The Woman Who Smashed Codes - Jason Fagone

How many women do you know, who shaped the course of the First and Second World War, and the Cold War? Probably none. Well, Jason Fagone has set the record straight, thanks to a woman’s personal stories and recently declassified records. In 1916, the young schoolteacher Elizebeth Smith was searching for a rare Shakespeare book in the Newberry Library in Chicago, when she met businessman George Fabyan who instantly invited her to stay at his Riverbank estate, where he had a privately funded research laboratory. He asked Elizebeth to assist scholar Elizabeth Wells Gallup to decode the Shakespeare plays and sonnets, as Fabyan and Mrs. Gallup were convinced that not Shakespeare, but Sir Francis Bacon was the real author, known for his steganography cipher. Goal was to find the secret embedded message that proved the so-called Baconian theory.

One of the many Riverbank residents was the young William Friedman, a plant biologist and geneticist who had arrived at Riverbank in 1915 and worked as a researcher at the farm. He also had interest in ciphers and codes, but occasionally helped Mrs. Gallup. From an early age, William was fascinated by Egdar Allan Poe’s story The Gold Bug, explaining how to decrypt substitution ciphers with the help of letter frequency analysis. Elizabeth and William had their doubts about Mrs. Gallup's theories and eventually refuted her claims.

Then, in early 1917, the British codebreakers deciphered a telegram in which German foreign minister Arthur Zimmermann proposed an alliance with Mexico. If the United States would not remain neutral, Germany would support Mexico to reconquer Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. This event drew the United States in the First World War. Eventually, it was their common love for cipher and codes, and for each other, that made Elizebeth Smith and William Friedman a husband-and-wife team of codebreakers that not only determined the course of that war, but also the cryptologic history of the twentieth century. They fell in love and married in May 1917.

Riverbank only had historical information on cryptography during the Civil War, and Elizebeth and William were two of only a few Americans with expertise on military cryptography when the U.S. entered the First World War. The Friedmans were instrumental in developing many principles of modern cryptology. The next years, Elizebeth and William provided cryptologic support and training for several government departments. William Friedman became a renown cryptologist, serving as chief cryptologist at the SIS, and later the ASA, AFSA and NSA. However, Elizebeth Smith Friedman’s career was just as extraordinary, and since code breaking was at the time - wrongly - considered mostly men’s business, she hardly got credit for her work, but Elizebeth preferred to stay out of the limelight.

That all changed with the 1919 prohibition, when the Coast Guard was unable to catch the bootleggers and smugglers, who brought liquor and narcotics into the country over sea. The smugglers used encrypted messages, sent by radio to coordinate their operations. The Coast Guard hired Elizebeth on a temporary basis. She also trained a team of cryptanalysts to successfully decrypt the increasingly complex ciphers and codes, used by the rum-runners, but she decrypted most of the intercepted messages herself. Elizebeth also developed a radio intelligence unit, and in the 1930s she became well known to the public as witness during high-profile court cases. Of course, the evidence in the decrypted messages was challenged by the defendants, as that woman could say anything. In court, Elizebeth kindly detailed how she arrived at the plain text.

During the Second World War, her Coast Guard unit was transferred to the U.S. Navy, and she also solved several different Enigma machines, used by German spies in South America. Although the FBI claimed breaking those spy messages, in reality, Elizebeth should have deserved the credit. She passed away in 1980, but had signed an oath of secrecy, and her achievements remained unknown to the public until 2008. Now, her story is told brilliantly by Jason Fagone, partly in her own words as recorded in 1976, given her the credit she deserves.

The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone ISBN 9780062430489

The Third Reich Is Listening: Inside German Codebreaking 1939-45 - Christian Jennings

The German codebreakers and radio Intelligence units, how they were organized, their successes and failures. It's a little known but important part of the Second World War. The British war efforts at Bletchley Park with its famous GC&CS codebreakers like Turing, Tiltman, Welchman and Knox is well known, but what about the Germans? This book is a truly fascinating journey into unknown wartime history.

Already in the 1924, cryptanalyst Wilhelm Fenner was one of the leading figures in the German cipher bureau, later known as Pers-Z, which focused on the crypto systems of foreign armies. In 1923, Wilhelm Tranow, a navy cryptanalysis veteran became one of the leading figures in the naval intelligence agency, called B-Dienst, which proved very successful in breaking the British naval communications.

In the runup to WW2, German signals intelligence grew steadily into a plethora of different agencies. They all competed to recruit the best cryptanalysts, but were also plagued by distrust, especially the Reich Security Main Office or RSHA, overseen by Himmler’s SS. At the beginning of WW2, Fenner became director of OKW-Chi, the Cipher Department of the Wehrmacht, and Erich Hüttenhain and astronomer Walter Fricke the leading cryptanalysts in the cipher bureau of the OKH, the Army Command.

