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    GCHQ
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    GCHQ
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    GCHQ
    Ebook965 pages13 hours

    GCHQ

    By Richard J. Aldrich

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJun 10, 2010
    ISBN9780007357123
    Unavailable
    GCHQ
    Author

    Richard J. Aldrich

    Richard Aldrich is a regular commentator on war and espionage and has written for the ‘Evening Standard’, the ‘Guardian’, ‘The Times’ and the ‘Telegraph’. He is the author of several books, including ‘The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence’ which won the Donner Book Prize in 2002.

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    Reviews for GCHQ

    3.5/5

    15 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A UK centred (although not exclusive) history of Signals Intelligence from the 2nd world war through to the current day. Initially slow it becomes more interesting later on as the timeline catches sup with events that are of recent relevance. At times it is somewhat repetitive, and frequently features lists of names and dates that are not interesting, there is much input from American sources, nothing at all on the more active human intelligence side. Also suffers from a hammer problem - everything is seen solely through the lens of sigint, which sometimes leads to exaggerated claims of its own importance. However later chapters covering the Iraq War and the rise of the Internet are of interest to anyone who has an interest in public affairs. It goes a little way into explaining why the 'Intelligence' services failed to predict several notable conflicts but the sucesses that were prevented are much harder to elucidate. The book is well referenced and compiled from 'open sources' - government documents that were declassified and released to the public archives. The author chose not to include interviews with serving officers so there are no contraventions of the Official Secrets Act. - Although according to the author during his promotional lecture circuit he was deliberately evasive in publishing times so that the government were too slow to censor anything. All the sources are available to be read by anyone who has the patience to trawl through the vast vast volumes in search of the nuggets that perhaps GCHQ would have proffered not to have had released. It took the author 10 years to write. The general structure is a look at how GCHQ evolved, from the early Bletchly Park WWII years, through the decades in turn. There is some degree of jumping about, and points (and at times sentences) from one decade are repeated in the next. There is not an over-guiding narrative, which makes it a quite bitty to read, A few key incidents from each decade are analysed for how they affected the general focus of GCHQ's activities. It is quite clear that the USA provided a lot of direction for GCHQ's activities even though originally GCHQ was the innovative partner in the relationship. The other key activity was the degree to which GCHQ limited access to their output. This made quite a lot of difference to whether or not GCHQs work was actually useful. In many cases important information was received by one hand, but never understood or disseminated to the other. The author does attempt to explain how this could happen, and generally does s in an impartial manner leaving it to the reader to decide if it was a good idea or not. There are several interesting facts, and a good explanation of some areas of recent history, but overall it is somewhat slow and complicated exploration of an area that obviously has a lot more interesting stories still to tell.
    • 3/5
      Good secondary research, but somewhat rambling in the mid-section. Indeed, the focus of the book drifts around somewhat unpredictably, and whilst the chronology of the evolution of GCHQ from its wartime roots is well set-out, the book only really becomes interesting in the very final chapters, where the reactions of former intelligence luminaries are set against the dramatic increase in the apparatus of surveillance. Worth reading, but only to someone already interested in the field.