Review: Before Bletchley Park – The Codebreakers of The First World War – by Paul Gannon

I have previously read a lot of material on World War 2 codebreakers and the likes of Alan Turing and their critical work against Enigma and the invention of modern computing during that period. Of course, codebreaking and cryptography is not a new science and has been a critical part of both war and diplomacy since ancient times and has only increased in significance as time progresses. World War 1 is the second biggest conflagration to have occurred on this planet. It is no surprise that codebreaking was a key element to Allied success in this war. The first World War saw the invention of devastating new military tech such as the tank, the machine gun and the use of aircraft. In cryptography and codebreaking there were new technologies and new methods and on both sides a hard fought war was fought in these areas that really tilted the balance in the end on who became victors and who lost the war.

There was a lot of new technology in the period leading up to the war, in particular in the field of communications. Submarine cables for telegraph were still a relatively new phenomenon. Britain’s position as the bridge between Europe and America in the Atlantic, gave it disproportionate power when it came to cross-ocean cable communications. The British could cut off Germany from contacting the Americas and this they did. The Germans were forced to tactically avoid this blockade. They sent ciphered traffic across the British cables where possible. They tried setting up their own systems but achieved little success. They used neutral Madrid to route most of their telegraph traffic. The British allowed some of this as they were tapping all this traffic anyway. Often the Germans were trying to get the Latin American nations involved on their side in the war, the infamous Zimmerman telegram passed through this route where he openly tried to get the Mexican government enrolled in a border conflict with the USA.

German frustrations with British control of communications boiled over into full-scale hostilities. The Royal Navy were another dominant area where the German Navy faced an uphill struggle. The British were in effect starving the Germans into submission and denying them critical supplies, both military and civilian. In addition to communication control there was a full British Navy embargo in operation. What was the Germans’ answer to this? One of the most unpleasant aspects of the war, that did indeed provide the undoing of the German war effort was their submarine war in the Atlantic. They didn’t have the battleships or cruisers to defeat the Royal Navy but their submarine technology was more advanced and they sent U-Boats to attack not just military naval targets but also commercial vessels, of all countries, including neutral nations conducting merchant navy business across the Atlantic. The Kaiser’s hand was forced really and his people demanded action. He quivered throughout, stopping and starting the U-boat programme, bit ultimately public opinion did go in the Germans’ favour and the sinki9ng of the Lusitania was a turning point as it led to America entering the war proper.

It is interesting to note that British dominance in cable technology and communications was in a large part due to a public / private sector link up – The Italian businessman, Marconi, really embedded his business future with the British, providing the Allies with state of the art disruptive cutting edge technology that was the result of his pioneering inventiveness in the area of communication technology.

The office of Room 40, which is what the predecessor to Bletchley Park and GCHQ was known as, started very much as an informal amateur driven organisation and, by the end of World War 1, had suitably ‘professionalized’ and expanded and would later provide the core for many of the essential employees of Bletchley Park during World War 2. It was set up not far from Horseguards Parade in central London. Room 40 was the hub which controlled all the intercepted traffic and where the codebreaking, cryptanalysis and hard graft was done.

A talented bunch of people inhabited Room 40, many amateurs, a lot of women. Specialisation in certain niche areas was the norm. The new technology offered new challenges and I suppose the modern art and science of cryptography was developed in Room 40. Ancient cipher techniques such as the Caesar cipher were still in use. The German naval codebooks and traffic were encrypted using a hybrid mix of substitution and transposition ciphering. It wasn’t all that difficult to work out the German codebooks for seasoned Room 40 staff. Room 40 saw the first modern computer systems introduced. They were pretty rudimentary, based on punch cards but they did cut labour time when it came to data analysis, allowing skilled staff to utilise their time more efficiently.

I am at present a full-time cybersecurity student at Masterschool in Tel Aviv, Israel. We are studying cryptography which has an important role in internet communications – we were playing around on a virtual Enigma machine from World War 2 a few months ago. I have set up https://fourfourcyber.com as a cybersecurity business. What I particularly found intriguing in this book was that it took a detailed investigation into some example codes, seized or intercepted from the Germans and also looks direct at some of the code books. When you run though some examples as laid out by the authors it really helps to understand the exact process that is taking place. I found it pretty amazing understanding how an entire dictionary of a codebook could be constructed from just deciphering or working out a handful of words. Linguistic knowledge and skills were an important asset but fundamentally the whole process of decryption is basically like doing a crossword. In Room 40, as the war progressed these often larger-than-life cryptography eccentrics became better and better at handling German military and diplomatic systems. They were probably killing more German soldiers than any trench warfare and the efforts of Room 40 ultimately brought victory to the United Kingdom and her allies in a terrible conflict. Peace came sooner and the wisdom and knowledge gained from Room 40 was applied directly to the foundations of Bletchley Park and GCHQ, often these organisations being staffed by Room 40 veterans.

