SECRET HISTORY OF M16, THE - Penguin USA

When Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, or M16, threw its archives open to historian Keith Jeffery, it offered an opportunity to capture in incredible detail the formative years of the world's oldest foreign intelligence service. In this authorized history, Jeffery reveals M16's rized history, Jeffery reveals M16's baptism by fire during World War I, the development of disguises, invisible ink, and other techniques that became plot devices in countless novels, the industrial-scale cryptography that broke Hitler's allegedly impenetrable ciphers, and much more. From the terror of spying inside the Third Reich to the blossoming relationship with American intelligence through two world wars, this is a magisterial work that is often stranger than fiction.