Declassified: 50 Top-Secret Documents That Changed History

By Thomas B. Allen

Culled from archives around the world, the 50 documents in Declassified illuminate the secret and often inaccessible stories of agents, espionage, and behind-the-scenes events that played critical roles in American history. Moving through time from Elizabethan England to the Cold War and beyond, noted author Tom Allen places each document in its historical and cultural context, sharing the quirky and little-known truths behind state secrets and clandestine operations. Each of seven chapters centers on one particular theme: secrets of war, the art of the double cross, spy vs. spy, espionage accidents, and more. Through support and access provided by the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., this lively history contains never-before-published and hard-to-find documents, printed from scans of the originals wherever possible. These include The Zimmerman Telegram, which led America into World War I; letters from Robert Hanssen to his Soviet spymaster, marking the start of his devastating career as a mole; and papers as recent as the Presidential Daily Brief that announced that Bin Laden was determined to strike the U.S., delivered in August 2001.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: May 20, 2008
• ISBN: 9781426203428

Reviews for Declassified

[schmerguls · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book examines 50 documents which "changed history." Two or three pages are devoted to each document--some are documents which I have read whole books on. The prose is National Georgraphic prose, and I could not get too caught up by the book, though some of the entries are of highly interesting or disturbing documents.

[marthajeanne · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

However important the issues, the documents themselves were usually not that interesting or important - or at least not the parts that are shown. I also found the constant jumping around in history to be difficult to follow. Documents closely related are in different chapters.

[gabriel_13 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Declassified is a useful introduction to the world of espionage. In reviewing 50 notable secret documents, most of the high points of spying and cryptographic history are covered.Each segment describes a document (often with a photograph), and places it within the larger political or military context. These descriptions, while keeping generally to a few pages, do an adequate job of providing the greater significance.Ultimately, this book is best for occasional perusal, as each segment keeps ones interest. However, the lack of an overarching narrative limits its usefulness.

[papyri · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very interesting book about the world of espionage, spys and spying. There is something for multiple interests from how George Washington used fake battle plans, how a hollow nickle was used to transmit secret information, to various Cold War activities and more recent events. The book was well written with each section about a document and its implications being brief (often about 4 pages). This is especially good if you don't have a large block of time to devote to reading. I found myself not reading reading the book straight through from cover to cover, but jumping about the book reading the various sections out of order. Suprisingly, I found even topics (or a document) which seemed uninteresting proved to be quite the opposite, and often gave insight or shead a whole new light on this secretive world. The book is well illustrated with pictures of the documents and some of the people involved. A really good book to read, both fascinating and eye opening.

[paulranke · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Overall quite interesting book. I would have like to have seen more detail on each document. I did like the breakdown of the book into related document types. It would have been nice for the author to include a Biblography for each document so you could delve deeper into the background of the document if you so desired.

[dwilton_7 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"Declassified" is arranged in 50 sections, each addressing a formerly secret document that is now available to the public. The documents range from a 1588 letter from a spy to Sir Francis Walsingham detailing the Spanish plans for the Armada to the August 2001 Presidential Daily Brief titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US."Each section is but a few pages long and can be digested in a few minutes, making the book ideal for commuter or bathroom reading. It is competently written in a straightforward, if unremarkable, nonfiction style.The research appears to be solid, but rather basic. There is little here that can't be found on Wikipedia or countless other, readily available sources. Those knowledgeable in the history of espionage will find little that is new, but dabblers and the mildly curious will find it interesting.The book lacks footnotes, making it unusable as a reference source as its assertions cannot be verified, although it does include an extensive bibliography of both print and online sources.

[citizenclark · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was a page-turner for me. It takes what might seem to be boring historical documents and explains their significance. It is not a long work: I blasted through it in one sitting. Sometimes the "little stories" help us understand political affairs more than big ones.

[sgtbigg_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mr. Allen has written an interesting book. He briefly discusses 50 of the most important/prominent espionage stories in history. The only issue I have with the book is the discussion of each story often seemed too brief. Most sections only contained three or four pages, giving only the briefest glimpse of the incident. In spite of this, the book works well as an introduction to espionage. The title is somewhat misleading, while the book attaches some type of document to each of the 50 incidents, in many of the cases the document is only of minor importance. Additionally several of the incidents involve documents that are not what the average person would consider “declassified”.

