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Big Data, Emerging Technologies and Intelligence: National Security Disrupted (Studies in Intelligence)
By Miah Hammond-Errey. 2024
This book sets out the big data landscape, comprising data abundance, digital connectivity and ubiquitous technology, and shows how the…
big data landscape and the emerging technologies it fuels are impacting national security.This book illustrates that big data is transforming intelligence production as well as changing the national security environment broadly, including what is considered a part of national security as well as the relationships agencies have with the public. The book highlights the impact of big data on intelligence production and national security from the perspective of Australian national security leaders and practitioners, and the research is based on empirical data collection, with insights from nearly 50 participants from within Australia’s National Intelligence Community. It argues that big data is transforming intelligence and national security and shows that the impacts of big data on the knowledge, activities and organisation of intelligence agencies is challenging some foundational intelligence principles, including the distinction between foreign and domestic intelligence collection. Furthermore, the book argues that big data has created emerging threats to national security; for example, it enables invasive targeting and surveillance, drives information warfare as well as social and political interference, and challenges the existing models of harm assessment used in national security. The book maps broad areas of change for intelligence agencies in the national security context and what they mean for intelligence communities, and explores how intelligence agencies look out to the rest of society, considering specific impacts relating to privacy, ethics and trust.This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, technology studies, national security and International Relations.Four Shots in the Night: A True Story of Spies, Murder, and Justice in Northern Ireland
By Henry Hemming. 2024
Four Shots in the Night is the story of a political murder: the killing of an IRA member turned British informant. …
The search for justice for this one man's death—his body found in broad daylight, with tape over his eyes, an undisguised hit—would deliver more than the truth. It exposed his status as an informant and led to protests, campaigns, far-reaching changes to British law, a historic ruling from a senior judicial body, a ground-breaking police investigation, and bitter condemnation from a US Congressional commission. And there have been persistent rumors that one of the country&’s most senior politicians, the Sinn Fein leader Martin McGuinness, might have been personally involved in this particular murder. Relying on archival research, interviews, and the findings of a new complete police investigation, Four Shots in the Night tells a riveting story not just of this murder but of his role in the decades-long conflict that defined him--the Troubles. And the questions it tackles are even larger: how did the Troubles really come to an end? Was it a feat of diplomatic negotiation, as we've been told--or did spies play the decisive role? And how far can, or should, a spy go, for the good of his country? Four Shots in the Night is a page-turner that will make you think.George Washington's Secret Spy War: The Making of America's First Spymaster
By John A. Nagy. 2016
George Washington was America’s first spymaster, and his skill as a spymaster won the war for independence.George Washington’s Secret Spy…
War is the untold story of how George Washington took a disorderly, ill-equipped rabble and defeated the best trained and best equipped army of its day in the Revolutionary War. Author John A. Nagy has become the nation’s leading expert on the subject, discovering hundreds of spies who went behind enemy lines to gather intelligence during the American Revolution, many of whom are completely unknown to most historians. Using George Washington’s diary as the primary source, Nagy tells the story of Washington’s experiences during the French and Indian War and his first steps in the field of espionage. Despite what many believe, Washington did not come to the American Revolution completely unskilled in this area of warfare. Espionage was a skill he honed during the French and Indian war and upon which he heavily depended during the Revolutionary War. He used espionage to level the playing field and then exploited it on to final victory. Filled with thrilling and never-before-told stories from the battlefield and behind enemy lines, this is the story of how Washington out-spied the British. For the first time, readers will discover how espionage played a major part in the American Revolution and why Washington was a master at orchestrating it.Secret Wars: One Hundred Years of British Intelligence Inside MI5 and MI6
By Gordon Thomas. 2009
Gordon Thomas has established himself as a leading expert on the intelligence community. He returns here on the one hundredth…
