Intelligence in Public Media

The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

Reviewed by Leslie C.

Christopher Andrew is the dean of intelligence histori- were chosen for their social standing, not because they
ans, and in The Secret World: A History of Intelligence, he had any skill, and 10 of them gave distorted reports. In
has undertaken the ambitious task of producing a global 19th century Europe, intelligence, counterespionage,
history of clandestine operations. His purpose is prescrip- and countersubversion were secondary duties for police
tive, as he professes that long-term perspective is required forces. Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, for example, was
to deal with present intelligence challenges. Synthesis founded to counter Fenian terrorism in London. From an
of this magnitude is a complicated business. Beyond Edwardian England paranoid about the rising German
mastery of myriad sources, successful execution requires threat, Robert Baden-Powell suggested, “The best spies
effective framing of issues so that a meaningful narrative are unpaid men who are doing it for the love of the thing”
structure emerges; it highlights the centrality of choice, (450). And when CIA was in its infancy, Sherman Kent
what to include—and, as important—what to omit; and it feared the profession lacked a serious literature.
demands of the author no small degree of craftsmanship
in writing, lest the work descend into pedantry. Andrew salts the narrative with turning points in
global history that influenced the craft of intelligence in
The book features carefully intertwined themes. One sometimes surprising ways. These include:
traces antecedents of present institutions and practices.
To offer one example: the Russian SVR—at least cul- • The dissemination of the printing press, which en-
turally—predates the KGB, its Soviet predecessors, and abled, for the first time, open source collection.
even the Tsarist Okhrana, back to Ivan “the Terrible” and
• The golden age of exploration was instrumental in
the Oprichniki, whose chief, Maliuta Skuratov, Andrew
the rise of official secrecy. Renaissance Venice was
describes as, “against strong competition, probably the
obsessed with using official secrecy to protect lucrative
most loathsome figure in the entire history of Russian
trade routes; Venetian ambassadors became models in
intelligence.” (142) Similarly, the KGB’s countersubver-
the use of embassies as platforms for running agent
sion campaign would have been familiar to the Spanish
networks; and the Venetian Council of Ten recruited
Inquisition, whose autos da fe Soviet show trials con-
foreign merchants to report on commercial develop-
sciously aped.
ments and established the first European code-breaking
What we would recognize as modern intelligence agency.
bureaucracies have waxed and waned over time. No such
• The emergence of the nation state and modern di-
apparatus existed in the ancient world. The Greeks placed
plomacy were a boon to the intelligence business. The
far greater emphasis on seers, oracles, and the interven-
earliest ambassadors were expected to collect foreign
tion of the gods, than on HUMINT. The Romans attached
intelligence as well as represent their sovereigns,
similar importance to divination, and commanders who
though their requirements were unlike ours: Span-
acted in contempt of omens were believed responsible for
ish agents at the court of Louis XIII were required to
their own misfortune. After Julius Caesar, emperors em-
verify that the teenaged monarch had consummated his
ployed informers to warn of plots. The practice, however
marriage to his equally young queen, Anne of Austria.
necessary, was unsuccessful: three-quarters of them
Similarly, Sir Francis Walsingham was both secretary
suffered assassination or overthrow.
of state and intelligence chief to Elizabeth I. There was
Another theme is the persistence of amateurism. The minimal distinction between these roles until the 20th
12 operatives Moses sent into Canaan circa 1300 B.C. century, when intelligence bureaucracies developed and
SIGINT became a discipline.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed in this article are those of the author. Nothing in the article should be con-
strued as asserting or implying US government endorsement of its factual statements and interpretations.

Studies in Intelligence Vol 62, No. 4 (December 2018)  35

• The rapid spread of the telegraph and the wireless, in to learn that Lord Nelson’s failure to detect Napoleon’s
turn, enabled SIGINT. Before, it consisted of what the Egypt-bound invasion fleet triggered the first documented
French called cabinets noir for intercepting and de- official query into an intelligence failure, despite his sub-
crypting private or diplomatic correspondence. Intelli- sequent annihilation of that fleet at Aboukir Bay.
gence from such operations put Mary Queen of Scots
and Charles I on the execution block. Unsurprisingly, Across the scope of this chronicle, Andrew identifies
SIGINT enjoys prominence here due both to its im- leaders he regards as effective intelligence practitioners
plementation by recordkeeping bureaucracies, and the and consumers, from Hannibal to Frederick the Great,
significance—if not the fame—of its impact across cen- from Walsingham to Washington. He likewise criticizes
turies, not least during the Second World War. Indeed, those who ignored intelligence, and does not spare the
Andrew observes that intelligence studies as a disci- biographers of the great and the good for overlooking
pline had its origins in the declassification of ULTRA the pivotal role it has played in politics and international
and Double Cross in the 1970s. affairs. Andrew is a Cambridge don, so we should not be
surprised at a touch of Anglophilia. Walsingham—who
Though this is a global history, Europe is the predomi- emerges the hero—was the first to integrate espionage,
nant presence, due to the lack of available documentation counter-espionage, code-breaking, and countersubver-
on other geopolitical entities. Andrew acknowledges sion into a cohesive system to protect his sovereign from
Asian antecedents—Art of War and the Indian Arthashas- unprecedented internal and external threats. His practices,
tra—asserting the latter was the first book anywhere to including recruiting agents among hated ideological oppo-
call for the establishment of a professional intelligence nents (161), doubling the financiers of plots against their
service and the first to envision a fully organized sur- masters, penetrating Jesuit seminaries in Europe training
veillance state. (61) Mao Zedong studied Sun Tzu more agents to penetrate England, and feeding disinformation
closely than did any previous emperor, even as Andrew through known foreign agents, are utterly modern. Other
argues that the book promises more than it delivers; chapters on British topics are among the best written. And
successive dynasties neglected intelligence just as they while Andrew praises George Washington for confound-
ignored the outside world. Like the Romans, most ing his foes during the Revolution, one senses bemuse-
Chinese rulers were more concerned with assassination ment in his account of how easily the British manipulated
and covert action against internal rivals. a naïve US government during World War One.

Andrew does relatively little with intelligence analysis American readers are advised to heed Andrew’s
in its own right, though he addresses notable analytical admonition about the long view. In 760 pages of text,
failures that tended to be failures of imagination, as when only the penultimate chapter directly addresses the Cold
he shows that, before Japan peaked in 1942, most Western War and CIA, with the last reserved for the age of sacred
analysts could not conceive of “Orientals” being so terror. This is, however, beside the point. As synthesis,
capable; or when he observes that, “Western intelligence The Secret World is an unqualified success. The text is
agencies at the end of the Cold War suffered, though they rich with fact and anecdote alike, engagingly written, and
did not realize it, from a serious lack of theologians,” marbled with shrewd observation and judgment that in-
(701) leading directly to the events of 1979 and 2001. telligence professionals might consider—or debate—with
Intelligence professionals steeped in Curveball, the equal benefit.
“surprise” Soviet collapse, and the like, will be interested

v v v

The reviewer: Leslie C. is a career CIA Directorate of Operations officer who has an interest in intelligence history.

36 Studies in Intelligence Vol 62, No. 4 (December 2018)