Experimental Blog # 165

Quotations and comments from "The Art of Betrayal - The Secret History of MI6" or Life and Death in the British Secret Service by Gordon Corera

"The task of the Secret Intelligence Service{SIS} - or to use its more popular name MI6 ..."

"The British public had become obsessed with traitors .."
"On both sides of the Atlantic, a fire had been lit by *******'s betrayal < > It blazed with fierce intensity, nearly consuming both the CIA and MI6 until it burnt itself out."
"The early 1960s were a golden age for the small army of Soviet spies plying their trade in Britain."

"Did it all matter? Did the spying and the lying and betraying make any real difference? Critics argue that all the spying accomplished was to raise the temperature by heightening suspicions that fuelled the Cold War in which ignorant armies clashed by night. Those who believe in intelligence say it did make a difference by managing a hostility that was real and dangerous."

"Donald Rumsfeld expressed this strange view best when he said 'the absence of evidence is not absence of evidence'."

By the end of this book, which is filled with fascinating and often tragic stories, but not so many basic facts, is the author Gordon Corera completely oblivious, or is he only pretending?