German Intelligence History: A Field in Search of Scholars

German historians have so far shown little interest in the history of intelligence services and in the role the craft of intelligence played in national and international politics. The sole exception is found in the historical writings on East Germany between 1945 and 1990, where the Ministry for State Security - or Stasi - has become the subject of dozens of highly valuable studies. This neglect cannot be explained simply by pointing to the difficulties in getting access to relevant source materials. A more plausible explanation is found in the reluctance on the part of most German intellectuals to study the broader questions of war and peace in international politics. Military history has been marginalised in post-1945 German universities. The same is largely true of international security studies, defence studies, studies of insurgency, terrorism and various related subjects. Peace and conflict studies, a discipline established sometime in the 1970s, has mostly avoided both war or intelligence. The deeper reasons for this neglect lie both in Germany's psychological atmosphere and in academic politics. Spy novels and spy movies are as popular in Germany as anywhere but their heroes almost never are Germans. Even those German intelligence officers and spies who worked against Hitler and might therefore be regarded as heroes are barely known in present-day Germany. Those few scholars who are now trying to build up the field of intelligence studies get little help from their government or from private funders. While East Germany publicly revered communist spies like Richard Sorge and Klaus Fuchs, the West German Bundesnachrichtendienst did and does nothing to publicise its achievements.     

The CIA’s mole in the Viet Cong: learning from a rare success

ABSTRACT

What does it take to cultivate spies inside an adversary’s forces? I assess efforts by the United States and South Vietnam to penetrate the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. I offer the first extended account of the United States’ most successful intelligence penetration of the conflict. After initial recruitment by South Vietnam, a mid-level Viet Cong cadre spied for the CIA from 1969 until the end of the war. U.S. experience in this episode and others in Vietnam points up a challenge. Local allies offer expertise in identifying potential informants. But prospective spies view U.S. intelligence as more trustworthy and legitimate than local agencies with dubious operational security.     

Soviet Espionage in Israel, 1973–1991

In June 1967, the Soviet Union abruptly cut off diplomatic relations with Israel and withdrew its embassy staff from Tel-Aviv, including its large KGB Rezidentura. To develop new sources of intelligence in Israel, the KGB recruited under duress hundreds of Russian Jews to spy in Israel in return for allowing their families to leave the Soviet Union. Most of these ‘recruits’ abandoned their task once they reached Israel, leaving Soviet intelligence with only a small number of agents in Israel who were handled by KGB illegal case officers working out of Russian churches. These agents were able to make careers in Israel and obtain some access to confidential military information, but generally failed to reach Israel's inner circle of political and military decision makers. This inner circle was only breached in 1983 by the treachery of a highly placed former Mossad officer who offered his services to the Soviets and became the KGB's best source for secret information deep inside the Israeli government.     

The Viennese Connection: Engelbert Broda,Alan Nunn May and Atomic Espionage

Recently declassified materials have revealed the existence of a previously unknown network of Austrian communists in pre-war England. The group of young well-educated Viennese used unsuspecting social contacts and marriages of convenience to establish itself. Analysis of this network reveals some previously overlooked similarities between the ‘Cambridge’ spies Kim Philby and Alan Nunn May, as well as the emergence of a new nuclear spy, Engelbert Broda. Their wartime espionage as individuals took place at a time when non-communist British scientists were promoting the international sharing of atomic knowledge through unofficial channels. The newly released files reflect a characteristic preference of the British secret services for intelligence gathering rather than intervention and illustrate how vital leads follow from apparently trivial observations.     

The perils of multinational intelligence coalitions: Britain,America and the origins of Pakistan’s ISI

This article examines how Great Britain helped create Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) with two goals: (1) establishing a Pakistani branch of a Commonwealth intelligence network; (2) ensuring information security within that network. Ultimately, this endeavor failed because of perceived deficiencies in Pakistan’s security institutions and Britain’s inability to address Pakistan’s security needs. By the mid-1950s ISI forged close ties with the United States which offered more and with fewer political strings attached. This article offers new insights on intelligence alliance formation during the cold war. It also provides a useful case study in the weaknesses of multilateral intelligence coalitions.     

The spy who never was: An intelligence myth in Palestine, 1914–18

Myths, like old soldiers, refuse to die, let alone myths about spies. The adventures of the daring German super‐spy, Fritz Frank (1873–1968), who operated behind British lines in Sinai and Palestine during World War I, disguised as a British officer, have fired the imagination of contemporaries as well as historians and scholars to date. This article shows that while Frank himself was a real, flesh and blood figure, the deeds attributed to him were almost entirely imaginary.     

Operation Sussex: your worst enemy is your ally

Operation Sussex was an intelligence operation undertaken by the Allies in occupied France shortly before the Normandy invasion. English and American officers trained French agents to parachute into France, spy on German military movements, and send information back to London via radio. The Germans exposed a number of the Allied agents; nonetheless, the operation proved a major success. The key threat to Sussex came not from the Nazis, but from bureaucratic conflicts among the Allies. Despite the operation’s significance, the scholarly literature on it remains sparse. The foundation of this paper rests upon little used documents from various collections.     

