ON INTELLIGENCE

Sub-titled 'The History of Espionage and the Secret World', Colonel John Hughes-Wilson charts the history of intelligence from its biblical origins to the onset of the surveillance state in the digital age, and lifts the veil of secrecy of this clandestine and murky world. He examines the dangerous uncertainties of spies and human intelligence, how the Cold War became an electronic intelligence war, the technical revolution that began with the first use of reconnaissance photography in WW1, and during the Cuban Missile Crisis, how signals intelligence gave America one of its greatest victories, how Wikileaks really happened, and whether 9/11 could have been avoided if America?s post-Cold War intelligence agencies had adapted to the new world of international terrorism. An impressive dossier of little-known informers, renegades and rogues who have caused unknown trouble to their respective governments, the author, one of Britain's leading commentators and contemporary military historians, writes with passion and authority. Chapters also touch on Cambridge's famous five, satellites, Vietnam and the Tet Offensive, Yom Kippur, Barbarossa and Stalin, the USS Pueblo and more. 510pp, paperback with diagrams.