Intelligence Studies On The Continent

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David Kahn
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REVIEW ESSAY
Intelligence Studies on the Continent
DAVID KAHN
Downloaded by [Australian National University] at 21:23 26 June 2013
Americans and Britons are notorious for not knowing foreign

languages. Yet despite Anglo-Saxon ignorance, a lot of scholarly work
on intelligence is going on abroad. Here is an overview of what is being
published in the eld in French, German, and Spanish. I hope it will stir
interest, improve intelligence studies over the world, and bring students
together in a new international collaboration.
THE RENAISSANCE OF FRENCH INTELLIGENCE LITERATURE
Intelligence literature has owered expansively in France in the last decade or

so, but it has been too neglected by Anglophones. In the December 2006
issue of this journal, Peter Jackson alerted us to this new activity. This article
amplies his ground-breaking work. It neither reviews the works as
intensively as they deserve nor offers as extensive a survey as a bibliography
should. It merely calls attention to the more important studies that have come
to my notice through friends, purchase, gift or the catalog of the New York
Public Library.
I think it fair to call the phenomenon a rebirth. Frances intelligence
literature rst blossomed in the revanchist years between the 1871 defeat by
Prussia, with the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and the start of World War I.
Nearly all was written by soldiers. The current crop comes mainly from
scholars, inspired by the intelligence aspects of the Cold War and nourished
by sources newly available from archives. Many of the books comprise
collections of scholarly articles.
The literature divides itself into three parts: scholarly books, scholarly
articles, and non-scholarly books. I have concentrated on the scholarly works
because they advance knowledge more than popular books, which, while
often less accurate, can offer new insights and are frequently better written. I
have not been able to nd and read the unpublished dissertations, so they are
not discussed here. And as I have been able to do little more than skim the
Intelligence and National Security, Vol.23, No.2, April 2008, pp.249 275
ISSN 0268-4527 print 1743-9019 online
DOI: 10.1080/02684520801977402 2008 Taylor & Francis
250 INTELLIGENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY
more important scholarly works that have come to my attention, I have

thought it best in most cases to give an idea of their subject matter by
translating the titles of the more important chapters. I regret not being able to
do more, but feel it is better to get the information out briey but sooner
rather than comprehensively but later. And may I say how grateful I am to Dr
Olivier Forcade, professor of history at the Universite Jules Verne at Amiens
and a leading scholar of intelligence, for his help on many points here and for
his and his wifes hospitality when he had me to dinner at his house in an
exurb of Paris. Dr Sebastien Laurent, master of conferences at the Universite
Michel de Montaigne at Bordeaux, likewise read and commented on this
section.
And though this survey deals with literature in French, it cannot ignore the
only book that, to my knowledge, covers the eld diachronically. Douglas
Porchs The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf
War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1995, 623 pp., ISBN 0-374-
15853-3), merits examination by anyone working on the topic. In addition,
Christopher Andrews article on Frances best source of intelligence, code
breaking, broke new paths: Dechiffrement et diplomatie: Le cabinet noir
sous la troisie`me republique [Decipherment and Diplomacy: The Black
Chamber in the Third Republic] (Relations internationales 5 (Spring 1976)
pp.3764).
Most of the scholarly French books focus on one period or a single type of
information, or deal with the relation of intelligence to government. To my
knowledge, only one recent work surveys all intelligence synchronically.
This is the dazzling study by Alain Dewerpe, Espion: Une anthropologie
historique du secret dEtat contemporain [Spy: A Historical Anthropology of
the Secrecy of the Contemporary State] (Paris: Gallimard 1994, 480 pp.,
ISBN 2-07-073779-9). Dewerpe is director of studies at the School for Higher
Studies in Social Sciences in Paris. To the best of my knowledge, there is
no book like it in all of intelligence literature. It discusses intelligence
philosophically, economically, legally, and anthropologically and illuminates
it with comments from some of the greatest thinkers in Western civilization.
Dewerpe, a historian of the working class, views intelligence as an
intellectual endeavor in the European tradition, not as a sui generis activity.
He quotes Montesquieu, Stendhal, Balzac, Kipling, Proust; he digests the
work of the great sociologist of secrecy, Georg Simmel; he has studied
contemporary laws and the classics of international law; he has read the pre-
World War I works and the more modern studies on intelligence. His book is
encyclopedic but not exhaustive. It lacks a good knowledge of the secondary
English-language literature, such as this journal. I saw no discussion of why
intelligence so fascinates the public. Nevertheless, this book deserves a
translation into English.
INTELLIGENCE STUDIES ON THE CONTINENT 251
Leading the specialist scholarly endeavor in the history of French intelli-

gence are the habilitations. These are superdoctorates. The Anglo-American
educational system has no equivalent. While the French the`se de doctorat
corresponds to the PhD and requires a thesis of around 500 to 600 pages, the
habilitation deals with its subject in even greater detail often 1000 pages.
The habilitation permits those who have obtained one to direct doctoral
students and to seek election as a professeur des universites. I know of four
in intelligence. Two have been published; two have been accepted for
publication.
The rst to have been published is Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de
Louis XIV [Spies and Ambassadors in the Time of Louis XIV] (Paris: Fayard
1990, 895 pp., ISBN 2-213-02446-4). By Lucien Bely, professor of the
history of international relations at the University of Paris IV Sorbonne, its
most important intelligence section is Part I, Secret Information in the Field
of Diplomacy. It deals with espionage in eight chapters: The Perfect Spy:
Recruitment and Surveillance, Networks and Channels, The Methods of
Espionage, The Open Letter, Money, Women, and Trust, Universal
Curiosity, The Metamorphosis of Information, Propaganda and
Disinformation. A few tables quantize aspects of intelligence. One, for
example, gives the types and times of information provided by a spy, Baron
Karg. Another lists the time served by spies in the Bastille (they ranged from
one month for two spies to 14 years for two). Belys sources half a dozen
archives, hundreds of printed works run 210 pages.
Alain Hugon, master of conferences at the University of Caen and
specialist in the history of Spain in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, is the
author of Au Service du roi catholique: Honorables ambassadeurs
et Divins espions: Representation diplomatique et service secret dans les
relations hispano-francaises de 1598 a` 1635 [In the Service of the Catholic
King: Honorable Ambassadors and Divine Spies: Diplomatic Representa-
tion and Secret Service in Hispano-French Relations from 1598 to 1635]
(Madrid: Casa de Velazquez 2004, 790 pp., ISBN 84-95555-59-X). This book
deals in large part with the role of spies for Spain in the relations between the
Spanish monarchs, the Catholic kings, on whose worldwide empire the sun
literally never set, and their most Christian majesties the kings of France,
which was starting to rise to become the greatest power in Europe. Among
the many excellences of this work are its data base of information about 240
spies and informers, with summaries of what is known about their persons
and work. For example, De Celles, a nobleman from Foix in what is now
southern France, appears in the Spanish documents for the rst time in 1599
and for the last on 12 April 1608; in 1606 he revealed a French plot in
Navarre. Hugon quanties such matters as payments in 37 bar charts and
tables a most valuable resource, since it permits comparisons. Hugon has
excellent chapters on The World of Secrecy and Information, Action, and

Counterespionage. The book answers a question that long nagged me: why
did so great a power as Spain not have a cryptanalyst to read encrypted
letters? In fact it did but no historian had hitherto looked for evidence of
him. Hugon found in the National Library in Madrid many intercepted
letters solved by Luis Valle de la Cerda, who thus takes his place alongside
Frances Francois Vie`te and Antoine Rossignol and Britains John Wallis.
The riches of this work set a remarkable standard for future historians of
espionage!
Other habilitations on intelligence have been written and accepted for
publication. One is Olivier Forcades La Republique secre`te: Histoire des

services speciaux francais de 1918 a` 1939 [The Secret Republic: History of
French special services from 1918 to 1939] (Paris: Nouveau Monde editions
2008, 702 pp., ISBN 978-2-84736-229-9). It argues that the state has
increasingly regulated espionage, that during the interwar period intelligence
was primarily a function of the military, and that the secret wars against
Germany and the Soviet Union largely drove French intelligence. It seeks to
determine what role intelligence played in Frances strategic and diplomatic
decisions. It scrutinizes the possible failure of Frances strategic orientation
during the 1930s.
The other habilitation is by Sebastien Laurent, Au cur de lEtat: le
renseignement, la politique et la formation de lEtat secret dans la France
contemporaine (XIXeXXe sie`cles) [At the Heart of the State: Information,
Politics, and the Establishment of the Secret State in Contemporary France,
19th20th Centuries]. It runs to 790 manuscript pages. His name will be
familiar to readers of this journal from his article in the winter 2000 issue:
The Free French Secret Services: Intelligence and the Politics of Republican
Legitimacy.
Among the dozens of books on French intelligence that have been
published, I list here those that seem to me the most useful among the ones
that have come to my attention.
The le dealing with the accusation, trial, conviction, and execution of the
woman whose name has become an eponym for spy has been usefully
assembled by Jean-Pierre Turbergue in Mata-Hari: Le dossier secret du
Conseil de Guerre [Mata-Hari: The Secret Dossier of the Council of War].
Introduction by Pierre Pesnot. Postscript by General Andre Bach (n.p.,
Editions Italiques 2001, 575 pp., ISBN 2-910536-17-3). Containing all the
papers of the affair created by the military justice administration and
conserved at the French military archives, it reproduces many originals.
Some are typed; some are handwritten; some are forms lled in by hand.
Whether other papers exist in, for instance, the Foreign Ofce archives or in
private hands it does not, of course, say.
Colonel Dr Frederic Guelton runs the army department of the Historical

