Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

The End of an Exclusive Special Intelligence Relationship: British-American Intelligence Co-operation Before, During and After the 1960s

Abstract Secret intelligence became a major ingredient in international relations in the twentieth century, vital as much to peace as to war. Cooperation was an ingredient in intelligence success, with the British-American special relationship the centurys prime and dominant example. The US-UK arrangement reached a Churchillian apogee in the 1940s and 1950s, then in the 1960s there were signs of change. Upheavals within American society, new challenges to US foreign policy, a decline in British capabilities and the end of the Cold War did not destroy the Anglo-American intelligence relationship, but they did undermine its exclusive character.

Rise, Fall and Regeneration: From CIA to EU

Abstract The rise of the CIA and its Cold War analytical successes provided Europe with a model of how a federal polity might conduct foreign intelligence. The shortcomings and recent decline of the CIA are instructive, too, and have the additional effect of adding urgency to the need for the European Union to develop its own intelligence capability. Lessons of possible relevance have to do with, inter alia, the advantages of centralization, the politicization of intelligence, the interaction of covert action with analysis, the phenomenon of competitive estimates, and the need for proactive parliamentary oversight. But the prospects for the development of EU foreign intelligence are for the time being blighted by nationalism, not least in the case of the British, and by the relative immaturity of EU constitutional arrangements.

Profit Over Class: A Study in American Industrial Espionage

My students at the University of Edinburgh often ask me, why have Americans been so anti-socialist? Some of them perplexedly refer to the rarity of class conflicts, as, say, Clydesiders would define them, in United States history. They remain unconvinced by ‘class’ or ‘economic’ interpretations of the American past. They underline the paradox by recalling the comparative weakness, in the long term, of organized American socialism. Still, they point out, there has been a good deal of anti-socialist, anti-communist rhetoric across the Atlantic. Is mere any explanation for what, on the face of it, seems to be a ranting in the void?

Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Tim Weiner is something of a star in the world of journalism. As a correspondent for the New York Times, he covered the US intelligence beat for many years and won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. A major book on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) written by him is considered a signal event. The work has elicited a stream of book reviews, along with nominations for literary prizes. In the reviews published so far, the responses seem to depend on the profession of the reviewer. By and large, his fellow journalists have given Weiner’s history high marks. Reviews by spies, in contrast, have been uniformly critical of the book’s factual mistakes and Weiner’s failure to acknowledge the good that the CIA has done. As for scholars, the consensus seems to be that the work lacks both objectivity and thorough research. How can informed readers reach such disparate conclusions? A hint may lie in the story of the elephant and the blind men. In the short version of this parable, three blind men came across an elephant while walking together through a jungle. They used their hands to determine the nature of what they had encountered. One of the blind men felt the elephant’s leg and decided the object must be a tree; another explored the elephant’s trunk and concludes it must be a snake; the third grasped the beast’s tail and thought it was a rope. In the case of Weiner’s book, many journalist-reviewers share the strong antiCIA undercurrents in Weiner’s book. They respond favorably to its muckraking tenor, withering combative prose, and copious examples of CIA errors, all laced together felicitously with polemical arguments about the incompetence of America’s premier intelligence agency. Here is

The sensitivity of SIGINT: Sir Alfred Ewing’s lecture on room 40 in 1927

ABSTRACT Based on a hitherto unnoticed batch of letters between Sir Alfred Ewing and former Prime Minister Lord Balfour, this article discusses the Admiralty’s reaction to a lecture Ewing gave in 1927, detailing his experience as the man in charge of the World War I cryptographic unit, Room 40. Threatening Ewing with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, the Admiralty prevented publication of the lecture in one of a series of actions that set the tone not just for the interwar years, but also for World War II and the Cold War. The article explains the Admiralty’s viewpoint and motives, and shows how Ewing offered a cogent if unsuccessful defence based on his views that dirty tricks should be discontinued in peacetime, and that the historical record should be set straight.

Hector Davies: A Liberal at War

Extrapolating from a particular case, the article argues that experience of the Second World War was capable of broadening combatants’ minds, and of helping to shape their post-war attitudes. Before the war, Hector Davies was a Bank of England official. From 1940 he served in Nigeria and Chad, where he was responsible for British military liaison with the Free French Equatorial commander, Jacques Leclerc. After a period in Gaza and Cairo, he joined the French division of SOEs mission near Algiers, and was infiltrated into the Tarn in 1944, there receiving accolades for his diplomacy and bravery. His mainly unpublished and hitherto unexploited memoirs and scrapbook help especially to rectify an evidential gap created by the incineration of official SOE/Massingham/France records. In 1945, he moved to Austria and Germany to help with economic reconstruction, and after the war was active in Liberal Party politics. Davies shared some common prejudices at the outset of the war. In the course of the conflict, he came to support the idea of African federal autonomy, and defended the record of the maquis including its leftist component. After the war and at a time of semi-racial prejudice against the defeated powers, he promoted the principle of German economic reconstruction.