Throughout the Second World War, the B-Dienst continued to break the British naval ciphers, used by convoy escorts and merchant ships. At the start of the war, the Luftwaffe Command cipher bureau OKL-Chi was able to break British air force communications and OKL-Chi signals intelligence units revealed the composition of British squadrons. This however did not prevent the German defeat by the RAF in the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe codebreakers also had important successes in Russia. But once the Allies opened a second front with the Mediterranean campaign, the Germans had to fight on two fronts. As of then, their signals intelligence units were in a constant withdrawal, decreasing their capabilities and successes.

Likewise, although successful in breaking British naval codes, the breaking of the Kriegsmarine Enigma and reading the U-boat communications turned the tide in favor of the Allies. In the end, Germany lost the signals intelligence battle, despite having excellent codebreaker and well-organized cipher bureaus. The constant bureaucratic battles, too many different agencies, each wanting its share, the difficulties to recruit and keep experienced people when the war progressed, and the meddling and distrust of the various security agencies and their heads took its toll.

The book is an excellent and very detailed account of the German codebreaking and signals agencies, how the services were formed, the quite capable personnel and how they failed. Jenning's book is a well-researched reference book that finally sheds a light on German signals intelligence during the Second World War. As introduction to the book, you can listen to History Hack's German Code-Breaking in WW2 interview with Christian Jennings.

The Third Reich Is Listening by Christian Jennings, ISBN 1472829506

In January 1977, CIA chief of station Robert Fuller was filling up his car at a gas station in Moscow when a Russian man approached him, asked to talk with him and immediately dropped a note on Fuller's car seat. In the note he explained that he wanted to discuss strictly confidential matters with a U.S. official and proposed to arrange a meeting. Fuller reported the contact to CIA headquarters. They feared that the man was a dangle, a trap by the KGB to expose CIA operatives. Fuller was instructed to ignore the man.

The Russian man however persisted. He made two more attempts in February, each time dropping a note, proposing a signal and meeting. After being ignored again in May, it seemed that the KGB gave up the dangle. That summer, Gus Hathaway succeeded Fuller as chief of station Moscow. On December 10, the Russian man spotted a car with embassy license plate, approached the driver and urged him to deliver his letter to a U.S. official. In that letter, delivered to Hathaway, the mysterious man explained that he had access to research into look-down radar and that he could also provide schematics for the new MiG-25 radar.

This information finally tickled CIA headquarters' interest. They assigned the codename CKSPHERE to the Russian man but did not find him worth the risk of exposing a CIA operations officer. Hathaway, by then convinced that CKSPHERE was most likely an engineer at a secret research laboratory, insisted on meeting the man. CIA however again ordered Hathaway to ignore the requests for a meeting.

On February 16, 1978, more than a year after the first contact, CKSPHERE again dropped a note, this time in Hathaway's car. By then, the man was desperate but afraid to reveal more personal information. Meanwhile, the Pentagon expressed to the CIA their great interest in Soviet aircraft electronics and radar. On March 1, the Russian man once again approached Hathaway, who was just unlocking his car, and pushed a packet into Hathaway's hand. It contained all the personal details that convinced the station chief and the CIA that he was a genuine spy.

CKSPHERE now had a name. Adolf Tolkachev, engineer and leading designer at the Scientific Research Institute for Radio Engineering in Moscow, and he resented the Soviet system. The next seven years, Tolkachev provided a tremendous amount of highly sensitive information on Soviet research related to aircraft electronics, radar and weapons systems.

For Tolkachav it was a race against the clock. He knew that his game would eventually end and therefore tried to pass as much information as possible, often taking great risks with disregard for his own safety and despite his case officers urging him to be cautious. In the end, his information saved the Pentagon and the U.S. Air Force billions of dollars in research and development and made sure the West had a critical technological and military advantage over the Soviets.

The Billion Dollar Spy, researched and written by David Hoffman, brings Tolkachev's story, based on declassified documents and many interviews with the CIA personnel involved in the CKSPHERE case. Hoffman's extensive research resulted in a highly detailed account that isn't limited to the spy story itself but also provides a better understanding in how the CIA handled the case, the events that lead to the fall of CKSPHERE and consequent fall-out, all placed in the broader context.

The book offers a fascinating insight in the modus operandi of CIA station Moscow. It details the tricks of the spy trade, how the case officers set up meetings and performed surveillance detection runs, the various ways they communicated covertly with Tolkachev, and the spy gear the CIA developed and provided him over the course of eight years. The reader learns in detail how they ran such operations in Moscow station. The book truly excels in the details and background information on the characters involved. You get to know Adolf Tolkachev through the many operations notes and letters with personal information he wrote to his handlers, and you discover the reasons why he became so resentful against the Soviet state.

Tolkachev was a complex man. He was intelligent and wanted to do things his way. He declined the proposed use of dead drops or a spy radio. They gave him a SRAC (short range agent communications) to send messages by burst-transmission, and later even provided him with a novel satellite message system, but he never used them. He preferred meetings in person, despite the according risks. CIA gave him the most advanced spy cameras, but he insisted to use his own Pentax camera.