Section of the Ministry of Defense from a big ofce in the historic Chateau de
Vincennes, not far from where Mata Hari was executed by a ring squad.
With Lieutenant Abdel Bicer, he has edited Naissance et evolution du
renseignement dans lespace europeen (18701940): Entre democratie et
totalitarisme, quatorze etudes de cas [Birth and Evolution of Intelligence in
the European Area (18701940): Between Democracy and Totalitarianism:
14 Case Studies] ([Vincennes:] Service historique de la defense 2006, 426
pp., ISBN 2-1109-5778-6). In the preface, the leading British historian of
intelligence, Christopher Andrew, correctly states that the articles will help in
understanding both the history of Europe and systems of intelligence. The

very wide-ranging studies rest in large part on fresh archival research. They
answer a number of questions that had interested me, at least, and of course
raise new ones. The authors and the abbreviated titles in English are:
Sebastien Laurent, Soldiers and Policemen of Intelligence in France 1870
1914; Alexandre Mihal, Future History of Romanian Intelligence;
Alessandro Massignani, Italian Army Intelligence 19001920; John Ferris,
British Army Intelligence in World War I; Michael Bourlet, The Economic
Section of Army Intelligence in World War I; Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix,
French Naval Intelligence in World War I; Abdel Bicer, The Genesis of
French Intelligence in the Aegean Sea and the Greek Peninsula 19151916;
Andrew Barros, The Impact of Total War on the Deuxie`me Bureau in the
1920s; Dirk Engelen, Intelligence in the Low Countries 1914 to 1940;
Chantal Aubin, Counterespionage in the 1930s; Jean-David Mizrahi,
French Intelligence in the Levant in the 1930s; Jean-Francois Berdah,
Anti-Nazi Intelligence in the Spanish Republic, 19361939; Yannick Pech,
Two-headed Espionage: Republican and Nationalist Secret Services during
the Spanish Civil War 19361939; Remy Porte, Military Attaches and
Franco-Soviet Negotiations 19381939.
Admiral Pierre Lacoste, director of the DGSE (Direction generale de la
securite exterieure) from 1982 to 1985, gained his ve stars Frances
highest non-marshal rank solely in intelligence, demonstrating the new
importance of that specialty in terms every military man recognizes. A
pleasant man, always smiling, he ran a course in intelligence at the Universite
Marne-La Vallee from 1995 to 1998 and then assembled a collection of 35
articles, Le Renseignement a` la francaise [Intelligence French Style] (Paris:
Economica 1998, 641 pp., ISBN 2-7178-3776-0). He divides them into ve
sections: Intelligence and History; Military Intelligence; the [Governmental]
Services; Intelligence, Economics, Society; and Foreign Comparisons.
Among the articles I found most interesting were Olivier Forcades on the
state of military history and intelligence, Maurice Faivres on French military
intelligence in the framework of NATO, Raoul Girardets on military culture
and intelligence, Andre Cattieuws on French cryptology, Bertrand Warusfels

on the juridical and institutional framework of Frances intelligence services,
Maurice Botbols on intelligence and journalism, Christian Harbulots on
French approaches to economic intelligence, two by Lacoste, on responsibility
and ethics of intelligence services and the French culture of intelligence, and
Charles Cogans on an American view of French intelligence.
Dr Maurice Vasse edits the ofcial Documents diplomatiques francais and
scholarly journals in addition to writing books and articles. He directs the
Defense Ministrys Center for Studies of Defense History, which since 1995
has had under it a commission on the history of intelligence. Among its
results was a collection to which he gave the title of Il nest point de secrets
que le temps ne reve`le [There are no secrets at all that time does not
reveal] a quotation from Racines Britannicus, which expresses the desires
of historians more than those of spies (and was picked up as a motto for Tim
Weiners critical history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes [New York 2007]). The
work was issued under the centers auspices and published by LaVauzelle in
Panazol, near Limoges in southwestern France, in 1998 (280 pp.,
ISBN 2-7025-0432-9). The 16 chapters of this book some published
previously cover a broader range than the other works. The earliest deal
with the military intelligence of the Normans 9001135 and an espionage
affair of the Hundred Years War. Other chapters deal but of course with
the French Revolution and Napoleon. Still others discuss the notion of a
network of intelligence in the Resistance and a French view of the American
Congresss control of intelligence from 1947 to 1987. One of the most useful,
by Bertrand Warusfel, argues that counterintelligence evolved from an
activity almost ignored by the state to an autonomous one recognized as
essential to national security.
Warusfel is also the author of the excellent Contre-Espionnage et
Protection du Secret: Histoire, Droit et Organisation de la Securite nationale
en France [Counter-Espionage and the Protection of Secrecy: History, Law,
and Organization of National Security in France] (Panazol: LaVauzelle 2000,
496 pp., ISBN 2-7025-0451-5). It begins with the evolution of French
counterintelligence after the loss of the Franco-Prussian War. Warusfel points
out that the military ran it until the Dreyfus affair Frances Water-
gate imposed civilian control by the Ministry of the Interior. During World
War I the military returned and shared power with the politicians. The defeat
of 1940, the division of power, the Resistance, the Liberation confused the
organization, the problems, the results; the war in Algeria Frances
Vietnam led to the creation of an arrangement with the SDECE, or Service
de Documentation et de Contre-Espionage, which operated from 1946 to
1982, when it was replaced by the DGSE. The second part of the book deals
with the French legal aspects of protecting state secrets and the new theory of
the fundamental interests of the nation and the third part with the clash
between individual rights and the needs of the state. This work covers its eld
thoroughly and well. While French jurisprudence cannot relate directly to
American, the questions are similar in both democracies and to that extent
can shed light on each others problems.
Colonel Gueltons Pourquoi le renseignement? De lespionnage a`
linformation globale [Why Intelligence? From Espionage to Global
Information] (Paris: Larousse 2004, 152 pp., ISBN 2-03-505463-X) reaches
beyond information gathering to terrorism. Though its brevity precludes in-
depth coverage of any topic, it ranges widely and its illustrations the
envelopes of letters containing anthrax bacillus, a world map showing the

electronic listening posts of 17 nations brighten its pages. Its chapters
cover: 1, What is Intelligence; 2, The History and Culture of Intelligence; 3,
The Main Evolutions of Intelligence Services; 4, Between Man and Machine:
The Pillars of Modern Intelligence; 5, Economic Intelligence: The Challenge
of Intelligence; 6, Terrorism and New Threats. Though he says nice things
about my book The Codebreakers, I detect a touch of anti-Americanism in his
remark on page 116 that an African consumes 30 litres of water a day, a
European, 200, and an American 700 not mentioning that much of that is
caused by Americas greater productivity.
Olivier Forcade and Sebastien Laurents Secrets dEtat: Pouvoirs et
renseignement dans le monde contemporain [State Secrets: Power and
Information in the Contemporary World] (Paris: Armand Colin 2005, 238
pp., ISBN 2-200-26536-0), was discussed by Peter Jackson, as mentioned
above. To that penetrating article may be added, for completeness sake, the
books chapter titles: Introduction: Towards the Discovery of Intelligence;
1, An Analytic Approach to Intelligence; 2, At the Heart of States: The
Origins of Intelligence; 3, Totalitarian Regimes and Dictatorships: Ideology
and Security; 4, An Intelligence hitherto Unavoidable in the World Wars; 5,
Intelligence in International Crises; 6, Intelligence beyond Alliances, an
Anti-diplomacy? 7, Intelligence in the American Empire; 8, Political
Economy and Intelligence; Conclusion, Secrecy and Democracy.
Several valuable articles have been collected in LExploitation du
renseignement: en Europe et aux Etats-Unis des annees 1930 aux annees
1960 [The Exploitation of Intelligence in Europe and the United States from
the 1930s to the 1960s] edited by George-Henri Soutou, Jacques Fremeaux,
and Olivier Forcade from a conference held at Saint-Cyr (the French West
Point) on 3 and 4 June 1998 (Paris: Economica 2001, 332 pp., ISBN 2-2178-
4196-2). Among the 14 articles are: Paule Rene-Bazin on the sources in the
Archives nationales for the history of intelligence; Claire Sibille on the
archives of the 2e`me Bureau (intelligence), which the Germans seized in
1940, the Russians captured from them, and the Russians restituted to France
after the end of the Cold War; Magali Lacousse on the archives of the
French navys intelligence staff unit; Forcade on how France exploited its
strategic intelligence from 1936 to 1939; Laurent on the special services of
the Free French; and articles on intelligence in Laos, Indo-China, and
Algeria.
Forcade has also edited Le secret et la puissance: Etudes sur les services
speciaux en Europe et aux Etats-Unis aux XIXXXe sie`cles [Secrecy and
Power: Studies in Special Services in Europe and the United States in the
19th and 20th Centuries] (Amiens: Editions Encrage 2007). Its articles
include Forcades on new approaches and problems in the history of
intelligence, Jean-David Mizrahi on intelligence ofcers in the Levant, based

