He was GARBO to the Allies and ALARIC to the Germans – the most successful double agent of the Second World War. Indeed, his spy network across Britain was so highly regarded that he was decorated for his achievements … by both sides.Throughout the war, GARBO kept the Germans supplied with reports from his ring of twenty-four agents. Hitler's spymasters never discovered or even suspected a double-cross, but all the agents in GARBO's network existed solely in his imagination.I...

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...

In 1921, MI5 commissioned a comprehensive, top-secret review of the organisation's operations during the First World War. Never intended for circulation outside of the government, all seven volumes of this fascinating and unique document remained locked away in MI5's registry ... until now. Recently declassified and published here for the first time, MI5 in the Great War is filled with detailed, and previously undisclosed, accounts centring on the Security Service's activities during the c...

The author of GCHG describes covert missions that "are worthy of spy fiction, but the entire book is utterly fascinating and informative. Brilliant!" (Books Monthly)Written by the renowned expert Nigel West, this book exposes the operations of Britain's overseas intelligence-gathering organization, the famed Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and traces its origins back to its inception in 1909. In this meticulously researched account, its activities and str...

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...

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...

In August 1909, a kindly, balding, figure named Mansfield Smith-Cumming was summoned to London by Admiral Alexander Bethell, Director of Naval Intelligence. He was to assume the inaugural position of Chief – more famously known as 'C – of what has become

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 ...

On Monday, 4 March 2019, Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia collapsed in the centre of Salisbury in Wiltshire. Both were suffering the effects of A-234, a third-generation Russian-manufactured military grade Novichok nerve agent. As three suspects, all GRU officers, were quickly identified, it was also established that the door handle to the Skripals’ suburban home had been contaminated with the toxin.Whilst the Skripals had lived in the cathedral city for the past s...

“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...

"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...

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...