He regarded money as a token of respect, rather than a means to get rich, but complained each time when he received too little money for what he believed to deserve. His fear for getting caught alive contradicted with the ever-increasing risks he willingly took. He therefore was worried about his wife and son but had already decided he would never leave Russia. There were also the little things. He often asked his handlers for music records from western bands, books or ink pens and gums for his son.

Hoffmann explains why the CIA, paralyzed by James Angleton's paranoia in the 1950s and 60s, was so reluctant to set up operations in Moscow, the frustration of Gus Hathaway with CIA headquarters and his efforts to protect the man behind the source. Tolkachev's case officers, John Guilsher, David Rolph and Bill Plunkert had to operate and arrange face to face meetings despite overwhelming KGB surveillance. The meetings later became so risky that CIA decided to use Robert Morris, a deep cover, to meet Tolkachev. You can't get it more exciting.

The reader gets plenty of background information to understand how the CIA handled the cased. Hoffman also delves into the history of other spies, like GRU Colonel Oleg Penkovsky (HERO and YOGA), and Soviet diplomat Alexander Ogorodnik (TRIGON), and tells the stories of Marti Peterson, the first female CIA operations officer in Moscow and the exfiltration of KGB Major Victor Sheymov by David Rolph. Many more relevant people from the intelligence community are given a place in the book.

The fall of CKSPHERE is credited to Edward Lee Howard, a former CIA officer in training who was assigned to Moscow station but was fired before his departure to Moscow. He offered his services and all his knowledge about Moscow station to the Soviets. His downfall is also written down in this very comprehensive book that reads like a spy thriller. If you like to know the real deal, this well researched book is it.

The Billion Dollar Spy by David E. Hoffman, ISBN 9780345805973

The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet - David Kahn

The Codebreakers is the ultimate reference on the history of cryptology. This book is indispensable on the bookshelf of anyone who is interested in the making and breaking of codes, and how it influenced history. David Kahn takes you on a trip through history that spans almost 4000 years, and he does this in a very detailed, extensive and sometimes exciting way.

Giving a summary of the book is almost impossible, considering the huge wealth of information. The first chapter starts in 1941 and describes chronologically the events leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the work of OP-20-G, the U.S. Navy’s cryptologic organization. This 70 page introduction immediately makes clear what cryptography is about, and how it influences history. This gripping first chapter puts you in the front seat of history and makes you want to ride straight through Kahn’s massive 1000-pager.

The story of cryptology starts in 2000 B.C. and the book traces its origins, from the first hieroglyphs, over the early Arabic work on cryptanalysis to the Middle Ages. Western civilization would have to wait until the 14th century before secret writing gradually developed in the hands of people like di Lavinde, Soro and Porta, and the first book on cryptography, Trithemius’ Polygaphyiae. Kahn brings alive the stories from monks, popes, kings, espionage and treason, and he explains how all the classical ciphers work and how they were broken. In the 17th century, codebreaking became a powerful tool in the hands of people like Antoine Rossignol and John Wallis. The era of the black chambers, how they worked, their achievements, decrypting communications from friend and foe to assist politics and diplomacy, it’s all there. Various nomenclatures, codebooks and ciphers are presented.

Cryptology moved from a mysterious dark art to real science in the 19th century. The invention of telegraphy evoked an explosion of communications. Jefferson, Wheatstone, and Babbage, the American Civil War and conflicts in Europe lead to the invention of many so-called field ciphers, extensively used by the military. Auguste Kerckhoffs, Etienne Bazieres and many others contributed to the mechanization of cryptography by writing books or inventing crypto machines.

The many conflicts in the early 1900’s showed the need for specialized military organizations, not only to implement cryptographic systems, but also to intercept and decipher enemy communications. Radio communications became widespread and so did the commercial market of crypto machines. The war of intercepts had started. Kahn describes in detail cipher systems, how and where they performed on the battlefields during World War I, and how the United States finally catches up with the European continent, thanks to people like Herbert Yardley and William Friedman.

During the Second World War, cryptanalysis finally evolved from raw intelligence into a vital part of modern warfare. Examples are innumerable, and Kahn does a wonderful job in bringing alive the many war episodes that were determined by the making and breaking of codes. Signals intelligence kept playing a major role during the Cold War, and Kahn devotes a complete chapter on Russian cryptology, returning to its origins in the 18th century and explains how they developed into a key player the Cold War, with the according espionage stories.

The history and work of NSA (National Security Agency) is followed by the anatomy of cryptology, and a detour to the use of ciphers and codes by the American rum runners during the prohibition years, gamblers and businessman. Kahn also peeks into the past, with the deciphering of ancient languages, and briefly peeks into the future with communications with outer space.

