MI6 and the Machinery of Spying : Structure and Process in Britain's Secret Intelligence

ISBN-13: 9780714654577 / Angielski / Twarda / 2004 / 412 str.

Philip H. J. Davies

Opis

MI6 and the Machinery of Spying traces the development of the agency's internal structure from its inception until the end of the Cold War. The analysis examines how its management structure has been driven by its operational environment on the one hand and its position within the machinery of British central government on the other. Close attention is paid to the agency's institutional links to its consumers in Whitehall and Downing Street, as well as to the causes and consequences of its operational organisation and provisions for counter-espionage and security. The book presents a detailed response to assertions that the SIS was historically chronically mismanaged and badly organised, and to claims that it is unaccountable to political and public oversight. It also argues that where SIS activities have resulted in public disasters and scandals the reason has usually been less its lack of accountability and control than the very high degree of control and direction exercised by opportunistic politicians and the senior Civil Servants.

Spis treści

1. Introduction 2. Origins and the First World War, 1903-18 3. The Inter-war Years, 1919-39 4. War Without and Within, 1939-45 5. A New Kind of War, 1946-56 6. To the End of the Cold War and After, 1956-95 7. Machines of Government and Intelligence

O autorze

Philip H. J. Davies is one of a growing number of British academic scholars of intelligence, but the only academic to approach the subject in terms of political science rather than history. He wrote his PhD at the University of Reading on the topic 'Organisational Development of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1979', and has published extensively on intelligence and defence issues. After completing his PhD he taught for a year and a half on the University of London external degree programme in Singapore before returning to the UK to lecture at the University of Reading for two years. He was formerly Associate Professor of International and Security Studies at the University of Malaya in Malaysia where he not only conducted his research but provided a range of training and consultancy services to the Malaysian intelligence and foreign services. He is now based at Brunel University, UK