Review: MI9: A History of the Secret Service for Escape and Evasion in World War Two – by Helen Fry

I randomly found this book on the shelves of Caldicot library. I read a lot of books on U.K. Intelligence services: MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. During the war…. Mt grandfather (GaGa) was in 618 Squadron RAF and 143 Coastal Command. He didn’t really speak to me much about World War 2 itself until quite late on in his life. Typical of an Armed Forces Officer, though, he kept a pristine home and in part of this home, in his back garden, where he had erected a wigwam, at the top of his garden, lay a treasure trove of WW2 memorabilia. The lost fascinating of items to me as a kid were all his ‘secret’ gadgets. He had all these sort of special James Bond Q-like military aids, secret maps, secret compartments. The most fascinating of all his possessions for me was his ‘trick’ compass which was a normal RAF uniform button, which unscrewed to reveal a miniature, fully-working compass. Whenever I visited him I forced him to show me it God knows how many times – with the full story of how, if he was shot down by the Luftwaffe, behind enemy lines, this little compass would help him to escape and evade capture and get home safe and sound. Of course, he was lucky and although he saw a lot of action, he never got downed in Nazi Occupied Europe or in the later stages of the war in Japanese held South East Asia. He always mentioned this secret intelligence service MI9 which was much more powerful and effective and secret than MI5 or MI6 or any others and was the ‘real’ secret’ service but that you wouldn’t read about them in any newspapers etc. I didn’t really pay much attention, just enjoyed the idea of British ingenuity and secret gadgets. Old Gaga retained a fascinat6ion with all gadgets for the rest of his life, and any Xmas or Birthday presents usually involved some sort of novelty gadget style fun toy that would keep him amused for a bit.

Fast forward to the actual book review now. I have read this and appreciate that MI9 did exist ad that everything he said was basically completely true and indeed the book documents the full lists of gadgets handed out to RAF pilots and others who faced the potential of capture on foreign shores. Indeed James Bond, creator Sir Ian Fleming was connected to MI9 along other (less fêted) famous espionage figures such as Kim Philby. MI9 were the par excellence intelligence service of World War 2 for Britain – It encompassed Room 900 and also IS9. Their mission was focussed on ‘Escape and Evasion’. Whereas services such as SOE, MI6 and GCHQ (Bletchley Park – Alan Turing, Enigma Code, computers etc) did exist and indeed were often established due to WW2, MI9 was so clandestine that very little information has ever been released and much is still locked away in the archives. This book therefore was well-researched. It does tell the most remarkable tales, one of the most exciting collection of narratives I have encountered in studying WW2 history.

MI9 did indeed liaise and work with the collaboration of the other intelligence agencies, although frictions andEscape andEvasion, rivalries did exist. We look at its formation at the start of the book.

It was created specifically to deal with the issue of servicemen who were ‘behind enemy lines’. In addition to ‘Escape and Evasion ‘ which was the main goal, it also was a direct intelligence-gathering operation with any repatriated personnel being debriefed for vital intelligence about enemy movements and other critical information related to the enemy and the situation of other allies in hostile territory. They set up training programmes for all personnel such as RAF pilots, and D-Day Landing soldiers, who were at risk of enemy capture.

The book contains lots of detail of the escape routes set up, often run by families of resistance Europeans, many young women, who were dissatisfied with Nazi occupation and felt compelled to actively engage the enemy by assisting allied servicemen in any way possible, often very much putting their own lives and the lives of their families and loved ones directly on the line. Indeed if an allied soldier was caught by the Nazis he would often be interred in a POW camp but as unpleasant as the experience was, he would survive. The brave European citizens risking all for the ‘rat-lines’ would have no such luxury. If they were betrayed or captured by the Nazis they were simply shot – Indeed for every successful repatriation, there was an estimated one dead European civilian in the analysis of post war statistics. These people often did it all at their own expense and it is to the credit of I9 that as the war ended and in the aftermath one of the main mission focuses was to provide good financial renumeration for these European heroes and heroines..  The Comet Line was probably the most famous of the escape routes and an obvious lead character was the remarkable young Dédée. Rat Lines were operational in Paris, in Belgium, in Holland, in Italy and indeed in Germany itself and also in South East Asia, in the jungles where the attitude to prisoners by Japanese soldiers was entirely different and Pyrenees and Alpine mountain passes were replaced by tropical rainforest jungle. We hear of the Naga Queen in the Naga Hills of Burma.

Famous stories such as ‘Escape from Colditz’ were based on reality as indeed was ‘Escape to Victory’. I was amazed at the ingenuity of prisoner escapes and just how well organized and versatile and creative the allied POWs were. They used to get smuggled board games from home sent in, secretly containing all the necessary gadgets and escape materials.

MI9 was disbanded after World War 2 and to my knowledge doesn’t exist today. It makes James Bond even look dull. It is such an exciting really war time adventure story and the truth is we are probably only just scraping the surface of the reality of what actually happened in MI9. It’s like ‘Allo Allo’ just without the faux-pas comedy and some real bravery and action. In an age of #brexit it is worth noting just how much the Europeans put on the line for our troops and the real heros of the story are not the POWs or the MI9 officers, but the simple young women and families who went that extra mile to defeat Nazism and win World War 2 for the allied cause.

