Factoid Pigout
Stephen Dorril's humungous (800+pages) history of the U.K.'s foreign intelligence service has a limited value. But for seekers of factual accuracy, reading this book takes care. I examined this volume mainly for its treatment of one of MI6's earlier Cold War adventures - Valuable: the effort to dump Albania's Enver Hoxha. Dorril's fairly thorough account is littered with errors and misinterpretations, i.e. naming Xhafer Deva, a World War II collaborator with Nazi Germany, as a member of a Free Albania Committee set up in the U.S. Deva never fit with the MI6-CIA affiliated FAC set up in Rome and New York. Dorril links directly episodes which, in actual time, were months or years apart, i.e. describing relations of the FAC and Assembly of Captive European Nations; the CIA set up the latter after the Truman administration's "containment" doctrine was dumped. Lest one think this is nitpicking, remember that all these factoids added togther as errors or accuracies can influence a book's value. If one episode is ridden with mistakes, why would one trust that the author's other episodes are any more reliable? Dorril ends most of his paragraphs with a footnote that usually includes multiple sources for what he writes in the paragraph. Far too many footnotes for this book to be a fun read. It is best used by a serious student of espionage who also has other sources on his desk.
Meticulously researched, but...
Meticulously researched, but dry as an official communique from the Foreign Office itself. There's a great story within the panoply of names and facts here, but Dorril wastes no time with a striking narrative. An unfortunate loss.
Great facts... poor conclusions
As others have said more eloquently than I. However, it is worth repeating (or at least speaking up about it) the fact that the conclusions reached by the author are the worst kind of historical reconstruction.The Soviet Union is presented as more of a victim of the west rather than a primary cause of what the author would have you believe they were a victim of. According to the author, the Cold War was the fault of the west, we were the bad guys. As most who have even barely studied history know, things are seldom that black and white. The author poses his theory without ever mentioning all the offenses and atrocities commited by the Soviet Union which gave the west good reason to be deeply concerned. If you have read Venona or any other more balanced works, you will see this book for what it is and take the facts for what they are worth and leave the subtle attempt at indoctrination out of the picture.
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