The Green Ribbon Books

The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence

Richard J. Aldrich
John Murray (Publishers) Ltd.
2001

The crucial role of intelligence to the Anglo-American special relationship has long been recognised. In this book, historian Richard Aldrich provides a profound new insight into the nature of that relationship in the first two decades of the cold war.

Intelligence liaison has often been portrayed as a polite variation of espionage, and Aldrich shows the extent this was true even between these closest of allies.

At the start of the cold war both states considered covert action to undermine the Eastern bloc. However, their interests diverged after the first Soviet atom bomb tests in 1949.

Defending the Realm: MI5 and the Shayler Affair

Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding
Andre Deutsch
1999

In 1997, MI5 officer David Shayler went public with a series of damning criticisms of the Security Service. With this book, Hollingsworth and Fielding took Shayler's story as the starting point for a survey of the organisation as a whole.

At the time, Shayler's primary grievance was with what he saw as MI5 incompetence, and the two journalists were particularly impressed by his refusal to indulge in wild conspiracy theories, or to reveal details of  ongoing operations' or agents' identities.

His more recent bizarre behaviour is obvious ammunition for his critics, but arguably only enhances the importance of this book as an exposition of his original views.

Public Servant, Secret Agent: The Elusive Life and Violent Death of Airey Neave

Paul Routledge
2002
Fourth Estate

As the title of this biography implies, Airey Neave's spent much of his life at the interface between two worlds, those of politics and intelligence. His career went through several intriguing phases. each of which sheds light on the history of Britain's secret state.

A visit to Germany as a 17-year-old Etonian in 1933 gave Neave an early hatred for fascism. In the 1930s, when many of his colleagues at Oxford were turning to socialism and even communism, he began a lifelong interest in the Territorial Army.

By 1940, he was a young army lieutenant, fighting in the bloody, and ultimately doomed, defence of Calais. His capture by the German paved the way for the defining period of his life.

The Dublin and Monaghan Bombings

Don Mullan
Wolfhound Press
2000

At 5.30pm on May 17, 1974, three car-bombs exploded in the centre of Dublin. 90 minutes later, another bomb exploded in Monaghan Town. Between them, the attacks killed 33 people, one of the worst death-tolls of the Troubles.

The bombings occured at a crucial political moment, in the midst of the Ulster Workers Strike which brought down the Sunningdale Agreement, the last attempt at power-sharing between the two communities in the North of Ireland for decades. A veil of silence soon descended over the episode, in spite of widespread suspicions that British intelligence had assisted loyalist paramilitaries in carrying out the attacks.

In this meticulously researched book, Don Mullan provides the accounts of eyewitnesses, survivors and the bereaved, and documents the struggle to uncover the truth about the bombings.

Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer

Peter Wright
1987

The MI5 website specifically denies one of the most eye-catching allegations in Peter Wright's notorious insider exposé of the service - that MI5 officers were plotting to bring down Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Ironically, that must be one the best-attested claims in the book. Writers like David Leigh, Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril have documented extensive evidence, independent of Wright, that this is exactly what was happening.

Neither Leigh not Ramsay and Dorril believe that Wright was telling the whole truth in Spycatcher. They conclude that his involvement in the Wilson episode was much deeper than he lets on.

The one thing that everyone is agreed on, therefore, is that Wright was not a particularly trustworthy witness. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of interesting material in the book.

My Silent War: The Autobiography of a Spy

Kim Philby
1968

The autobiography of the KGB's top spy in MI6.

Harold Adrian Russell Philby was born in 1912, the son of Harry St John Philby, an officer of the Indian Civil Service who was closely involved in the rise of the House of Saud in Arabia.

Philby's lifelong nickname 'Kim' would prove to be singularly appropriate. Like Kipling's hero, he was a key player in the great game being played out between Britain and Russia. The crucial difference was that Philby was playing for the Russian side.

Ths book is own account of his role, written in Moscow after his final defection to the Soviet Union.

Big Boys' Rules: The SAS and the Secret Struggle Against the IRA

Mark Urban
Faber & Faber
1992

An influential account of the covert struggle between the security forces and the IRA.

Big Boys' Rules includes a neat diagram at the back of the book which details the evolution, through the 1970s and 80s, of Army and RUC covert units in the areas of surveillance, agent-running and firearms.

The substance of the book details the events underlying that diagram, the successes and failures of changing tactics, the political controversies they provoked, and the ever shifting lines of demarcation between Army and RUC responsibilities.

MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service

Stephen Dorril
Fourth Estate 2000
Touchstone 2002

A magisterial study of Britain's foreign intelligence service, the SIS, better known as MI6.

Although Dorril covers operations around the world and up to the 1990s, the key focus for more than half the book is on Europe and the early Cold War.

During Word War II, MI6's prestige rested more on its control of the Bletchley Park code-breaking programme than on recruiting agents in Europe, where its thunder was stolen by the rival Special Operations Executive.

MI6 absorbed SOE after the Second World War, acquiring in the process some expertise in political warfare as opposed to intelligence-gathering. One of the most intriguing aspects of this, MI6 involvement in the Gladio stay-behind networks, is touched on but largely left for another volume, which will certainly be very interesting if it appears.

The Wilson Plot: The Astounding Truth about the Spycatchers who dabbled in Treason

David Leigh
Heinemann
1988

One of Britain's top investigative journalists describes how elements of MI5 and the CIA turned on the British Prime Minister.

The story has its roots its in the cold war paranoia engendered by the Cambridge spy ring, a brilliant Soviet coup that penetrated right to the heart of western intelligence. When KGB defector Anatoly Golitsyn claimed that Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell had been murdered by the KGB to make way for Harold Wilson, senior counterintelligence officers such as James Angleton of the CIA and Peter Wright of MI5 were prepared to believe him.

This helped pave the way for a covert campaign against Wilson that would climax during his second government in the mid-1970s. Although, this campaign would be revealed in Wright's book Spycatcher, Leigh argues that Wright concealed his own role. Leigh had access to a number of Wright's unpublished manuscripts, a source he prefers to the ghostwritten Spycatcher.

Who Framed Colin Wallace?

Paul Foot
Macmillan 1989
Pan 1990

The definitive account of one of the most remarkable stories ever to emerge from Britain's secret state.

When the British Army arrived in Northern Ireland in 1969, the local knowledge of Antrim-born public relations officer Colin Wallace proved a godsend. As the conflict developed, information became a crucial battleground, and Wallace became increasingly involved with psychological warfare.

Initially, this meant working with MI6, but in 1973 the Northern Ireland role passed to MI5. This was followed by the initiation of project Clockwork Orange, a smear campaign intended to discredit paramilitary leaders.

However, as Foot shows using Wallace's contemporary notes, the project soon became a right-wing propaganda campaign aimed at British politicians, notably including the key smear that Harold Wilson was a KGB agent.

The campaign intensified in 1974, as MI5 set out to undermine the new Labour government and it's attempt at power-sharing in Northern Ireland, the Sunningdale Agreement.