The Munsinger affair: Images of espionage and security in 1960s Canada

Using the Gerda Munsinger affair of 1966, this article explores Canadian attitudes in the 1960s concerning the nature of security threats to Canada, the proper role of government in protecting Canadian security, and espionage and spies generally. Initial findings suggest that the RCMP was out of step with much of the Canadian public in determining what constituted a legitimate security threat and that, regardless of how Munsinger herself was variously assessed as a security risk by the actors in the public inquiry or by outside observers, there clearly existed a widely shared perception of the ‘typical profile’ of the female spy which was likely heavily influenced by contemporary popular culture.     

The Church Committee Investigation of 1975 and the Evolution of Modern Intelligence Accountability

Since 1975, lawmakers have displayed four responses to the call for greater intelligence accountability on Capitol Hill. Some have taken the approach of ‘ostriches’, content to bury their heads in the sand and continue the earlier era of trust when members of Congress deferred to the decisions of the executive branch within the domains of intelligence. Others – indeed, a majority – have chosen to become unalloyed boosters for intelligence –‘ cheerleaders’ who view their job primarily as one of explaining the value of intelligence to the American people and supporting intelligence missions with robust funding and encouragement. Taking the opposite approach, another set of lawmakers – the ‘lemon-suckers’ – have consistently found fault with America's attempts to spy on adversaries or overthrow regimes that fail to accommodate US interests. Finally, some lawmakers have been ‘guardians’, striking a balance between serving as partners of the intelligence agencies on Capitol Hill and, through a persistent examination of budgets and operations, demanding competence and law-abiding behavior from these agencies. The guardian model fits best into the framework of democratic theory.     

Note on Teaching Intelligence

Over the last decade, intelligence has become one of the most widely taught subjects in higher education. In response to this, a sub-discipline has emerged within Intelligence Studies devoted to thinking about how the subject is actually taught. One of the most common arguments to come out of this literature is that there should be more practitioner involvement in the university teaching of intelligence. However, it is rarely specified what exactly intelligence professionals bring to the classroom, save the largely self-evident point that because they have ‘walked the walk’, they are uniquely qualified to teach the subject. Drawing on student questionnaires, as well as interviews with serving and retired intelligence officers, this article attempts to probe a little deeper and identify the specific benefits of incorporating practitioners into the university teaching of intelligence. It is argued that practitioners ‘put a face on the profession’ and help to remove some of the mystique and misperceptions that surround intelligence work. It is claimed that practitioners, especially with their ‘inside stories’, give added meaning to academic theories and make the subject more exciting. Finally, it is argued that practitioners enrich the broader ‘student experience’. In UK higher education, now under a new fees regime, students are looking for departments to go the extra mile not only in terms of their teaching, but also in areas like careers advice and support. In this context, intelligence professionals are enormously valuable.     

Spies and scholars in the United States: winds of ambivalence in the groves of academe

Spies and scholars in the United States have had a close, largely hidden, relationship. Both professions are in the business of information acquisition. Spies, though, work for the government, while the allegiance of most scholars is to independent research and teaching. Moreover, spy organizations view students as potential hires; in contrast, scholars are likely to see students as young charges placed in their hands to educate and prepare for lives of consequence. One school of thought argues that, since spies and scholars are both citizens, they should work together in partnership: sharing knowledge to improve the intelligence product, training and recruiting students, warning of radical activities on campus. A second school counters that the university is meant to be a pure and open place, dedicated to unbiased learning and free of government ties – especially entanglements with secret agencies. Campuses can find themselves torn between the two schools, caught up in a swirl of practical and moral issues that lead to a sense of ambivalence about the proper relationship between the academy and a nation’s secret services.     

Unknown Agabekov

The decision to declassify selected historical documents from the archives of the Security Service in 1997 has been a boon to academic historians of intelligence. The declassified files reveal the successes and failures of the Security Service in fulfilling its statutory function of defending the realm. Yet the activity of Soviet spies continues to be one of the most challenging topics in intelligence history. The role of Soviet defectors in transforming the Security Service's understanding of the nature and extent of Soviet intelligence operations, meanwhile, remains largely understudied. In the case of Agabekov, for example, the reaction of SIS or MI5 to his ‘disappearance’ in the spring of 1938 has long been neglected. It is possible that there was no reaction at all, because both services had long-since written off Agabekov as a source. This helps explain why Agabekov's case has been ignored in the relevant literature in both Russia and the West.     

The Wennerström spy case: A Western perspective

Few spy cases during the Cold War have such an international flavour as the Wennerström spy case – a neutral Swedish attaché spying on the West for the benefit of the East. Even 40 years later, however, the literature available on the case suffers from a Swedish bias and has generally received little scholarly treatment. Therefore, this article aims to describe and analyse the Wennerström spy case from a Western perspective, based on new declassified sources as well as the most recent research available in Swedish. Among other things, the article demonstrates that the investigation after Wennerström's arrest took place in close cooperation with primarily American and British intelligence services, that Wennerström's allegation of being a double agent was either false or greatly exaggerated, and, finally, that the damage done to Western interests due to his espionage was greater than portrayed in the existing literature.     

