The New Spymasters

by Stephen Grey

  Milne, Tim, Kim Philby: The Unknown Story of the KGB’s Master Spy (London, Biteback Publishing, 2014)

  Modin, Yuri, My Five Cambridge Friends (New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994)

  Moran, Christopher, Classified: Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012)

  Moran, Lindsay, Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy (New York, Berkley Books, 2005)

  Nasiri, Omar, Inside the Global Jihad: How I Infiltrated Al Qaeda and Was Abandoned by Western Intelligence (London, Hurst & Co., 2006)

  Olson, James M., Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying (Nebraska, Potomac Books, 2006)

  Page, Bruce, Leitch, David, Knightley, Phillip, and Le Carré, John, Philby: The Spy Who Betrayed a Generation (London, Sphere, 1978)

  Pearson, John, The Life of Ian Fleming, Creator of James Bond (London, Coronet Books, 1989)

  Philby, Kim, My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy (London, HarperCollins, 1999, and Cornerstone Publishing, 2010)

  Post, Jerrold M., The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to Al-Qaeda (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

  Prados, John, Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003)

  Reilly, Sidney George, and Bobadilla, Pepita, Britain’s Master Spy: The Adventures of Sidney Reilly, An Autobiography (New York, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1986)

  Richelson, Jeffrey T., A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (New York/Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997)

  Richelson, Jeffrey T., The U.S. Intelligence Community (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1999)

  Rimington, Stella, Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5 (London, Arrow Books, 2002)

  Sayers, Michael, and Kahn, Albert E., The Great Conspiracy Against Russia (London, Collet’s Holdings Ltd, 1946)

  Schroen, Gary C., First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan (New York, Presidio Press, 2005)

  Sims, Jennifer E., and Gerber, Burton (eds), Transforming U.S. Intelligence (Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 2005)

  Smele, Jonathan D., The Russian Revolution and Civil War 1917–1921: An Annotated Bibliography (London/New York, Continuum, 2006)

  Smith, Michael, New Cloak, Old Dagger: How Britain’s Spies Came in from the Cold (London, Victor Gollancz, 1996)

  Staniforth, Andrew, and Sampson, Fraser (eds), The Routledge Companion to UK Counter-Terrorism (Oxford, Routledge, 2012)

  Storm, Morten, with Tim Lister and Paul Cruickshank, Agent Storm: My Life Inside Al-Qaeda (London, Viking, 2014)

  Sweet-Escott, Bickham, Baker Street Irregular (London, Methuen & Co., 1965)

  Tenet, George, with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York, HarperLuxe, 2007)

  Tucker, Spencer, The Great War, 1914–1918 (New York, Routledge, 1997)

  Tzu, Sun, The Art of War (Boston, Shambala, 1991)

  Urban, Mark, UK Eyes Alpha: The Inside Story of British Intelligence (London, Faber and Faber, 1996)

  Van Der Rhoer, Edward, Master Spy: A True Story of Allied Espionage in Bolshevik Russia (New York, Scribner, 1981)

  Vincent, David, The Culture of Secrecy: Britain, 1832–1998 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999)

  Warrick, Joby, The Triple Agent: The Al-Qaeda Mole Who Infiltrated the CIA, Kindle edition (New York, Doubleday, 2011)

  Waters, T. J., Class 11: My Story Inside the CIA’s First Post-9/11 Spy Class (New York, Dutton, 2006)

  Weiner, Tim, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (London, Penguin/Allen Lane, 2007)

  Whymant, Robert, Stalin’s Spy: Richard Sorge and the Tokyo Espionage Ring (London, I. B. Tauris, 2006)

  Wise, David, Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million (New York, HarperCollins, 1995)

  Wolf, Markus, with Anne McElvoy, Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism’s Greatest Spymaster (New York, PublicAffairs, 1997)

  Woodward, Bob, Obama’s Wars (New York, Simon & Schuster, 2010)