The book was published in 1967 and therefore did not contain any recently declassified information about, for instance, the breaking of the German Enigma machine, the expansion from cryptography into the public domain, the Internet or the evolution of signals intelligence. The 1996 edition contains an additional 15-page short chapter which merely touches these subjects. However, given the many detailed books, published today about these more recent, there is no need for an extensive revision of the book.

With 27 chapters and 1180 pages (of which 194 pages notes and references) the book is already a massive read. Although the book also presents some classical cryptologic techniques, it is not a technical work for cryptologists or mathematicians. David Kahn’s The Codebreakers is a unique one-in-a-kind reference on the history of cryptology with numerous exciting stories that will captivate even those who never heard of cryptology. Highly recommended!

The Codebreakers by David Kahn, ISBN 0684831309

Nuking the Moon: And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board - Vince Houghton

This is one of the books where I have no clue where or how to start my review. Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the Spy Museum, encountered many stories, some absurd, some ridiculous and some plain nonsense. Or weren’t they? Many impressive late-night stories were told by people from the intelligence community, but Vince knows quite a few of them and, as any serious historian, interviewed experts, researched archives and scrolled through declassified documents to find the truth behind utmost secret World War II and Cold War inventions and operations. Brilliant men, inventors and exceptional innovators created some of the well-known and most advanced technology ever build, but the book is not about those inventions...

Because at some point, they were asked to come up with solutions that required exceptional out-of-the-box thinking for problems the government desperately wanted solved. And when a nation is desperate, any solution, I really mean any solution, is justified and approved. A cat, turned into a listening device (yes, I wrote turned into, not wearing), recruiting one-armed trappers with a pilot license as stay-behind forces, swarms with thousands of pebbles with electronic eyes in space, waiting to bump into Soviet ICBM’s, using nuclear power as agricultural machinery or fly around nuclear reactors, and many more stories.

The book contains many implausible ideas, some are just terrible, awful or plain dangerous. And the worst of all... they are all true! And they worked, sort of, or not quite. Fortunately, at some point, some guy said nah, too crazy, too dangerous or too mad, and the plan was scrapped. Vince not only found the history, organizations and men behind these unbelievable plans, but also brings these stories in such an entertaining, colorful and sometimes hilarious way.

However, although you might dismiss these awfully stupid ideas at first glance, you cannot turn a blind eye for how desperate these solutions were needed, the era and circumstances that - almost - justified those ideas, and how brilliant and innovative some of those solutions were. This book will make you chuckle at almost every page but will also astonish you with fascinating ideas, far ahead of their time, which would actually work, but for some reason never left the drawing board. Brilliant ideas, brilliantly told by Vince. Interviews with Vince Houghton about the book at the Spy Museum SpyCast and at Cold War Conversations.

Nuking the Moon by Vince Houghton, ISBN 0525505172

Imagine driving on the interstate on a Friday evening with a great weekend ahead. You just passed the tollgates, and a state trooper waves you over. The moment you get out of the car, an FBI agent approaches and tells you he would like to talk to you. You and I would wonder what on earth the FBI wants from you. Jack Barsky didn’t wonder. He knew his life would never be the same anymore.

If you dream of joining the secret service and operate as an illegal agent in foreign countries, you better think twice. It is indeed fascinating work but there's little glory or 007 excitement. Only lots of stress and worries. Ask Jack Barsky, formerly known as Albrecht Dittrich. In 1970, Albrecht Dittrich was a talented student at the university of Jena with a promising career in chemistry until a knock on his dorm room changed the course of his life. Scouted by the Stasi, Albrecht was asked by the KGB to join the almighty Soviet secret service and defend the communist ideals as a secret agent. And honestly, you and I would have been honored to do just the same in similar circumstances. This book explains the how and why.

Albrecht grew up during the harsh post-war years in East-Germany. As a brilliant student he was destined to join the league of men who would define the future of his country and socialism. His childhood shaped his character and ideals, and when offered to serve the socialist cause in the secret service he eagerly took the challenge. They called it serving but in reality, it meant sacrifice. He left family, friends and love to be trained in Moscow as illegal agent. He told his mother he worked in diplomacy and many loved ones were told other fake stories in the next decades. Serving as illegal non-registered agent of the KGB in the United States - the main adversary - is arguable the highest rated mission in intelligence work and more a calling than work, but it had its downsides.

In 1978, after extensive training in secret communications, counter-surveillance, English language and learning his new identity, Albrecht Dittrich finally arrived in the U.S. to shake off his past life and start a new one as Jack Barsky. It was a formidable task to go from zero to hero. His book gives an excellent insight into what it takes to establish a new identity, acquire a fictitious but credible past and the trouble to transfer that fiction onto genuine official documents. It’s an account of many tricks of the intelligence trade, learning to adapt to the culture and particular habits of an unknown country, getting a university degree all over again, loneliness, the pressure of evading counter-intelligence, improvising solutions to problems that the KGB didn't take into account, missing his wife and child and eventually alienate from his loved ones.

