The Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Vol. Ⅰ: From the Approach of the Second World War to the Suez Crisis

摘要

The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) has long acted - in the words of its notable post-war chairman, Sir Percy Cradock - as the 'high table' of the intelligence community, which would indeed scarcely have existed without it. It has been studied in other countries with varying degrees of envy and incredulity, and has been imitated, modified and rejected. How has it survived and exerted this influence? Has it served the UK well or badly? Here at last are the answers of a professional historian - or at least their beginnings - based on his full access to the official papers for the years from the committee's formation in 1936 to the end of the Suez Crisis in 1956. This historical assessment is timely, following the recent slimming-down of JIC responsibilities after the creation of the National Security Council in 2010. After this change the twentieth-century committee can now be viewed increasingly as a matter of history, somewhat removed from the present.