on what his superior called his outstanding doctoral thesis, Olivier Minivielle
on French intelligence and Italy 192539, and Charles Bony de Lavergne on
French intelligence at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and on the CIA under Clinton.
The publisher LaVauzelle has issued an excellent series, Renseignement et
Guerre Secre`te [Intelligence and Secret War]. I have seen only some of the
dozen or so published thus far.
One of the rst, edited by Fabienne Mercier-Bernadet, surveys aspects of
World War II intelligence in 11 articles in 19391945: La Guerre des
Intelligences [19391945: The Intelligence War] (2002, 381 pp., ISBN 2-
7025-0731-X). Among the pieces I found the most interesting were: Robert
Belot on when the American state discovered the necessity for intelligence
(194245), which offers a French view of the creation of the OSS, its role in
the North African invasion, and its postwar evolution. David Hornus
investigation of the sources of the German culture of intelligence and its
failure on the Russian front. And Francois Dumazy on Frances attempts to
cut the Danubian route of oil supply, described in large part in the reports of
its naval attaches. The other articles deal with the World War II relations
between the secret services of the Soviet Union and the Allies, psychological
warfare, Allied deception in the Normandy invasion, resistance through
intelligence in Indochina, a French subversive unit in Laos 194445, the
British Intelligence Corps against Japan, cryptography in the French
Resistance, and my survey of intelligence in World War II, translated from
English.
Two volumes in the series deal with cryptology. Alexandre Ollier
describes the post-1871 evolution in which France became the greatest
cryptologic power in the world: La Cryptographie militaire: avant la guerre
de 1914 [Military Cryptography: Before the 1914 War] (2002, 224 pp.,
ISBN 2-7025-5035-X). This bore fruit in World War I, when cryptanalysis
gave generals victories and made intelligence matter for the rst time in
history. Gilbert Karpman surveys the entire eld magisterially and with
original insights in Cryptologie: Une histoire des ecritures secre`tes des
origines a` nos jours [Cryptologie: A History of Secret Writing from the

Origins to Today] (2006, 316 pp., ISBN 2-7025-1312-3). I reviewed it in
Cryptologia (31, July 2007, pp.27880).
Also dealing with cryptology are three other volumes appropriately
enough, given the success of codebreaking in providing more timely, more
accurate, and more useful intelligence than any other source. Sophie de
Lastours picks up the story of French cryptanalysis after Olliers account and
tells how La France gagne la guerre des codes secrets 19141918 [France
Wins the War of Secret Codes 19141918] (Paris: Editions Tallandier 1998,
263 pp., ISBN 2-235-022003-0). She also edited a volume of 19 studies
presented at a conference in Peronne, near Amiens, 21 and 22 March 2001:

Le Chiffre, le renseignement, et la guerre [Cipher, Intelligence, and War]
(Paris: LHarmattan 2002, 258 pp., ISBN 2-7475-2497-3). One of the most
interesting articles, by General Michael Chabloz, a historian, shows how
surprisingly small the Swiss cryptanalytic organization was: in 1940,
six persons worked on German intercepts, six on Italian, three on British,
two on French, and two on American. By 1943, the number of personnel
rose to 18. He reveals no results. Postwar, he lists successive Swiss
cryptographic machines. In another useful contribution, General Louis
Ribadeau-Dumas describes quantum cryptography, properly, as a revolution
of the future.
Crossing into more popular books, Les Grandes Oreilles du President
[The Big Ears of the President] (Paris: Presses de la Cite 2004, 432 pp.,
ISBN 2-258-06418-X), by Yves Bonnet, a former counterintelligence
director, and Pascal Krop, an investigative journalist, describes the extensive
eavesdropping activities of French President Francois Mitterrand. Alain
Charret, a former sigint specialist in the French air force, gives some details
about interception in the rst Gulf War and deals with 11 September 2001 in
Ecoutes radioelectriques et renseignement [Radioelectric Interception and
Intelligence] (Paris: LHarmattan 2006, 240 pp., ISBN 2-296-00784-8).
Likewise not scholarly, but fun to look at because of its scores of
illustrations, is Constantin Parvulescos Secret Defense: Histoire du
renseignement militaire francais [Defense Secret: History of French Military
Intelligence] (Boulogne-Billancourt: E-T-A-I 2007, 144 pp., ISBN 978-2-
7268-8695-3). Chosen at random: Father Joseph, patron of one of
Frances royal intelligence services, interrupts a mass to receive a secret
messenger. A balloonist directs artillery re. A subterranean radio inter-
ception station.
I looked at one popular work because of its ambitious scope. Roger Faligot
and Remi Kauffer, authors of several books on intelligence, have attempted
nothing less than a Histoire mondiale de renseignement [A World History of
Intelligence]. Volume I covers 18701939; Volume II, Les matres espions:
De la guerre froide a` nos jours [The Master Spies: From the Cold War to Our
Days] (Paris: Laffont 1993, 572 pp., ISBN 2-221-07571-3, and 1994, 563 pp.,
ISBN 2-221-07572-2, respectively). In such a wide-ranging study, errors of
detail are to be expected and may be pardoned because the works overview
has greater value. But this works howlers destroy much of its usefulness.
Because of my interest in cryptology, I looked at what it had to say about
Herbert O. Yardley, Americas rst professional cryptologist, whose
sensational book The American Black Chamber (1931) was twice translated
into French. Faligot and Kauffer say he was red actually, his bureau was
closed, leaving him without a job in 1922 instead of 1931, give the wrong
reason for this, talk about an unpublished book as if it had been published,
say his solution of Japanese diplomatic codes took place in China in 1939
instead of in New York in 1921, and invent a story to explain that date. And
in a book by Frenchmen, the name of Jules Louis Lewal, author of the 1883
Tactique de renseignement [Tactics of Intelligence], Frances rst work on
intelligence, and later a general and minister of war, does not appear in the
index. Books like this give popularizers a bad name! The second volume
deals only with spies and says nothing about such important forms of
intelligence as satellites and codebreaking.
Strictly speaking, a study by an Israeli professor cannot be called part of
the French intelligence renaissance. But the work has been translated into
French, and so may inuence that renaissance: Isaac Ben-Israels Philosophie
du Renseignement: Logique et morale de lespionnage [Philosophy of
Intelligence: Logic and Morality of Espionage], trans. from the Hebrew by
Laurent Schuman (1999; Paris: Editions de leclat 2004, 233 pp., ISBN 2-
84162-073-5). Ben-Israel rests his analysis heavily upon the philosophy of
Karl Popper. He includes chapters on the correlation between facts and
theory, the ideal investigator, the ethics of intelligence, and intelligence in the
Yom Kippur War.
Not only books but articles can advance the eld. Too many have been
published to list, but I regard a few that I have seen as worthy of being more
widely known. Two of the best were published in Serviteurs de letat: Une
histoire politique de ladministration francaise 18751945 [Servants of the
State: A Political History of the French Administration 18751945], edited
by Marc-Olivier Baruch and Vincent Duclert (Paris: Editions La Decouverte
2000, ISBN 9-782707-133694). Sebastien Laurent provides on pages 27995
a remarkable survey of French army intelligence in Le service secret de
lEtat: La part des militaires (18701945) [The Secret Service of the State:
The Role of Military Men (18701945)]. He nails down that complicated,
evolving organization through citations to laws and regulations and enlarges
it with references to the literature of military intelligence, including Lewals.
Laurent shows how intelligence was politicized and so divided in
France more so, I believe, than in the United States. And it was disrespected
in both places, with the heads of intelligence in the French army rarely rising
above colonels rank, just as in the American (as shown in a revealing table in
James E. Hewes Jr.s From Root to McNamara: Army Organization and
Administration 19001963 (Washington: Government Printing Ofce 1973)
pp.3899). Laurent does not penetrate into the causes of this disrespect,
which existed in all armies and which I believe lie in that promotions are won
not at a desk but in the eld, that intelligence ofcers were tainted because
they dealt with professional liars, namely spies, and that, until World War I,
intelligence had not given generals any victories. Nor has he illuminated the
problem of pre-World War II French intelligence ofcers as strikingly as