#centuryofgaga My grandad was Flight Lieutenant William Gordon Gerrard (26.05.1923-14.02.2015). sadly he didn’t make it to celebrate his 100^th Birthday (today: 26.05.2023) but I’m most certainly raising a glass to him up in the surly bonds, and this book review is part of the tribute I pay to him to continue his legacy and that of his fellow patriotic countrymen who served us so well during World War 2 and who must be pretty thin on the ground nowadays as we lose aa wise generation who understood what a a genuine global conflagration consisted of.  In this tense hostile global atmosphere where it’s pretty much boiling over militarily into World War 3, it makes the study of the history of the previous world wars that much a critical pursuit or paramount importance and therefore I’d encourage you to go out and read Helen Fry’s book on MI9, perhaps.

Review: Defending The Realm – MI5 and The Shayler Affair – by Mark Hollingsworth and Nick Fielding

This is just another one of the many books I’ve read on the security services / spies / intelligence agencies in general. I guess I have a morbid fascination. Non-fiction throws up some pretty weird stuff – Life itself is a lot stranger than fiction. This tale from a turncoat ex MI5 employee David Shayler, comes from a time of great change in the world, Security Services in general and it interests me in particular as I was living down in London at that specific time and had what I believe to be my own brush with Shayler’s employers. It was at a time (in history) when people still bought and read daily newspapers and not just get all their news information off Donald Trump’s twitter feed. I can distinctly remember all the controversial headlines about the whole affair.

The book is written by some Daily Mail journalists, a sort of hive for some of the smelliest sort of flies that the tabloid journalist industry attracts so automatically I was on my guard as to the agenda and the sort of bias, provocation, and fascist ideology of the book. Also, let’s get one thing straight. David Shayler is not a hero like they might try to portray him as, he’s not even an anti-hero. He’s just a sort of bo standard below-average MI5 officer, a disgruntled employee, a whistleblower. He knows what he’s signed up to by applying for the job in the first place, by successfully passing the vetting and by being offered a position. I think the Official Secrets Act as much as anyone may find it repulsive and disagree with it is pretty clear and explicit in what it states. Basically Shayler is a criminal and this book is evidence of his crime. He’s broken the Official Secrets Act, he’s also clearly committed treason and although he perhaps lacks the glamour of those that have gone before him such a Kim Philby, he’s certainly nothing more than traitor scum acting against the interests of this country which is exactly what MI5 or their employees are not supposed to be doing. Mi5 is their to protect the nation and yes, the job is difficult but I think the outset that Shayler has failed totally to appreciate the patriotic element of the work. It may have changed since the cold War and be [perhaps a little more boring, but it will adapt like many other industries and indeed since the time of publication MI5 has adapted, facing a new enemy is Islamic terror and the end of the Cold War has proven only really to be a brief ceasefire as the Russians are now back on the scene added to which a growing threat from China makes MI5 an even more critiical organization in the contemporary (and future) world.

I hold the whole message that Shayler and the writers are trying to present as completely invalid and very easy to discount. Zero sympathy for him. Nobody should be reading his revelations. Yes maybe a private letter to the MI5 boss would have been OK. But selling your story to the Daily Mail and anyone else with a chequebook? At least Kim Philby was sort of driven by ideology and is therefore it’s much more easy to identify with him. Shayler just basically wanted a nice comfy hug payout so he didn’t have to worry about his mortgage. Selfish capitalist. Thatcherist, blinkered self-aggrandisement and totally free of ethics and morality. About as close as we get to James Bond his little escape to France where his greed catches up with him and he eventually gets raided and arrested by the French authorities He was probably given a nice comfie bed and a constant supply of fresh croissants out there, just in case and It wasn’t corruption or anything like injustice. He was a serious wanted criminal and that is what INTERPOL etc is set up to sort out. Cheered me up when he finally got to Belmarsh. I’m tempted to look up his wiki but to see where he is now but it will just annoy me further.

He’s an anonymous dot in a big blob and the secrecy of the work, yes it’s underpaid, difficult and the whole system and organization is frankly sh*t but so is everything else in #brokenbritain and has been for a long time. It’s reality. You don’t get to cut corners in life. Just a buy a lottery ticket like anyone else – I’m glad the sort of celebrity tabloid culture has removed a lot of power from the redtops with their lottery payout bribes to corrupt people and deliver huge sales. The British Press is by far the biggest threat to National Security we have. Greed and capitalism has turned them into the most sinister devious body of enemies ever produced on this island. They will stop at nothing to subvert Britain, the Commonwealth or the Empire. Just examining a tiny of fraction of Prince Harry’s valiant quest against them seeking justice is total proof of their treachery. Shame Murdoch didn’t holiday with Maxwell and the rest really as Davy Jones’ locker seems the best place for them all.

