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Example research essay topic: World War Ii Cold War - 2,070 words

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Using Double Agents and Problems Connected with It Intelligence means many things to different people. Social scientists associate eight interpretations to the expression. Statecraft, or more mundanely government, requires knowledge both in a general and in a particular sense. Intelligence in government usually has a more restricted meaning than just information and its collection, processing and use. It is related to international affairs, defense, national security and secrecy and it works through specialized institutions labeled intelligence.

The book written by M. Herman, Intelligence Power in Peace and War, tries to analyze the intelligence system, the interaction of people in the intelligence organizations and the underlying processes, with special attention to the big, computer-based agencies. Michael Herman has been a professional intelligence practitioner whose career coincided almost exactly with the Cold War. His viewpoint developed into one of an Organization Man in the British intelligence system. Thereafter he wrote and taught about intelligence, made some forays into social sciences studies of organizations and their transmission and use of information and explored its literature. The author very clearly states the topics, which are not covered in his book.

He is not dealing with the controversial issues of intelligences democratic accountability, legal status and implications for individuals rights. Herman draws from his British experience and restricts himself to the Anglo-American-Commonwealth intelligence model. The study of Michael Herman is a very valuable addition to the analytical intelligence literature. It provides an overview how intelligence works and functions. (Herman, 1996). The secret world of intelligence is a 'wilderness of mirrors' where reality is distorted by professional liars. But it is also quite often the 'missing dimension' to much of importance in contemporary history which helps us make sense of events which would otherwise be inexplicable, or extremely strange.

Separating fact from fiction in secret work is therefore both necessary, and very hard. Even where government papers and, occasionally, secret service personnel become available for public scrutiny, nagging doubts remain that the full truth may still be hidden, that a 'revelation' is just a further piece of dissimulation. What is more, the official veil of secrecy does not simply permit governments to obscure the past, but also protects those who fantasize about history, and about their part in it. Good studies of intelligence work, whether about individuals or policies, must seek to transform the world of mirrors into useable evidence, or alert readers to the lying that is done. (Lander, 2002). Nigel West does sterling service by arguing that several allegedly authentic accounts of the work of British secret agents during the Second World War are actually works of total fiction. A number of his victims though, are marginal figures: the stories of Robert Vacha, George Borodin and Josephine Butler have no place on the shelves of those with a real interest in the subject.

Could it be considered that the Special Operations Executive (given life by Churchill and just one testimony to his keen interest in the secret world) would have been able to substitute a young British agent by the name of Craig for one of Rommel's staff officers for a lengthy period, and that his knowledge of German, and his appearance, were so convincing that he tricked both the Desert Fox, and the German officer's good wife in Berlin? That a plastic surgeon altered the same face many times over to equip it for a variety of tasks? That meek Dr Butler was 'really' a secret spy for Churchill code-named Jaybee? It is, however, disquieting to learn that 'the Druid', a hitherto unknown Nazi spy in Britain revealed by Leonard Mosley. (Jeffery, 1988). Historian Albert Martin's 1985 in his work focuses on the Allied clandestine operations in the European Theatre during World War II that, in the words of Winston Churchill, constituted "a secret war whose battles were won and lost unknown to the public. " All the famous and high-profile institutions, individuals, and cases are included. The founding and development of the SOE, OSS, M 15, and M 16 are detailed as well as the parallel stories of such individuals as Major General Sir Colin Gubbins, Sir William Stephenson, and General Wild Bill Donovan.

Prominent cases that are well documented include the capture of the Enigma, the race for the atomic bomb, and the European invasion. (Lashmar, 1996). The major conclusion is a heavily qualified rejection of the hypothesis that the German will to resist could only have been broken down by purely military means. It must be admitted, however, that this conclusion is not based exclusively on the actual progress and achievements of the various activities and initiatives. Perhaps for the first time, therefore, we can properly evaluate the actual role of psychological warfare in the ending of World War II and draw lessons from conflicts fought since then. Double agents were extensively used by both sides.

Such a way of waging war became essential in the final stages of the war. But at the same time, it happened that a lot of important issues depended on few people, creating extreme risks. "The seemingly wild surmises of an American counterintelligence officer become more understandable as we learn more about the strange "behind the mirror' world of spying, double agents, and deliberate misinformation in which huge and well-funded rival intelligence services clashed with no holds barred. Intelligence at any time is a necessary and valuable instrument of a state's foreign policy. But in the years of Cold War tension the intelligence services were more than just 'eyes, ' they were powerful weapons in propaganda warfare between the ideological blocs.

Furthermore, in a situation of mutual fear produced by the nuclear deadlock, when mammoth armies confronted each other in Europe and around the world, intelligence networks were the only mobile force in action, the 'light infantry' of the Cold War: conducting reconnaissance, but also trying to influence the situation in the enemy's rear by means sometimes just short of military ones. (House, 1992). In 1938, an 11 -term New York Democratic congressman, Russian-born Samuel Dickstein, walked into the Soviet Embassy and volunteered as a spy for money, Major notes. Dickstein was the chairman of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization. He was given an appropriate Russian code name, Crook, says Major. Nearly 30 years later, John Walker also walked into the Russian Embassy through the back door and signed on for a similar deal.