Robert J. Young on pages 3089 of Ernest Mays edited Knowing Ones
Enemies: their job was to report to Olympus from the foothills and, since
they were dealing not with Frenchmen but with foreigners, their arid
intellectual chauvinism seems to have erected a Maginot Line of the mind.
But Laurents article deals not with events but with administrative structure.
Such history matters because especially in military or governmental
affairs one cannot understand what is happening without knowing who
reports to whom. I have often felt that Anglo-Saxon intelligence studies are
limited to technical, interior matters; French studies reach to the outside
world and link to politics and sociology. Laurents article exemplies this.
In the other, historically and philosophically based article, Alain Dewerpe
provocatively asks, Does the Republic need spies? He contrasts the
openness and honesty of the ideal public life with the secrecy and deception
of the ideal spy and maintains that this immorality leads the public to regard
spying as a low thing, almost repugnant. But he points out that service to the
nation excuses and even glories spying. According to Dewerpe, the rise of
secrecy in the state during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries bureau-
cratized intelligence and legitimized spying. Dewerpe argues that because the
secret service evolved from the military, it scorned the liberal politics of the
republic, with its parliament, its parties, and its free press, whose openness,
though he does not say so, evolved at the same time as state secrecy: it was
not for nothing that the Dreyfus affair was an espionage affair. Though this
rich article covers French institutions and history, many of its broader
observations can serve for the United States. He does not answer his title
question directly, but says rather that despite its incongruence with republican
ideals, spying will continue to exist.
Laurent offers a wide-ranging, rich, and penetrating study of La naissance
du renseignement etatique en France au XIXe sie`cle, entre bureaucratie et
politique [The Birth of State Intelligence in France in the 19th Century,
between Bureaucracy and Politics] on pages 10722 of Revue dhistoire du
XIXe sie`cle (2007). He observes that industrialization and urbanization alone
do not explain the growth of intelligence, which he traces in part to

governments need for information such as censuses, police reports to run
its affairs better. He points out that in the Europe of the Holy Alliance
(established after the Congress of Vienna) nations practiced political
surveillance while the United Kingdom and the United States abjured it.
Laurent provides the only survey known to me of the growth and decline of
the Depot de la Guerre, the forerunner if not the father of Frances military
intelligence section. Prussias defeat of Austria in 1866 frightened the French,
who began reconnoitering across the Rhine a program run by then-
Lieutenant Colonel Lewal. The reconnaissances did not help much, for
Prussia defeated France in 187071. When France then imitated its conqueror
by establishing a general staff, it included (though unlike Prussia) a
peacetime G-2, or intelligence section, headed by Major Emile Vanson. Soon
the military squeezed the diplomats out of their centuries-old control of
political intelligence and won a monopoly of all intelligence. This shift and
the growth of internal (police) intelligence engendered secret administrations
whose practices were shielded from public inquiry the secret state.
The journal Relations internationales published, in its number 78 in
summer 1994, an issue consecrated to Intelligence and International
Relations. It opens with an essay by M. Steinert surveying intelligence
and international relations that asks about the sources of intelligence and its
relevance and proposes a periodization of the history of intelligence. Its seven
articles include pieces on the role of disinformation in the attack on France in
May 1940, on intelligence and diplomatic and military decisions the case of
France 193340, on German espionage against Switzerland during World
War II, and on German intelligence against Czechoslovakia from 1927 to
1938, which the author says succeeded and so David Kahns conclusion
that German intelligence worked only on the tactical level in World War II
needs to be modied. The journal summarizes the articles, in French and in
English.
The French Army historical services Revue historique des armees devoted
all 116 pages of issue 221 (December 2000) to intelligence. In the preface,
Admiral Lacoste remarks that he often attended conferences in America or
England where he was the only Frenchman. Among the articles are pieces on
French intelligence before the 1812 Russian campaign, Swiss intelligences
Bureau France during World War II, the military attache in Hong Kong as
observer of Communist China 195964, and a survey of military intelligence
sources from 1860 to the present.
Not espionage, but in my view the most effective part of intelligence
gathering is cryptology, the subject of Jacques Sterns La Science du secret
[The Science of Secrecy] (Paris: Editions Odile Jacob 1998, 204 pp., ISBN 2-
7381-0533-5). A professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, Stern
has written an original, well-organized survey of secret communication. The

rst part, Historical Perspectives, covers the artisanal age, the technical age,
and the paradoxical age, which includes the apparent impossibility of having
a decryption key that differs from the encryption key, which has made
e-commerce possible. The second part, Modern Cryptology, has sections on
the right of condentiality, the mathematics of secrecy, and secrecy and
knowledge. The work is clear; it is to the point, and it requires only a
modicum of mathematical knowledge.
Francois Vie`te: Un mathematicien sous la Renaissance [Francois Vie`te: A
mathematician in the Renaissance], edited by Evelyne Barbin and Anne Boye
(Paris: Vuibert, 2005, 280 pp., ISBN 2-7117-5380-8), includes a 13-page

chapter on cryptology by Jean-Paul Delahaye, professor of informatics at the
University of Sciences and Technology of Lille. It rehearses Vie`tes solution
of several Spanish letters for Henry IV, king of France, and puts it into the
context of the eras cryptology and mathematics.
One journal, now defunct, and an older, more specialized one have dealt
with intelligence. Renseignement et Operations speciales [Intelligence and
Special Operations] was started by a young entrepreneur interested in
intelligence, Eric Denece, who created a Centre Francais de Recherche sur le
Rensignement and got the Paris publisher LHarmattan to put it out. Its ninth
issue dealt with the 11 September attacks, and the eleventh, its last, included
articles on economic intelligence and state information, telephone eaves-
dropping during World War I (only the French, however), and, if I may be
permitted a plug, a translation of my article on a theory of intelligence. The
annual bulletin of the Association des Reservistes du Chiffre et de la Securite
de lInformation, which has been published for more than 30 years, chiey
under the excellent editorship of General Louis Ribadeau-Dumas, covers new
techniques of cryptology and information security, as well as some matters of
the organization, most of whose members serve in the army reserves.
Finally an article by Olivier Forcade, Nouvelles approches et problema-
tiques dune histoire du renseignement [New Approaches and Problems of a
History of Intelligence] Cahiers du Centre dEtudes dhistoire de la Defense
generously acknowledges that much of this was pushed by a transatlantic
historiographical breeze. He surveys part of that history, and one of his most
telling stories reminds me of the axiom Plus ca change, plus cest la meme
chose. Forcade found the report of a meeting on 4 February 1937 under Leon
Blum, president of the council, and Marx Dormou, minister of the interior.
Present were the representatives of the ministries and services interested in
questions of national security. The chairmen urged that research and
information should be coordinated: the agencies should share plans; the
chiefs should meet frequently. A goal was to work like Britains Joint
Intelligence Committee. And indeed during the rst year, 25 interministerial
meetings took place. But nothing like the JIC ever evolved. And during the
next two years the chiefs never met again and no coordination took place.
How familiar this sounds to those who have studied Americas intelligence
history! It reminds me of the remark of the colorful baseball player Yogi
Berra, who did not know French but did know life: Its deja` vu all over
again.
GERMANYS INTELLIGENCE WELTANSCHAUUNG
Neither in breadth nor in depth have the German-speaking countries produced

