Trading Secrets: Spies and Intelligence in an Age of Terror

Huband, Mark

ISBN 10: 1848858434 / ISBN 13: 9781848858435

Published by I.B. Tauris, 2013

About this Item

How have the intelligence services been forced to adapt to try and combat the threat of terrorism? In this book, the author takes us inside the shadowy world of intelligence-gathering. It explores how the role and purpose of 'intelligence' has evolved from its origins in nineteenth-century Ireland to today's fight against terrorism. Num Pages: 224 pages, Illustrations. BIC Classification: 3JJP; 3JM; JPSH; JPWL; JWKF. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 234 x 166 x 27. Weight in Grams: 554. . 2013. hardcover. . . . . Books ship from the US and Ireland.

Seller Inventory # V9781848858435

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Trading Secrets: Spies and Intelligence in an Age of Terror
• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1848858434
• ISBN 13: 9781848858435
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Today's intelligence community faces challenges that would have been inconceivable only a dozen years ago. Just as al-Qaeda's destruction of the Twin Towers heralded a revolution in global diplomacy, the events of 9/11 also threw two centuries of spy-craft into turmoil - because this new enemy could not be bought. Gone were the sleepers and moles whose trade in secrets had sustained intelligence agencies in both peacetime and war. A new method of intelligence had been born. The award-winning former Financial Times security correspondent Mark Huband here takes us deep inside this new unseen world of spies and intelligence. With privileged access to intelligence officers from Rome to Kabul and from Khartoum to Guantanamo Bay, he reveals how spies created secret channels to the IRA, deceived Iran's terrorist allies, frequently attempted to infiltrate al-Qaeda, and forced Libya to abandon its nuclear weapons.
Using accounts from ex-KGB officers, Huband vividly describes the devastation caused by the West's misreading of Soviet intentions in Africa, and explains how ill-prepared western intelligence agencies were when the Cold War was replaced by the perception of a new terrorist threat. Benefiting from privileged access to intelligence sources across the world, Trading Secrets provides a unique and controversial assessment of the catastrophic failure of spies to grasp the realities of the Taliban's grip on Afghanistan, and draws upon exclusive interviews with serving officers in assessing the ability of the major intelligence agencies to combat the threat of twenty-first century terrorism.

About the Author

Mark Huband is a leading authority on intelligence and security issues and an award-winning former journalist, who held the positions of Africa correspondent for the Guardian and the Observer, Cairo correspondent and later Security correspondent for the Financial Times. He has written on subjects ranging from the civil war in Liberia to the emergence of political Islam and today is the head of a global research firm.