The FBI was unable to detect him because their lookout covered the front door, says Major. Kalugin observes that his people actually bugged the FBI's lookout to be sure they didn't know about Walker. In the beginning, Kalugin says, he thought Walker might be an FBI plant, but when he provided codes which enabled "Russia to intercept 80 percent of ship-to-ship communication, we knew he would be a valuable asset, " Kalugin boasts. "Walker's treachery was so damaging that naval officers said at his trial that, should a conflict arise between Russia and the United States, the top-secret material Walker provided could have war-winning implications for Russia. " Major says, "The Johnny Walker case was the Julius Rosenberg case is one of the most important espionage cases in American history. " He notes that, two days before the Walker spy ring was exposed in 1985, Ames was paid $ 50, 000 at the Mayflower Hotel for classified documents. Ames was convinced a KGB agent turned on Walker and would soon turn on him. In a panic he wrote down every human asset he could think of - some 20 names in all - and then stuffed the list with seven pounds of classified material in a shopping bag and presented it to a Soviet contact at Chadwick's restaurant in Georgetown, according to Major. The result?

Ten CIA agents in the USSR were executed. Ames was caught in 1994. "Ames did this out of total greed, " says a disgusted Major, adding that Chadwick's was not the only place where spy business was done in Washington. An Irish pub there, Martin's Restaurant, was a favorite watering hole for Kalugin as it was decades earlier for a true American hero, Elizabeth Bentley, a courier for Soviet intelligence in the 1930 s and 1940 s who broke with the communists in 1945 and exposed Soviet operations in the United States to the FBI. Georgetown also was the residence of some of the more famous communist spies. Laughlin Currie, a Soviet spy and special assistant to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, lived at 3132 P Street, N.

W. Currie was never prosecuted and denied being a spy but, years later, documentary evidence proved otherwise. A few houses down the street Alger Hiss lived at 2905 P Street, N. W. A senior State Department officer, with FDR at Yalta, and the acting secretary-general of the United Nations at its founding conference, Hiss was accused of spying for the Soviets and denied this to his dying day. Kalugin says there was no KGB file on Hiss. "Years before his death, he asked me to speak publicly that he was not a KGB agent.

I stated publicly he was never a KGB agent. I had no problem stating that because I have no right to speak for other agencies, " Kalugin says. (Jones, 1989). The book "Battleground Berlin: CIA Vs KGB in the Cold War, " written by a former top officer of the CIA and a top officer of the KGB, was meant to glorify the CIA's reputation on its fiftieth anniversary. Reviewers of that book, however, are not kind: "Battleground Berlin, " authored by David Murphy, and Sergi Kondrashev (and George Bailey) is a book of "thumping self-satisfaction. " A secret-service boss in Berlin spends years trying to frustrate the acts of spooks run by another spymaster. People are disgraced, imprisoned, tortured or shot (sometimes all four). The conflict over, the spymasters write jolly revelations about each side's exploits.

The authors, using previously unpublished CIA and KGB files, revel in the during-do they uncover. Anyone who likes the mirrors and mazes of defectors and double-agents will find it a thrill. Others may be more impressed by the unhappy fate of Western agents betrayed by their own spymasters' treachery or incompetence. The Economist, 9 / 13 / 97.

The Washington Post reviewer called this tome -- a clumsy, if ambitious, collaboration from those on both sides of the ideological divide. The effort to learn what the other was up to was, a colossal waste of energy and resources. For all the effort in recruiting informers, etc. , the major events of the Cold War came as surprises. The fiction of the Cold War has accustomed us to a level of importance and achievement by spies that had little connection to reality. The world of tunnels, wiretaps, misinformation and secret identities may have changed the course of history hardly at all. Washington Post 12 / 28 / 97.

My own experience, from 1953 to 1977, which I have outlined a number of times, found me developing a facility in analysis in self defense. I simply had a difficult time believing the incompetence of my fellow DO officers and the bad, inaccurate intelligence produced by the DO and the Directorate of Intelligence. (web). Unlike Hitchens book, incisive, discursive and thematic, and assumes a certain amount of readers knowledge about the geo-political background, "The Cyprus Conspiracy" provides the background, but in some cases a little too much. One is inclined, for example, to question the direct relevance of such tangential stories an the Philby Affair of M 15 s suspicion that Harold Wilson was a Soviet agent. (Wright, 1987). Quoting Peter Wrights book, "Spycather", on the other hand, is directly relevant, since it highlights the importance of Cyprus as a listening post. Now we will consider Kim Philby's case.

Kalugin claims the "Cambridge Five" - the infamous British band of turncoat spies led by British intelligence officer Kim Philby - were men of principle. Philby, who maintained secret liaisons with both the FBI and CIA - and had in fact helped to set up the CIA -- was asked by the U. S. agencies to track down a Soviet mole, code-named Homer, one of the members of the Cambridge Five. Philby had managed to penetrate the highest level of British intelligence after being recruited in the 1930 s but realized the game was over. He warned his comrades and defected to the Soviet Union in 1963. "These were...


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Research essay sample on World War Ii Cold War

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