as much intelligence literature as the Francophone. I do not know why. Still,

here are a few works that have come to my attention.
One of the most scholarly and withal broadest work is Albert Pethos
Agenten fur den Doppeladler: O sterreich-Ungarns Geheimer Dienst im
Weltkrieg [Agents for the Double Eagle: Austria-Hungarys Secret Service in
the World War] (Graz: Leopold Stocker Verlag 1998, 448 pp., ISBN 3-7020-
0830-6). Petho stems from an Austrian ofcer family, one of whose
forefathers, he told me, fought the Turks when they were besieging Vienna in
1683. His book begins with the 1850 creation of the Evidenzburo within the
Dual Monarchys Royal and Imperial Army. It ran spies. As the range of
intelligence expanded, there evolved a superordinate intelligence branch,
within which the Evidenzburo specialized in espionage while its other
sections dealt with attaches and evaluation. And Austria-Hungary became
one of the two nations the other was France to practice military
cryptanalysis before World War I, enabling it to succeed in this valuable
work against its enemies to the east and the south. The central section of the
book deals with these successes, which persuaded the military of the
importance of intelligence for the rst time in military history. Petho
discusses the notorious betrayal of Alfred Redl as well as counterespionage in
the multinational empire. He supports his narrative with 1247 footnotes! His
book is also especially well illustrated, with 71 photographs of persons and
places.
Regrettably disappointing is a study of the spiritus rector of Austrias
intelligence in World War I, Colonel Maximilian Ronge: Im Zentrum Der
Macht: Die Vielen Gesichter des Geheimdienstchefs Maximilain Ronge
[In the Center of Power: The Many Faces of Secret Service Chief Maximilian
Ronge] by Verena Moritz, Hannes Leidinger, and Gerhard Jagschitz
(St. Polten: Residenz Verlag 2007, 440 pp., ISBN 978-3-7017-3038-4).
The chapters are written by different authors, and the book is well sourced,
based in part upon his World War I memoirs (a photocopy of which has been
given to the National Cryptologic Museum). The biography indeed gives the
full life story of Ronge, including his interwar and post-World War II
activities. But these have less interest to the student of intelligence, and the
core of the book his work as an intelligence chief in World War I lacks the
spark of his own printed memoir, Kriegs- und Industriespionage (1930),
which remains one of the great pictures of an intelligence agency at war.
Narrower but deeper and far more useful is an extraordinary 1975
unpublished dissertation for the University of Vienna by Harald Hubatschke:
Ferdinand Prantner (Pseudonym Leon Wolfram) 18171871: Die Anfange
des politischen Romans sowie die Geschichte der Briefspionage und des
geheimen Chiffredienstes in O sterreich [Ferdinand Prantner (Pseudonym
Leon Wolfram) 18171871: The Beginnings of the Political Novel as well as
the History of Letter Spying and the Secret Cipher Service in Austria].
Prantner wrote what Hubatschke says is the rst political novel in Austria, the
1861 Dissolving Views it had an English title. Like many an author,
Prantner had a day job. He worked as an ofcial in the Austrian black
chamber! This has led Hubatschke into the most thorough investigation of a
black chamber ever written.
Volume 5 of his dissertation begins with a historical study of letter opening
in France and in the German-speaking states, concentrating on Austria.
Hubatschke considers the legal dimension, briey discusses cryptography,
and gives a history of Viennas Secret Cipher Chancellery through the
Congress of Vienna, details its working methods (as copying seals to forge
them), its cooperation with the provincial letter-opening branches, or
lodges, and its dissolution in 1848 with the tumult of revolt and
Metternichs resignation. Volume 6 describes the organizations reconstitu-
tion and its work to the end of the monarchy in 1918. Hubatschke gives
almost 40 pages of thumbnail biographies of the units ofcials and of the
regulations covering it. He dug this out of the manuscripts of Viennas Haus-,
Hof-, und Staatsarchiv and anyone who has cursed his way through the
German handwriting of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries knows what a
great debt he or she owes to Hubatschke. His dissertation surpasses the
excellent but briefer studies of Franz Stix and Josef Karl Mayr as well as
Euge`ne Vailles work on the French black chamber. It provides historians
with by far the fullest picture of a letter-opening agency ever written. It will
give students of privacy an extraordinarily useful background. Though a
photocopy of the cryptologic portions will be going to the library of the
National Cryptologic Museum, these portions at least should be published
and, if possible, translated.
I know of only one German habilitation, or superdissertation, in
intelligence. Michael Wildts Generation des Unbedingten: Das Fuhrungs-
korps des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes [Generation of the Totally Trust-
worthy: The Leadership Corps of the Reich Security Administration]
(Hamburg: Hamburger Edition 2002, 964 pp., ISBN 3-930908-75-1) depicts
the leaders of that combined party and governmental espionage, counter-

espionage, police agency, describing a great deal about their racial
attitudes and role in the Holocaust. But it says little about their effects on
intelligence.
Three important memoirs by former members of the German Foreign
Ofce codebreaking agency remain in manuscript, in the Political Archive of
the German Foreign Ofce under Signatur VS-6025. Dr Rudolf Schaufers
Errinerungen eines Kryptologen [Memoirs of a Cryptologist] runs to 36
pages. Schaufer, who began as a cryptanalyst in World War I, later became
both a mathematician and a linguist in Oriental languages. He describes,
among other things in his all-too-brief memoir, how the German Foreign
Ofce cipher unit evolved the one-time system the only theoretically and
practically unbreakable cipher apparently in the early 1920s. Adolf Paschke,
also a longtime cryptanalyst of the German Foreign Ofce, wrote 158 pages
on Das Chiffrier- und Fernmeldewesen im Auswartigen Amt: Seine
Entwicklung und Organisation [The Cipher- and Telecommunications
System in the Foreign Ofce: Its Development and Organization]. Paschke
covers the slight pre-World War I activity, German and foreign solutions in
World War I, the interwar period, including relations with other German
cryptologic agencies, successes and failures during World War II, postwar
interrogations, and the reconstruction of German cryptology. Dr Horst
Hauthal wrote a 107-page Beitrag zur Geschichte des Chiffrierwesens im
Auswartigen Amt 19391945 [Contribution to the History of the Cryptology
in the Foreign Ofce 19391945]. It is less a memoir than a technical study of
German cipher systems. A bound photocopy of all three will also be going to
the library of the National Cryptologic Museum.
Two collections of scholarly articles further advance knowledge.
Diplomaten und Agenten: Nachrichtendienste in der Geschichte der
deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen [Diplomats and Agents: Intelligence
Services in the History of German American Relations], edited by Reinhard
R. Doerries, American Studies. Vol. 88 (Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag C.
Winter 2001, 229 pp., ISBN 3-8253-1137-6) assembles seven articles on its
theme. Doerries, who was educated partly in the United States, wrote a well-
received political biography of Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, the
German ambassador to the United States in World War I, and has researched
extensively in the records of the Mixed Claims Commission, with its charges
of German spying in the United States in World War I. His own contribution
deals with the activity of German agents Madame de Victorica, Kurt
Jahnke, Lothar Witzke (alias Pablo Waberski), others and their inuence on
German American relations. He provides a lot of new, solid information on
these agents. The other contributors are: Michael Wala, on the Weimar
armys intelligence evaluating unit and its relations with the US Army;
Ulrich Schlie, on Carl Marcus and the Jahnke Bureau in World War II; the
late Jurgen Heideking, founder of the International Intelligence History Study
Group, to whom the book is dedicated, on the OSS and the German
Resistance; Jurgen Rohwer, Germanys leading naval historian, on signal
intelligence in World War IIs naval conict; Christian Mauch, until recently
director of the German Historical Institute in Washington and author of the
solid The Shadow War Against Hitler (New York: Columbia University Press
2003, 333 pp., ISBN 0-231-12044-3), on the Third Reich, the politics of the
American intelligence service, and historical myth-building; and Wolfgang
Krieger, on the meaning of intelligence services for international relations in
the Cold War. This is a compressed, useful collection. All the articles are well
footnoted.
Wider ranging is Geheimdienste in der Weltgeschichte: Spionage und
verdeckte Aktionen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart [Secret Services in
World History: Espionage and Hidden Action from Antiquity to the Present],
edited by Wolfgang Krieger (Munich: C.H. Beck 2003, 379 pp., ISBN 3-406-
50248-2). Krieger is the effective, pleasant, trilingual president of the
International Intelligence History Group, which meets mainly in Germany
but conducts most of its sessions in English. He has assembled 23 articles of
the greatest variety, often by persons whose names are new to students of the
eld. Among them are: Jakob Seibert, a professor of ancient history at the
University of Munich, on the secret service of Alexander the Great; Helwig
Schmidt-Glintzen, professor of sinology at Gottingen, on espionage in
ancient China; Christopher Allmand, a medieval historian from Liverpool
University, on spying in the Hundred Years War, and articles on more
modern topics such as the spy in Germanys chancellors ofce, Eichmann,
and the Mossad. Some as those by Ernest R. May and Loch Johnson are
translated from the English. Stefan Weiss, a private instructor in medieval
history, contributed two pieces: on the papacy and its secret diplomacy and
on police chief Wilhelm Stieber and Bismarck. In the latter article, Weiss
mentions the man who I think was imperial Germanys greatest spy: the
Austrian Baron August Schluga von Rastenfeld, whose information
contributed to Prussias victory over France in 1870. Weisss detailed,
revelatory article about Schluga, Wilhelm Stieber, August Schluga von
Rastenfeld und Otto von Bismarck, appeared in Francia (31, 2004, pp.87
112). Hilmar-Detlef Bruckner discusses him in English but more briey in
the Newsletter of the International Intelligence Study Association (6, Winter
1998, pp.15).
The demise of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik in 1990 brought not
only freedom for millions of East Germans, not only the Oscar-winning
motion picture, Das Leben der Anderen [The Lives of Others], about its state
surveillance of its citizens, but a ood of information about its secret service,
the Stasi. The German Federal Republic took over its documents, housed in a
vast archive on the Normannenstrae in the former East Berlin, and admin-
istered them through an agency with a Teutonic title that I cannot resist giving
in full: Der Bundesbeauftragte fur die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdiensts
der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, or The Federal
Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the former
German Democratic Republic. Even a German academic had to laugh
embarrassedly at a scholarly conference when giving this name. It became
generally known as the Gauck-Behorde, after the name of the commissioner.
This agency has, according to its list, issued two dozen volumes about its
work. They are sold by the ofce of the Bundesbeauftragte, Abteilung Bildung
und Forschung, Postfach 218, 10106 Berlin. I can report only on three; these
and a few others will be going to the National Cryptologic Museum library.
Anatomie der Staatssicherheit: Geschichte Struktur Methoden: Die
Organizationsstruktur des Ministeriums fur Staatssicherheit 1989 [Anatomy
of State Security: History Structure Methods: The Organizational Struc-
ture of the Ministry for State Security 1989], edited by Klaus-Dieter Henke
et al. ([Berlin 1995], 404 pp., no ISBN), anatomizes the organization of the
Stasi down to the level of individual desks, with names. For example,
Abteilung [Branch] XIV, in Freienwalder Street, under Colonel Dr Siegfried
Rataizick, carried out the jailing of persons being investigated and of those
being punished in the ministry. A unit that especially interested me, since I
know of no mentions of its work anywhere, is Abteilung XI, in Hoppegarten
in the Strausberg quarter, under Generalmajor Wolfgang Birke. Assigned to
secure the ciphers of the DDR and the unveiling their term of the cipher
trafc of foreign representatives, its branches included 6, Decrypting ana-
lyzing foreign cipher trafc, with four desks, and 9, Foreign Cipher Service,
with six desks and three working groups. The volume has a name index and a
list of abbreviations. One is entirely appropriate for the folks at Fort Meade:
NSA Nicht Sozialistiches Ausland.
No. 1/98 is Bibliographie der Diplomarbeiten und Abschluarbeiten an
der Hochschule des MfS [Bibliography of Diploma Work and Concluding
Work in the Higher School of the Ministry for State Security], edited by
Gunter Forster (Berlin, 1998, 577 pp., no ISBN). Forster points out in his
introduction that he lists 4537 postgraduate works completed at the ministrys
juristic academy and at civil universities. Not all are doctoral dissertations,
and almost a third deal with basic Marxist-Leninist studies. Many are based
on the authors intelligence or police experience. An extensive subject index
is included. Some random subjects: Captain Siegfried Meier, Some Specic
Aspects of Interrogation to Detect Enemy Agents Disguised as Citizens
Returning to the DDR (1968, 90 pp.); Lieutenant Karl-Heinz Jensch,
The Use of Dogs to Secure the State Boundary of the DDR and Its
Immediate Hinterland (1969, 56 pp.); Julius Sacher, The Meaning of the

