasters of the world replaced human intelligence with an obsession that focuses on the technical methods of spying, ranging from the use of high-definition satellite photography to the global interception of communications. However, this obsession with technology has failed, most spectacularly, with the devastation of the 9/11 attacks. In this modern history of espionage, Stephen Grey takes us from the CIA's Cold War legends, to the agents who betrayed the IRA, through to the spooks inside Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Techniques and technologies have evolved, but the old motivations for betrayal--patriotism, greed, revenge, compromise--endure. Based on years of research and interviews with hundreds of secret sources, this is an up-to-date exposé that shows how spycraft's human factor is once again being used to combat the world's deadliest enemies.--Adapted from book jacket.

The Spy and the Traitor
The Spy and the Traitor

Author: Ben Macintyre

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2018-09-18

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1101904208

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War. “The best true spy story I have ever read.”—JOHN LE CARRÉ Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist • Shortlisted for the Bailie Giffords Prize in Nonfiction If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States's nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky's name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain's obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets. Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky's nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre's latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man's hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.

MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations, 1909–1945
MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations, 1909–1945

Author: Nigel West

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2020-01-19

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1526755750

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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

Queen of Spies
Queen of Spies

Author: Paddy Hayes

Publisher: Abrams

Published: 2016-01-19

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 1468313258

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This “fascinating and long overdue” biography reveals the remarkable life of a Baroness who was one of Britain’s most celebrated spies (Washington Post). From living in a shack in Tanzania to becoming Baroness Park of Monmouth, Daphne Park led a most unusual life—one that consisted of a lifelong love affair with the world of Britain’s secret services. In the 1970s, she was appointed to Secret Intelligence Service’s most senior operational rank as one of its seven Area Controllers. In Queen of Spies, Paddy Hayes recounts the evolution of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) from World War II to the Cold War through the eyes of Daphne Park, one of its outstanding and most unusual operatives. It is a fascinating and intimate narrative of how the modern SIS went about its business whether in Moscow, Hanoi, or the Congo, and shows how Park was able to rise through the ranks of a field that had been comprised almost entirely of men. Queen of Spies captures all the paranoia, isolation, and deception of Cold War intelligence work, and combines it with the personal story of one extraordinary woman trying to navigate this secretive world. It is “as exciting as any good spy thriller—but it’s all true” (Kirkus, starred review).

Double Cross
Double Cross

Author: Ben Macintyre

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 1408830620

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The number one bestselling author of Agent Zigzag and Operation Mincemeat exposes the true story of the D Day Spies.

House of Spies
House of Spies

Author: Peter Matthews

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780750984164

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

St Ermin's Hotel has been at the centre of British intelligence since the 1930s, when it was known to MI6 as 'The Works Canteen'. Intelligence officers such as Ian Fleming and Noel Coward were to be found in the hotel's Caxton Bar, along with other less well-known names. Winston Churchill allegedly conceived the idea of the Special Operations Executive there over a glass (or two) of his favourite champagne in the early days of the Second World War, and the operation was started up in three gloomy rooms on the hotel's second floor, with the traitorous Cambridge Spies among its founders. When Stalin's Russia turned to a peacetime enemy in the Cold War that followed, Kim Philby and Guy Burgess handed over intelligence to their Russian counterparts in the dark corners of the hotel, while MI6 man George Blake operated as a Soviet double agent just across the road in Artillery Mansions. Meanwhile, St Ermin's proximity to government offices ensured its continued use by both domestic and foreign secret agents. In this paperback edition of the first book on St Ermin's, Peter Matthews, a witness to the intelligence battle for supremacy between MI5, MI6 and the KGB, explores this remarkable true history that is more riveting than any spy novel.

Disrupt and Deny
Disrupt and Deny

Author: Rory Cormac

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-05-10

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 0191087521

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

The Nuclear Spies
The Nuclear Spies

Author: Vince Houghton

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-09-15

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1501739603

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi 's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong? Houghton's delightful retelling of this fascinating case of American spy ineffectiveness in the then new field of scientific intelligence provides us with a new look at the early years of the Cold War. During that time, scientific intelligence quickly grew to become a significant portion of the CIA budget as it struggled to contend with the incredible advance in weapons and other scientific discoveries immediately after World War II. As The Nuclear Spies shows, the abilities of the Soviet Union's scientists, its research facilities and laboratories, and its educational system became a key consideration for the CIA in assessing the threat level of its most potent foe. Sadly, for the CIA scientific intelligence was extremely difficult to do well. For when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949, no one in the American intelligence services saw it coming.

Ashenden
Ashenden

Author: W. Somerset Maugham

Publisher: Standard Ebooks

Published: 2023-01-01T20:46:22Z

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

During World War I W. Somerset Maugham, already by then an established playwright and author, was recruited to be a British intelligence agent. These stories reflect his wartime experiences in intelligence gathering. Though fictionalized, they managed to retain enough authentic elements for Winston Churchill to advise Maugham that their publication might be a violation of the Official Secrets Act, resulting in the author burning an additional 14 stories. Set in various locales across the continent, these remaining Ashenden stories are a precursor to the jet-setting spy novels of the 1950s and 1960s. Maugham is known as a master short story writer and these stories are no exception, combining wit and realism to create memorable characters in a unique and highly critical portrait of wartime espionage. Initially released to a mixed reception—with an early review by D. H. Lawrence being especially scathing—Ashenden has since been credited as an inspiration for numerous authors, including John Le Carré, Graham Greene, and Raymond Chandler. The latter in particular was especially impressed, writing in 1950, “There are no other great spy stories—none at all. I have been searching and I know.” This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

MI6
MI6

Author: Keith Jeffery

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2010-09-21

Total Pages: 834

ISBN-13: 0747591830

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first - and only - history of the Secret Intelligence Service, written with full and unrestricted access to the closed archives of the Service for the period 1909-1949.