Despite the challenges, Jack Barsky managed to live the American but fictitious Dream and rose from bicycle messenger to successful manager in a large software firm. At the same time, he was challenged in a way that every illegal agent has to cope with. As he began to appreciate the opportunities, given to him by the United States, his dedication to the communist cause faded and he reluctantly decrypted his weekly received radiograms with instructions from KGB headquarters. Eventually, he fell in love and married a woman in the U.S. but his double life took a toll on his marriage. And just when his covert life finally seemed to have embedded perfectly in the land of the main adversary, he was waved aside at that tollgate.

The book is a real page-turner. How Albrecht Dittrich was made a spy, his training, how he embedded as Jack Barsky, what ended his spying career, how he was finally caught and his surprising redemption. But the book doesn't merely provide a fascinating account of espionage tradecraft. It's also a very personal story about the psychological and emotional burden of living a covert life. It unravels the reasons why a self-confident and a bit arrogant young man becomes a dedicated spy who sacrifices his real life in exchange for a fictitious one, how it is to even lose that fabricated life and how he eventually finds a new purpose in life. You cannot but imagine how you would feel when you had to choose between loyalty to your country, wife and children, cope with building a new future in a country far away and then see everything falling apart. Could you live that covert life, knowing that it can all be over in a blink of an eye? More about Jack Barsky on SIGINT CHATTER and on Jack Barsky's website.

Deep Undercover by Jack Barsky, ISBN 1496416821

Secret Power: New Zealand’s Role in the International Spy Network - Nicky Hager

Secret Power (now free to download as e-book) is a fascinating book about New Zealand's role in the international UKUSA based spy network. Published in 1996 but hardly known to the public, the book is one of the first well documented papers to shed a light on the most secret ECHELON system. The story begins after the Second World War, when the United States and the United Kingdom sign the UKUSA agreement, to gather and share Signals Intelligence (SIGINT). Soon after, Canada, Australia and New Zealand joined this cooperation. This was to become the largest worldwide SIGINT organization ever.

The book provides many details about the origins and history of the New Zealand Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), their collaboration with the other SIGINT agencies and the how and why of the most secretive UKUSA agreement. In the 1980s, a system was introduced to automatically categorize, filter and store the vast amount of intercepted signals from commercial satellites, radio communications, telephone, fax, Telex and e-mail traffic. The system, codenamed ECHELON became an enormous source of intelligence.

Although apparently a child of the Cold War, ECHELON does much more than protecting the participating countries against the - meanwhile perished - Soviet Union or safeguarding their nations interests. It enables massive eavesdropping on both enemies and friends, and for many years, this was done without consent or knowledge of the New Zealand parliament. ECHELON was so secret that only the GCSB staff knew - more or less - what they were doing. Moreover, the technology, training and key staff members were provided by the American NSA and the British GCHQ, the UKUSA key members.

ECHELON is based on software, called Dictionary, to filter potential interesting information with the help of key words. The five countries can individually compose and adjust different key word tables to filter out the intelligence they need. ECHELON also interconnects all the listening stations, located across the world. All five countries harvest intelligence and - theoretically - profit of the remote spy stations of their fellow eavesdroppers.

However, the 'return on investment' for junior members Australia, Canada and New Zealand is nothing compared to their British GCHQ counterpart and especially the NSA, the agency that designed and fully controls the ECHELON system and its Dictionary. At the end, New Zealand embarked on a Big Brother project without being aware of what ECHELON was used for, what information the key players filtered out the GCSB stations, and without having any democratic control over this most secret operation.

The information in the book is based many years of painstakingly puzzling together the very scarce information, tracking involved personnel and interviews with staff members of the GCSB. A quest that started in 1984 and lasted until the 1996 publishing of the book. The result is a detailed report on how the spy network and ECHELON are working, who is targeted and what information they harvest. Hager's investigations provide an insight view, not only in GCSB's kitchen, but also in the GCHQ, the NSA and the Australian DSD. A truly fascinating book!

The e-book version (pdf) is now on-line available and free to download at Nicky Hager's website (right-click the "full book" link). ISBN 0908802358

Station X: Decoding Nazi Secrets - Michael Smith

Station X is the story of the incredible achievements of codebreakers in the Second World War. In 1939, the Government Code and Cipher School, GC&CS, started a top secret station to decipher intercept enemy codes. Some of the most brilliant people were brought together in Bletchley Park, England. One of their objectives was breaking the Enigma codes.

The Enigma cipher machine was used in all parts of the German Army, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. Breaking this code could turn the tide of the war. This book is the story of the people who broke the code, how the codebreaking was organized, and gives us a pretty good idea of how people lived in Bletchley Park. Breaking Enigma played a decisive role in many parts of the war such as the Atlantic, Africa and D-day, and shortened the war by several years.


