The Intelligence Game: Illusions and Delusions of International Espionage

By James Rusbridger

The purpose of this book," writes James Rusbridger, "is to open the window of accountability-and show the pointlessness of so much intelligence work.... America spends at least $12 billion a year on its intelligence community but if one allows for various illegal activities, such as the Iran/Contra Operations, the true total is certainly much higher. Overall, a total of $13 billion is available from two secret budgets to fund all America's intelligence operations. In Russia, intelligence operations are so inextricably mixed with military defense spending that no accurate figures could ever be produced, but, bearing in mind their attempt to copy the Americans in every sphere of operations, it seems logical to believe that their annual bill is no smaller. In Britain, the official cost of the two main intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, is put at around 100 million a year, but the real figure is nearer four times this. Whatever the final cost may be, all such agencies have two things in common. First, they are very inefficient. Second, they multiply like rabbits on a dark night. The intelligence world makes even the most inept government departments seem quite efficient....

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1561310085
• ISBN13: 9781561310081
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: New Amsterdam Books
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.1" x 1.1" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

Wilderness of Warped Mirrors

Reading "The Intelligence Game" is like becoming trapped in a fascinating looking-glass time warp. The teams are MI5/SIS, CIA, and KGB; their captains are Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan (replaced late in the game by George The First Bush--actually George II, if one counts Washington), and Mikhail Gorbichev. The constantly changing rules of the game seem to have been written by Lewis Carroll for one of his Alice books, and, if one of the minor players cries "foul"--or in the words of Alice, "You're nothing but a pack of cards!"--governmental referees rush out onto the playing field waving rule books of "official secrets." As the recalcitrant player is promptly escorted to the penalty box, a frantic, but usually unsuccessful, attempt is made to bind, gag, and keep him there until the game finishes. What the spectators in the stands do not know, however, is that the game will never finish. Like Phillip Knightley in his 1986 book, "The Second Oldest Profession," Mr. Rusbridger, writing in 1998-99, argues that the intelligence community (on all sides) is an expensive, often-delusional, not to say corrupt, self-perpetuating oligarchy, whose survival depends both on the cloak of governmental secrecy and on the conjuring up of new enemies, both real and imaginary, to be forever feared. Food for thought in the post-KGB twenty-first century, as the game goes on. And on . . .