[chuck_ralston · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

“War is older than history,” the author, Thomas B. Allen, reminds his readers, and within every raging conflict, vivid in epic poetry and chronicles, is a secret war the actions of which often are not written about. Fortunately for historians and novelists, however, (if unfortunate for spies and intelligence analysts) documents are created in the pursuit of war planning and operations, that eventually do come to light, intentioned or not. Allen’s Declassified: 50 Top-Secret Documents that Changed History (Washington, DC: National Geographic, May 2008, $26 Hardcover) is a compilation ranging from the sixteenth-century Spanish Armada against England to an 8 August 2001 routine President’s Daily Brief which discussed the possibility of an attack on the United States by Al-Qa’ida in retaliation for US missile strikes on terrorist training facilities in Afghanistan in 1998, which attack occurred on 11 September. Each topic is arranged first, with a facsimile of the document or a page there from; secondly, discussion of its background: how it came to be created, encoded, decoded, hidden, transmitted, exposed, etc., and the machinations of the handlers of such, the spies (or “intelligencer” as Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth I’s, principal spy was called); and thirdly, with a succinct summary of the impact of the document’s information on the course of history. In the case of Catholic Spain’s King Philip II, plans to invade Protestant England, devised in 1586 were copied, presumably by a valet employed by the Spanish admiralty, whose brother worked for Walsingham’s intelligencer, Anthony Standen, an English Catholic in exile from England and with access to Spain’s Catholic elite. A letter from Standen to Walsingham included detailed plans (ships, company, equipment, routes) of the armada. England, with such fore knowledge, in July 1588, set ablaze eight “Hell Burners”, old ships loaded with tar and gun powder, amidst the 130-ship Spanish Armada, scattering it in the English Channel and thwarting the attack. The outcome of this battle, Allen informs us, was the end of Spain’s anti-Protestant crusade, a weakening of Papal influence, and the growth of English sea power with Britannia ruling the waves to mid-twentieth century. Some documents included in Declassified will be familiar to us. One is the encrypted letter of Continental Army Major General Benedict Arnold to British Major Andre that proposed turning the garrison overlooking a strategic bend in the Hudson River – West Point – to the British, which if it succeeded, would have divided General Washington’s forces and broken the Continental Army’s major line of communication, north-south.Another document familiar to us is the 1917 telegram, sent by the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmerman to the German Ambassador to the United States, who was to relay it to the German envoy in Mexico. The telegram was sent this way to minimize British access to it (Britain had been at war with Germany since 1914) and the Americans were told its contents had to do with a peace offering. Unencrypted, the Zimmerman Telegram so-called, begins: “We [Germany] intend to begin unrestricted submarine warfare on the first of February [1917] . . . .” It also proposed an alliance between Germany and Mexico. By March 1917, President Wilson, recently re-elected to office on a platform that included the policy of remaining neutral with regard to the war then raging in Europe, released the telegram to the public, which became outraged at Germany. In April, the U.S. Congress declared war on Imperial Germany. Allen has included several declassified documents that provide examples of the complexities of espionage and counter espionage and the operations of double agents, those who work for one intelligence agency while in secret actually work against it in the service of another, enemy agency. One such is a set of dispatches from Confederate President Jefferson Davis to a Confederate sabotage operation in Canada. The information gathered was intended to influence the outcome of the re-election of Union President Abraham Lincoln. Double agent Richard Montgomery, who couriered secret dispatches for Davis, actually was working for Lincoln’s Assistant Secretary of War, Charles Dana. To keep the Confederates from catching on, Montgomery at one point was intercepted by Union forces, imprisoned, and even fired upon and wounded.Another is the memorandum for record by the handler of British Double-Cross agent Nathalie Sergueiew, born in Russia, raised in France, and a journalist in Nazi Germany. During her transfer from Nazi Germany to England, ‘Treasure’ (her code name) learned that her dog Frisson, which she had to leave behind, had not been smuggled out of Germany as promised by her British handlers. In her anger, Treasure told MI5 that her Nazi handlers had given her a secret signal that if transmitted by Morse code would reveal that she was sending under duress. This was three weeks before the impending launch of the Allied invasion of Europe. Although Allied intelligence feared the worst, it turned out that Treasure had not compromised the Double-Cross system the purpose of which was the intricate deception plan for D-Day 6 June 1944. The array of Allen’s declassified documents is varied and extensive, to include four of my favorites: •Acting Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt’s 1898 cable to Admiral George Dewey ordering preparation for offensive action in the Philippine Islands in the event war is declared against Spain following the destruction of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor. TR’s boss, President McKinley, at the time was interested in maintaining peaceful relations with Spain!•The Sykes-Picot Agreement (May 1916) that established British and French “priority of right of enterprise” in the Middle East while unbeknownst to T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) who was leading the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The map annexed to this agreement did not show an Arab ‘state’ and when the secret agreement was exposed (by Russia’s revolutionary leader, Lenin) in 1917; Arab distrust of the West was sewn.•FDR’s letter to his Secretary of State authorizing US ships for the British fleet, August 1940, just a month before the start of the Battle of Britain. •The legacy of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg’s photocopies of pages from a classified report on US involvement in the war in Southeast Asia, published in the New York Times (1971), and which eventually led to the Nixon administration’s involvement in the Watergate break in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters (1972) and to the resignation of President Nixon (August 1974). Declassified is an informative, researched account of the murky waters of stealth, intrigue, deception, disinformation, and the business of establishing that essential “bodyguard of lies” around precious truth, to quote Allen’s quote of Winston Churchill. I look forward to its sequel.