Well, looking directly at the book, Shayler claims MI5 cocked up IRA city of London attacks, He claims through word-of-mouth secondary information about an assassination plot by the British government on Colonel Gaddafi – Yes, well, Mr Shayler, Gadaffi (now dead of course), may have certain human rights etc but after Lockerbie he’s pretty much clear as an enemy of the British people and State. That’s who MI5 and MI6 and GCHQ are supposed to be targeting really. I was gutted that you didn’t take the offer by the Libyan intelligence service to clear off to Tripoli, would have made a much more exciting tale, one way or the other.

It’s no recruitment manual for MI5, further justification that the actual job is absolutely nothing at all like a James Bond film. The appendix 2 of Shayler’s recommendations for organizational change, probably the most boring tract of text I’ve ever read, but is great in clarifying just what a hideous corporate body of bureaucratic bungling the MI5 security service is. I can see why MI5 officers can be so deadly effective and dangerous if they are spending 23 and half hours chained up to a desk under a pile of paperwork and government forms then I guess that for the half hour allocated break where they get to do the glamorous work in high speed car chases, staking the State’s budget on roulette spins and copping off with foreign birds etc, they are going to be so angry and wound up and pissed off that they’ll pretty much take out all their frustrations on any target and cause serious destructive damage.

Some of the revelations were significant like how much financial wastage there is. An example is the £25 million spent on an amateur computer system that didn’t work and that they had to go out and buy an off the shelf version of Microsoft Windows 95 to sort out the IT in this critical department of National Security shows clearly that mismanagement is very possible and real.

I think that it does clarify the need for change and that there are serious inadequacies and probably worse than a standard government civil service department I think that we could maybe look to other countries and the way they handle their intelligence services. The CIA and Mossad, for example, are vastly different. In many ways they have more liberty and power and more open and more effective. Our secrecy laws are a bit archaic. There is most certainly a lack of balances and checks in place for our intelligence services that would limit abuses, enable necessary change and improve efficiency and productivity and better achieve the desired goal of national security. I think that for this country James Bond is quite a double-edged sword. Whereas on the one hand it is a very positive and successful (fictional) brand, I would argue it is the very epitome of global espionage propaganda achievement, par excellence. Equally it is quite old now and it must entangle the intelligence services in manacles really and be very frustrating. Deception works to a point but needs to be balanced a bit with reality, openness and honesty.

I think looking back that even though it was pretty damned boring, that Dame Stella Rimington, as head of MI5 who released a boo, that this book was actually a watershed moment and an historic change in methodology for MI5. Yes, Ok we end up with the sort of Shayler trash a s a result. But is signals that change is happening.

I feel like a nosey idiot myself for contributing to the obvious treason of Shayler et all by purchasing the book. But it is an interesting read and I think might, if used properly, be useful to enact change. It must be a very popular text out in the Kremlin in Moscow or Pyongyang or Beijing or the Afghan Cave complex. It demonstrates weakness to our enemies, possible exploits and perhaps encourages hostile attacks on out nation. But it’s subject an idiot who I highly doubt had much access at all to any form of high-level security information. Vetting system is broken obviously. What to do about it aside from the recommended changes – well, really push the death penalty for treason to properly discourage future Shaylers – Hanging, drawing and quartering must have a value aside from public entertainment. I discount most of the so-called scandal and I’m pretty confident that although there have been mishaps and errors that MI5 in fact do actually run an effective security service with regard to domestic issues. The lack of serious security incidents on British soil is testament to their work being efficient.

Review: Red Horizons – The True Story of Nicolae & Elena Ceausescus’ Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption – by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa

I was just chatting away to Ionutz a security nurse in the local mental hospital and he’s Romanian. I passed through Bucharest a few years ago en route to Istanbul on a train journey traversing Eastern Europe. Romania seemed quite rural, poor and quite different to the Europe with which I am more acquainted. Curiosity and a quick Amazon search later and  I’ve got this rare gem of a book in my hands documenting the life of former Communist Dictator of Romania, Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena.

General Pacepa was the most high-ranking Eastern Bloc Communist official ever to defect during the Cold War so is an enigma in himself. From his final destination, in hiding in the USA, he delivered this brutal revelatory biographic diary of his life serving Romanian Communist Dictator, Nicolae Ceaucescu. Ceausescu, with his equally flamboyant wife, Elena, had succeeded in setting up a hereditary Communist dictatorship in the Soviet satellite start of Romania. As a geographic outlier on the borders of the Iron Curtain with the democratic West, Ceausescu used his country’s position to ‘bridge the gap’ between East and West. He resisted domination from the Kremlin, while parading Romania as a model Communist economy that was open to doing business with the West, thus gaining favoured status as an economic trade partner with powerful Western technological superpowers such as the USA. His regime though, was very brutal and oppressive. Propaganda allowed for a portrayal of high living standards and decent human rights, but this was just a falsified portrait for Western consumption. The reality was that to the extent of comparability with the GDR East German Stasi,  Ceausescu succeeded in implementing a secret police directorate-driven paranoid surveillance state where every form of monitoring of almost the entire population in the form of bugged phone calls, informant networks, sexual blackmail, really left the Romanian people in a state of absolute totalitarianism. As head of the DIE, Romanian Foreign Intelligence, General Pacepa was an integral core potentate within the inner circle of the regime, acting pretty much as Ceausescu’s personal valet and being asked to do some pretty extreme and very weird things on behalf of the tyrannical, quite frankly insane, dictator despot and his even more eccentric excessive, out-of-control wife. I wonder about the actual bias inherent in such a task as this project due to the obvious political ramifications of such a scandalous publication. On the one hand the whistle-blower Pacepa is bound to have his own personal political agenda and let’s face it, his professional role made him very suitable for the dissemination of propaganda. Yet, on the other hand, the frank and ludicrous absurdity of the revelations about Ceausescu’s life within the text make sense as truth. Fact is often more deranged than fiction and some of these stories just lie outside the realm of the most fantasy-orientated author of fiction. Therefore I find most of what is written to be true, with a lack of other readily available information to counter the claims that have been made.