anniversaries of Britain's Security and Secret Intelligence Services to provide the definitive history of the famed MI5 and MI6.These agencies rank as two of the oldest and most powerful in the world, and Thomas's wide-sweeping history chronicles a century of both triumphs and failures. He recounts the roles that British intelligence played in the Allied victory in World War II; the postwar treachery of Great Britain's own agents; the defection of Soviet agents and the intricate process of "handling" them; the often frigid relationship that both agencies have had with the CIA, European spy services, and the Mossad; the cooperation between the British and Americans in the search for Osama bin Laden; and the ways in which MI5 and MI6 have fought biological warfare espionage and space terrorism.All told, this is the story of two agencies led by men---and women---who are enigmatic, eccentric, and controversial, and who ruthlessly control their spies. Based on prodigious research and interviews with significant players from inside the British intelligence community, this is a rich and even delicious history packed with intrigue and information that only the author could have attained.Four Shots in the Night: A True Story of Stakeknife, Murder and Justice in Northern Ireland
By Henry Hemming. 2024
'A truly page-turning, compulsive and also profoundly moving narrative. Superb.' JAMES HOLLAND'Gripping, urgent, superbly reported and brilliantly written' DAN JONES'A…
gripping and pacey book that reads like a thriller. I found it shocking in a world where I didn't think I could be shocked any more. Henry Hemming wears his extensive research very lightly and manages to shape a great narrative from a complex and dark episode from our recent history. An important and skilfully crafted book.' JOHN O'FARRELLHOW THE DEATH OF A SPY IN THE IRA LED TO ONE OF THE BIGGEST MURDER INVESTIGATIONS IN BRITISH HISTORY. On 26th May 1986, the body of an undercover British agent was found by the side of a muddy lane, with a rope tied around its wrists and tape over each eye. Years later, it was reported that this murder might have been carried out by another undercover British agent, known as 'Stakeknife'. In 2016, a detective began to investigate this case, and would soon find himself running the largest murder investigation in British history.In a compulsive blend of investigative journalism and true crime thriller, Henry Hemming exposes the parallel worlds of the IRA and British intelligence through the lives of those inextricably bound up in both. He reveals the bravery of those who were crucial in ending the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the bloodiest and longest-running conflict in recent British history, and the determination of one detective in his dogged search for justice and the truth.'a compelling story' - The Times'[a] gripping and consistently surprising true-life thriller' - ObserverFour Shots in the Night: A True Story of Stakeknife, Murder and Justice in Northern Ireland
By Henry Hemming. 2024
'A truly page-turning, compulsive and also profoundly moving narrative. Superb.' JAMES HOLLAND'Gripping, urgent, superbly reported and brilliantly written' DAN JONES'A…
gripping and pacey book that reads like a thriller. I found it shocking in a world where I didn't think I could be shocked any more. Henry Hemming wears his extensive research very lightly and manages to shape a great narrative from a complex and dark episode from our recent history. An important and skilfully crafted book.' JOHN O'FARRELLHOW THE DEATH OF A SPY IN THE IRA LED TO ONE OF THE BIGGEST MURDER INVESTIGATIONS IN BRITISH HISTORY. On 26th May 1986, the body of an undercover British agent was found by the side of a muddy lane, with a rope tied around its wrists and tape over each eye. Years later, it was reported that this murder might have been carried out by another undercover British agent, known as 'Stakeknife'. In 2016, a detective began to investigate this case, and would soon find himself running the largest murder investigation in British history.In a compulsive blend of investigative journalism and true crime thriller, Henry Hemming exposes the parallel worlds of the IRA and British intelligence through the lives of those inextricably bound up in both. He reveals the bravery of those who were crucial in ending the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the bloodiest and longest-running conflict in recent British history, and the determination of one detective in his dogged search for justice and the truth.'a compelling story' - The Times'[a] gripping and consistently surprising true-life thriller' - ObserverThe CIA at War: Inside the Secret Campaign Against Terror
By Ronald Kessler. 2003
With the CIA at the core of the war on terror, no agency is as important to preserving America's freedom.…
Yet the CIA is a closed and secretive world-impenetrable to generations of journalists-and few Americans know what really goes on among the spy masters who plot America's worldwide campaign against terrorists.Only Ronald Kessler, an award-winning former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, could have gained the unprecedented access to tell the story. Kessler interviewed fifty current CIA officers, including all the agency's top officials, and toured areas of the CIA the media has never seen. The agency actively encouraged retired CIA officers and officials to talk with him as well. In six years as director, George J. Tenet has never appeared on TV shows and has given only a handful of print interviews, all before 9/11, but Tenet agreed to be interviewed by Kessler for this book. He spoke candidly and passionately about the events of 9/11, the war on terror, the agency's intelligence on Iraq, and the controversies surrounding the agency.The CIA at War tells the inside story of how Tenet, a son of Greek immigrants, turned around the CIA from a pathetic, risk averse outfit to one that has rolled up 3,000 terrorists since 9/11, was critically important to winning in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now kills terrorists with its Predator drone aircraft.The book portrays Tenet as a true American hero, one who overcame every kind of Washington obstacle and the destructive actions of previous director John Deutch to make the agency a success. As Tenet