The new spies: Exploring the frontiers of espionage - James Adams

The end of the Cold War threw the world's intelligence agencies into turmoil. The old security of a superpower confrontation had vanished and with the new world order came a search for a new identity and purpose for the spies. At stake was a $50 billion global industry employing a million people, every one of whom felt threatened by the changes.

The intelligence community has been swift to identify new roles by countering proliferation, drugs, terrorism and economic espionage. At the same time there is a major effort to bring back the traditional spy as a complement to the satellites and other exotic systems which are now deemed less capable to counter the new threats.

Until now, no author has been able to move with equal freedom within Russian, British and American intelligence. James Adams has achieved that access and has followed the changes inside the intelligence community since the start of the Gorbachev Revolution in Russia which resulted in the disbanding of the KGB, the Soviet Union's hated secret police.

In Britain, which maintains one of the most secret societies, both MI5 and MI6 have been forced out of the shadows to confront a sceptical parliament and public. The New Spies explains the Whitehall machinations that produced these changes and goes behind the closed doors of both agencies to document in great detail the changes that have taken place.

This is an extraordinary book that explodes many of the Cold War myths about intelligence and provides for the first time details of the changes that have taken place as the intelligence community adjusts to meet the challenges of the next century. It is also packed with revelations, including first hand reports of many of the secret operations that have taken place around the world since the New Spies took control.