  Wright, Lawrence, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2006)

  Wright, Peter, with Paul Greengrass, Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (New York, Viking, 1987)

  Zegart, Amy B., Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11 (Princeton/Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2007)

  Acknowledgements

  This is a book about secret intelligence and, as such, obviously very few of the dozens who assisted me will thank me for mentioning them here, or highlighting their particular role in the book. You know who you are and I thank you for your patience, your trust that I would try my best to portray your profession faithfully and your tolerance of my criticisms. I beg forgiveness if, despite your best efforts, I have failed to grasp the point. There is, of course, a warm beer behind the bar for you – preferably at the Gandamack Lodge, when it reopens.

  There are some, however, who must be thanked publicly. With me throughout, as she was with Ghost Plane and Operation Snakebite, has been the unstoppable and razor-sharp researcher Christina Czapiewska, who had a lot to contribute too from her own personal knowledge and contacts. At different times, I also had tremendous additional research help from Lucy Bond, Jerome Taylor and Daniel Douglas. Particular thanks to my old friend John Goetz, who helped me explore the world of German espionage. And also to Stelios Orphanides, who helped track down EOKA fighters, and thank you to Susan Hollowday for sharing Zanina Hollowday’s beautiful diary of her time in Cyprus. Thanks to Spanish investigative journalist Marco García Rey for his great assistance on the F1 case in Barcelona: I hope we shall keep digging into that one. I must also thank the hyper-generous Philippe Madelin, who helped set up interviews in Paris but sadly died in 2010. I also appreciate the help of the group of cage-prisoners in arranging several interviews.

  Thanks too to colleagues who shared some of their adventures, enabling me to learn more about the intelligence world, and to those who have encouraged and funded these trips, in particular David Fanning and Dan Edge at PBS Frontline (Dan, I thank you unforgivably late for proofreading my last book); Dorothy Byrne and Kevin Sutcliffe of Channel 4; Kate Clark of the Afghan Analysts Network and Afghan producer Shoaib Sharifi; Sean Ryan at the Sunday Times; Michael Williams and Simon Robinson at Reuters. Thanks to all at Reuters for giving me time to finish this project. And I would especially like to thank my friend Mark Hosenball, Washington intelligence correspondent, who advised me throughout and introduced me to some of his key contacts. Thanks too to Gordon Corera and David Loyn at the BBC.

  This book had many inspirations, but it only came to be thanks to an idea and commission from Penguin’s Tony Lacey and Jon Elek (now working at a leading London literary agency), after an introduction by my old friend Jason Burke. Michael Flamini at St Martin’s Press in New York was an enthusiastic and wise supporter throughout, as was Joel Rickett, who took over the project at Penguin and reinvigorated it – and me! In production, Lesley Levene and Emma Brown carefully took the project to the finish line. Thanks too to my agents, first Emma Parry and then Grainne Fox, for their constant encouragement. Thank you all for bearing with me.

  Thanks too to those who took the time and trouble to read the manuscript and make suggestions, including J and J, two wise ex-professionals from different sides of the Atlantic, my dear friend Rupert Chetwynd and of course my wife, Rebecca, for her suggestions and, above all, her steadfast loving support.

  As ever, the errors are mine alone.

  Index

  The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.

  In Arabic names the definite article (al-), used as a prefix, is ignored in the ordering o
f entries.

