Wesley K. Wark

In Never-Never Land? the British archives on Intelligence

A leading historian of the British intelligence community has described the British public archives as ‘laundered’. Christopher Andrew was, of course, referring to the closure, sometimes deceptively, of the official records of the security services. ‘Laundered’ can cover a wide variety of sins and might even give a misleading impression. An understanding of the disposition of the historical records of British intelligence, of the prospects for access to such an archive, and the implications for research in this field, depend on more than knowledge of Whitehall practice or the state of legislation regarding public records. Such understanding depends, in the first instance, on what we mean by ‘intelligence archives’.

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

Coming in from the Cold: British Propaganda and Red Army Defectors, 1945–1952

During i 948, as the Cold War settled over a divided Europe, the British government became alarmed by the increasing volume and ferocity of Soviet propaganda directed against the West, the Marshall Plan, and the political viability of those Western European democracies to which US aid would flow.1 The propaganda offensive seemed but one part of a concerted Soviet attack in that year: the takeover of the Prague government by the Czech Communist party in a well-engineered coup in February, followed by the tightening blockade against West Berlin, and signs of Soviet pressure on Finland and the Scandinavian powers. To counter the Soviet propaganda offensive, Great Britain created a peacetime covert propaganda agency known as the Information Research Department (IRD).2 The IRD, housed at the foreign office, was a true child of the hightension atmosphere of international politics into which it was born, and typified the serious attention given to the ideology of the Cold War within Whitehall. There was even a perceptible sense of mission at the onset of the propaganda war: a paper prepared for the cabinet in 1951, defending the value of British propaganda, did not hesitate to describe the Cold War as a struggle for mens minds ... a struggle to determine whether the mass of mankind shall look for hope towards the Soviet Union or towards

The Evolution of Military Intelligence in Canada

The historical evolution of a military intelligence system in Canada, like that of other Western powers, developed largely under the stimuli of the two world wars. Yet within this evolutionary framework, unique national characteristics emerged. One was the underlying Canadian concern with intelligence on a variety of threatened frontiers, especially after 1945 with the remote northern flank. Another unique feature of Canadian history was the response to the lessons of the Second World War. Rather than consolidating the wartime intelligence community to serve postwar needs, Canada restricted itself to subordinate partnership in an intelligence alliance with the United States and the United Kingdom, forfeited a strategic intelligence capability, and concentrated on domestic security problems. This article attempts to analyze these developments as a preliminary step toward the still unwritten history of the intelligence function in Canada.

Introduction: ‘Learning to Live With Intelligence’

Reflections on the future of intelligence are intimately bound up with considerations of the role of technology as a key driver of intelligence change, with public attitudes still strongly shaped by Orwellian fears, with new uses for intelligence in shaping public debate on critical issues of war and peace, and with learning lessons from the past. The most radical new feature of twenty-first century intelligence may not derive from expectations and fears of technological enhancements to spying and surveillance, but from the casting off of old doctrines of secrecy under the pressure of new, global strategies for pre-emption in the face of terrorist threats, rogue regimes, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

British Intelligence on the German Air Force and Aircraft Industry, 1933–1939

The advent of the Hitler regime in Germany in early 1933, with its emphasis on the overthrow of the Versailles- peace treaty restrictions and the re-militarization of German society, caused a fundamental shift in the focus of Bntish intelligence activity. Germany replaced Russia and the Comintern as the primary target. The arm of German military power which commanded the most attention was the Luftwaffe, Germanys new air force. The bomber was the only weapon with which Germany could directly threaten Britain; by which London and the industrial Midlands could be made vulnerable; which could strike at the civilian population. Out of this nexus of strategic anxieties, the air staff created their ‘worst-case’ assumption. The worst case, as the air ministry consistently saw it during the 1930s, was a massive German air attack launched against Great Britain with the object of forcing a quick surrender, primarily through the collapse of civilian morale. Group Captain J. C. Slessor, director of plans in the air ministry (and a future chief of the air staff), admitted in his memoirs that,’ in those years immediately before the war the possibility of what was referred to as the knock-out blow bore very heavily on the minds of the Air Staff’.

Intelligence Predictions and Strategic Surprise: Reflections on the British Experience in the 1930s

Among the worst fates that can befall a nation, and its intelligence services, is to be the victim of a surprise attack. The British response to the European crisis of the 1930s suggests an intriguing paradox. Long-range intelligence predictions were made early in the decade concerning an Anglo-German conflict. Policy in the last years of the 1930s was directed at confronting (or avoiding) the prospect of war with the Third Reich. Defence preparations and strategic planning for much of the 1930s were designed to meet a German threat. When war finally came in September 1939, and the air raid sirens sounded over London, Britain did not suffer an intelligence trauma comparable with the shock dealt out to the Russians by Operation Barbarossa or to the Americans by Pearl Harbour. Yet Britain embarked on World War II manifestly unprepared for a major conflict with Germany.1 The paradox is thus to be found in the condition of a state apparently unsurprised by war, but also unready for it. This essay will attempt to explore the concept of strategic surprise and, through an examination of the origins of intelligence prediction about Nazi Germany, seek to resolve this paradox.

Williamson Murray's wars: A review essay

Williamson Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–1939: The Path to Ruin (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. xix, 494, £33.50 or

Spy fiction, spy films, and real intelligence

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Cryptographic Innocence: The Origins of Signals Intelligence in Canada in the Second World War

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