Ceausescu’s politics are pretty odd. Content with absolute power within his own communist party he is extremely ignorant and rude with regard to the advice of his ministers and even Pacepa. Power is totally concentrated at his own whim and he is left to explore his own paranoid idiosyncrasies with zero resistance. He loves getting stuck into foreign affairs and has a tendency of association with some pretty odd bedfellows: Yasser Arafat, Colonel Gadaffi, Carlos the Jackal are a few characters that appear in the book. He sees himself as a potential saviour of the Middle East and whereas he tries his best to avoid all oversight from Moscow centre, he is most capable in representing the Soviet Bloc in dealings with the West, providing a lot of really useful intelligence for the Warsaw Pact bloc. Indeed technical intelligence is a particular focus of the DIE, with a lot of Romanian espionage efforts focussed on the procuring of industrial and military technology secrets from the West that can be emulated in cheap Romanian manufactures. A lot of success is achieved in military equipment stolen from NATO such as tanks and also state of the art surveillance equipment. Ceaucescu travels a lot and his adventures in Washington on a state visit to Jimmy Carter is perhaps the highlight of the book. Ceausescu is so paranoid he will only eat his own food, prepared by his own chef with vast amounts of money spent on importing all his own food and expensive wine on any excursion at home or abroad. He is totally shocked by democratic protests in New York City against his regime and cannot seem to grasp how on earth these protests can take place. He really isn’t used to hearing dissident voices against his tyranny and it deeply traumatises him. Indeed one of his personal bugbears that runs throughout the book are the attacks made upon his rule by Radio Free Europe and he devotes a lot of time in attempting to eradicate this voice of democracy, an irritant to many Communist regimes. He is not afraid to order assassinations and the very fact he doles out work to the most notorious terrorist assassin, Carlos the Jackal, says it all. Elena’s story is one unto itself and whole book could really be devoted to her peccadillos which when it comes to diamonds and expensive Paris fashion would make even Marie-Antoinette seem normal. Pacepa is tasked with funnelling large amounts of Romanian foreign reserve into the hands of expensive boutique to stock up Elena’s extensive wardrobes. She also has a rather unhealthy fetish for watching pornographic movies, made by the security services, of illicit affairs of important Romanian government ministers, in order to create blackmail dossiers to either purge or totally control their loyalty to the dictator. The Ceausescu’s family are odd in the extreme. Preferred son, Nicu, really just an out and out drunken yob who, secure in his future inheritance is already planning ahead and Pacepa is often the mediator who has to dig him out of some pretty horrendous violent scrapes.

Unfortunately the book stops after Pacepa defects and there are a good few years of the regime left until its bitter end in 1989. It would have been nice to have seen this period documented in full also. Pacepa has a dreadful personal sacrifice to make in leaving his home nation as he cannot take his daughter with him. Ultimately we know the story of Ceausescu and his wife’s end. They were rare victims of violence in an otherwise surprisingly peaceful transition to democracy as the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s. Ceausescu and Elena were captured by an angry mob and after a brief show trial, were summarily executed by firing squad at Christmas in 1989. I think that this book would have fuelled the anger of the Romanian people towards their dictator and would have certainly served as kindling for the fire that destroyed them. Nicolae and Elena were more extreme than the most despotic Royal families of history and it is no real surprise that their lives were so brutally exterminated.   

