Intelligence and the Cold War

Abstract

J Bond symbolizes the popular appeal of any story related to the intelligence services. Yet, until recently, this interest had not been matched by academic publications. As Professor Richard J. Aldrich rightly asserts in his book, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and the Cold War Secret Intelligence, “only a minority of scholars has yet attempted to integrate secret service with international history.”1 By addressing this issue in the context of Anglo-American relations from June 1941 to the end of 1963, this brilliant book fills two major gaps of international relations historiography. Indeed, being one of the first serious and well-documented scholarly assessments of the impact of secret services on the Cold War, this study is also a major contribution to the history of the so-called “Special Relationship.” By shedding light on “the ‘Missing Dimension’2 of history,” Aldrich also focuses on an understudied theme of Anglo-American relations—the intelligence field. It therefore is no accident that Professor Aldrich’s book received the Donner Prize and was short listed for the Westminster Medal. The Anglo-American “Special Relationship” was characterized as an informal alliance establishing a privileged link between the two Anglo-Saxon powers. It did not rest on any specific treaty but more on an aggregation of agreements. Since World War II, three pillars symbolized this relationship: collaboration between the military forces, cooperation in the fields of nuclear weapons (except between 1946 and 1958), and collaboration in intelligence. However, so far, “there remains an alarming disparity in our understanding of [these] areas. The importance of intelligence is often commented on, but rarely subjected to sustained analysis.”3 In The Hidden Hand, Aldrich demonstrates that this underdeveloped theme is indeed a very important gap, which has distorted our understanding of the “Special Relationship.” In his introduction, Aldrich explains that he chose to emphasize conflict between the two allies rather than to depict an illusory collaborative image.4 He persuasively demonstrates that “many still held true the familiar dictum that ‘There are no friendly secret services, only secret services of friendly states’” and that “secret service in this turbulent period often seemed an anarchic struggle of ‘all against all.’”5 This was especially true in the context of