Richard J. Aldrich

'Grow your own': Cold War intelligence and history supermarkets

Most of the records of the three British secret services relating to the Cold War remain closed. Nevertheless, the Open Government initiative in the UK and the Clinton Executive Order of 1995 have resulted in some disclosures, often from consumer agencies who were in receipt of intelligence material. There have also been limited releases from other countries. Against that background, this essay considers two questions: First, how far has the study of intelligence affected the broad context of Cold War history during the last decade? And second, how effective have we been in probing the institutional history of secret services during the Cold War? The essay concludes that while some secret services are breaking new ground by recording their own oral history, academic historians have been less than enterprising in their investigations and tend towards a culture of archival dependency.

Global intelligence, co-operation versus accountability: new facets to an old problem

Abstract The most important recent change within the realm of intelligence and security services has been the expansion of intelligence co-operation. The growing connectivity between both foreign intelligence services and also domestic security services means that we might speak – not just of growing international co-operation – but perhaps even of global co-operation. This essay considers the complex interplay of intelligence and globalization since 1989. It argues that there is an obvious tension between a developing global style of co-operative activity and the traditional mechanisms of oversight, which have tended to be national. Accordingly, it moves on to discuss the recent efforts by national, regional and international systems of inquiry to examine issues that involve intelligence co-operation. It suggests that while formal committee-type mechanisms have limited purchase, they are not the only options for oversight in a globalized context.

An INS Special Forum: Implications of the Snowden Leaks

In 2013, the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States became embroiled in controversy – again. Its questionable use of wiretaps (Operation MINARET) and its improper reading of international cables sent and received by Americans over decades (Operation SHAMROCK) had been revealed by the Church Committee in 1976; and in 2005 theNew York Times disclosed that the NSA had been wiretapping selected American citizens without a warrant, contrary to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. In this most recent scandal, the NSA hired Edward J. Snowden to help with some of its computer work. At the time of his hiring in 2013, Snowden – a 29year-old high school dropout from suburban Maryland and a former CIA computer specialist – was under contract as a data specialist with the giant defense firm Booz Allen Hamilton. In his short stint with the NSA, Snowden reportedly stole some 1.7 million classified documents from the agency’s computers.He leakedmanyof these documents over the next year toAmerican and British journalists, as a protest against what he viewed as improper surveillance methods used by the NSA against American and British citizens. The stolen documents also revealed that the NSA had been wiretapping the communications of some leading US allies, including the cellphone of German Chancellor Angela Meckel. She was not pleased to learn about this intrusion. ‘Surveillance Revelations Shake US-German Ties’, observed a New York Times headline. Nor were other Europeans happy about the revelations of widespread NSA surveillance against them. Before releasing the first of his documents, Snowden fled the United States in search of a safe haven, first to Hong Kong and then (when other options fell through) to Russia. The leaks revealed that the NSA had been gathering ‘metadata’ (the records of telephone numbers dialed and the duration of calls) on about a third of all the telephone calls made by American citizens, both

Putting culture into the Cold War: the Cultural Relations Department (CRD) and British covert information warfare

In 1943 the British Foreign Office created an obscure outfit called the Cultural Relations Department (CRD), to manage the growing organization of intellectual, cultural, social and artistic contacts designed to promote Allied goodwill. It became clear early on that the Soviet Union was already well-organized in this field, with many seemingly independent international organizations claiming to represent ‘world opinion’ yet operating as fronts for Moscows foreign policy objectives. In the three years before 1948, when the more widely-known Information Research Department began its operations, CRD was the cutting edge of Britains informational Cold War, focused very much upon the twin issues of culture and organized youth. This essay will examine this little-explored organization by focusing upon these twin issues and its neglected records in FO 924 in the Public Record Office, London.

Britain's Secret Intelligence Service in Asia During the Second World War

The past twenty years have seen the rapid growth of a new branch of international history, the serious academic study of secret services or ‘intelligence history’ with its attendant specialist conferences and journals. Two main causes for this development can be identified. The first was conceptual, namely the increasing recognition that the study of international history was greatly impoverished by the reluctance of academic historians to address a subject which appeared capable of shedding considerable light upon the conduct of international affairs. Two leading historians underlined this during 1982 in a path-breaking collection of essays on the subject, suggesting that intelligence was the ‘missing dimension’ of most international history. The second development was a more practical one, the introduction of the Thirty Year Rule during the 1970s, bringing with it an avalanche of new documentation, which, within a few years, was recognized as containing a great deal of intelligence material. In the 1980s historians had begun to turn their attention in increasing numbers to the intelligence history of the mid-twentieth century. They were further assisted in their endeavours by the appearance of the first volumes of the official history of British Intelligence in the Second World War .