said in a recent speech, "Nowhere in the world could the son of an immigrant stand before you as the director of Central Intelligence. This is simply the greatest country on the face of the earth."The CIA at War discloses highly sensitive information about the CIA's unorthodox methods and its stunning successes and shocking failures. The book explores whether the CIA can be trusted, whether its intelligence is politicized, and whether it is capable of winning the war on terror. In doing so, the book weaves in the history of the CIA and how it really works. It is the definitive account of the agency.From the CIA's intelligence failure of 9/11 to its critical role in preventing further attacks, The CIA at War tells a riveting, unique story about a secretive, powerful agency and its confrontation with global terrorism.Near and Distant Neighbors: A New History of Soviet Intelligence
By Jonathan Haslam. 2015
A revelatory and pathbreaking account of the highly secretive world of the Soviet intelligence services A uniquely comprehensive and rich…
account of the Soviet intelligence services, Jonathan Haslam's Near and Distant Neighbors charts the labyrinthine story of Soviet intelligence from the October Revolution to the end of the Cold War. Previous histories have focused on the KGB, leaving military intelligence and the special service—which specialized in codes and ciphers—lurking in the shadows. Drawing on previously neglected Russian sources, Haslam reveals how both were in fact crucial to the survival of the Soviet state. This was especially true after Stalin's death in 1953, as the Cold War heated up and dedicated Communist agents the regime had relied upon—Klaus Fuchs, the Rosenbergs, Donald Maclean—were betrayed. In the wake of these failures, Khrushchev and his successors discarded ideological recruitment in favor of blackmail and bribery. The tactical turn was so successful that we can draw only one conclusion: the West ultimately triumphed despite, not because of, the espionage war. In bringing to light the obscure inhabitants of an undercover intelligence world, Haslam offers a surprising and unprecedented portrayal of Soviet success that is not only fascinating but also essential to understanding Vladimir Putin's power today.Negative Intelligence: The Army and the American Left, 1917-1941
By Roy Talbert Jr.. 1991
During World War I, in the period of the Red Scare, and throughout the Great Depression, the army's domestic spy…
agency mounted an extensive surveillance campaign focused on civilians and groups deemed subversive. Negative Intelligence traces the fascinating and astonishing story of military espionage on the home front. Created by Major General Ralph H. Van Deman in 1917, the Negative Branch of Military, or MI, spied on American reformers in a program of civilian surveillance that surpassed even that of the Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation. Among the targets were the Industrial Workers of the World, the American Civil Liberties Union, and “Negro Subversion.” Documentation of MI's program of domestic espionage is from recently opened Military Intelligence archives. Closely allied with private vigilante groups, the Army conducted illegal raids, made illegal arrests, subjected many citizens to interrogation, and developed an elaborate filing system for its dossiers. After World War I the hysteria continued, with MI's direct focus beamed upon a new enemy, the Bolsheviki. Although MI's abuses have been overshadowed by those of the Department of Justice, army espionage was in many ways more aggressive than its civilian counterpart. Negative Intelligence documents these abuses and shows how until 1921 the attempts to restrain MI's work failed. After this time, with limited staff and funding MI could do no more than maintain close liaison with private super-patriotic groups. However, the coming of the Great Depression fired up the rebirth of the army's civilian espionage programs. Then as World War II approached, internal security once again became a national policy, and J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation moved his powerful network into the supreme position of domestic spying.Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss
By Philip Carlo. 2008
The boss of New York's infamous Lucchese crime family, Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso's life in the Mafia was preordained from birth.…
His rare talent for "earning"—concocting ingenious schemes to hijack trucks, rob banks, and bring vast quantities of drugs into New York—fueled his unstoppable rise up the ladder of organized crime. A mafioso responsible for at least fifty murders, Casso lived large, with a beautiful wife and money to burn. When the law finally caught up with him in 1994, Casso became the thing he hated most—an informer.From his blood feud with John Gotti to his dealings with the "Mafia cops," decorated NYPD officers Lou Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, to the Windows case, which marked the beginning of the end for the New York Mob, Gaspipe is Anthony Casso's shocking story—a roller-coaster ride into an exclusive netherworld that reveals the true inner workings of the Mafia, from its inception to the present time.The Ethics of National Security Intelligence Institutions: Theory and Applications (Studies in Intelligence)
By Adam Henschke, Seumas Miller, Andrew Alexandra, Patrick F. Walsh, Roger Bradbury. 2024
This book explores the ethics of national security intelligence institutions operating in contemporary liberal democracies.Intelligence collection by agencies such as…
