Nigel West, Historian, on Spies Who Changed History: Greatest Spies and Agents of the 20th Century

Interview of Sunday, 15 January 2023 of Nigel West, Intelligence Historian, Author, former MP, and AFIO Honorary Board member. Interviewer - Host: James Hughes, AFIO President, a former CIA Operations Officer.

TOPIC: Nigel West and Jim Hughes discuss several intelligence figures from Nigel's recent book, "Spies Who Changed History: The Greatest Spies and Agents of the 20th Century." Those include: "The White Lady", "The Angel", "Garbo", Arnold Deutsch, Kim Philby, and the mysterious death of Ashraf Marwan.
Purchase a copy of "Spies Who Changed History" here: https://www.amazon.com/Spies-Who-Chan...

The interview runs 22 minutes and includes several Q&As. It is sponsored by Northwest Financial Advisors at https://www.nwfllc.com/.

BIOS:
NIGEL WEST was born in Lambeth, south London, educated at a Roman Catholic monastery, London University and Grenoble University. While still a student he worked as a researcher for the authors Ronald Seth and Richard Deacon, who both specialised in security and intelligence issues. Between 1987 and 1997 he was a Member of Parliament representing a constituency in south Devon and contributed to Official Secrets legislation and the Intelligence Services Act. He was voted 'The Experts' Expert' by a panel of other spy writers in the Observer in November 1989 and The Sunday Times has commented:
'His information is so precise that many people believe he is the unofficial historian of the secret services. West's sources are undoubtedly excellent. His books are peppered with deliberate clues to potential front-page stories.'
Nigel often speaks at intelligence seminars and has lectured at both the KGB headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square and at the CIA headquarters in Langley, and teaches members of the intelligence community at the Centre for Counter-Intelligence and Security Studies in Alexandria, VA.
His recent titles include Hitler's Trojan Horse; Spies Who Changed History: The Greatest Spies and Agents of the 20th Century; VENONA, which disclosed the existence of a GRU spy-ring operating in London throughout the war, headed by Professor J B S Haldane and the Hon. Ivor Montagu: and The Third Secret, an account of the CIA’s intervention in Afghanistan. In Mortal Crimes he investigated the scale of soviet espionage in the Manhattan Project, the Anglo-American development of an atomic bomb.
In 2005 he edited The Guy Liddell Diaries, a daily journal of the wartime work of MI5’s Director of Counter-Espionage. He also published a study of the Comintern’s secret wireless traffic, MASK: MI5’s Penetration of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and a series of counter-intelligence textbooks, The Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence, Cold War Counterintelligence, World War II Intelligence, International Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, etc.
In 2003 Nigel West was awarded the US Association of Former Intelligence Officers’ first Lifetime Literature Achievement Award.

JAMES R. HUGHES currently serves as the 17th President of AFIO. His service began January 2015. He had a career of US Government service spanning 37 years in numerous foreign countries with a particular focus in the Middle East. He started in U.S. Military Intelligence in the late 1960s and then joined the CIA’s Clandestine Service. He served overseas as a Chief of Station several times, and at CIA Headquarters in a number of senior management positions, including as Chief of the Near East and South Asia Division, in the Directorate of Operations [today’s National Clandestine Service]. He was also named the Associate Deputy Director of Operations (ADDO) at the National Security Agency, 1998-99. Following his retirement from the government in 2005, he joined EDS in Herndon, VA, as the Client Industry Executive for the U.S. Intelligence Community. After the HP acquisition of EDS, he continued to serve in a similar capacity until his retirement in 2012. His parents were missionaries in Turkey in the 1950s, where Jim spent his formative years. He is fluent in Arabic.

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