OSS, CIA and European unity: The American committee on United Europe, 1948–60

During the last ten years, diplomatic historians have attached growing significance to intelligence, and the related subject of covert operations, as increasingly important to an understanding of the early Cold War. After 1945, a variety of Western organizations, not just intelligence agencies, drew up programmes of covert operations designed both to undermine Communist influence in Europe and to ensure a welcome for the Marshall Plan. Examples have been documented in the fields of electoral politics, organized labour and cultural affairs. US officials trying to rebuild and stabilize postwar Europe worked from the assumption that it required rapid unification, perhaps leading to a United States of Europe. The encouragement of European unification, one of the most consistent components of Harry S. Trumans foreign policy, was even more strongly emphasized under his successor General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Moreover, under both Truman and Eisenhower, US policymakers conceived of European unification not only as an important end in itself, but also as a way to solve the German problem. The use of covert operations for the specific promotion of European unity has attracted little scholarly attention and remains poorly understood. One of the most interesting US covert operations in postwar Europe was the funding of the European Movement. The European Movement was an umbrella organization which led a prestigious, if disparate, group of organizations urging rapid unification in Europe, focusing their efforts upon the Council of Europe, and counting Winston Churchill, Paul-Henri Spaak, Konrad Adenauer, Leon Blum and Alcide de Gasperi as its five Presidents of Honour. In 1948, its

The Future of Cyber-Resilience in an Age of Global Complexity

This article seeks to discuss two key challenges in the area of cyber-resilience. First, it asks: who owns UK cyber-resilience? Some 80 per cent of the UKs critical national infrastructure is in private hands and the last decade has seen efforts to legislate away some of the problem of resilience by creating legal duties for service providers. This has contributed to a new ecology for intelligence, security and resilience consisting of complex state–private citizen partnerships. However, it is unlikely that populations will accept this approach to risk-shifting when systems fail. Second, it considers what constitutes genuinely robust cyber-defence after the Stuxnet event of 2010. Arguably, any system that depends on information technology, however well protected, is now vulnerable. There is a dawning realisation that the best technical solutions offer only partial assurance. Paradoxically, in an era when the Internet seems ubiquitous, a mixture of analogue and manual systems – often called systems diversity – offers a solution. However, mixed or diverse systems are a declining legacy and not the result of design. We close by discussing the immense challenges that the growing prevalence of electronic systems will bring.

Whitehall and the Iraq War: the UK's four Intelligence Enquiries

The UK intelligence community has recently undergone a ‘season of enquiry’ relating to the Iraq War and the ‘War on Terrorism’. This essay discusses each of the four enquiries in turn and argues that while the debate has been intense, much has been missed. The enquiries have largely focused on specific administrative issues, while the media have focused on blame–casting. Although the enquiries have been useful in underlining the extent of genuine ‘intelligence failure’, wider reflections about the nature and direction of UK intelligence have been conspicuously absent. None of the enquiries has dealt with the difficult issue of how intelligence analysis might interface with modern styles of policy–making. More broadly, it is argued that there is a growing mismatch between what intelligence can reasonably achieve and the improbable expectations of politicians and policy-makers.

The Waldegrave Initiative and secret service archives: New materials and new policies

Louise Atherton, Top Secret: An Interim Guide to Recent Releases of Intelligence Records at the Public Record Office (London: PRO Publications, 1993). Pp.32. £3.25. ISBN 1 87362073. Louise Atherton, SOE Operations in the Far East: An Introductory Guide to the Newly Released Records of the Special Operations Executive in the Public Record Office (London: PRO Publications, 1993). Pp.59. £3.25. ISBN 1 873162081. Louise Atherton, SOE Operations in Scandinavia: A Guide to the Newly Released Records in the Public Record Office (London: PRO Publications, 1994). Pp.34. £3.25. ISBN 1 873162154. FCO Historical Branch, Changes in British and Russian Records Policy: Occasional Papers No.7 (London: Historical Branch, LRD, 1993). Pp.42. FCO Historical Branch, FCO Records: Policy Practice and Posterity, 1782–1993 (London: Historical Branch, LRD, Second Edition, 1993). Pp.17.

‘A Profoundly Disruptive Force’: The CIA, Historiography and the Perils of Globalization

Abstract This essay argues that, since 1989, the CIA has been slow to understand the transformative impact of globalization upon its own activities as an intelligence agency. While the CIA spent considerable time examining global trends as part of its work on generalized strategic analysis, its thinking about how globalization would change its own business was less prescient. This problem is explained in terms of the way in which debates over the CIA have been framed historiographically. While intelligence studies as a subject has been successfully integrated into mainstream international history, it has failed to make the same connections with international relations. As a result, those debating how intelligence might change have tended to focus quite narrowly on matters of bureaucratic organization and have taken only limited interest in global politics. This is stark contrast to those working on the subject of terrorism and counter-terrorism, who have engaged in wider debates about world affairs. This needs to change, since the perils of globalization remain the over-arching challenge for the CIA over the next ten years.