Stability of Socialist Rights for the Expression of the Main Driving Force of
the Socialistic Development of Society in the DDR (1969, 54 pp.).
BF Informiert Nr. 15, Bibliographie zum Staatssicherheitsdienst der DDR
[BF Informs No. 15: Bibliography of the State Security Service of the DDR],
edited by Hildegard von Zastrow (Berlin, 1996, 124 pp., no ISBN). This is
the second bibliography on state security. It includes the works in the rst
bibliography and publications that appeared by the end of 1995. Zastrow says
that the core of the bibliography deals with works on the apparatus and
activity of the Stasi. Most of the works come from East Germany, as Bernd
Schafers articles differentiating unofcial collaborator, collaboration, and

cooperation in the Stasis work within the Catholic Church. But western
authors are included in a brief section, such as Amy Knights book on Beria
and Roger Faligot and Remi Kauffers 1994 French book on master spies.
Walter Richter, who served mainly as a security ofcer in the air forces
communications division, has written Der Militarische Nachrichtendienst der
Nationalen Volksarmee der DDR und seine Kontrolle durch das Ministerium
fur Staatssicherheit: Die Geschichte eines Geheimdienstes [The Military
Intelligence Service of the National Peoples Army and Its Control by the
Ministry for State Security: The History of a Secret Service] (2nd expanded
ed., Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2004, 375 pp., ISBN 3-631-52020-4).
Richter bases his work on the many documents that have survived from the
military intelligence service and the Stasi ministry. For example, the minutes
of the meetings of the security commission of the partys central committee
and its successor survived in toto. Brief biographies of the intelligence
service personnel proved especially useful. The work itself opens with more
than 150 pages about the leading personalities of the intelligence service. It
lists three major sources in the Bundesrepublik, discusses the military attache
service at some length and communications intelligence more briey,
analyzes the cooperation with other services and armies, and describes its
takeover by the federal republics Bundeswehr.
The origins of Austrias postwar intelligence are discussed in Walter
Blasis chapter Die Anfange des militarischen Nachrichtendienstes in
O sterreich [The Beginnings of the Military Intelligence Service in Austria],
pages 12838 in the edited work of Blasi, Erwin A. Schmidl and Felix
Schneider, B-Gendarmerie, Waffenlager und Nachrichtendienste: Die
militarische Weg zum Staatsvertrag [B [Federal]-Gendamery, Ordnance
Depot and Intelligence Service: The Military Way to the State Treaty]
(Vienna: Bohlaus Verlag 2005, 237 pp., ISBN 3-205-77267-9).
Not secret but intelligence nonetheless is the reconnaissance unit of an
armored division. Otto Henning recounts his experiences with Reconnais-
sance Battalion 130 in Hungary, Normandy, and in the Ardennes in Als
Panzer- und Spahtruppfuhrer in der Panzer-Lehr Division 19431945

[As an Armored and Scout Troop Leader in the Panzer-Lehr Division
19431945] (Wurzburg: Verlagshaus Wurzburg 2006, 247 pp., ISBN 978-3-
88189-634-4).
Writers cannot resist the sly, mysterious head of German armed forces
espionage, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. He ruled over a vast, disorganized,
ineffective spy apparatus, the Abwehr, which covered his resistance
tendencies and which make it possible for conspiracy theorists to say that
he met with his opposite number in Britain to arrange a peace. I have not read
all the Canaris biographies that have appeared, but these two one recent, one
not so new ought to be noticed.

Michael Muellers Canaris: Hitlers Abwehrchef (Berlin: Propylaen 2006,
576 pp., ISBN 978-3-549-07202-8) has just been translated as Canaris: The
Life and Death of Hitlers Spymaster (London: Chatham Publishing). It is a
solid study, as shown by the originals, 236 pages of notes and bibliography
and the 30, mostly previously unpublished, photographs. He rejects the story
that Canaris met with Colonel Stuart Menzies, which itself demonstrates the
sobriety of his work, though he observes that OSS documents show that
serious attempts were made to contact the Allies for a separate peace.
Michael Graf Soltikows Im Zentrum der Abwehr: Meine Jahre bei Admiral
Canaris [In the Center of the Abwehr: My Years with Admiral Canaris]
(Gutersloh: Prisma Verlag 1986, 440 pp., ISBN 3-570-09867-2) talks as
much about his experiences with Nazi ofcials and generals as he does about
Canaris.
(A personal pique: people too often refer to Canaris as the head of armed
forces intelligence. He was not that and these two writers, thankfully, do not
reinvigorate the falsehood. Indeed, for the rst, offensive half of the war, the
High Command of the Armed Forces, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
(OKW), did not even have its own intelligence-evaluating unit. It got its
information directly from the intelligence-evaluating agencies of the army,
navy, and air force, as well as from the SS and from the Abwehr, which was
an agency of the OKW and reported to it. Not until the North African
invasion in 1942, when Germany went on the defensive, did the OKW
establish its own intelligence-evaluating unit. Small and unimportant, it was
headed by a colonel, rst Friedrich-Adolf Krummacher, then Hugo Baron
von Susskind-Schwendi. It gathered no intelligence on its own, but merely
assembled information that other agencies collected. This it forwarded once
or twice a week to the OKW operations staff. If anyone could be regarded as
the head of armed forces intelligence, it would be one or the other of these
insignicant ofcers. Canaris headed the 13,000-man Abwehr, whose three
branches spied on the enemy, guarded German secrets, and sabotaged foreign
installations. The Abwehr sent its spy reports to the various army, navy, air
force, OKW, and SS units, which incorporated them into their own
intelligence. Though it indeed evaluated its own reports, it did not test them
against other sources, such as codebreaking or aerial reconnaissance. So
Canaris never headed German intelligence. Nor did his competition in Nazi
Party foreign espionage, at rst SS-Major Heinz Maria Karl Jost and then,
from the summer of 1941, SS-General Walter Schellenberg. They headed
what was then Department VI, foreign intelligence, a branch of the SD, or
Sicherheitsdienst, the partys domestic and foreign intelligence agency. They
and Canaris merely ran rival spy agencies. After Hitler on 12 February 1944
ordered the SD to absorb the much larger Abwehr, and when six days later
Canaris was removed as head of the Abwehr, Schellenberg became the sole
spymaster of the Reich but not Germanys intelligence chief.)
Two books touch lightly on intelligence. Hans Georg Kampe, Nachrich-
tentruppe des Heeres und Deutsche Reichspost: Militarisches und staatliches
Nachrichtenwesen in Deutschland 1830 bis 1945 [Signal Troops of the Army
and German Imperial Post: Military and Civil Communications Means in
Germany 1830 to 1945] (Waldesruh bei Berlin: Verlag Dr. Erwin Meiler
1999, 492 pp., ISBN 3-932566-31-9), deals mainly with communications, but
many pages include information about interception units that provided
intelligence to the German military. Werner Schneider gives the other side of
the code battle of the Atlantic the side of the radio operators in the U-boats.
He does not reveal many details about his work, but provides interesting
color: 12 Feindfahrten: Als Funker auf U-431, U-410 und U-371 im Atlantik
und im Mittelmeer: Ausbildung Einsatz Gefangenschaft 19401946
[12 Enemy Cruises: As Radioman aboard U-431, U-410 and U-371 in
the Atlantic and the Mediterranean: Training, Action, Imprisonment 1940
1946] (Weinheim: Germania-Verlag 2006, 176 pp., paper, ISBN 978-3-
934871-05-2).
Several books on cryptology merit attention. By far the best is Friedrich L.
Bauers Decrypted Secrets: Methods and Maxims of Cryptology (4th revised
and extended ed., Berlin: Springer Verlag 2007, 525 pp., ISBN 3-540-
24502-2). Indeed, it remains the best single work on the subject. Bauer is an
engineer and his book, translated from the German original, uses a
considerable amount of mathematics. Those who, like me, are not
mathematicians, will miss some of the technicalities, but the rest of the
work is understandable. Even non-specialists will nd it useful as a guide to
the eld. It provides clear explanations of classical cryptosystems, both
manual, including those of the German army in World Wars I and II, and
electromechanical, like the Enigma, as well as their underlying principles. It
also explains the bases of one-way functions, which lie at the heart of
asymmetric (public-key) systems and it discusses cryptanalysis. Bauer has
larded his book with historical nuggets, and the book includes 16 pages of
excellent color photographs of cipher machines. It is reviewed (twice, by

