The Sigint Secrets: The Signals Intelligence War, 1900 to Today: Including the Persecution of Gordon Welchman

Offering few anecdotal examples or representative characters, and concentrating on procedures of direction-finding, message interception, traffic analysis and code-breaking, this authoritative study by the European editor of Intelligence Quarterly focuses on the development of British systems of interception and analysis. West demolishes convincingly the widely held myth that the Allies solved the secret of the German ``Enigma'' coding machine early in the war and explains why British and American intelligence authorities have gone to extraordinary lengths to perpetuate that myth. The author then relates the grim story of Gordon Welchman, a British SIGINT ace who was hounded after publishing his memoirs which, in the view of the British Government Communications Headquarters and the U.S. National Security Agency, threatened to expose the truth about ``Enigma.'' Photos. (Nov.)