Intelligence In War Research Articles

Landmark emancipation of technical intelligence in pre-World War II Czechoslovakia

Landmark emancipation of technical intelligence in pre-World War II Czechoslovakia

British surveillance of postwar Soviet radio jamming: US–UK intelligence relations and interference detection at BBC Tatsfield, 1948-1949

ABSTRACT Following World War II, the BBC, better known for radio programme broadcasts, continued its long-standing work of radio spectrum surveillance at the specialized receiving and measurement facility located at Tatsfield. Both before and after Soviet jamming of US and British Russian-language broadcasts escalated in April 1949, Tatsfield catalogued the technical characteristics of jamming signals. BBC engineers, experienced in interpreting types and sources of radio interference, issued fortnightly summaries with interpretations of these technical observations. US intelligence agencies knew of Tatsfield’s findings, but differing perspectives in Washington and London resulted in divergent responses to the technical intelligence data. With rising tensions in wider Anglo-American intelligence relations, fueled by the Soviet weapons program and security breaches, such differences presaged separate approaches to Soviet communications threats. US agencies received greatly increased funding, while the BBC’s budget struggles persisted. Even so, interference detection was a high-water mark in Britain’s early Cold War intelligence work.

Spies: the epic intelligence war between East and West

Spies: the epic intelligence war between East and West

British Army intelligence in provincial Ireland, 1919‒1921: organisation, outcomes and the 6th Division blacklist

AbstractIntelligence played a critical role in the Irish War of Independence, though debate remains about the effectiveness of British information-gathering. Historians have focused largely on the intelligence war in Dublin. This article examines British Army intelligence in the 6th Division area (roughly the southern third of the island). It will contextualise British military intelligence before the conflict and traces the slow development of an intelligence organisation in the 6th Division. It then considers the sources and nature of British information gathering, particularly interrogation of prisoners and the collection and analysis of captured documents. Military intelligence summaries and a ‘Blacklist’ of I.R.A. suspects across the 6th Division are used to ascertain the quality of military intelligence products during the final stages of the conflict. The ‘Blacklist’ can be contrasted with I.R.A. unit arrest data and leadership lists, to assess the effectiveness of British military intelligence at a county level. This comparison provides a new measure of British performance, clearly revealing the limitations of British military intelligence in the 6th Division, particularly when compared to relatively more successful results achieved by crown forces in the Dublin District.

Ethics, autonomy, and killer drones: Can machines do right?

As technology advances, machines will increasingly serve as moral arbiters of difficult and convoluted war tasks. Humanity is already in the dawn of the “Autonomous Revolution” and ethical questions and considerations regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in war cannot be delayed. The use of AI-enabled weaponized drones is a microcosm of the issues that arise. The purpose of this paper is to create and sustain a discussion of the ethics of emerging defense technologies by considering them in the context of mainstream ethical frameworks, analyzing the U.S.’s decision-making and moral justifications to date, and discussing what ethics should be instilled in AI-enabled military drones themselves, if indeed the U.S. decides to further pursue them.

Early Cold War intelligence paper mills: the case of the Association of Hungarian Veterans

ABSTRACT During the early Cold War, it was difficult for American intelligence to penetrate the Iron Curtain but a potential solution soon arose: émigré intelligence groups such as the Magyar Harcosok Bajtársi Közössége (MHBK) or ‘Association of Hungarian Veterans’. This group, however, turned out to be an intelligence ‘paper mill’. Attempts at trans-Atlantic cooperation with the MHBK and similar groups failed as they lost most of their good sources and were penetrated by communist security services. By the mid-1950s, US intelligence cut these groups off, took over their good sources, and established a source registry to prevent recurrence of the problem.

