Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies and Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth Century - Softcover

Gannon, James

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9781574884739: Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies and Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth Century

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1574884735 ISBN 13: 9781574884739

Publisher: POTOMAC BOOKS, 2002

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How important is it to know your enemy's secrets? The German victory at the Battle of Tannenberg in 1914, the entrance of the United States into World War I, the defeat of Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union's faster-than-anticipated development of the atomic bomb were all facilitated by stealing enemy secrets. Espionage and codebreaking have, throughout history, been instrumental in the rise, fall, and preservation of world powers. In STEALING SECRETS, TELLING LIES James Gannon provides the full story behind the critical intelligence breakthroughs that helped alter the course of history in the twentieth century. The interception of the Zimmerman Telegram, the deciphering of the German Enigma machine, the Soviet's damaging penetration of the British Foreign Service through the "Cambridge Five" spy ring, and the U.S. counterintelligence coup known as Operation Venona (still secret until 1995) are just some of the episodes detailed here.

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About the Author:

James Gannon is a journalist and former producer-writer of documentaries for NBC News. He is the author of Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies and Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth Century (Potomac Books, Inc., 2001), and Military Occupation in the Age of Self-Determination: The History Neocons Neglected (Praeger Security International, 2008). Gannon lives in Stony Point, New York.

From Library Journal:

Quality intelligence is vital to effective decision-making, and this book reviews some of the crucial personalities and operations that helped shape our world. World War II was the central event of the last 100 years, and much of the book is given over to recounting the desperate efforts to gather information during that conflict. Most of these stories are well known, so the history of the Polish spy who helped bring down the Communist government is a welcome addition. Gannon believes that Donald Maclean was a more important spy than Kim Philby because of the former's greater access to American secrets, but perhaps most important was Klaus Fuchs, who passed America's atomic secrets to the Soviets. The resulting Cold War stalemate came to define the century. The author is a freelance writer and former TV documentary producer. Although he used some archival sources, he culled most of the information from the open literature. Suitable for public and academic libraries, alongside Phillip Knightley's The Second Oldest Profession: Spies and Spying in the Twentieth Century (LJ 12/86) and Jeffrey T. Richelson's A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (LJ 8/95). Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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