Treachery
Betrayals, Blunders and Cover-Ups: Six Decades of Espionage
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
In Treachery, noted intelligence authority Chapman Pincher makes a compelling case that Roger Hollis, head of MI5 from 1956 to 1965, was himself a double agent, acting to undermine and imperil the UK and America.
Myriad intriguing case histories are portrayed, including that of Lt Igor Gouzenko, a Red Army cipher clerk whose 1945 disclosure of a mole in MI5 touched off the Cold War. With a mass of new evidence, some from Russian sources, Pincher also provides exciting new perspectives on other infamous operatives, including Kim Philby and Klaus Fuchs. Perhaps most explosively, Pincher posits that long after Hollis stepped down, a cover-up was perpetrated at the highest levels, even involving Margaret Thatcher, to conceal the truth for ever – a deception that continues today.
Treachery warns us to protect our society and institutions from enemy infiltration in the future. It is a revelatory work that puts twentieth-century politics and war into stunning new relief.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It is no longer a secret that not only Britain's defense plans but also top-secret information provided by the U.S. were systematically pipelined from London to Moscow. The Soviets' consistent success in the intelligence war has usually been seen as a combination of skill and luck. In this history of 60 years of espionage, Pincher, a highly regarded British expert on intelligence and espionage, makes convincing use of recently released Soviet records to assert that British counterintelligence failed through the work of a "supermole": Roger Hollis, MI5's director from 1956 to 1965. The accusation is four decades old, and conspiracy theories of this kind are notably difficult to substantiate. Pincher comes as close as possible absent complete, systematic access to Russian archives. He establishes credible connections among significant "coincidences, counterproductive actions, and inactions" in Hollis's career, from the failure to expose Soviet agent Kim Philby to systematic discrediting of Soviet defectors. Arguably more valuable is Pincher's account of the longstanding refusal of British intelligence to disturb its inner dynamic by thoroughly investigating the case: "Operation Cover-Up goes on forever."