Review: Cybersecurity: The Beginner’s Guide – by Dr Erdal Ozkaya

I am just about to embark in an online professional cybersecurity course with Masterschool in Tel Aviv, Israel. I am a relative novice in this field and in order to be as prepared as possible for the new academic venture I bought this introductory text to bring me up to speed with the basic of my new chosen specialisation. Cybersecurity is a new emerging growth technology industry and its history is recent. It is an exciting and growing field full of opportunity and career potential and as our daily lives become more and more dependent on computers and technology cybersecurity is becoming more significant and necessary. There are bad actors out there on the internet be they credit card fraudsters, identity theft criminals, hacker groups with political or non-political motives or rogue nation states such as North Korea, China and Russia. Cybersecurity changes rapidly as silicon chips speed up, computer memory exponentially increases and as the internet of things reaches into every aspect of our daily lives and critical infrastructure. A skilled cybersecurity professional will learn the necessary skills and stay p to date with new tech, in order to protect against the bad actors and to preserve the significant benefits that the modern world experiences from the paradigm shift that is the modern age of computer technology. This book is covers such a vast range of material and is well-compiled by author Erdal Ozkaya, detailing the skills necessary to succeed and whenever possible getting direct input from significant workers and experts in the field. For me, the most relevant and inspiring chapter was Chapter 11 where expert opinions were sought out in interviews to leaders in the field from across the globe in a wide variety of different employment roles. This direct experience of cybersecurity professionals spoke truth and the advice was immeasurable and left one feeling with a sense of awe at the incredible opportunities that studying cybersecurity and becoming a professional could offer. The book, chapter by chapter, covers various specialist skills and niche areas of the whole field of this new discipline. Whereas it is possible for a student to become an overall jack of all trades and general cybersecurity expert, in reality the whole expanse of necessary material means (and this is backed up by experts) should be that a student should seek to focus and specialise in a particular niche market, becoming a true master of that particular cybersecurity subcategory. I was drawn to the exciting nature of penetration testing and digital forensics seems to have a lucrative and growing future also. It would be also a noble career path to somehow work in the wider geopolitical sphere in cyberdefense and cyberwarfare. To be honest I was a bit overwhelmed and baffled by the material in this book. Virtually 90% of it was completely new knowledge to me and I got a bit confused with the various terminologies etc and felt like I definitely had a big mountain to climb sat in front of me as the journey progresses. The good thing is that this book is an excellent and comprehensive starting point and as a reference point I can see it standing on my computer desk for quite some time into the future. There are plenty of links to follow up and research to be done. I am sure that once the Masterschool course is complete that the final section of this book about career paths and interviewing etc will be a most vital source. I’ve added other texts by this author to my amazon wishlist and can highly recommend this accessible and inspiring book to any fellow newcomers to cybersecurity.

Review: Kim – by Rudyard Kipling

‘Kim’ is recognised as the greatest work of famous author Rudyard Kipling. This is a cult novel especially in espionage circles. It is fiction but documents the widely popular Great Game between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia, a clandestine cat and mouse conflict between the two powers fought out on in British India and the border territories which separated the two great powers. Indeed one of the twentieth century’s most famous and notorious spies, the treacherous Kim Philby, who rose to power in British Mi6 whilst in reality working directly for the Soviet Union’s KGB. Philby takes his nickname Kim from Kipling’s protagonist. Kim is a young lad. His parents who are both Irish have left him in an orphan like state and he grows up, streetwise in the slums of Lahore, known to all as ‘Little Friend of the World. Despite his Caucasian European heritage, Kim felt half native and he spoke his English with a sing song native accent and dreamed in Hindi. The 19th century period of the book’s setting was Imperial India at the very apogee of Queen Victoria’s dominance of the sub-continent. The book highlights some of the conflicts of Empire, politically from both sides, native Indian and British overlords. It is clear that the author, Rudyard Kipling, has a deep connection to India and his prose is written in a high style, invoking beautiful descriptions of geographical features and the characters have emotional exotic traits, rarely denoting negative feelings towards the Indian people. Some of the descriptions and flow of the prose are so beautiful and poetic the reader must often stop and wonder at this great master in full flow. Often new native terms, unfamiliar to the lay reader are thrown into the mix, giving us a rich glossary of terms, deepening our understanding of this alien culture. The crux of the book revolves around young Kim’s relationship to the elderly Buddhist lama who is master to Kim, taking him under his wing. As chela, Kim traverses India from cities to alluvial plains to across the great mountain ranges of the Himalayas. The quest is for fulfilment of ‘The Wheel of Life’ and the lama seeks out his mysterious river that will give him enlightenment. The religious other of India, a simple renouncement of materialism, monastic begging and the virtues of Buddhism are explored and influential, although other major subcontinent religions get coverage such as Hindu ideas and Kim is often disguising himself as a Musselman invoking the ideas of Islam. The former regiment of Kim’s dead Irish father chance upon the wandering young boy and forcibly take him in and make him attend school. The lama contributes financially to ensure that Kim gets the best available education and treatment. He could aim to become a powerful Sahib in the service of the British Raj government. Kim has contacts a plenty and often through various merchants or influential friends such as a famous horsetrader, Kim’s adventurous spirit leads him into the adult world setting off on inquisitive and often potentially dangerous missions and adventures. He is inadvertently being sucked into the Great Game and his work as a spy reaches his climax when some foreign indeed Russians who are travelling with the lama and him across the mountains, fall out and, completely taboo in the eyes of natives, actually physically assault the old sage, it is Kim who defends with violence the outrageous attack and the travelling foreigners lose all their possessions including critical maps and documents that will prove useful to the British government of India. We weave through an increasingly more native world deep in the heart of India and the special relationship of old man and boy, the romance of the whole journey, culminates in the lama finding his river and way up deep in the mountains we see a fully-matured adult Kim contemplating future, his world view and philosophy so touchingly formed with spiritual non-material values by his master. It’s a wonderful tale and a unique book that surely must be one of the best cultural products of the British Empire in India.

