Offering few anecdotal examples or representative characters, & concentrating on procedures of direction-finding, message interception, traffic analysis & code-breaking, this authoritative study by the European editor of Intelligence Quarterly focuses on the development of British systems of interception & analysis. West demolishes convincingly the widely held myth that the Allies solved the secret of the German Enigma coding machine early in the war & explains why British & 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 & the US National Security Agency, threatened to expose the truth about Enigma. Photos.—Publishers Weekly