The Death of a Myth: How Socialism and the Left Succeeded in America

Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? The German economist Werner Sombart asked the question in his book of that title in 1906. Since then, there has been a flood of speculation on the reasons. It has involved some of America’s brightest scholars, including Selig Perlman, Daniel Bell, Louis Hartz, Martin Lipset, and Aileen Kraditor. It became almost a rite of passage for ambitious historians and social scientists to invent a new theory. Contributing from different perspectives, a number of writers have begun in recent years to chip away at this historiographical megalith. There have been some striking claims. In their book Free to Choose (1980), the Chicago University scholars Milton and Rose Friedman observed that “almost every plank in the [Socialist Party of America’s] 1928 presidential platform has by now been enacted into law” (p. 334). A few years later, the business philosopher Peter F. Drucker noted that, through the vehicle of pension funds, the American worker has at last achieved what Marx prescribed, the ownership of the great corporations.1 The two books under review furnish some systematic evidence and thinking on the subject. Though different in approach, they mark a turning point in the historiography of the American Left. In American Dreamers, historian Michael Kazin holds that the Left has influenced American culture. He uses the word “culture” in three senses. First, he discusses a great array of left-wing contributors, including such individuals as Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, and Howard Zinn. Second, he covers the Left’s impact on behavioral culture as it affects phenomena ranging from sex to marijuana. Finally, he considers its impact on the cultural/ideological trends that influence politics.

Robert Dover, Michael S. Goodman and Claudia Hillebrand (eds.), Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies

This is a high-price entry into a crowded field. Will it serve simply as an institutionally-bought, single-copy reference book, or will it come out in a cheaper edition putting it within the means of students and their teachers? The latter is desirable, as the Routledge Companion is richly detailed. For example, at the end of the book (pp.321–57), there is a densely-printed intelligence bibliography (too modestly headed ‘References’) that is the best I have seen for a number of years. In reviewing such a wide-ranging book with 33 chapters, I can only offer a flavour of its riches. Accordingly, let me first offer a sample of the contents, before concentrating on Chapter 1, a thought-provoking dissection of the state of intelligence studies. Appropriately, the volume offers definitions. Michael Warner has served in a variety of capacities as an official historian of intelligence. In this Companion, he offers an essay on intelligence theory, a discipline in which his fellow Americans have excelled. His definition is that it’s ‘our label for the notion that we can explain events in terms of replicable causes and effects’ (p.25). In similarly reflective mode, R. Gerald Hughes offers erudite reflections on ‘Strategists and Intelligence’ (pp.50–8). Reviewing the classical literature, he discusses Sun Tzu’s observation that strategy must always be under political control, Michael Handel’s remark that strategy is ‘universal not parochial’, Jomini’s insistence upon the value of intelligence to ‘national wars’, and the enduring wisdom of Carl von Clausewitz’s insightful discussions on the value and limitations of tactical and strategic intelligence (discussions marred only by Clausewitz’s exclusive focus upon wartime scenarios). Len Scott’s chapter is on HUMINT. Commenting on the variety of reasons why people spy, he notes Kim Philby’s claim that he never belonged, thus his betrayals never seemed treasonable; the FBI’s Robert Hanssen just got a kick out of playing ‘The Great Game’ (pp.98–9). Other points made in this thoughtful contribution include an observation that Al Qaeda was difficult to penetrate because it was disorganized, and that from the German point of view not having the Abwehr at all would have been preferable to having a deceived Abwehr. In a contribution on

Inter-Allied Commando Intelligence and Security Training in Gwynedd: The Coates Memoir

John Gordon Coates was an intelligence instructor with 10 Commando, a force drawn from several European nations in the Second World War. His brief memoir together with supporting documents and oral histories throw light on the intelligence training of a unit whose memorialization has until now been patchy. 10 Commandos Troops (fighting units) were quartered in various Welsh villages according to nationality, for example the French in Criccieth, the Dutch in Porthmadog, and the relatively renowned Jewish group in Aberdyfi. They were dispatched in small numbers as specialist add-ons to military missions engaged in secret operations in occupied Europe, achieving success but a high casualty rate. In an embryonic way, 10 Commando could be regarded as an intelligence-orientated precursor to the idea of a European Union Rapid Reaction Force.

Presidential and Prime Ministerial Women in the Americas: A List with Interpretations

The Americas and Latin America in particular are sharply in advance of the global norm when it comes to the incidence of female presidential and prime ministerial leadership. One reason is the relatively high and increasing incidence of democracy on the two continents. Another is that the Americas are more progressive than other parts of the world. The relatively peaceful state of the region over the last half century is an additional factor, for women favor peace and force works to their disadvantage. The theory that dynastic advantages account for the prominence of female leadership in the Americas is erroneous. United States has lacked female leadership because of a countervailing male culture that blocks women’s aspirations, and because the nation has been on a near-permanent war footing. In an appendix, the arguments are supported by a table listing the world’s “Women Prime Ministers and Presidents 1960-2010.”