Review: The Great Game – On Secret Service in High Asia – by Peter Hopkirk

The Great Game, as immortalised by Rudyard Kipling in ‘Kim’ was the nineteenth century adventures in espionage between Russia and the U.K. across Central Asia. Both sides were on the verge of a full on military confrontation and sought advantage. The Russian Tsars sought territorial expansion across Asia and always had their eye on the riches of British-controlled India. The Empire under Queen Victoria was to be protected at all costs. A series of adventurers mapped out the relatively unknown regions that separated the two great powers. The regions of Persia, Afghanistan, India, Tibet, Turkmenistan and China became the board on which this Great Game was played out. Deep political intrigue and outright treachery features heavily in these factual adventure tales. Wild eccentric characters fill the landscape on both sides of the divide. Often when the two sides meet on the field war in averted and gentlemanly camp meals and Vodka accompany the standoffs. It is the unruly under-civilised Asian powers that often produce the venomous brutal murders and beheadings and downright scandalous betrayals in this period. The explorers are feted by the British Geographical society and often write bestselling books about their travels. Russophobes and Anglophobes in London and St Petersburg devour the press articles and hawks dominate doves in foreign policy decisions between the powers although other than the Crimean War a total conflict is luckily just avoided by both sides. There are some great character sin this book and it highlights a time in the relatively recent past when Britain still had its Empire and the world was still being mapped out and explored. Very well written and a five star read.

Review: Russians Among Us – Sleeper Cells & The Hunt for Putin’s Agents – by Gordon Correra

I’ve read Gordon Correra’s previous work in espionage literature and for this reason I was drawn to seek out this new offering. In the current climate of the Russian invasion of Ukraine under ex KGB spy, Vladimir Putin, I felt that this relatively recent work would highlight some of the ongoing dangers of Russian spies that have infiltrated our societies in the West. I did enjoy watching the TV series ‘The Americans’ that presented a fictional version of what Correra exposes as a fait accompli, the reality of embedded Russian illegals, sleeper cells inside the USA. The story skips between the lives of several of these trained Russian agents who take on fake identities of dead people in the West with a view to setting up ‘normal’ lives in the country of the Cold War enemy state. These illegals get normal jobs, buy houses, live in suburbia and slowly but surely are always looking for ways of undermining their host nation, seeking out potential contacts in their business and social lives who might be able to prove advantageous to Russia. They could be within powerful political circles or in technology or finance. These identified potential real people could be approached to become KGB / FSB / GRU agents or could be blackmailed. Obviously the game of espionage is cat and mouse and played equally voraciously by both sides. The CIA and FBI counter-intelligence in the case of many of the more recent illegals manoeuvred the whole expensive operation. A very valuable CIA source, Alexander Poteyev was head of the illegals program in the FSB and for over a decade was revealing all the critical information of the whole affair. Thus, the FBI maintained close surveillance on the spies for over a decade, watching their every move from their marital lives, their children growing up to any movements towards vital US targets in their operational activity. Putin has a twisted logic about the West and is an avid supporter of covert intelligence operations against his Cold War adversaries. His absolute detestation of treason and spy turncoats led him to attacking two ex-KGB comrades on U.K. soil. Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London by radioactive poisoning (Polonium) and later, Sergei Skripal, who had been granted an official pardon by Putin, and had been part of a Vienna exchange by for the arrested Russian illegals, was attacked in Salisbury by a Novichok biological nerve agent but survived the assassination attempt. He had been an active MI6 agent and was released from Russian prison. It was interesting seeing how technology change and the post Soviet Union era redefined the illegals program and how Russian agents were just masquerading in the West using their real identities. The internet and social media brought a new dimension to espionage with active political meddling in the US election leading to the Donald Trump Presidential election of 2016. The book details shocking secrets of the clandestine world of international espionage and is an entertaining tale. One can only wonder how little we actually know and just how many illegals actually are still active and who successfully evaded the capture net.

