WRITING INTELLIGENCE HISTORY is problematic. The difficulties it presents are essentially twofold. First there is the issue of archives and records. As Calder Walton himself points out, there is today such a huge amount now available that to research the material thoroughly is very challenging.
However, some crucial areas remain secret and in all likelihood they will never become accessible. For example, the archives of SIS — MI6 in popular parlance — are never released, and CIA’s releases are selective. There is thus a hinterland of records relating to “the epic intelligence war” that are not available to historians. This limits their perspective and may lend fragility and distortion to some of their analysis. However, this book’s extraordinary chapter notes do testify to the thoroughness of the research that has gone into it.
The second difficulty is how to rise above the sensationalism of the “spy story” and write something that delivers a serious historical perspective. I am immediately discouraged by the book’s title — presumably the publishers insisted on “Spies” in order to sell more copies. The intelligence war which this book maps in detail is about much more than spies, and Walton, excellent