  Aalem, Mohamed (aka Mohamed Amin)

  misidentification as Amanullah

  Abbottabad

  ABC Nightline

  Abdulmutallab, Umar Farouk

  Able Archer (NATO exercise)

  Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti

  Abu Hamza (Mustafa Kamel Mustafa)

  Abu Nidal Organization

  Abu Qatada (Omar Mahmoud Othman)

  Abu Zubaydah

  Adams, Gerry

  Adams, Gerry Snr

  Adams family

  Adebolajo, Michael

  Afghan Analysts Network

  Afghanistan

  1980s Afghan War

  Bagram airbase

  bin Laden in

  Britain’s First Afghan War

  CIA bases in

  CIA covert war against the Soviets

  Crooke in

  National Directorate of Security (NDS)

  and NATO

  Pashto language

  and the SIS

  Soviets in

  training camps

  see also Khost; Takhar; Taliban

  Afridi, Shakil

  Ahmed, Abdul Hafeez

  Akhtar, Saeed

  Akrotiri

  Albania

  and Operation Valuable

  Alec Station

  Algeria

  Civil War

  war of independence

  Algiers bombing

  Ali, Rafqat

  Allen, Mark

  Alshishani, Asadullah

  Alwan, Rafid Ahmed (Curveball)

  Amanullah, Zabet

  misidentified as Amin (Aalem)

  Ames, Aldrich

  Amin, Mohamed see Aalem, Mohamed

  Amman

  Anderson, Garry

  Andrew, Christopher

  Angleton, James

  Al-Ansar

  Antoniades, Andrew/Andreas (Keravnos)

  code name Mario

  Antoniades, Fahim

  Antoniades, Hafiza

  AQAP see al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

  al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade

  Arab–Israeli conflict

  Arab Spring

  Arafat, Yasser

  Archangel

  Arghawan, Afghan driver

  Armed Islamic Group see GIA

  Asim (Agent F1)

  al-Assad, Bashar

  Associated Press

  atomic bomb

  see also nuclear capabilities/conflict

  Atta, Mohamed

  Awlaki, Anwar

  Baader-Meinhof

  Baer, Robert

  Baginski, Maureen

  Bagram airbase

  Baker, Nick

  al-Balawi, Defne

  al-Balawi, Humam (aka Abu Dujanah al-Khorasani)

  code name Agent Panzer

  code name Wolf

  al-Balawi, Leyla

  al-Balawi, Lina

  Baldwin, Stanley

  epigraph

  Baquero, Antonio

  Barcelona terrorist plot

  Barot, Dhiren

  Bearden, Milton

  The Main Enemy (with James Risen)

  Beirut

  Belfast

  Belgium

  Bell, Gertrude

  Bergdahl, Bowe

  Bergen, Peter

  Berlin Wall

  Berzin, E. P.

  Bethe, Hans

  Bethlehem

  betrayal/treachery

  conflation of intelligence with betrayal

  motivations

  triple agents

  see also double agents

  Bettany, Michael

  Bhutto, Benazir

  bin Laden, Osama

  and al-Balawi

  and Black Hawk Down

  and the CIA

  killing of

  bin Zeid al-Aoun, Sharif Ali (aka Abu Zeid)

  bin Ziyad, Tariq

  Black, Cofer

  blackmail

  Blair, Tony

  Blunt, Anthony

  BND see Bundesnachrichtendienst

  Bolsheviks

  Bonch-Bruevich, Vladimir

  Bosnian War

  Bowden, Mark

  Black Hawk Down

  Boyce, Ernest

  Brandt, Willy

  Brennan, John

  Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of

  British Army

  in Northern Ireland

  Brown, Harold

  Buikis, Jan

  Bulger, James ‘Whitey’

  Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND)

  and Curveball

  Burnes, Sir Alexander

  Bush, George W.

  Cambridge Five

  Cameron, David

  Camp Chapman

  Camp Peary

  Campbell, Alastair

  Caprioli, Louis

  Carlile, Lord Alex

  Carlin, Willie

  Castro, Fidel

  CEDC see Chemical Engineering and Design Centre

  Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

  and 9/11

  and Afridi

  and Antoniades

  and al-Balawi (Humam)

