This is a fascinating book, filled with names, places, dates and events that illustrate and illuminate a lot about British Secret Service activities - and that of some other agencies during the Cold War and after it. ( )

Gordon Corera has been the BBC’s Security correspondent for several years, which has afforded him considerable insight into the workings of the various agencies that make up the British intelligence service. In this book he offers a history of the major incidents and campaigns from the end of the Second World War until the ‘War on Terror’ following the 9//11 attacks in 2001.

Of course, with any book such as this, one is prompted to wonder how much has been left out, and what enticing and salacious stories have been left untold. Much of the material that Corera has included was already familiar to me (the world of espionage, whether in fact or fiction, having always caught my imagination), but his accounts are very clear (as one would expect from a veteran journalist) and accessible.

There were certainly some pretty dreadful howlers for the intelligence services, and MI6 in particular, throughout the period covered by Corera’s book. One problem is that, by their very nature, successful operations will not draw any media attention. Sadly, the failures garner all too much coverage. Some names, such as Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, and John Vassall have now become synonymous with treachery. Looming largest among this roll of traitors is Harold ‘Kim’ Philby, who penetrated to significant heights within MI6, and seemed somehow able to stay in a position of sensitivity long after the security establishment had largely determined his guilt, even though there was insufficient (or, at least, insufficiently robust) evidence to support prosecution. Such a trail of disasters led almost to a sense of relief, or at least Schadenfreude, when traitors were also discovered to have penetrated MI6’s American counterparts.

The ‘establishment’ was clearly not above entering into a conspiracy of silence when it came to potentially embarrassing revelations. It was not until the publication of Andrew Boyle’s [The Climate of Treason] in 1979 that there was any acknowledgement that Anthony Blunt, respected academic, Director of the Courtauld Institute and sometime ‘Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures’ had confessed to being the fourth member of the so-called Cambridge spy circle. Her had confessed some sixteen years earlier, but was allowed to retain his public status and positions, as well as his knighthood, which was only withdrawn following the outcry after the publication of Boyle’s book.

In fact, there has been a substantial history of acknowledgements only being prompted by the publication of journalists’ books, although these have sometimes strewn more confusion than fact. During the mid-1980s the UK Government entered into lengthy, expensive and ultimately unsuccessful litigation to prevent publication of [Spycatcher], the memoirs of Peter Wright, a disaffected former member of MI6. As so often with works that provoke such a pre-publication storm, the book itself proved disappointing when it actually hit the shops. (I remember buying my copy from Collet’s, the left wing bookstore on Charing Cross Road, which was selling it quite openly during the period that it was supposedly banned.) Wright’s principal allegations were that Roger Hollis, former head of the service had been a ‘mole’, betraying important secrets to the KGB throughout his career, and that MI5 had consistently worked to undermine the government of Harold Wilson in the belief that he, too, was either a Soviet agent or had allowed himself to fall prey to undue influence from the Soviet Union. None of these claims were adequately substantiated throughout the pages of Spycatcher, and are not assigned much emphasis by Corera here.

This is overwhelmingly a story about men, with women playing very little part in the work of agents and officers. While the marvellous gadgetry and high living that proliferate throughout the James bond books were entirely fanciful, the rampant male chauvinism was not. For the most part, female members of MI6 were confined to secretarial roles. One notable exception was Daphne park, who led an adventurous career largely in Africa, where she presided over MI6’s observation (and participation) of the meteoric rise, and almost equally rapid demise, of Patrice Lumumba, who briefly held office in the newly-independent Congo. That whole episode does not reflect well on either MI6 or the CIA, although Park emerges as a courageous, empathetic and honest figure, who earned the respect of the Congolese with whom she came into contact, even to the extent that, unbeknown to her, a local chief despatched warriors to stand guard around her home while post-Independence riots raged around the country.

Corera may not have any startling new revelations to offer in this book, but it is an impressive addition to the espionage history canon. ( )

"We'd have been better off doing nothing"

Alan Bates starred in two mildly comic tv films. An Englishman Abroad, by Alan Bennett, told the story of a tawdry, disheveled spy who defected to the USSR. He was irrelevant, ignored and reduced to scrounging bars of soap at receptions. In Tom Stoppard's The Dog It Was That Died, a double-double-double agent tries to commit suicide because he couldn’t figure out who he was really working for – or why. Both amusing, but I had no idea how close they were to the truth. Far from the glam world of 007, intelligence is a morass of malign incompetence and paranoia.

The Art of Betrayal is an astonishing depiction of the day to day failings of the intelligence community. They stumble, they fumble, they make it up as they go along, but mostly, they accomplish essentially nothing. Along the way, they betray colleagues, friends, family, and of course, their countries. And still they make no difference to history.

For decades it seemed their primary objective was to get civil servants and spies from the other side to betray their country. Yet they were beside themselves at the thought of it happening among their own. But of course it did, and The Art of Betrayal depicts decades of such betrayal, and all the resources and manpower it took to pull it off or detect it, neutralize it or exploit it. The details are exquisite.

MI6 began in 1909, aimlessly counting things: trains, people, cargo. “Much of the routine work of MI6 was a form of glorified trainspotting.” Before World War I, people were paid, for example, to help determine German naval strength by strolling around harbors and noting the vessels there.

Yet 45 years later, when it came to intelligence from inside the USSR, the USA and the UK both had “absolutely nothing”. Instead, they all played out a cheap drama in Vienna and Berlin, chasing each other for scraps of meaningless data, and of course, encouraging betrayal. The novels of Graham Greene, Ian Fleming and John Le Carré, all fulltime spies, glorified the mostly boring, mostly mundane, and almost always futile existence of their real lives.

Then suddenly, the game changed. Kim Philby’s treachery led to suspicions of traitors everywhere. MI5 investigated MI6, which investigated MI5 and the CIA. It got to the absurd point where they were investigating the prime minister, Harold Wilson, as a Communist spy. Meanwhile the CIA suspected everybody, including itself, because it could not believe it had never had a traitor to call its own. It had one soon enough however, in the person of Aldrich Ames.

Soon, spies who worked the Soviet Block were at a disadvantage and looked down on. A rising star was told “You’ve got to know too many Russians”. “But that’s the job!” was the ignored reply. Instead of a head office promotion, he was transferred out of Geneva to the Far East.

Every decade seemed to have its all star Soviet informer, who sent MI6 scrambling in all directions following up his leads. And it still all amounted, as ever, to nothing. No wars were averted, no attacks prevented, no lives saved.

Possibly the worst example is Osama Bin Laden, an actual villain the CIA tracked through the 90s, with a view to eliminating him. The bureaucracy, rules, regulations and orders, not to mention bridges burned with the Afghans and Pakistanis, meant it never followed through or accomplished anything. Then 9-11 came - as a shock - and CIA staff vacated their building expecting it to be a target.

This was quickly followed by incredible dollops of selective nonsense accepted by Western leaders to justify war in Iraq. The total fraud of evidence stopped no one. And the intelligence community, in a Keystone Kops slapstick comedy, kept piling it up. To the public it was obvious. To Blair, Bush, Cheney and Powell, it was concrete proof. The result, as we know, is an increase in terrorist threats, as Islam feels under attack. MI6 was justifiably humiliated.

Corera writes in a clear, spare, direct style. No words are wasted. No pointless adjectives discolor the discourse. It’s active voice, with nary an extra comma. It is a style that is rare and precious, and delivers far more impact than the more florid prose we see daily. The Art of Betrayal is information far more valuable than the data collected by its characters. As more than one has of his sources described it, intelligence spying “does more harm than good”.

David Wineberg ( )