Cos - Cot

Costa, Alexandra. Stepping Down from the Star: A Soviet Defector's Story. New York: Putnam's 1986. [Petersen]

[Russia/DefectorLiterature]

Costa, Christopher P. "Changing Gears: Special Operations Intelligence Support to OPERATION PROVIDE COMFORT." Military Intelligence 18, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1992): 24-28.

Kurdish refugee situation following Gulf War.

[MI/Ops/Other]

Costa, Christopher. "Phoenix Rises Again: HUMINT Lessons for Counterinsurgency Operations." Defense Intelligence Journal 15, no. 1 (2006): 135-154.

"[M]ilitary HUMINT must be far more nuanced and tied in with indigenous human networks to balance the long-term goals of winning insurgencies.... What remains to be developed is a doctrinal foundation for addressing the operational-level requirements for leveraging indigenous human networks."

[MI/Humint/00s]

Costello, John. Days of Infamy: MacArthur, Roosevelt, Churchill -- The Shocking Truth Revealed: How Their Secret Deals and Strategic Blunders Caused Disasters at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. New York: Pocket Books, 1994.

Brinkley, WPNWE, 26 Dec. 1994-1 Jan. 1995, suggests that despite its "tabloid dust jacket," this is "a truly remarkable and original scholarly contribution ... [involving] painstaking archival research." This book "successfully rehabilitates the ... careers" of Pacific Fleet Commander Kimmel and U.S. Army Hawaiian Commander Short. But it is "bound to upset admirers of Gen. MacArthur." Costello also "questions the constitutionality of FDR's pre-war decisions."

To Bates, NIPQ 11.1, the "culprit" in this book is "MacArthur who, Costello contends, caused an even greater strategic defeat ... than Pearl Harbor." The book is "repetitious and poorly edited." Most of Costello's "facts and conclusions are accurate," but he "goes off the deep end" when he contends that 1945-1946 decrpyts of messages intercepted in 1941 "contained information which ... would have revealed the plan to attack Pearl Harbor." The book's "secondary ... mission ... is to force the exoneration of ... Kimmel and ... Short."

Allen, Proceedings, Apr. 1995, says "Costello discloses nothing sensational about the use and misuse of military intelligence. However, he does piece together a solid story about what happened, regardless of intelligence reports. Except for an occasional lurch into tabloid imagery..., Costello tells a bigger story than Pearl Harbor's day of infamy -- and tells it well."

For Kruh, Cryptologia 19.3, Costello provides "strong and circumstantial evidence mixed with conjecture, speculation and 20-20 hindsight." The most controversial charges are delivered with "stinging rhetoric but not always solid evidence."

[WWII/PearlHarbor]

Costello, John E. "MacArthur, Magic, Black Jumbos and the Dogs that Didn't Bark: New Intelligence on the Pearl Harbor Attack." In In the Name of Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Walter Pforzheimer, eds. Hayden B. Peake and Samuel Halpern, 197-250. Washington, DC: NIBC Press, 1994.

[WWII/PearlHarbor][c]

Costello, John. Mask of Treachery. London: Collins, 1988. New York: Morrow, 1988. [pb] Mask of Treachery: Spies, Lies, and Betrayal. Revised and updated. New York: Warner Books, 1990.

According to Surveillant 1.1, the 1990 version is a "revised paperback edition with a new chapter" of a book in which the author reconstructs "the treasonable activities of Anthony Blunt."

Cram says Mask of Treachery is "long-winded" and "runs off the rails with its conclusion that 'The Fifth Man' was Guy Liddell." This conclusion "degrades the credibility" of the work overall.

Chambers calls the book a "well-done and unsympathetic look at Blunt." On the other hand, Bennett, I&NS 4,3, skewers the book as containing "unsupported, or insufficiently authenticated, assertions presented as ascertained fact." There simply are too many "must have beens" here, and the book "cannot be said to have proved anything new" about the Blunt affair.

[UK/SpyCases]

Costello, John. Ten Days to Destiny: The Secret Story of the Hess Peace Initiative and British Efforts to Strike a Deal with Hitler. New York: Morrow, 1991.

Surveillant 1.6: This book "shows just how close England came to making a peace deal with Hitler." Costello "exposes the cunning of Churchill's exploitation of American Embassy spy Tyler Kent both to silence his enemies and to blackmail President Roosevelt into helping England."

[UK/WWII]

Costello, John, and Oleg Tsarev. Deadly Illusions: The KGB Orlov Dossier Reveals Stalin's Master Spy. New York: Crown, 1993. Deadly Illusions: Inside the Looking-Glass War. London: Crown/Century, 1993.

Surveillant 3.2/3 notes that Deadly Illusions is based on the KGB's archives, access to which comes from an agreement between Crown Publishing and the Russian Intelligence Service. The book covers the career of Alexander Orlov, "the true éminence grise of the Cambridge and Oxford spy rings."

To Chambers, the book is the "first serious look at Alexander Orlov"; it is "like lighting a candle in a darkened room."

West, FILS 12.4, argues that "Orlov continued to serve the Soviet cause until his death.... Costello is a controversial author who has stern critics.... Gordievsky ... savaged Deadly Illusions in the Sunday Telegraph (23 June 1993)."

For Bates, MI 10.1, the "major problem" is that the book "is deadly reading." Nevertheless, it is "an important contribution, ... [and] should be part of any bibliography supporting studies of the KGB and its predecessors." Haslam, I&NS 9.4, believes that Deadly Illusions contains "many useful new and surprising facts about the Cambridge spies."

Kerr, I&NS 11.3, comments that while the book is based in part on documents from the KGB's archives, it was the KGB which selected the documents and gave them to Costello. Thus, "[t]his is a KGB book serving KGB purposes.... [Consequently,] the book's historical contribution is circumscribed by the KGB's political motives."

[UK/SpyCases][c]

Coster, Donald Q. "We Were Expecting You at Dakar." Reader's Digest 49 (Aug. 1946): 103-107.

Petersen: "Allied deception plan for 1942 invasion of North Africa."

[WWII/Eur/Deception]

Cote, Maureen. "Translation Error and Political Misinterpretation." Studies in Intelligence 27, no. 4 (Winter 1983): 11-19.

[OpenSource]

Cottell, John E., and Arthur Gordon. Code-Name Badger: The True Life Story of a British Secret Agent. New York: Morrow, 1990.

Surveillant 1.1: Cottell was an SOE recruit sent by Churchill into Holland in 1944. In this way, he "began 30 years ... as a secret agent." His wife was "tortured and killed in Ravensbruck.... [He] was captured, tortured by Gestapo, interned in Buchenwald.... In the 1950s he was declared a traitor and put in Lubyanka." (Huh?)

Wiant, Studies 46.2 (2002), reviewing Nigel West's Counterfeit Spies (1998), comments with regard to Cottell "not a single fact of his operational activity -- nor even his existence -- can be verified."

[UK/WWII/SOE]

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