the CIA, MI6, and Mossad involves practices that are apparently inconsistent with the principles of ordinary morality – practices such as lying, spying, manipulation, and covert action. However, in the defence of national security, such practices may not only be morally permissible, but may also under some circumstances be morally obligatory. One approach to the ethics of national security intelligence activity has been to draw from the just war tradition (so-called ‘just intelligence theory’). This book identifies significant limitations of this approach and offers a new, institutionally based, teleological normative framework. In doing so, it revises some familiar principles designed for application to kinetic wars, such as necessity and proportionality, and invokes some additional ones, such as reciprocity and trust. It goes on to explore the applications of this framework and a revised set of principles for national security intelligence institutions and practices in contemporary and emerging political and technological settings.This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, ethics, security studies and International Relations.Dimensions of Counter-insurgency: Applying Experience to Practice
By Tim Benbow and Rod Thornton. 2008
The once-neglected study of counter-insurgency operations has recently emerged as an area of central concern for Western governments and their…
military organizations. While counter-insurgency represents a hugely challenging form of contemporary warfare, there exists a considerable body of experience that offers assistance in the form of examples ofThe Last Cambridge Spy: John Cairncross, Bletchley Park Mole and Soviet Agent
By Chris Smith. 2019
‘A riveting read.’ – Professor Richard Aldrich‘The Last Cambridge Spy is not just a fascinating, well-paced book about an interesting…
individual, but it also invites us to re-appraise the very idea of the “Cambridge spy ring”.’ – Sir Dermot TuringJohn Cairncross was among the most damaging spies of the twentieth century. A member of the infamous Cambridge Ring of Five, he leaked highly sensitive documents from Bletchley Park, MI6 and the Treasury to the Soviet Union – including the first atomic secrets and raw decrypts from Enigma and Tunny that influenced the outcome of the Battle of Kursk in 1943.In 2014, Cairncross appeared as a secondary, though key, character in the biopic of Alan Turing’s life, The Imitation Game. While the other members of the Cambridge Ring of Five have been the subject of extensive biographical study, Cairncross has largely been overlooked by both academic and popular writers. Despite clear interest, he has remained a mystery – until now.The Last Cambridge Spy is the first ever biography of John Cairncross, using recently released material to tell the story of his life and espionage.The Spy Beside the Sea: The Extraordinary Wartime Story of Dorothy O'Grady
By Adrian Searle. 2012
Dorothy O’Grady is uniquely placed in the annals of espionage. She was the first Briton condemned to death under the…
Treachery Act of 1940 after she was frequently spotted on the outskirts of Sandown (a prohibited area on the Isle of Wight), insisting time and again that her dog had strayed. Had her appeal not saved her from the gallows, she would have been the only woman of any nationality to suffer death under the Act during the Second World War – indeed, the only woman to be executed in Britain for spying in the 20th century. Yet the full story of her extraordinary brush with notoriety and its enduring legacy has never been told, despite the fact that it has more than once dominated the front pages of the British press and inspired both a BBC radio drama and a novel. Now, with the benefit of access to previously classified documents, the truth underpinning the O’Grady legend can finally be revealed. Following her appeal she served nine years in prison for her wartime crimes – but was she really a spy in the employ of Germany? Or was O'Grady, as she insisted years later, a self-seeking tease who committed her apparent treachery ‘for a giggle’? Or was there some other motivation which drove her to wartime infamy in a case which reverberated around the world? In The Spy Beside the Sea, author and journalist Adrian Searle examines all the evidence to reach a disturbing conclusion.Before Bletchley Park: The Codebreakers of the First World War
By Paul Gannon. 2022
The story of Bletchley Park’s codebreaking operations in the Second World War is now well known, but its counterparts in…
the First World War – Room 40 & MI1(b) – remain in the shadows, despite their involvement in and influence on most of the major events of that war. From the First Battle of the Marne, the shelling of Scarborough, the battles of Jutland and the Somme in 1916, to the battles on the Western Front in 1918, the German naval mutiny and the Zimmermann Telegram, this cast of characters – several of them as eccentric as anyone from Bletchley Park in the Second World War – secretly guided the outcome of the ‘Great War’ from the confines of a few smoke-filled rooms.Using hundreds of intercepted and decrypted German military, naval and diplomatic messages, bestselling author Paul Gannon reveals the fascinating story of British codebreaking operations. By drawing on many newly discovered archival documents that challenge misleading stories about Room 40 & MI1(b), he reveals a sophisticated machine in operation.Codeword Overlord: Axis Espionage and the D-Day Landings
By Nigel West. 2022
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.The dramatic story of how the superpowers collected secrets and used intelligence to build an advantage during the Cold War,…
