Full version Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare For
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In 1917, the German foreign office in Berlin sent an encrypted telegram to their embassy in Washington, with the aim of nudging Mexico into a war against America. The larger goal was to prevent a US intervention into the Great War. But British codebreakers intercepted the German telegram, deciphered it, and decided to pass its controversial contents on to the White House and President Woodrow Wilson. Their goal was to get America into World War I. The operation worked, and would set the gold standard for influence operations for an entire century.WEDGE: A HISTORY OF DISINFORMATION begins with that story of the Zimmermann telegram, an act of intervention on which history pivoted. In fifty pithy chapters, Thomas Rid takes the story to new Soviet Russia, through the Second World War and Cold War in East and West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Africa, London, and finally, back to Russia and Washington: 'active measures' in the 'black game', which morph from printed manuals, fake broadcasts, assassinations and the fatal unmasking of spies, to database intervention with huge political fallout. The stories here-some in the open for the first time-are worthy of Ben Mackintyre or Robert Harris.
In 1917, the German foreign office in Berlin sent an encrypted telegram to their embassy in Washington, with the aim of nudging Mexico into a war against America. The larger goal was to prevent a US intervention into the Great War. But British codebreakers intercepted the German telegram, deciphered it, and decided to pass its controversial contents on to the White House and President Woodrow Wilson. Their goal was to get America into World War I. The operation worked, and would set the gold standard for influence operations for an entire century.WEDGE: A HISTORY OF DISINFORMATION begins with that story of the Zimmermann telegram, an act of intervention on which history pivoted. In fifty pithy chapters, Thomas Rid takes the story to new Soviet Russia, through the Second World War and Cold War in East and West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Africa, London, and finally, back to Russia and Washington: 'active measures' in the 'black game', which morph from printed manuals, fake broadcasts, assassinations and the fatal unmasking of spies, to database intervention with huge political fallout. The stories here-some in the open for the first time-are worthy of Ben Mackintyre or Robert Harris.