British Intelligence in the Middle East, 1898–1906

This article examines British intelligence efforts in Turkish Arabia at the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that intelligence collection was really three separate efforts, carried out by the War Office, the Foreign Office, and the Government of India, and it reflected concerns about British decline, the problems experienced during the Boer War, as well as an effort to penetrate the ‘information order’ of India's sub-empire. Although intelligence efforts suffered from bureaucratic disharmony in Whitehall, and between London and the Government of India, valuable contributions were nevertheless made to Britain's knowledge of Turkish Arabia.     

Professionalizing clandestine military intelligence in Northern Ireland: creating the Special Reconnaissance Unit

This article explains the origins of the British Army’s covert counter-insurgency intelligence efforts in Northern Ireland, and shows how the army professionalized its approach to clandestine intelligence collection there. It traces the pre-1969 precedents for covert collection. It also shows that the early ad hoc efforts proved insufficient and problematic; some collection operations were exposed and compromised. Thus, the army decided to ‘professionalize’ the clandestine collection of intelligence, and created a special body–the Special Reconnaissance Unit–to handle the task. This laid the foundations for later intelligence successes and for current army intelligence doctrine.     

A Higher Form of Intelligence: Hugh Trevor-Roper and Wartime British Secret Service

Throughout his distinguished career, the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper was known in many incarnations and guises: the ‘sleuth of Oxford’; Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford; the Spectator's Mercurius Oxoniensis; Baron Dacre of Glanton; and Master of Peterhouse College. In addition, he was to gain wider notoriety in the early 1980s as the man who helped authenticate the forged Hitler Diaries. Nevertheless, his wartime embodiment as a British intelligence officer is one facet of his personal history that has never before been addressed by scholars in any great depth. Using previously unpublished material from Trevor-Roper's memoirs and personal papers, as well as excerpts from the Guy Liddell Diaries, this article aims to highlight the fact that, contrary to the impression engendered by F.H. Hinsley's dry and depersonalized multi-volume official history, British Intelligence in the Second World War, Major H.R. Trevor-Roper, and many other intelligence officers like him, not only had a ‘good war’, but a rich and colourful one. If historians are to escape the late Sir Maurice Oldfield's indictment of that official history, namely, that it was written ‘by a committee, about committees, for a committee’, they might do worse than begin to reappraise the role of the individual in the context of Britain's intelligence effort during 1939–45. The late Lord Dacre, so this article argues, is one such individual requiring further study.     

The Cyber Pearl Harbor redux: helpful analogy or cyber hype?

This article defends the utility of employing the Pearl Harbor analogy to characterize contemporary cyber threats, especially threats facing the United States. It suggests that despite the fact that policy-makers are keenly aware of the nature of today’s cyber threats, this knowledge does not necessarily protect them from falling victim to a strategically significant cyber surprise attack. The fact that elected officials and senior officers fall victim to strategic surprise attacks launched by known adversaries is the problematique that animates the study of intelligence failure. The article concludes with the observation that just because scholars and policy-makers can imagine a ‘Cyber Pearl Harbor’ does not guarantee that they can avoid a Cyber Pearl Harbor.     

‘Stella polaris’ and the secret code battle in postwar Europe

Much has already been written about the September 1944 evacuation of the Finnish intelligence service to Sweden, which was designated Operation ‘Stella Polaris’. Newly declassified intelligence documents found at the US National Archives provide a fresh perspective on the role of the American wartime foreign intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and its successor, the Strategic Services Unit, in ‘Stella Polaris’ and its aftermath. The documents reveal that throughout World War II, the OSS secretly obtained sensitive intelligence information concerning America's wartime ally, the Soviet Union, from agents within the Finnish intelligence service. The OSS Stockholm Station purchased Soviet and other foreign government code and cipher materials from the Finns, not realizing until later that the Finns had sold the same material to other states. The Americans responded by recruiting some well-placed agents within the Finnish ‘Stella Polaris’ organization, who provided detailed information about the intelligence activities of the Finns in Sweden, and the work of Finnish intelligence officers in France after the end of the war. Among the key pieces of intelligence obtained was the fact that the French intelligence service was intercepting American radio traffic.     

From Combined Arms to Combined Intelligence: Philosophy,Doctrine and Operations

‘Combined arms’ operations have been a central tenet of military planning for nearly a century. They call for the integration of land, air and sea forces to achieve battlefield synergies. This philosophy has equal application to intelligence. The article advances the combined arms concept as a way to foster synergies across the intelligence disciplines – geospatial, signals, measures and signals, human, and most recently open source intelligence. It describes the strengths and weaknesses of each discipline in forming an analytical foundation for such a ‘combined intelligence’ and calls for developing theory to integrate the intelligence disciplines. The authors suggest that combined intelligence would confer several benefits, including more effective collection efforts and stronger countermeasures against adversary denial and deception. The article closes by calling for development of concepts and doctrine to put combined intelligence into practice.