For almost 80 years the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) has been a central player in the secret machinery of the British Government, providing a co-ordinated intelligence service to policy makers, drawing upon the work of the intelligence agencies and Whitehall departments. Since its creation, reports from the JIC have contributed to almost every key foreign policy decision taken by the British Government.

The records of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Britain's senior intelligence body, are now being released to the public on the same basis as other official papers. As a result, historians have available a unique archive revealing British thinking at the highest level about the world situation and threats confronting the West in the critical years after World War II. This book, by Sir Percy Cradock - for many years himself Chairman of the JIC as well as the Prime Minister's Foreign Policy Advisor - explores these hitherto top secret records and the interplay of JIC estimates and warnings with British foreign policy decisions over the first 23 years from 1945. He concentrates on the great crises of the Cold War, Berlin, Korea, Suez, Cuba, Vietnam and Czechoslovakia, but also examines some lesser emergencies involving Britain alone, such as Kuwait, confrontation with Indonesia, and Rhodesia. He compares the British organization and performance with the parallel system of US intelligence and the very different machinery of the KGB. In a final chapter he reflects on the intimate relations between intelligence and policy, and how Britain adjusted to a long period of declining power. This study aims to be a valuable addition to historical knowledge and to offer an insight into the development of Western as well as British foreign policy.

Volume One of the Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee draws upon a range of released and classified papers to produce the first, authoritative account of the way in which intelligence was used to inform policy. For almost 80 years the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) has been a central player in the secret machinery of the British Government, providing a co-ordinated intelligence service to policy makers, drawing upon the work of the intelligence agencies and Whitehall departments. Since its creation, reports from the JIC have contributed to almost every key foreign policy decision taken by the British Government. This volume covers the evolution of the JIC since 1936 and culminates with its role in the events of Suez in 1956. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, British politics, international diplomacy, security studies and International Relations in general. Dr Michael S. Goodman is Reader in Intelligence and International Affairs in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He is author or editor of five previous books, including the Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies (2013).

The first history of the Joint Intelligence Bureau - an organisation designed to preserve and advance British capability in military intelligence for the Cold War - shedding light on the largely unknown world of military and economic intelligence after 1945, and how this intelligence influenced British policies throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

A file of Cabinet Office reports, correspondence, and memoranda concerning the organisation of British intelligence. Items in the file include revised charters for the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee (JIC); complete lists of previous directors of naval and air intelligence; and plans for intelligence mobilisation, covering subjects such as responsibilities for the provision of different types of intelligence, the circulation of intelligence papers, and the security implications of opening department records after 50 years. The file also contains two reports on the history of the JIC from its inception in 1936 up to 1955, including summaries of the various areas of intelligence over which the JIC had responsibility; arrangements for information sharing with the United States of America, the Commonwealth, and NATO; and numerous charts illustrating British intelligence organisation, along with handwritten notes made in preparation for these reports.