the longest and most dangerous confrontation of the twentieth century.The Cold War, which lasted from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, was fought mostly in the shadows, with the superpowers maneuvering for strategic advantage in an anticipated global armed confrontation that thankfully never happened. How did the intelligence organizations of the major world powers go about their work? What advantages were they looking for? Did they succeed? By examining some of the famous, infamous, or lesser-known intelligence operations from both sides of the Iron Curtain, this book explains how the superpowers went about gathering intelligence on each other, examines the type of information they were looking for, what they did with it, and how it enabled them to stay one step ahead of the opposition. Possession of these secrets threatened a Third World War, but also helped keep the peace for more than four decades. With access to previously unreleased material, the author explores how the intelligence organizations, both civilian and military, took advantage of rapid developments in technology, and how they adapted to the changing threat. The book describes the epic scale of some of these operations, the surprising connections between them, and how they contributed to a complex multi-layered intelligence jigsaw which drove decision making at the highest level. On top of all the tradecraft, gadgets and ‘cloak and dagger’, the book also looks at the human side of espionage: their ideologies and motivations, the winners and losers, and the immense courage and frequent betrayal of those whose lives were touched by the Secrets of the Cold War.In True Face: A Woman's Life in the CIA, Unmasked
By Jonna Mendez. 2024
The bestselling coauthor of The Moscow Rules and Argo tells her riveting, courageous story of being a female spy at…
the height of the Cold War Jonna Hiestand Mendez began her CIA career as a &“contract wife&” performing secretarial duties for the CIA as a convenience to her husband, a young officer stationed in Europe. She needed his permission to open a bank account or shut off the gas to their apartment. Yet Mendez had a talent for espionage, too, and she soon took on bigger and more significant roles at the Agency. She parlayed her interest in photography into an operational role overseas, an unlikely area for a woman in the CIA. Often underestimated, occasionally undermined, she lived under cover and served tours of duty all over the globe, rising first to become an international spy and ultimately to Chief of Disguise at CIA&’s Office of Technical Service.In True Face recounts not only the drama of Mendez&’s high-stakes work—how this savvy operator parlayed her &“everywoman&” appeal into incredible subterfuge—but also the grit and good fortune it took for her to navigate a misogynistic world. This is the story of an incredible spy career and what it took to achieve it.But I Trusted You: And Other True Cases (Ann Rule's Crime Files #14)
By Ann Rule. 2009
In this chilling volume of New York Times bestselling author Ann Rule&’s Crime Files, discover unforgettable cases of a spouse,…
lover, family member or helpful stranger who is totally trusted—until it&’s too late.Whether driven to extreme violence by greed or jealousy, passion or rage, the calculating sociopaths in this true crime collection targeted those closest to them—unwitting victims whose last disbelieving words could well have been &“but I trusted you....&”Headlining this page-turning anthology is the case of middle-school counselor Chuck Leonard, found shot to death outside his Washington State home on an icy February morning. A complicated mix of family man and wild man, Chuck played hard and loved many...but who crossed the line by murdering him in cold blood? And why? The revelation is as stunning as the shattering crime itself, powerfully illuminating how those we think we know can ingeniously hide their destructive and homicidal designs.Along with other shocking cases, immaculately detailed and sharply analyzed by America&’s #1 true crime writer, this fourteenth Crime Files volume is essential reading for getting inside the mind of the hidden killers among us.Inside British Intelligence: 100 Years of MI5 and MI6
By Gordon Thomas. 2013
“Rollicking, readable new history of Britain’s famous spy organization.” —Los Angeles TimesA complete and up-to-date account of the two oldest…
and still the most powerful, secretive intelligence services in the world: MI5, the security service, and MI6, the secret intelligence service, which have been in existence for over a century. This is a story of spectacular triumphs, treachery, their frigid relationship, their untold work with the CIA, Mossad and the spy services of Europe, and their part in the fight against terror. It is also the story of two agencies led by men who are enigmatic, eccentric and controversial and who ruthlessly control their spies. From the unique partnership between Mossad and MI6, how MI5 and MI6 became a breeding ground for Soviet spies post-war, their exploitation of the collapse of the Soviet Union and their role in biological warfare, and including how both services monitor the spies of every nation based in London, it reads like fiction. But it’s not.Based on prodigious research and interviews with significant players Inside British Intelligence is packed with new and startling information.“An irresistible picture of an age of global terrorism, drug trafficking and economic warfare.” —Sunday Telegraph“ . . . a fascinating cast of moles and double agents, whistle-blowers and politicians. For the ambience of the closed world that inspired James Bond and George Smiley, this book is a winner.” —Publishers Weekly“A well-written page-turner.” —Kirkus Reviews“Thomas brings to the agencies histories a high level of expertise, a fluent style, accessible to lay reader and expert alike.” —Booklist