different reviewers) in Cryptologia (31, July 2007).
More popular is Klaus Schmehs Die Welt der gehemein Zeichen: Die
faszinierende Geschichte der Verschlusselung [The World of Secret Signs:
The Fascinating History of Enciphering] (Herdecke: W3L-Verlag 2004, 350
pp., ISBN 3-937137-90-4). Schmeh, an engineer, has divided his well-
illustrated book into three parts: the time of enciphering by hand, the time of
encryption machines, and the time of encryption with the computer. Using
little mathematics, he rehearses the solution of the Japanese PURPLE
machine, Enigma, and other well known stories, but also talks about the
underestimated German cryptanalysts and the postwar TICOM investiga-

tions of Axis cryptology by Allied experts. In the last section he describes,
among other, cybermoney. The book includes ten color photos of cipher
machines.
Michael Prose focuses more narrowly in Chiffriermaschinen und
Entzifferungsgerate im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Technikgeschichte und informa-
tikhistorische Aspekte [Cipher Machines and Cryptanalytic Apparatuses in
the Second World War: Technical History and Informational-Historical
Aspects] (Forum Wissenschaftsgeschichte 2; Munich: Martin Meidenbauer-
Verlagsbuchhandlung 2006, 269 pp., ISBN 3-89975-548-0). Prose, an
engineer who is interested in the technical matters inuenced by the two
world wars, gives clear descriptions of the Vernam teletypewriter encipher-
ment (the rst on-line cryptographic mechanism), Enigma, the Siemens
teletypewriter encryption device and others. He then discusses the
mechanisms that the British used to solve these and other encipherments,
including the COLOSSUS and what he calls early computers. It lacks a
discussion of the primitive German World War II cryptanalytic mechanisms,
which were presented in a German doctoral dissertation a couple of decades
ago. The book will be especially useful to those threading their way through
the complexities of wartime encipherments and solutions.
General Dr Otto J. Horak has written an exhaustive two-volume life of
Andreas Figl, Austrias rst great cryptanalyst. I: Andreas Figl: Altmeister
der osterreichischen Entratselungskunst und kryptographischen Wis-
senschaft, Hofrat i.R. und Oberst a.D,: Leben und Werk [Andreas Figl: Old
Master of the Austrian Solving Art and Cryptographic Science; Retired
Ofcial and Retired Colonel, Life and Work] (367 pp., ISBN 3-85487-779-
X); II, Was U brig Blieb: Kommentare und Dokumente zu Andreas Figl,
Leben und Werk 18731967 [What Else Remains: Commentary and
Documents to Andreas Figl, Life and Work 18731967] (pp. 292, ISBN 3-
85487-790-0). Both published in Linz by Universitatsverlag Rudolf Trauner
in 2006. I reviewed the work positively in Cryptologia (31, April 2007,
pp.18891).
An excellent study of secrecy, which underlies much intelligence work, is

Joachim Westerbarkeys Das Geheimnis: Die Faszination der Verborgenen
[Secrecy: The Fascination of the Hidden] (Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch-Verlag
2000, 239 pp., ISBN 3-7466-1657-3). Though this is a popular book, it delves
deep into the psychology and the sociology of secrecy, starting with Georg
Simmels pioneering work and carrying it to lies and betrayal, tactful
discretion, data security, secret societies, professional secrets, masks, and
more. It is clear and well organized, with a 215-item bibliography that
includes not merely political and sociological sources but literary ones, such
as Kafkas The Trial.
SPAIN DISCOVERS THE INTELLIGENCE WORLD
A conference exposed my ignorance of Spains thriving intelligence studies

industry. Entitled Guerra, espias e intelligence en la Historia: Un factor
decisive para la Victoria?, the conference took place on 15 and 16 October
2007 at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, a branch of the University of
Madrid located in Leganes, a suburb. Professors Diego Navarro Bonilla and
Juan R. Goberna Falque organized and ran it. Specialists spoke in Spanish or
in English, and slides during many of the talks enabled those not uent in the
speakers languages to follow the talks better. Many students wore earphones
for simultaneous translations into Spanish. Jose Carlos Vega Lamas,
commander of the department of intelligence in the armys war school,
opened the conference with a talk on the historical perspectives of the
intelligence function at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Other
talks dealt with stratagems that contributed to victories, intelligence failures,
uncertainty, and intelligence in the naval operations of the Spanish-American
war.
The conference showed that intelligence studies are ourishing south of the
Pyrenees. It was not the rst: three other conferences had preceded it. A new
journal reinforced this effort: the twice-yearly Inteligencia y seguridad:
Revista de analisis y prospective, edited by Fernando Velasco and Diego
Navarro and published by Catedra Servicios de Inteligencia y Sistemas
Democraticos/Instituto Juan Velazquez de Velasco de Investigacion en
Inteligencia para la Seguridad y la Defensa. Its street address is Calle de la
Eras 30 B, 28670 Villaviciosa de Odon, Madrid, Spain; email is
[email protected]. A Mexican address is given for the new world:
Manuel Mara Contreras 73, Colonia San Rafael, 06470, Mexico, D.F.,
Mexico; email: [email protected]. Number 1 (December 2006,
157 pages) includes articles on intelligence for public security by Enric Bas, a
professor at the University of Alicante and (in English) suicide terrorism in
Afghanistan by Rohan Gunaratna, principal investigator of the Institute for
Strategic and Defense Studies in Singapore. Number 2 (June November

2007, 155 pages) has articles on, for instance, current problems of law in
intelligence services by Carlos Ruiz Miguel, professor of constitutional law at
the University of Santiago de Compostela`, and on the inuence of political
and psychological variables in the processes of information and decision by
Ruben Herrero de Castro, professor of international relations at the
University Complutense of Madrid. Both issues include book and lm
reviews and a listing of conferences of interest to persons studying
intelligence, not only in Spain but also in Texas, London, and Bangkok,
among others. An English table of contents helps the linguistically
challenged.
But all this was just the tip of the iceberg. Spain has generated a
remarkable volume of intelligence studies, about which, I am embarrassed to
acknowledge, I knew nothing. Fortunately, four useful bibliographies opened
my eyes and enabled me to begin to show the extent of that activity. One is
the wide-ranging list of sources on pages 205 to 218 in Navarro Bonillas
Derrotado, pero no Sorprendido: Reexiones sobre la informacion secreta en
tiempo de guerra [Defeated but not Surprised: Reections on Secret
Information in Wartime] (Madrid: Plaza y Valdez Editores 2007, 218 pp.,
ISBN 978-84-96780-32-3). The other three are the extremely comprehensive
bibliographies in articles by Goberna Falque of the Instituto de Historia,
CSIC. The rst is Los servicios de inteligencia en la historiografa espanola,
Arbor (CLXXX/709, enero 2005, pp.2574). The second is La cultura de la
inteligencia y la Historia contemporanea de Espana: Problemas actuales y
perspectivos de futuro [The Culture of Intelligence and the Contemporary
History of Spain: Current Problems and Perspectives towards the Future],
Empiria (No.11, enero junio 2006, pp.93106). The third is Inteligencia,
Espionaje y Servicios Secretos en Espana (Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa
2008, 331 pp., ISBN 978-84-9781-367-9).
Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of Mr Caneld at Great Neck High,
my Spanish is not what it should be. I fear that in reading these articles or
books I would miss important points or, worse, misunderstand them.
Moreover, the New York Public Library does not have as broad a collection
of intelligence books or of the journals that carry such articles as it has in
French. So I have been able mainly to examine the above-mentioned
bibliographies and list here some of the titles that seemed to me the most
important. This is not very good, but to look at the bright side it may be
seen as unemployment insurance for graduate students.
Among the works I examined are:
. Navarro Bonillas Derrotado, pero no Sorprendido poses an interesting

question near the start: massive information or precise information? He
calls these the scientic foundations of the intelligence cycle. Another

chapter discusses defective intelligence: imprudent calculations and
premeditated mistakes. Another offers a conditional history of Repub-
lican intelligence during the Spanish civil war.
. Los servicios de informacion modernos y contemporaneos, Revista de
Historia Militar (49, numero exraordinario, 2005, 259 pp., ISSN 0482-
5748). Among the articles: Italian Information Services in Spain in
World War I by Fernando Garca Sanz (pp.14778); French Information
Services in Spain in World War I by Eduardo Gonzalez Calleja (pp.179
226); British information services in Spain during World War I by Maria
Dolores Elizalde Perez-Grueso (pp.22758); Information Services in the

