Richard Deacon

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. The British Connection: Russia's Manipulation of British Individuals and Institutions. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1979.

Constantinides: "There seem to be too great liberties taken in labeling people and not enough separation of wheat from chaff in his attempt to prove extensive and intensive Soviet influence in Great Britain."

[UK/SpyCases]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. "C": A Biography of Sir Maurice Oldfield. London: MacDonald, 1985.

Clark comment: Sir Maurice Oldfield was Director, MI6/SIS, 1973-1978.

[UK/Biographies; UK/Postwar/Gen]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. The Cambridge Apostles: A History of Cambridge University's Elite Intellectual Secret Society. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1986. [Wilcox]

[UK/SpyCases]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. The Chinese Secret Service. New York: Taplinger, 1974. Revised and updated. London: Grafton Books, 1989. [pb]

Surveillant 1.1 notes the publication of a "[n]ew paperback edition of a classic.... The modern Chinese Secret Service has proved difficult to document.... In order to write this book Deacon set up a mini intelligence service of his own -- Operation Jackdaw." Richelson, I&NS 9.4, was unimpressed, calling the work "dreadful."

[China/Gen]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. Escape! London: BBC, 1980.

Wilcox: "How Soviet spies Kim Philby, Alfred Hines, Donald Woods escaped to the USSR."

[UK/SpyCases]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. The French Secret Service. London: Grafton, 1990.

NameBase: "Deacon tends to rely on sources with an axe to grind." However, since "this is the first English-language history of the French secret service, we can't be choosy. He begins his chronology before the revolution, and about one-third through the book has arrived at DeGaulle's World War II resistance.... The SDECE ... became the DGSE in 1982, while counterintelligence is handled by a separate agency, the DST. One chapter is about the Greenpeace affair of 1985, when French agents sank the Rainbow Warrior.... But another topic is ignored by Deacon: the extent to which France may be involved with industrial and high-tech spying in countries such as the U.S."

[France][c]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. The Greatest Treason: The Bizarre Story of Hollis, Liddell and Mountbatten. London: Century, 1990.

According to Surveillant 1.3, Deacon "contends that the real `fifth man' was ... Guy Liddell and working in the shadows was a very closeted homosexual in the figure of Earl Mountbatten of Burma." The timing of this release was unfortunate, following the different account in Andrew and Gordievsky's KGB. The first printing was caught in a libel suit in 1989 and the "book was withdrawn. This edition deletes the offending passages."

[UK/SpyCases/Debate]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. A History of the British Secret Service. London: Muller, 1969. New York: Taplinger, 1970. London: Grafton, 1991. [pb] JN329I6D41970

With regard to the 1991 paperback edition, Surveillant 1.1 calls this an "encyclopedic history of British intelligence." To Constantinides, this work is too often wrong, selective in material, and spotty in reliability.

[UK/Overviews]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. A History of the Russian Secret Service. New York: Taplinger, 1972. London: Muller, 1972.

Rocca and Dziak call this a "highly selective, anecdotal survey ... from the Oprichnina ... to the KGB. Actually not a 'history,' this ... book ... relies largely on secondary materials, on unaccredited 'insider' information, and on the Soviet and Western press." The GRU receives no attention.

[Russia]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. The Israeli Secret Service. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1977.

Chambers comments that this book "sounds like a PR release from Mossad"; there are "lots of stories, [but] very few details." Constantinides notes that Deacon's work "depends upon newspaper accounts and a few published memoirs plus some books by persons no more privy to Israel secrets ... than the author himself."

[Israel]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick].

1. Kempai Tai: A History of the Japanese Secret Service. London: Muller, 1982. New York: Beaufort, 1983.

See below for revised and updated edition.

2. Kempai Tai: The Japanese Secret Service, Then and Now. Tokyo: Charles Tuttle, 1990.

Surveillant 1.2 notes that this is the revised and updated edition. Deacon sees Japanese intelligence as a "giant organization that efficiently sucks in staggering amounts of information."

For Oros, IJI&C 15.1, Deacon's work "provides good background material on the variety of Japanese intelligence activities through World War II, but falters badly in examining the postwar period."

[Japan/PostWWII]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. The Silent War: A History of Western Naval Intelligence. Newton Abbot, UK: David & Charles, 1978. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1978.

Sexton notes that The Silent War is a "[s]urvey history of the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the British Naval Intelligence Division (NID) from their inception[s] to the 1980s."

To Constantinides, the book is "[e]asy to read," but "must be approached with caution because it is a mixture of good sections ... and weak ones, with debatable and (at times) sweeping conclusions." The World War I and World War II sections are the strongest parts of the book; earlier and later coverage is weak.

[MI/Navy&Overviews; UK/Overviews/Gen/MI]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. Spyclopedia: The Comprehensive Handbook of Espionage. New York: Morrow, 1987. [Petersen]

[RefMats]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. Super Spy: The Man Who Infiltrated the Kremlin and the Gestapo. [UK]: Futura, 1990. [pb]

Surveillant 1.1: "William Otto Lucas, also known as William va Narvig.... He once told Deacon about meeting with Sidney Reilly.... Never accepted in the West, Narvig was suspected of being a double-agent by the FBI and not trusted by the British SIS. Most complete account to date."

[UK/Biogs]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. The Truth Twisters. London: Macdonald, 1987.

[MI/Deception]

Deacon, Richard [Donald McCormick]. With My Little Eye: The Memoirs of a Spy-Hunter. London: Frederick Muller, 1982.

[UK/Memoirs]

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