Review: Memoirs – by Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most influential and critical figures of the twentieth century. When I was growing up in the 1980s he was part os a set of international world leaders that seemingly had much more influence over people than the political leaders of today. Gorbachev was the last leader of he Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991. He presided over the final years of the Cold War and witnessed its thaw. He was a key advocate of détente and disarmament and sought rapprochement with the West. He brought, along with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterand a reduction of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) through disarmament of nuclear weapons stockpiles and a lessening of military friction between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. These are his political memoirs and they offer a true insight into a very powerful global leader who played a significant role in world affairs at the end of the century, presiding over such key events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev had humble roots as a tractor and combine harvester driver in the Stavropol region of rural Russia. He joined the Communist Party early and was fortunate enough to go to university in Moscow from where his active role in politics flourished. He would be elected Chairman of the Communist Party in 1985 replacing a series of elderly, embedded Soviet leaders. He offered the leadership and nomenclatura a new dynamism and vitality. Living standards were low in the USSR and Gorbachev sought o revolutionise Soviet communist politics and regenerate benefits for all. His key policies for which he is most remembered are Perestroika and Glasnost. Perestroika was a realignment and a modernisation of economic policies, introducing more economic freedoms, less State control and an opening of international trade, ultimately with the USSR becoming part of the global economic system. With Conservatives who clung to Stalinesque control of the State his Perestroika was an anathema. It proved popular and gave Gorbachev international prestige though and improved foreign relations. Glasnost was an opening up of politics and accountability to the people. It again proved unpopular with the forces on the right of the Party. He headed the Politburo where the key leadership of the Soviet Union ruled the nation. From the start though, he had enemies within and ultimately these conspiratorial plots against him grew and grew until the final death throes of the entire Union. His ultimate nemesis proved to be Boris Yeltsin the future democratic President of an independent Russia. Yeltsin’s self-serving, backstabbing Machiavellian manoeuvring ultimately destroyed much of Gorbachev’s legacy. With the context of today’s Russian war in Ukraine I did gleam some interesting information about a political fact that I was unaware of. Crimea has a native Crimean Tatar population and during Gorbachev’s presidency there was friction between Crimea and its control by Ukrainian officials. The native population preferred to identify itself as part of Russia and therefore these facts lend credibility to Vladimir Putin’s annexation based on historic feelings about the region. As the story progresses you get an overall feeling of the train derailing as political tensions intensify. The independence of the Baltic States from Soviet Rule is the beginning of the end and encourages the nationalist sentiments of Yeltsin’s Russia and other key Soviet republics as Belorussia and Ukraine. Gorbachev shares a loving relationship with his wife Raisa and his family and their very lives are threatened by an attempted coup where he is locked in his dacha with all communications cut off and the target of a criminal attempt to subvert the rule of the USSR. After the coup, things never fully recovered and ultimately in 1991 he was forced to resign as President and this brought to en end the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev’s main legacy was to the World. In the West he was viewed with much affection and was seen as someone who they could do business with yet he is often remembered inside the Soviet Union as a failure. I think that long term in historical memory his true status will be felt with the benefit of hindsight. There is much glamour in the international jet-setting of world summits, especially with Reagan and it was interesting reading about his encounter’s with the United Kingdom Prime Minister Thatcher.
I think that in reading this book I have gained a much greater insight into the true mechanisations of Communist rule inside the Soviet Union and although Gorbachev sadly died only a short while ago, I felt that in completing the study of his memoirs it has significant relevance in understanding the Russia of today and what led to the global situation which we currently witness in Putin’s Russia.

Review: Putin’s People – How the KGB took back Russia and then took on The West – by Catherine Belton

The author of this, the best study of Vladimir Putin that I have read to date, is Catherine Belton, a Financial Times journalist that was based in Moscow. It is a comprehensive study of the rise of Putin and how he has cemented a Tsar-like power as head of the New Russia. We go from a relatively humble career as a KGB agent in East Germany through to a man who has consolidated vast amounts of wealth and power in an insurmountable concrete position of power as head of State. The anarchic conditions of Yeltsin’s post Soviet Union capitalist experimentation left opportunities for many and was very disruptive both globally and within Russia. Putin enters politics as deputy mayor of St Petersburg where he begins a steady ascent to supreme power. So much of his rise is based on total corruption and dodgy dealings with organised crime such as the Tambov group. Putin’s main allies who have accompanied his meteoric success have been the Siloviki or former KGB and FSB agents. Systematically towards the ed of the Cold War as perestroika and glasnost opened doors, money and large sums of it were being funnelled out to the West by KGB agents planning the post Soviet reality of Russia. Putin challenged the new wave of super wealthy oligarchs who were the revolutionary Russian cowboys who seized State assets during the anarchic capitalism. Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkhovsky were the most high profile victims of the new Putin state facts that oligarchs had to comply and were subservient to the Kremlin. Roman Abramovich was more lucky and has a cosier more complaint relationship with the régime. Londongrad and siphoning of cash to Panama Papers offshore banks enriched Putin and a web of total corruption of all, the judiciary, the opposition politicians, rogue regions of the former USSR, all have been forced to submit to Putin aggression and domination. Some of the links are so discrete and conniving and the journalistic excellence of the author brings to light a lot of the hidden deceit. Espionage has had a lot of psychological resonance within the Kremlin with democratic foreign politics being subjected to Russian meddling and interference. It is interesting to note the evidence of Putin’s role in Brexit and the Trump presidency. There has been massive financial input into the British Conservative Party and frankly the Russian impact on Donald Trump is totally blatant and obvious. He was farming out Trump Towers franchises across the world entirely to dodgy Russian businessmen and gangsters while pocketing a healthy 18% return cushion on all investments without touching his own unscrupulous dollar bank accounts. The reality of this non-fiction real life account is so far-fetched and shocking that it could never possibly have been invented by a modern day Dostoyevsky as for sure, the true story of Vladimir Putin is stranger than fiction. This book has obvious relevance with this odd man’s decision to invade Ukraine and its international and domestic dangerous consequences. A great book.