Transition to the Contemporary World by Manuel Espadas Burgos
(pp.13346).
. Carlos Carnier and Javier Marcos, Espas de Felipe II: Los servicios
secretos del Imperio espanol [Spies of Philip II: The Secret Services of
the Spanish Empire] (Madrid: La Esfera de los libros 2005, 505 pp.,
ISBN 84-9734-278-X). This sumptuous book, with its numerous
color plates, lays out the intelligence activities of the king who sent the
armada against England, fought protestantism in the Netherlands, and
grew rich from his mines in the New World. The authors call this
period the late 1500sthe golden age of espionage and astutely devote
an early chapter to the character of Philip and the king and secrecy.
Other chapters deal with political theory and espionage, the institutio-
nalization of espionage, direct action in espionage, types of spies,
cryptography. More than 70 pages of notes support the authors
arguments.
. Antonio M. Daz Fernandez, Los servicos de inteligencia espanoles:
Desde la guerra civil hasta el 11-MHistoria de una transicion [The
Spanish Intelligence Services: From the civil war to 11-M: History of
a Transition] (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2005, 558 pp., ISBN 84-206-
7676-9). After introductory sections on Knowing to Conquer and
The Origins of Intelligence in Spain, the author discusses
Intelligence for a Democracy and Reform: The National Center of
Intelligence. Seventeen annexes, as of organizational charts, provide
additional detail.
. David Salinas, Espionaje y Gastos en la Diplomacia Espanola (1663
1683) En sus documentos [Espionage and Expenditures in Spanish
Diplomacy (16631683). In its Documents] (Valladolid: Ambito, 1995,
116 pp.). The documents come from the Archive of Simancas and deal
with the Spanish embassies in Vienna, London, Genoa, and The Hague
and the politico-military expenditures of four ofcials against the
aggressive policy of Louis XIV of France.
Two items seemed especially interesting to me from the Navarro Bonilla

bibliography: Diego Navarro Bonilla, Cartas entre espias e inteligencias
secretas en el siglo de los validos (Juan de Torres Gaspar Bonifaz, 1632
1638 [Letters between Spies and Secret Intelligence in the Century of the
Validos (Juan de Torres Gaspar Bonifaz, 16321638)] (Madrid: Ministerio
de Defensa 2007); and Sara Nunez de Prado y Clavel, Servicios de
informacion y propaganda en la guerra civil espanola: 19361939 [Services
of Information and Propaganda in the Spanish Civil War 19361939]
(Madrid: Universidad Complutense 1992).
And a few samples plucked from among the hundreds of items in the
Goberna Falque bibliographies to show the richness and variety of Spanish

intelligence studies:
. F. Luengo Teixidor, Espias en la Embajada: los servicios de informacion

secreta republicanos en Francia durante la Guerra Civil [Spies in the
Embassy: The Republican Services of Secret Information in France
during the Civil War] (Bilbao: Servicio Editorial de la Universidad de
Pais Vasco 1996).
. F.F. Olesa Munido, sections on Informacion, posta y cifra en la
monarqua espanola and Los organos de informacion ingleses
[Information, Post, and Cipher in the Spanish Monarchy and The English
Organs of Information] in Algunas consideraciones en torno a la Gran
Armada, Revista de Historia Naval 1 (1983) pp.3193.
. Ma C. Calero Palacios, Contribucion al estudio del espionaje morisco
a traves de un documento des archivo de la Alhambra [Contribution
to the Study of Moorish Espionage according to a Document in the
Archives of the Alhambra], Cuadernos de la Alhambra 14 (1978)
pp.14750.
. Morten Heibert and Manuel Ros Agudo, La trama oculta de la Guerra
Civil: Los servicios secretos de Franco, 19361945 [The Secret Plot of
the Civil War: Francos Secret Services] (Barcelona: Critica 2006).
. Ma C. Pescador del Hoyo, Don Juan de Valencia, espa mayor de Felipe
IV y torero [Don Juan of Valencia, Major Spy of Philip IVth and
Bullghter] (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Madrilenos 1987).
. S. Alcocer Badenas, La quinta columna [The Fifth Column] (Madrid:
Gregorio del Toro 1976).
. Seco de Lucena Paredes, El musulman Ahmad Ulayla, espa de los
Reyes Catolicos en la Corte granadina [The Muslim Ahmad Ulaya, Spy
of the Catholic Kings in the Granada Court] in Miscelanea de estudios
arabes y hebraicos 9 (1960) p.157.
. H. ODonnell and Duque de Estrada, El secreto, requisito para la
empresa de Inglaterra de 1588 (II) [Secrecy, a Requirement for the
Enterprise of England in 1588 (II)] Revista de Historia Naval 2 (1884)

pp.6373.
. J. Ma Satrustegui, Relectura de los textos vascos de espionaje del siglo
XVI [Rereading of Basque Texts of Espionage of the 16th Century],
Fontes Linguae Vasconum 25/64 (1994) pp.44375.
. A. Lafuente and J.L. Peset Reig, Poltica cientca y espionaje industrial
en los viajes de Jorge Juan y Antonio de Ulloa (17481751) [Scientic
Politics and Industrial Espionage in the Travels of Jorge Juan and Antoni
de Ulloa (17461761)] in Melanges de la Casa de Velasquez 17 (1981)
pp.23362. This includes as appendices the instructions to the two spies
and a list of their 88 letters and reports.

. B. Prior Barbarroja, La conexion espanola de la espa Aphra Behn
(16401689) con el teatro espanol [The Spanish Connection of the Spy
Aphra Behn (16401689) with the Spanish Theater] in D. Martnez
Torron (ed.), Sobre Cervantes (Alcala de Henares, Centro de Estudios
Cervantinos 2003, pp.22130).
. Pastor Domingo Petit, Espionaje: Espana, 19361939 (Barcelona:
Bruguere 1977).
. Pastor Domingo Petit, Los dossiers secretos de la Guerra Civil
(Barcelona: Librera Editorial Argos 1978).
. Pastor Domingo Petit, Diccionario enciclopedico del espionaje (Madrid:
Complutense 1996).
. Pastor Domingo Petit, Las tecnicas de los servicios de inteligencia
(Barcelona: Editorial Planeta 1977) 302 pp.

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Intelligence Studies on the Continent

Americans and Britons are notorious for not knowing foreign

THE RENAISSANCE OF FRENCH INTELLIGENCE LITERATURE

Intelligence literature has owered expansively in France in the last decade or

more important scholarly works that have come to my attention, I have

Leading the specialist scholarly endeavor in the history of French intelli-

excellent chapters on The World of Secrecy and Information, Action, and

publication. One is Olivier Forcades La Republique secre`te: Histoire des

Colonel Dr Frederic Guelton runs the army department of the Historical

understanding both the history of Europe and systems of intelligence. The

and intelligence, Andre Cattieuws on French cryptology, Bertrand Warusfels

envelopes of letters containing anthrax bacillus, a world map showing the

intelligence, Jean-David Mizrahi on intelligence ofcers in the Levant, based

origines a` nos jours [Cryptologie: A History of Secret Writing from the

presented at a conference in Peronne, near Amiens, 21 and 22 March 2001:

problem of pre-World War II French intelligence ofcers as strikingly as

do not explain the growth of intelligence, which he traces in part to

has written an original, well-organized survey of secret communication. The

(Paris: Vuibert, 2005, 280 pp., ISBN 2-7117-5380-8), includes a 13-page

GERMANYS INTELLIGENCE WELTANSCHAUUNG

Neither in breadth nor in depth have the German-speaking countries produced

as much intelligence literature as the Francophone. I do not know why. Still,

the leaders of that combined party and governmental espionage, counter-

Immediate Hinterland (1969, 56 pp.); Julius Sacher, The Meaning of the

Schafers articles differentiating unofcial collaborator, collaboration, and

Panzer- und Spahtruppfuhrer in der Panzer-Lehr Division 19431945

not so new ought to be noticed.

excellent color photographs of cipher machines. It is reviewed (twice, by

underestimated German cryptanalysts and the postwar TICOM investiga-

An excellent study of secrecy, which underlies much intelligence work, is

SPAIN DISCOVERS THE INTELLIGENCE WORLD

A conference exposed my ignorance of Spains thriving intelligence studies

Strategic and Defense Studies in Singapore. Number 2 (June November

. Navarro Bonillas Derrotado, pero no Sorprendido poses an interesting

calls these the scientic foundations of the intelligence cycle. Another

Dolores Elizalde Perez-Grueso (pp.22758); Information Services in the

Two items seemed especially interesting to me from the Navarro Bonilla

Goberna Falque bibliographies to show the richness and variety of Spanish

. F. Luengo Teixidor, Espias en la Embajada: los servicios de informacion

Enterprise of England in 1588 (II)] Revista de Historia Naval 2 (1884)

and a list of their 88 letters and reports.

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