Intelligence history profiles with a focus on the US, UK and Ireland.

Cold War Intelligence

In 2022, I published my first book, State-Private Networks and Intelligence Theory: From Cold War Liberalism and Intelligence Theory, in the Routledge Studies in Intelligence series.

The book traced the roots of the Iraq War to a hawkish coalition which developed, inside and outside the US intelligence community, in opposition to détente in the 1970s. I focused largely on one element of that coalition, tracing the origins of neoconservatism to the CIA’s allies among anti-communists in the labour movement.

In this substack, I want to build on some of the other themes in the book, examining the internal politics of Western intelligence services from the Cold War to the War on Terror.

Key themes will be the legacy and international impact of James Angleton’s approach to counterintelligence, counterinsurgency in the British empire, and domestic counter-subversion in the UK.

Intelligence in the Northern Ireland Troubles

I have been a close follower of the Northern Ireland peace process since the early 2000s, when I was political correspondent of the Irish World. My archival research with a number of Irish-based NGO has informed a number of books on the Troubles. My draft study The DCIs:Britain’s intelligence chiefs in the Irish Troubles 1969-1994 is available to subscribers.

Why subscribe?

Subscription tier posts will focus on biographies and organisational profiles, building up into a valuable reference. The aim will be at least one substantive new post each week, hopefully more, with continuous revision in response to new information, a process I hope readers may have ideas about.

Free-tier posts will provide occasional commentary on current events and new research. I hope that your support will enable me to expand my research at the National Archives in London. In the meantime, the time-honoured approach of tracing intelligence networks through the diplomatic lists is still an effective strategy for researching some intelligence agencies.

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