  bases in Afghanistan

  bases in Iraq

  and bin Laden

  Camp Chapman

  Camp Peary

  and Castro

  clandestine service

  counterterrorism

  Counterterrorism Center

  and crime-fighting

  and Curveball

  damage to US reputation

  Directorate of Operations

  embassy work

  expansion

  ‘fake vaccine’ programme

  and Germany

  killing of officers and agents

  Langley HQ

  and the Mafia

  militarization of

  and myth

  Operation Valuable

  origin

  and Pakistan

  and paranoia

  as president’s tool

  and al-Qaeda

  and the quality of technical intelligence

  recruitment of spies

  rendition operations

  and the Soviet Union

  spreading of resources

  and the spymaster’s role

  stealing of military secrets

  and Storm

  and terrorism

  torture employed by

  see also Cold War; drone aircraft/warfare

  Chechnya

  Cheema, Mohamed Imran

  Cheka

  see also KGB; NKVD

  Chemical Engineering and Design Centre (CEDC), Baghdad

  Cheney, Dick

  Chilcot Inquiry

  China

  Churchill, Winston

  CIA see Central Intelligence Agency

  clandestine action

  Clark, Kate

  Clarke, Liam

  Clarke, Richard

  Clarridge, Duane ‘Dewey’

  Clinton, Bill

  Colby, William

  Cold War

  espionage

  paranoia

  political agent lack in superpower confrontation

  Coll, Steve

  Collins, John

  Conflicts Forum

  Conolly, Arthur

  Cook, Andrew

  Cook Report

  Corera, Gordon

  Corlette, John C.

  corroboration of intelligence

  Cory, Peter

  counterterrorism

  action overriding intelligence

  CIA

  Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams (CPTs)

  Global War on Terror

  and the killing of bin Laden

  MI5

  and the necessity of spying

  penetration of terrorist groups

  steering of terrorist careers

  UK intelligence-gathering units

  see also Central Intelligence Agency; drone aircraft/warfare; human intelligence; IRA; Northern Ireland; surveillance; t
errorism: Islamist

  covert action

  definition

  covert diplomacy

  crime-fighting see ‘intelligence-led policing’

  Cromie, Francis

  Crooke, Alastair Warren

  and Conflicts Forum

  and the IRA

  and Palestine

  Crooke, Frederick Montague Warren

  Crooke, Ian

  Crooke, Sir Thomas

  Crooke, William

  Crumpton, Hank

  Cumming see Smith-Cumming, Mansfield

  Curveball (Rafid Ahmed Alwan)

  Customs & Excise (HMCE)

  Cyprus

  EOKA

  Cyprus Mail

  Daily Telegraph

  Daniel (MI5 handler)

  Danish intelligence service (PET)

  Daoud, Abdullah

  Darunta camp

  Daud, Mohamed

  de Silva, Sir Desmond

  Dearlove, Sir Richard

  Death Star, Balad

  Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)

  Deutsche Revue

  Devine, Jack

  DGSE see Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure

  DIA see Defense Intelligence Agency

  Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST)

  Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE)

  Djerf al-Nadaf

  Dobson, George

  Donovan, ‘Wild Bill’

  double agents

  Humam see al-Balawi, Humam

  mistaken identity as a double agent

  see also Philby, Kim; Steak Knife

  Drogin, Bob

  drone aircraft/warfare

  drugs

  heroin

  War on Drugs

  Drumheller, Tyler

  DST see Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire

  Duddy, Brendan

  Dukes, Sir Paul

  Dzerzhinsky, ‘Iron Felix’

  Eckhart (code name of Stasi agent)

  Economist, The

  Egypt

  Egyptian Embassy bombing, Islamabad

  Einstein, Albert

  electronic jamming devices

  Enemy of the State

  EOKA

  espionage

  atomic

  changing face of

  clandestine action

  credibility

  and crime-fighting

  and defence mechanisms

  and discreet diplomacy

  and friendship

  fusion cells

  getting inside the enemy’s mind

  and globalization

  the Great Game

  and invasion of privacy

  and Iraq’s WMD intelligence

  judging when spies are effective

  limitations and weaknesses

  and misidentification

  misuse of spies