Jacket flap blurbs

In his memoirs, Intelligence at the Top, Sir Kenneth Strong, wartime Chief of Intelligence under Eisenhower's Supreme Command, and in post-war years Head of Political Intelligence at the Foreign Office, Director of the Joint Intelligence Bureau and ultimately Director-General of Intelligence at the Ministry of Defence, showed how the Intelligence processes in military, political and business spheres were conducted in modern times.

Men of Intelligence is the logical sequel to that book, for in it Sir Kenneth turns to a study of the work of a dozen men from four major "Intelligence powers" who were responsible for the establishment, development or implementation of those same processes in a national or international framework. These twelve men are the true "super spies" so beloved of the spy-thriller and the cinema and TV screens, but however little their real-life resemblance to the "Ms", the "Colonel Russells" and the "James Bonds" of the world, the Intelligence decisions they were called upon to make, their successes and failures, had far-reaching effects upon contemporary events.
Colonel Hentsch, General von Moltke's Chief Intelligence officer in 1914, was almost by accident partly responsible for the eventual defeat of Germany in World War I. Britain's General Charteris, Chief Intelligence officer to Haig, played an important but disquieting part in Western Front policies in the same war. Between the wars, two French Intelligence officers, Generals Gauche and Didelet, represented two extremes of "peacetime Intelligence", the one disturbingly accurate, the other dangerously misleading. During the same period the German Colonel Liss was patiently analysing the potential of British, In his memoirs, Intelligence at the Top, Sir Kenneth Strong, wartime Chief of Intelligence under Eisenhower's Supreme Command, and in post-war years Head of Political Intelligence at the Foreign Office, Director of the Joint Intelligence Bureau and ultimately Director-General of Intelligence at the Ministry of Defence, showed how the Intelligence processes in military, political and business spheres were conducted in modern times.

Men of Intelligence is the logical sequel to that book, for in it Sir Kenneth turns to a study of the work of a dozen men from four major "Intelligence powers" who were responsible for the establishment, development or implementation of those same processes in a national or international framework. These twelve men are the true "super spies" so beloved of the spy-thriller and the cinema and TV screens, but however little their real-life resemblance to the "Ms", the "Colonel Russells" and the "James Bonds" of the world, the Intelligence decisions they were called upon to make, their successes and failures, had far-reaching effects upon contemporary events.
Colonel Hentsch, General von Moltke's Chief Intelligence officer in 1914, was almost by accident partly responsible for the eventual defeat of Germany in World War I. Britain's General Charteris, Chief Intelligence officer to Haig, played an important but disquieting part in Western Front policies in the same war. Between the wars, two French Intelligence officers, Generals Gauche and Didelet, represented two extremes of "peacetime Intelligence", the one disturbingly accurate, the other dangerously misleading. During the same period the German Colonel Liss was patiently analysing the potential of British, French and American forces with ominous exactitude. Two other German Intelligence officers whose activities are investigated by General Strong are the "double agent" Admiral Canaris and that still mysterious figure, General Gehlen.

British Military Intelligence was at its zenith in the Second World War, and was probably the best in the world. Yet the man responsible for its efficiency and co-ordination has hardly been given recognition until this book's appearance, unlike the colourful Allen Dulles, who led American Intelligence in flamboyant style until the Bay of Pigs episode. Under his successor, John A. McCone, American Intelligence became the highly sophisticated complex organization that it is today.

Sir Kenneth Strong writes from a lifetime's experience of working with and against Men of Intelligence (his remarks on the relevance of spies in Intelligence are alone enough to make readers look again at their bookshelves). The overt and covert work of the twelve or so men he examines here, separately and in relation or opposition to each other, is shown by him to be a logical development which has taken Intelligence from the basic need to see what was "on the other side of the hill", to fully co-ordinated participation in national and business policy- and decision-making. And it is with a full chapter on this vitally important feature of present-day Intelligence—in which General Strong is himself now actively engaged—that Men of Intelligence closes.