The Second World War saw the role of espionage, secret agents and spy services increase exponentially as the world was thrown into a conflict unlike any that had gone before it.At this time, no one in government was really aware of what MI5 and its brethren did. But with Churchill at the country's helm, it was decided to let him in on the secret, providing him with a weekly report of the spy activities. These reports were so classified that he was handed each repor...

“… a valuable introduction to the role of defectors in counterintelligence operations and a fine contribution to intelligence literature.” -Studies in IntelligenceA well-informed defector is the most dangerous counter-intelligence commodity because it takes a spy to catch a spy. Very occasionally, an agent, especially a mole or an intelligence professional, will make a mistake and incriminate themselves, but usually it is a denunciation, a tip, or a vague clue from...

As part of the infamous Double Cross operation, Jewish double agent Renato Levi proved to be one of the Allies' most devastating weapons in World War Two. ln 1941, with the help of Ml6, Levi built an extensive spy-ring in North Africa and the Middle East. But, most remarkably, it was entirely fictitious. This network of imagined informants peddled dangerously false misinformation to Levi's unwitting German handlers. His efforts would distort any enemy estimates of Allied battle plans for t...

The go-to intelligence expert and author of MI6 has "provided the clearest review of GCHQ and its predecessors in a publicly available book" ( Firetrench).Signal intelligence is the most secret, and most misunderstood, weapon in the modern espionage arsenal. As a reliable source of information, it is unequalled, which is why Government Communications Headquarters, almost universally known as GCHQ, is several times larger than the two smaller, but m...

The author of The Kompromat Conspiracy reveals the truth behind Great Britain's secret World War II group.What did SOE really achieve during the Second World War? Why were so many agents parachuted into enemy hands? Who chose to back Communist guerrillas in Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Albania, Greece and Malaya in preference to other anti-Axis movements? In this newly revised edition, Nigel West strips away the secrecy that has surrounded the Special Ope...

Spies have made an extraordinary impact on the history of the 20th Century, but fourteen in particular can be said to have been demonstrably important. As one might expect, few are household names, and it is only with the benefit of recently declassified files that we can now fully appreciate the nature of their contribution. The criteria for selection have been the degree to which each can now be seen to have had a very definite influence on a specific course of events, either directly, b...

"Nigel West has presented the most complete account of the Abwehr to date. It will serve as a valuable reference work." — Studies in IntelligenceAs the Second World War progressed and defeat for Hitler's Third Reich in all theatres became ever more certain, the tight Abwehr network, built so effectively by its head, Admiral Canaris, began to unravel. High-level defections to the Allies and bitter disputes with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) added to a collapse in morale. Most notably wa...

“China’s Spies is a necessary alarm for those who still nurse delusions of a rosy partnership with a benign rising power.”– The NYMAS ReviewWhile many of President Xia Jinping’s increasingly aggressive foreign policies, manifested by expansion into the South China Sea, trade confrontation with Australia, and political suppression in Hong Kong, have become obvious, there has been a covert dimension that has gone largely unreported outside the Allied intelligence com...

Over the past fifty years, Nigel West has been involved in almost every espionage-related investigation, breakthrough or revelation that you can think of. His molehunts have led to the unmasking of spies within MI5, MI6 and the CIA and the identification of numerous others – some of whom were crucial to the Allied victory in the Second World War and would have died without any public recognition if not for him.His first encounter with the intelligence community was a lecture given ...

Tradecraft: as intriguing as it is forbidden . . .Tradecraft is the term applied to techniques used by intelligence personnel to assist them in conducting their operations and, like many other professions, the espionage business has developed its own rich lexicon. In the real, sub rosa world of intelligence-gathering, each bit of jargon acts as a veil of secrecy over particular types of activity, and in this book acclaimed author Nigel West explains and give exampl...

The author of The Kompromat Conspiracy shares the history of MI5, from its beginnings in 1909 to 1945 and its role in the Second World War.MI5 is arguably the most secret and misunderstood of all the British government departments. Its enigmatic title—much more than its proper name, the Security Service—stands in the public mind for the dark world of the secret services. In reality it has a very specific responsibility: counterintelligence. Its purpose is ...

It was inevitable that the Allies would invade France in the summer of 1944: the Nazis just had to figure out where and when. This job fell to the Abwehr and several other German intelligence services. Between them they put over 30,000 personnel to work studying British and American signals traffic, and achieved considerable success in intercepting and decrypting enemy messages. They also sent agents to England – but they weren't to know that none of them would be successf...