Station X by Michael Smith, ISBN 1575000946

The Ultimate Spy Book - H. Keith Melton

Keith Melton is a well-known author of several spy books and an expert on espionage equipment and clandestine devices. He has an enormous collection of these unique spy tools. This book is beautifully illustrated with more than 600 detailed images of ingenious spy accessories and weapons. The book starts with a brief historical review on the beginnings of espionage, the First World War and the Russian revolution. Melton takes us back to the Second World War, with the British SOE - Special Operations Executive, the American OSS - Office of Strategic Operations and the German Abwehr, Sicherheitsdienst and Gestapo. The covert communications equipment, suitcase radios, special weapons, the cracking of codes and Soviet wartime spy rings.

However, a major part of the book is, not surprisingly, about the Cold War. The Cold War was a period in history that was characterized by mistrust and fear between East and West. These were the heydays of espionage, with Berlin as the capital of spies. Many of the most notorious spy cases were about the battle for intelligence information between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

This battle was fought in the sky, with U2 spy planes and satellites, but also on the ground by intelligence officers and their agents in enemy territory. Hidden and automatic cameras for observation such as the Robot Star, small mini cameras like the famous Minox or the F21 with its lens in a jacket button for clandestine photography and small camera systems to copy documents. You will discover communications equipment for covert operations, monitoring equipment and dead drops to secretly pass documents and films.

Melton also brings us the story of secret operations and the special devices that were developed for these operations. If there are spies, there's counterintelligence. Bug detectors, anti-eavesdropping equipment, interception of documents and all kind of tools to burgle or secretly gain access to installations or documents of the enemy. Training and recruitment, spy rings, false covers and legends, it's all there. But above all, The Ultimate Spy is a book to watch, with many splendid photos about the art of spy-craft and its technology. A book that would make James Bond's Mister Q jealous.

The Ultimate Spy Book by Keith Melton, ISBN 0789404435

Man Without A Face / Die Trojka / Im eigener Auftrag - Markus Wolf

Markus Wolf was the legendary chief of the HVA (Haupt Verwaltung Aufklaerung), East Germany's foreign intelligence service. Wolf, the son of writer and physician Friedrich Wolf and brother of film director Konrad Wolf, fled as child in 1933 from the Nazi's and exiled himself to Moscow. After the war, he was sent to Berlin as journalist for the radio station in the Soviet Zone of occupation. As a journalist, he followed the Nuremberg Trials against the Nazi leaders.

In 1953, he was one of the founding members of the foreign intelligence service, a department of the ministry of state security, also called Stasi. As head of the HVA, Wolf developed the most effective secret service of the Cold War. After retiring in 1986, he wrote a book which was originally a film project of his late brother Konrad, about Konrad and two friends, growing up in Moscow in the 1930s. Konrad joined the Soviet Army, one friend joined the German Luftwaffe, and the third one joined the US forces.

After the war, the three friends meet again and keep in contact. The book, Die Troika, a statement for friendship which also exposed the failure of communism, was published in East and West Germany. For the people in the East, Wolf, who supported Glasnost and Perestroika, became a symbol of the ongoing changes in a country that rejected the changes in Eastern Europe.

Although Wolf headed only the foreign intelligence, one of many departments of Erich Mielke's Stasi, he became targeted as Stasi spy chief by the media during the period of the fall of the Berlin Wall. After the collapse of the German Democratic Republic Wolf was charged and sentenced for espionage, bribery and treason in the reunified Germany, but that conviction was later overturned, and he received a suspended sentence on lesser charges.

In the book The Man Without a Face (ISBN English 1891620126), you can read about his childhood years in Moscow, the development of the most successful spy agency of the Cold War, and lots of inside information on famous spy cases. In Die Trojka (ISBN German 3746680611, Dutch 9053300465, English ???) you get a taste of the life in the pre-war Soviet Union, and how friends got separated by Stalin's abuse of communism. The last book I got to read was In eigenem Auftrag: Bekenntnisse und Einsichten (ISBN German 3795112168, Dutch 9056171127, English ???) Wolf's diary of 1989-1990, describing in detail the political collapse of East Germany and how the GDR government of Erich Honnecker led the country, the SED party and socialism into the abyss, by rejecting any changes in policy.

Philby: KGB Master Spy - Phillip Knightley

The story of Kim Philby, head of the Soviet counterespionage section of the SIS, Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, at the same time a successful Russian spy. This brilliant student became a true communist in Cambridge. In 1933 he finished his university studies and went to Vienna to help underground socialists in their battle against the Austrian right-conservatives. After his return Philby was recruited by the KGB as one of 'the four of Cambridge', together with Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt.

His main objective was to infiltrate the SIS. He went to Spain as newspaper reporter and pretended to be a supporter of the fascist General Franco, to erase his communist past. In 1940 he was recruited by the SIS after recommendation by the already infiltrated Burgess and one year later he worked at the counter-espionage branch. By the end of 1944, at the dawn of the Cold War, he had been promoted to head of counter-espionage and anti-communist operations. Five years later he was promoted to the SIS top function in Washington which gave him access to US operations against the Soviet-Union, the top secret VENONA project, and other sensitive information.

