The
story of political/ military intelligence and counterintelligence is as old as
Moses’ spies and as new as the famous 300-pound hacker siting on his bed and
disrupting our election. Numerous interesting examples of both are exhaustively collected in “The Secret
World, A History of Intelligence” by Christopher Andrew, best-selling author of "The Sword and the Shield." In this core book the author recounts many
well -known and many lesser known examples of effective and ineffective spy and
counterspy efforts. Uniquely, perhaps,
it also examines the actual fate of important discoveries on events and leads
us to some important conclusions about the actual impact of such discoveries. Impacts
may be beneficial to the clients who receive intelligence, such
as the ULTRA intercept program in World War II, or damaging, such as paranoid refusal of Stalin to believe
the reports of his best agents, and the impact of “blowback” by undue fear of
misdirection. The information to be studied is a different perspective on
history and the SD/G will reach its own conclusions about the efficacy of such
data in the hands of all too human clients. It will sometimes be necessary to augment the
materials with more detail about the political and military circumstances of
the period.
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1 |
Introduction and Spies of the Bible and Ancient Egypt, Greece
and Rome, Overtaken by China and
Islamic intelligence. . |
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2 |
Inquisitions, Renaissance Venice and Western Intelligence; |
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3 |
Ivan the Terrible and Russian State Intelligence; Elizabeth, Walsingham and rise of English
Intelligence. |
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4 |
The Stuarts and the Spaniards and the rise of the French Cabinet
Noir. |
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5 |
The Sun King, and Codebreakers and spies from the Hanoverian
Succession to the Seven Years War. |
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6 |
Intelligence and American Independence, the French Revolution
and Revolutionary wars; |
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7 |
The Napoleonic Wars; |
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8 |
Intelligence and Counter Revolution , from Cong of Vienna to
1848 Revolution; 1848 to death of Karl Marx |
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9 |
The Telegraph, Mid Century Wars and the Great Game; Golden Age
of Assassination, Revolutionaries, the Black Hand |
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10 |
The Great Powers and Foreign Intelligence; Coming of the First
World War |
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11 |
The First World War |
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12 |
SIGINT and HUMINT
between wars |
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13 |
The Big Three and WWII
Intelligence; Victory of Grand Alliance |
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14 |
The Cold War and the
Intelligence superpowers to 9/11 and thereafter |