<i>Das unsichtbare Visier</i> – A 1970s Cold War Intelligence TV Series as a Fantasy of International and Intranational Empowerment; or, How East Germany Saved the World and West Germans Too

This article addresses a franchise of intelligence films in the former Communist East Germany. Under the general title Das unsichtbare Visier—The Invisible Visor—they were produced for television and very popular. In general, the Cold War East produced a rich array of its own intelligence heroes, which cannot be reduced to mere derivatives of Western models. Yet there were commonalities and interactions across Cold War divides. One of these common features that Visier shared with many intelligence films globally was the depiction of abroad as both an “invisible front” of dangers and temptations and an exciting realm of adventure and consumption. Visier could not but also be a fantasy about East German citizens encountering, withstanding, and also enjoying the dangers and temptations of the Western Cold War Other. This included their facing two peculiar challenges: a degree of international mobility unlike anything the vast majority of ordinary East Germans could experience and the West’s consumerism. Visier addressed both these issues through what we could describe as an essentially playful—and dis-playful—practical cosmopolitanism. A careful look reveals Visier as a rich artifact of Cold War popular culture, with complex messages. The image of the heroic East German agent included a running comment of compensatory wish fulfillment. Here were ideal East German citizens doing their duty and yet also getting a fair slice of the capitalist good life abroad that most of their compatriots could not reach. They also consistently punched above their weight vicariously for East Germany as a whole. Like Britain’s James Bond, these were agents of an at-best middling power doing major things in the world at large. And finally, perhaps most satisfyingly of all, they turned into gentle, benevolent guardian angels of hapless West German cousins, neatly reversing West Germany’s claims of superiority.

Book Review of “Hitler’s Spies: Secret Agents and the Intelligence War in South Africa 1939–1945” Edited by Evert Kleynhans

Evert Kleynhans: Hitler’s spies, Secret Agents and the Intelligence War in South Africa 1939–1945. Johannesburg, Cape Town, London: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2021. ISBN: 9781776190201, pp. 271

An Examination of “Rationality’’ on President George Bush (Jr) Second Gulf War Intelligence

The world is faced with a series of security problems and the need to address such problems depends on the leaders at the helm of affairs. International problems such as the threat of terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be treated with levity, they require deep thinking with a rational mind to prevent or cause war. However, the issue of leadership committing his nation to war or not is been addressed within the corridor of exercise of power. Critical case of the second Gulf war had questioned the rationality of President George Bush (Jnr) in prosecuting the war despite opinion polls that were against it. Since the war attracted political and academic debate bothering on rationality, it is worthwhile to attempt this paper by examining President George Bush’s (Jnr) rationality or otherwise in going for the war. The paper is based on qualitative analysis with the application of textbooks, journals, periodicals, and adopted interviews published on the websites. It also concluded that rationality is a beauty in the eye of the beholder and that American foreign policies are the instruments that any of its leaders must follow to achieve national interest based on primacy, democratic philosophy, and a world order based on his degree of rationality.

Asian Americans and the Intelligence War

Asian Americans and the Intelligence War

The Black Sea Coast as a Landscape of Cold War Intelligence

The Black Sea Coast as a Landscape of Cold War Intelligence

Countersurveillance, Photography and Revolution in the Irish War of Independence

This article examines a photographic album compiled by an Irish Republican Army unit during the Irish War of Independence, a guerrilla struggle fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army and the British Army, along with the quasi-military Royal Irish Constabulary. The employment of techniques and surveillance methods similar to those of the British state and police forces in Ireland enabled the group’s intelligence squad to track the movements of their enemies. Those depicted were monitored and sometimes targeted for elimination, thus turning this photographic evidence against the state and its representatives. The article is based on witness statements, memoirs and parliamentary proceedings, thus revealing the importance of photography in the intelligence war against the British Empire. Studio portraits originally taken for familial or occupational uses, newspaper cuttings reflecting society events and covertly taken snapshots were triangulated with handwritten notes detailing the daily routines of those pictured. The album’s multiplicity of formats constitutes a type of conflict photography that differs from the usual depictions of ruins and raids that dominated imagery of the Irish revolutionary period.

