James Gannon is a

freelance writer ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...

and producer of

documentaries A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". The American author and media analyst Bill ...

for

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Media Group, a division of NBCUniversal, which is itself a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's various operations r ...

. He has published many articles on a variety of subjects.

Life

James Gannon is the author of ''Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How

Spies Spies most commonly refers to people who engage in spying, espionage or clandestine operations. Spies or The Spies may also refer to: Arts and media Films * ''Spies'' (1928 film), English title for ''Spione'', a 1928 German film by Fritz Lan ...

and

Codebreakers Cryptanalysis (from the Greek ''kryptós'', "hidden", and ''analýein'', "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic secu ...

Helped Shape the Twentieth century'' (2001). The book discusses key episodes of 20th-century

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...

and

cryptology Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More gener ...

involving the Zimmermann telegram; Enigma decryption and "

Ultra Ultra may refer to: Science and technology * Ultra (cryptography), the codename for cryptographic intelligence obtained from signal traffic in World War II * Adobe Ultra, a vector-keying application * Sun Ultra series, a brand of computer work ...

"; the

Battle of the Atlantic The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allies of World War II, ...

;

Erwin Rommel Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel (; 15 November 1891 – 14 October 1944), popularly known as The Desert Fox (, ), was a German '' Generalfeldmarschall'' (field marshal) during World War II. He served in the ''Wehrmacht'' (armed forces) of ...

; the

Colossus computer Colossus was a set of computers developed by British cryptanalysis, codebreakers in the years 1943–1945 to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Colossus used vacuum tube, thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) to perform Boolean algebra ...

;

Frank Rowlett Frank Byron Rowlett (May 2, 1908 – June 29, 1998) was an American cryptologist. Life and career Rowlett was born in Rose Hill, Lee County, Virginia and attended Emory & Henry College in Emory, Virginia. In 1929 he received a bachelor's degr ...

and

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

Purple Purple is a color similar in appearance to violet light. In the RYB color model historically used in the arts, purple is a secondary color created by combining red and blue pigments. In the CMYK color model used in modern printing, purple is ...

cipher In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...

; Allied

Operation Overlord Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allies of World War II, Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Front (World War II), Western Europe during World War II. The ope ...

deceptions; World War II spies and spy organizations;

Rudolf Roessler Rudolf Roessler (German: ''Rößler''; 22 November 1897 – 11 December 1958) was a Protestant Germany, German and a dedicated German resistance to Nazism, anti-Nazi. During the interwar period, Roessler was a lively cultural journalist, with a ...

and the

Lucy Spy Ring The Lucy spy ring () was an anti-Nazi World War II espionage operation headquartered in Switzerland and run by Rudolf Roessler, a German refugee. Its story was only published in 1966, and very little is clear about the ring, Roessler, or the effo ...

; Takeo Yoshikawa and Japan's attack on

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Reci ...

; Joseph J. Rochefort and the

Battle of Midway The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II, Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of t ...

;

Richard Sorge Richard Gustavovich Sorge (; 4 October 1895 – 7 November 1944) was a German-Russian journalist and GRU (Soviet Union), Soviet military intelligence officer who was active before and during World War II and worked undercover as a German journa ...

; Donald Maclean;

Klaus Fuchs Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs (29 December 1911 – 28 January 1988) was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly a ...

;

Venona The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, u ...

;

Oleg Penkovsky Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky (; 23 April 1919 – 16 May 1963), codenamed Hero (by the CIA) and Yoga (by MI6) was a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) colonel during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Penkovsky informed the United States and the U ...

; and

Ryszard Kukliński Ryszard Jerzy Kukliński (June 13, 1930February 11, 2004) was a Polish Army colonel and Cold War spy for NATO. He was posthumously promoted to brigadier general by Polish President Andrzej Duda. Between 1972 and 1981 Kukliński passed top-secr ...

. A thread running through Gannon's book is the ubiquity of distortions in accounts of

and

, and the readiness of unscrupulous individuals, agencies and countries to take credit for the achievements of others.James Gannon, ''Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies'', passim.

Notes

References

* James Gannon, ''Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies and Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth Century'', Washington, D.C., Brassey's, 2001. American male journalists American historians of espionage Year of birth missing (living people) Living people {{US-journalist-20thC-stub

Life

See also

Notes

References