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RECOMMENDED BIBLIOGRAPHY ON THE MAJOR SECRET SERVICES

Lawrence Chin

www.lawrencechin2011.com

Russia: the SVR (formerly KGB)

Christopher Andrew, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of

the KGB, Basic Books, 1999. The book is a classic example of "active measure", disinformation

to discredit the past and present Russian intelligence service as both evil and ineffectual.

Genrikh Borovik, The Philby Files: The Secret Life of Master Spy Kim Philby, translated by

Antonina W. Bouis, edited and introduced by Phillip Knightley, Little, Brown and Co., 1994. A

most excellent account of the life of the "spy of the century" Kim Philby, the British SIS officer

who spied for USSR throughout World War II and after and then defected to USSR in the 1960s.

The account is balanced, objective, and non-propagandist.

Victor Cherkashin, Spy Handler: The True Story of the Man Who Recruited Robert Hanssen and

Aldrich Ames, Basic Books, 2005. A fairly accurate and balanced presentation of the KGB and

SVR. Does not contain classified details on operational methods, etc.

France: DGSE

Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair o the Gulf War, Farrar Straus

and Giroux, 1995. Useful to some extent for educating yourself about the French inteilligence

sercie. From RG (Renseignements gnraux), to DST (Direction de la surveillance du territoire),

to SDECE (Service de documentation extrieure et de contre-espionnage) which later becameDGSE. A good history on the politicization and fragmentation which have plagued the French

intelligence organs more than in any other country. Underestimates the effectiveness of the

French foreign intelligence service. Advocates the erroneous model of intelligence business as

"intelligence gathering".

Jean Guisnel, Roger Faligot, and Remi Kauffer, Histoire politique des services secrets francais, La

Decouverte, 2012. Educational and informative if you know nothing about the French secret

services. Mediocre if you already know a lot, because it gives out no secrets and is usually

conforming to "official stories", especially toward the Sarkozy era (e.g. the bullshit "We Western

democracies are under threat from Muslim terrorists and rogue states like North Korea").

China: MSS

David Wise: Tiger Trap: America's Secret Spy War with China, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.

Detailed examination of the cases of Katrina Leung and Wu-Tai Chin. Mediocre; not an overview

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of the China's intelligence service at all.

Britain: CI6 (SIS)

Gordon Thomas, Secret Wars: One Hundred Years of British Intelligence Inside MI5 and MI6, St

Martin's Press, 2009. Awful book. Official stories (i.e. propaganda). A simplistic, fairy-tale view

of Britain's highly sophisticated and deviant intelligence organs.

Annie Machon, Spies, Lies, and Whistleblowers, Book Guild Ltd 2005. On MI5. Contains useful

information, "true details" behind certain terrorist acts (the plot to assassinate Gadhafi,

bombing of Israel's embassy in London). Occasional disinformation (Lockerbie bombing).

Israel: Mossad

Gordon Thomas, Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad. Very good, but not an

overview of Mossad. A collection of specific operations carried out by Mossad. Check out the

early edition!

US: CIA

Lindsay Moran, Blowing My Cover, Berkley Trade, 2005.

Valerie Plame Wilson, Fair Game, Simon and Shuster, 2007. These two contemporary memoirs

by actual CIA agents are the worst sources of information about the CIA. Purely disinformation.

Purposely designed to mislead you to the erroneous model of CIA's mission as intelligence-

gathering for the purpose of defending the nation. To hide the fact that females constitute the

majority of CIA spies, Moran's book also misportrays the CIA as male-dominated and permeated

by sexism. No such thing.

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