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Loading... The Second Oldest Profession: Spies and Spying in the Twentieth Century (1986)by Phillip Knightley
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The spy is as old as history but spy services are quite new. Britain founded the first, Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, in dubious circumstances in 1909. Others followed until no country considered itself a nation unless it had a corps of spies. The biggest and most expensive is America's Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, formed as recently as 1947. The CIA's principle enemy was the Soviet Union's KGB, and the clash of these two giants has been the thrilling stuff of history, novels, films and plays. In assessing the real role of the spy, Phillip Knightley brilliantly takes all the real characters of the spies themselves - Mata Hari, Sidney Reilly, Richard Sorge, Kim Philby, George Blake, James Jesus Angleton, Ruth Kuczinsky, the Rosenbergs - and answers the crucial question. Did they make any difference to the course of history? Or was spying the biggest confidence trick of our time? No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)327.1Social sciences Political Science International Relations Foreign policy and specific topics in international relationsLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Tem passagens interessantes e originais sobre a criação e desenvolvimentos das principais agências a nível mundial e sobre a espionagem anterior à guerra-fria. No entanto, não faz qualquer referência a Garbo apesar de desenvolver a actividade do seu contemporâneo Sorge. Aborda pormenorizadamente os desertores soviéticos Golytsin, Penkovsky e Fedora, mas não refere Gordievsky nem o agente de penetração do KGB na CIA, Aldrich Ames.
A afirmação do autor de que “os serviços de informações se transformaram em fontes de poder na nossa sociedade, clubes secretos para a elite e os privilegiados” pode ser verdade para os EUA e para a Rússia, mas não é verdade para os outros países do mundo, nem para o Reino Unido nem para a China. ( )