A Nuclear Generator of Clouds: Accidents and Radioactive Contamination Identified on Declassified Satellite Photographs in the Mayak Chemical Combine, Southern Urals

The Mayak Chemical Combine was one of the most secretive places in the Soviet Union. It was built in the southern Urals, close to Kyshtym. The facility produced weapons-grade plutonium and other radioactive isotopes for the Soviet nuclear military programme. Fugitives from behind the Iron Curtain mentioned the site, usually due to accidents and peculiar, unexplained observations. Such reports were often treated in the West as exaggerated or fictional, as they spoke of large-scale disasters, deportations and vast landscape transformations. This paper aims to present the research potential of declassified Cold War intelligence records for archaeological landscape studies of off-limits military sites. To outline a somewhat broader perspective, I will combine those sources with contemporary historical knowledge and modern remote sensing data. The analysis will be focused on the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] satellite imagery (CORONA and GAMBIT) from the 1960s to the beginning of the 1970s. The discussed sources recorded outcomes of nuclear disasters, hundreds of square kilometres of uninhabited wasteland, abandoned villages, disappearing lakes, dying forests, diverted rivers, and other features related to this clandestine plutonium facility.

Hitler’s spies: Secret agents and the intelligence war in South Africa

No abstract available.

Agents of influence: Britain's secret intelligence war against the IRA

Agents of influence: Britain's secret intelligence war against the IRA

‘This is not the sort of man we want in Palestine today’. New evidence on the appointment of Alan Cunningham as High Commissioner of Palestine

ABSTRACT The decision-making process behind the appointment of General Alan Cunningham as High Commissioner of Palestine in November 1945 to replace Field Marshal Lord Gort has been difficult to explain. Cunningham’s record as a failed wartime general and backwater administrative commander were scant preparation for an important political position in Mandatory Palestine. Newly located files indicate Vice Chief of the Imperial Staff Archibald Nye listed Cunningham among a series of possible candidates for consideration by Prime Minister Clement Atlee. Terror attacks in Palestine, American pressure over Jewish refugees, the need to secure additional American loans, and the covert Anglo-French intelligence war in the Middle East, pressured Atlee to make a quick decision. After some confusion Cunningham was selected and Chief of the Imperial General Staff Alan Brooke approved. Haste and personal connections therefore brought about a critical appointment that shaped the end of the Mandate.

Eyes on target: ‘Stay-behind’ forces during the Cold War

This article examines the concept of ‘stay-behind’ as a war-fighting tactic used by North Atlantic Treaty Organization to maximize its defensive efforts against a possible Soviet onslaught during the Cold War. It outlines how the concept developed, describes the military and clandestine units involved and what the division of tasks was between them, the way they operated, and how North Atlantic Treaty Organization was involved in coordinating these efforts. By providing a holistic look at military and clandestine stay-behind doctrine, it fills a gap in Cold War intelligence research.

“The Secret Lives of Dennis Phombeah: Decolonization, the Cold War, and African Political Intelligence, 1953–1974”

Processes of decolonization in the context of the Cold War provided enormous opportunities for nationalist figures to parlay insider nationalist knowledge into significant metropolitan influence. This article offers an ‘agent-focused’ rather than ‘agency-focused’ approach to the study of Cold War intelligence competition in Africa’s decolonization through a study of the career of Dennis Phombeah, a Nyasalander by birth and Tanganyikan nationalist figure who came to work for multiple foreign intelligence agencies. While itself a single case study, this article suggest that multiple intelligence agencies placed a high premium on acquiring a basic understanding of the internal politics of newly-independent African countries, which were otherwise rendered deliberately opaque by the states themselves as a common sovereignty-preserving device. Using intelligence records from Britain, Czechoslovakia and Portugal, a picture emerges of cross-rival institutional dependency on informants from the peripheries who were empowered by their years at metropolitan centers, offering a challenging perspective to institutional-focused studies of Cold War intelligence.

Japanese Navy’s Tactical Intelligence Collection on the Eve of the Pacific War

The intelligence literature on the Pacific War of 1941–1945 is grossly asymmetrical. Mainly American and British authors have examined many aspects of the Allied intelligence war, typically touting...

Hungarians in the Spanish Legion?

The research was conducted on the activities of Hungarian emigrants in the Spanish Legion. It was assumed that the Hungarians provided an important manpower supply for the Spanish Legion and the Spanish army, including in the Spanish Civil War. Examining the facts, it can be concluded that the Hungarian soldiers’ participation in the earlier North African wars and the Spanish conflicts had an important effect on the area’s geopolitical situation, and it is possible to assume that veterans played a relevant role in the ongoing military and intelligence war between the West and the East.