Classified

by Moran, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9781107000995
• ISBN10: 1107000998
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-01-28
• Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr

Summary

Classified is a fascinating account of the British state's long obsession with secrecy and the ways it sought to prevent information about its secret activities from entering the public domain. Drawing on recently declassified documents, unpublished correspondence and exclusive interviews with key officials and journalists, Christopher Moran pays particular attention to the ways that the press and memoirs have been managed by politicians and spies. He argues that, by the 1960s, governments had become so concerned at their inability to keep secrets that they increasingly sought to offset damaging leaks with their own micro-managed publications. The book reveals new insights into seminal episodes in British post-war history, including the Suez crisis, the D-Notice affair and the treachery of the Cambridge spies, identifying a new era of offensive information management and putting the contemporary battle between secret keepers, electronic media and digital whistleblowers into long-term perspective.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1889-1945

Laying the foundations of control

Bending the rules: ministers and their memoirs

Secrecy and the Press

Chapman Pincher: sleuthing the secret state

Britain's Watergate: the D-Notice affair and consequences

Publish and be damned

Secrecy and Political Memoirs

Cabinet confessions: from Churchill to Crossman

Intelligence Secrets, Spy Memoirs and Official Histories

Keeping the secrets of wartime deception: Ultra and Doublecross

SOE in France

Counterblast: official history of intelligence in the Second World War

Epilogue: from Wright to WikiLeaks

Bibliography

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