After the defection of his close friends Burgess and Maclean to Moscow, he came under suspicion with MI5 and got fired. Due to lack of evidence his name was cleared and by 1956 he was covertly recruited again by the SIS as agent in Beirut. After the defection of KGB agent Golitsyn his treason was exposed, and the SIS proposed exemption of prosecution in exchange of a full confession. However, early in 1963 Philby vanished in Lebanon to surface a few weeks later in Moscow, where he was received as a hero. The performance of this master spy is unique and for almost 30 years caused enormous damage in the hart of the battle against Soviet Intelligence. This book is based on many interviews with Philby himself in Moscow and has been verified by historical research.

KGB Master Spy by Phillip Knightley, ISBN 0233000488

Loyal Comrades, Ruthless Killers: The Secret Service of the USSR 1920s to the Present - Slava Katamidze

If you are not familiar with the Soviet secret service, its history and developed, this is a great book to read. The book is written in chronological order and starts at the roots of the secret service. Katamidze takes us on a journey through time, from Dzerzhinsky's ruthless Cheka, the OGPU and NKVD, the repression by the KGB inside and outside the Soviet Union during the Cold War, to the failed 1991 coup by Kryuchkov with the dissolving of the KGB and transition to the new Federal Security Service FSB and Foreign Intelligence SVR in the new Russian Federation.

Katamidze doesn't hide his criticism on the secret services and their violent history. Many of the most notorious spy cases and KGB intelligence successes are described and you can find details about nearly all high ranked people in the secret service, all of this illustrated with many unique images. Having said this, I also have some serious questions about this book. Although a very good introduction, it fails to go into detail on several important episodes in the history of the Soviet Union and its secret service.

The author presents some new and questionable facts about names and numbers, criticizes some people and is striking mild on others. The book regretfully lacks the sources for these new facts, giving the book a sense of subjectivity, although it's hard to tell in which direction. Slava Katamidze has a background as officer in the Soviet Army, studied at the institute for foreign languages and institute for international law in Moscow.

Sounds like a perfect candidate for the GRU (military intelligence, known for its fierce rivalry with the KGB). Although nowhere mentioned and only an educated guess of mine, it would explanation the duality of the book in its criticism on the secret service and at the same time forgetting some dark Soviet episodes and details. Nonetheless a fascinating introduction and beautiful illustrated book. However, I recommend reading books such as The Mitrokhin Archive after this one, to get another view on the story.

Loyal Comrads, Ruthless Killers by Slava Katamidze, ISBN 1930983239

Chatter: Dispatches from the secret world of global eavesdropping - Patrick Radden Keefe

Interesting book about Signal Intelligence, the Echelon network, and the discussion about privacy vs security. Is it possible to eavesdrop on your phone calls or read your mails? What are secret services doing, and how far are they going? Keefe did lots of research and found answers, but also many new questions. What is NSA and who's supervising this top secret service? Can NSA win the war against terrorism? What changed after 9/11? And what about our privacy? Do secret services protect us or just violate our privacy? Keefe talked to many people from the world of intelligence, visited listening stations and tries to analyze the influence of secret services on politics and vice versa.


Chatter by Patrick Radden Keefe, ISBN 1400060346

The Sword and The Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive - Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin

Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin was a chief archivist for the First Chief Directorate PGU, the foreign-intelligence department of the KGB, when the huge archive relocated to another KGB building. Mitrokhin was responsible for transferring over 300,000 files, many of them among the KGB's most secret documents. Over a period of 12 years, Mitrokhin smuggled a vast amount of top secret papers out of the archive and copied them.

In 1992, he walked into a British embassy in a Baltic state and by the end of that year he was exfiltrated by British Secret Service, together with several large crates of documents. The consequences were devastating for the KGB. Details about secret operations and the names and code names of Soviet spies came into the hands of intelligence services in the West. As the facts got published, SVR, the successor to the KGB, replied that it was simply impossible that hundreds of names could be exposed, 'in worst case a few'.

The reality was that more than one thousand names were revealed. This enabled secret services to identify or catch many Soviet spies. This large book contains an enormous amount of information on the history of the secret services in the Soviet Union and detailed info on Soviet spies and numerous secret operations.

The Sword and The Shield by Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin, ISBN 0465003125

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography - Simon Singh

What is cryptology and where did it come from? Ever since the beginning of mankind, people have had secrets, and people have wanted to know other people's secrets. This book takes the reader on a trip through the history of cryptology, from ancient texts through to modern cryptographic algorithms on computers. Singh explains the evolution of codemakers, and their never-ending battle with codebreakers.

Without going into technical details, he shows the importance of cryptology in politics and war over many centuries. We read how cryptography was developed as an important weapon against Signal Intelligence, and the role of codebreakers in SIGINT. In this age of technology, internet and communication, Singh explains the importance of encryption to protect our privacy.

