"GCHQ" by Richard Aldrich - Printable Version +- Deep Politics Forum (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora) +-- Forum: Deep Politics Forum (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/forum-1.html) +--- Forum: Books (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/forum-5.html) +--- Thread: "GCHQ" by Richard Aldrich (/thread-3990.html)

"GCHQ" by Richard Aldrich - Ed Jewett - 16-06-2010 GCHQ by Richard Aldrich June 16th, 2010 GCHQ by Richard Aldrich on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. Via: Register: If information indeed is power, then GCHQ is undoubtedly the closest thing the British government has to the Death Star. As the historian Richard J Aldrich notes in the introduction to his excellent new history of the Cheltenham-based agency it represents by far our largest, most expensive, most productive – and yet most secret – intelligence effort. GCHQ: The uncensored story of Britain’s most secret intelligence agency instantly ranks as the most essential exposition of the hidden power wielded for 70 years by Britain’s information superweapon. Not that very many have attempted to complete a picture from the few, widely scattered puzzle pieces available. One can well believe Aldrich’s book is the result of the 10 years work claimed on its dust jacket. Indeed, apart from its heroic beginnings at Bletchley Park during World War Two, GCHQ’s presence in the popular consciousness is limited to vague paranoia and some awareness that what it does is frightfully clever and terribly secret. The agency’s success in maintaining not just its secrecy, but a helpfully low profile, is best demonstrated in the book by its exposition of the intimate relationship between GCHQ and the US’ National Security Agency (NSA). How many appreciate that when politicians and journalists reflexively reference the “special relationship” between Westminster and Washington they are really talking about a Cold War bond originally forged between eavesdroppers in Cheltenham and Fort Meade, the Maryland base of the NSA? It’s a historical paradox that as the Empire was dismantled in the 1950s, Britain held its seat at the top table by dint of signals intelligence from vestigial remote territories such as Diego Garcia and Hong Kong.