Nicholas van der Bijl Sharing the Secret

Annotation

While written under the auspices of the Trustees of the Military Intelligence Museum, Sharing the Secret is not an academic regimental history. Rather it gives a privileged glimpse into a necessarily publicity-shy organization that has been deeply involved in military intelligence operations since its inception in 1940 through to 2010. Understandably, little has been written about the Corps' work for Official Secret reasons.The development of Field Security and Protective Security and measures taken to protect the Army for espionage, sabotage, subversion and terrorism in peace and war are examined. These tasks were particularly important during the de-Nazification of Germany during the aftermath of the Second World War. Field Security led to the successful arrest of leading Nazis, including Himmler and Doenitz.The author, who served in the Corps for over 20 years and saw active service in Northern Ireland and the Falklands, gives fascinating examples of differing Intelligence techniques in action. These include the exploitation of Imagery Interpretation, Human Intelligence, including the interrogation of prisoners of war, the examination of enemy documents and the deployment of Signals Intelligence so that commanders have enough information to fight the battles. The support the Intelligence Corps gave to the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War is well covered, as are examples of Special Duties since 1945.The reader will appreciate that, as with any work relating to national intelligence and security, Sharing the Secret has been written under the restrictions of the era. That said, it provides a long-overdue insight into the contribution of members of the Intelligence Corps over seventy years of war and peace.As featured in Burnham & Highbridge News