This isn't a detailed book aimed at crypto geeks, but a good introduction to cryptography with some basics on classical encryption methods and a bit of theory on modern algorithms like RSA. This book is a must for those who think that encryption isn't important.


The Code Book by Simon Singh, ISBN 0385495323

The Game of The Foxes - Ladislas Farago

A detailed book about the Abwehr, the German Foreign Intelligence organization before and during the Second World War. Farago, a former SIS officer, reconstructed the history of this notorious service thanks to recovered archives, captured in the final days of war. They contained tens of thousands of documents on microfilm.

The book explains how the Abwehr was formed, how Admiral Canaris developed it into an effective secret service, and his struggle with the other German security services. We can read about the preparations for war and the invasion of Poland, as well as the spy networks in England, the success of the British counterintelligence and the Double-Cross system that turned virtually all German agents in England into double agents.

There's a large chapter on pre-war industrial and military espionage and sabotage by German spy networks in the US. You can read how the Abwehr tried to influence US elections and prevent a third term for F. D. Roosevelt, who was in favor of military support for Europe. The archives reveal the misplaced confidence in the Abwehr agents operating in the US, and how the FBI eliminated most of the spy networks once the US entered the war. The archives show the infiltration of foreign embassies, the spy network in neutral Sweden and the support for General Franco in Spain.

In 1944 the Abwehr finally lost all credit with the Nazi top brass, in favor of Schellenbergs Sicherheidsdienst Ausland, and Admiral Canaris was forced to leave the service. The Allied success of operation Fortitude, to mislead German intelligence about the invasion on D-Day, was the last major battle between the secret services and finally lead to the fall of the Nazi empire.

The question remains in how far Canaris, who became anti-Nazi, was responsible for the failure of his intelligence service and the outcome of war. The Abwehr, by then under command of the RSHA, soon collapsed without the expertise of Canaris who was executed later by the SS in Kamp Flossenburg for conspiracy against Hitler. This detailed story of the recovered Abwehr archive is a unique piece of WW2 intelligence history.

The Game of The Foxes by Ladislas Farago ISBN 0553123424

IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation - Edwin Black

How was it possible for the Nazis to identify such an enormous number of Jews and other ethnic groups? How did they find all their relatives? How did they manage to transport and eliminate millions of people? The answer to these questions begins in the early 1930s, when IBM successfully commercialized and aggressively monopolized the Hollerith punch card technology, used since 1890 by census bureaus.

When Thomas Watson became president of IBM, his goal was to expand the company on a global scale, regardless any political, military or ethic obstacle. A crucial player in the organization of the Holocaust was Dehomag, a German sub-company of IBM. The Hollerith machines, the predecessor of the computer, were able to perform statistical calculations and organize data with an unmatched speed.

Already in the early 1930s the Nazis placed large orders at Dehomag to organize their industry, finances, railways but also to automate the identification of Jews. All Hollerith machines had to be customized for each specific task and special punch cards were designed to store detailed information. Although the Germany based Demohag company officially processed these orders, it were the IBM engineers who controlled the complete process, and all financial decisions were made by IBM New York and its executives.

Even when Jews were openly prosecuted and deported, even when war broke out, even when all trade with Germany became illegal, IBM continued to produce and lease Hollerith machines, developed custom solutions for the Nazis, offered maintenance and gained massive profits of this, of course hidden in a labyrinth of confusing financial and legal tricks.

Given the complex requirements to develop specific custom solutions, which included detailed data input and question lists, IBM was well aware of the purpose of the ordered machines. Moreover, IBM was constantly involved in legal battles to obtain more and more profit of its successful sub-company Dehomag. Meanwhile, Hollerith machines produced precise address lists of Jews in Germany and many occupied countries, organized their deportation and enslaved labor, enabled smooth railway timetables to transport millions of people across Europe and boosted the efficiency of the German war industry.

IBM was the one who leased the machines and produces the billions of punch cards Hitler needed to continue his war and the total annihilation of Jews. This book shows in detail the carefully constructed covert alliance between IBM and the Third Reich, and how IBM founder and president Thomas Watson cooperated with the Nazis. It's not an easy book to read, but an astonishing report on how a globalized company ignored moral ethics, laws and borders for the sake of profit. Above all, this book answers the most important question: how did Hitler get the names of all these Jews?

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black, ISBN 0609607995

The Red Orchestra - Gilles Perrault

The story of Leopold Trepper, a Polish Jew who ran a network of Soviet radio spies in occupied Europe during WW2. The Red Orchestra is the name of the secret operation, ordered by Hitler personally, to eliminate these Soviet cells. One by one, all clandestine radio stations are traced, and the members of the organization arrested and tortured by the Gestapo.

Trepper however seems to be a ghost, getting away each time, while the ring around his organization is closing slowly. It's a detailed document on how Soviet spies operated in Europe, and the battle between Wehrmacht and Gestapo SIGINT units and the different Soviet cells, broadcasting German secrets to Russia.


The Red Orchestra by Gilles Perrault, ISBN 0805209522