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Michael Smith, Killer Elite. The Inside Story of America’s Most Secret Special Operations Team.
Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, 2006.
$24.95. ISBN 0312362722.

Killer Elite is the first full account of the 25 years history of the top-secret US Army special operations unit known as ‘The Activity’ within the US Special Forces community.
This special intelligence unit was born in January 1981, after the failure of Operation Eagle Claw, the aborted attempt to rescue the American hostages from Iran in 1980. One of the main reasons this operation failed was a lack of intelligence on the ground.
The Pentagon highly criticized the weakness of the CIA intelligence in Iran and decided to create its own secret surveillance unit, under the cover name of ‘Intelligence Support Activity’ (ISA). This unit was created to operate undercover anywhere in the world and to carry out deniable operations preparing the way for Delta Force and Seal Team Six, the two famous US antiterrorist units.
From the beginning, US military chiefs decided to hide it from the politicians. For 25 years, The Activity has hidden behind a myriad of code names like Forward Operating Group, Centra Spike, Grey Fox, Torn Victor, etc. The unit had been publicly ‘disbanded’ many times but secretly resurrected immediately after. The aim was to deceive the US parliamentary Commissions of Defense as well as foreign countries looking at the US intelligence and special forces order of battle.
Despite the lack of official sources, Sunday Times’ journalist Michael Smith had the advantage of access to many former members of the Activity. He also has an excellent grasp of intelligence and special operations.
From the early years of the Activity, almost all important operations are described. We follow the unit’s men on operations since the rescue of General James Dozier from the Italian Red Brigades, until the capture of Saddam Hussein and the assassination of key members of al Qa’eda. Along the way, we discover the US’ attempts to rescue missing servicemen from Laos, after the Vietnam War, and the undercover operations in Beirut in the 1980’s.
We also learn about the Activity‘s ‘business’ in South America, where the unit was spearheading the war on drug barons and providing the electronic surveillance that led to the hideouts of Pablo Escobar. More recent missions include snatching war criminals from their safe houses in the Balkans, and operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Horn of Africa, where the Activity is at the forefront of the war on terror.
Michael Smith writes well, unexaggeratedly and sheds some new light on this secret unit. But although he has painstakingly researched, there’s nothing really new in it for specialists. Most elements of operations’ accounts could be found elsewhere.
The book describes more special operations than intelligence. Although it has been greatly publicized, Smith deals above all with the hunt for terrorists and the internal rivalries within the military hierarchy and the US special operations community.

Eric Denécé
Centre Français de Recherche
sur le Renseignement

Sebastian Ritchie. Our Man in Yugoslavia. The Story of a Secret Service Operative. Frank Cass: London, 2004.
£20.99. ISBN 0714684414

Sebastian Ritchie is an official historian at the Air Historical branch (RAF) of the Ministry of Defence. He obtained his PhD from King’s College, London in 1994. Owen Reed was his grandfather and this book is a perfect homage to him. Richie wrote this book as entirely private and personal project. But the method is historical and he very well combined Owen Reed’s wartime diaries from Yugoslavia with records he could find in the National Archives. What a pity he didn’t used other records, for example from Slovenia and Croatia.
As author said in introduction – this book is not much of a biography but rather an operational history. Its subject, Owen Reed, was a successful actor and broadcaster who joined the Army in 1940 with the intention of serving in the Royal Armoured Corps. Later he was a liaison officer in the Middle East and after he was saved from death at El Alamein, he was promoted to captain, he worked for the BBC in Cairo and thus was recruited by SIS (masquerading under the name of "Inter-Services Liaison Department") as a field officer for infiltration into Yugoslavia.
Reed’s SIS assignments to Yugoslavia involved closed collaboration with the Special Operations Executive (SOE). But whereas SOE’s wartime role in Yugoslavia has been the subject of an enormous literature over the past two decades, SIS’s operation there have received hardly any attention from historians.
SIS operations in Yugoslavia during the Second World War may conveniently be divided into three phases. During the first phase – from the outbreak of war to the German occupation in April 1941 – SIS worked through the British Embassy in Belgrade and through consulates in Zagreb, Split, and elsewhere. James Millar, Bill Stuart, and their colleagues operated under diplomatic cover and recruited agents among British Council lecturers and members of the British and Commonwealth business community. In the second phase – from April 1941 to early 1943 – SIS collaborated with the Yugoslav government-in-exile and worked through royalist Yugoslav officers who had escaped at the time of the occupation. Finally – from the spring of 1943 – they began to deploy British officers such as Stuart, Syers, Cooke, and Reed, and Yugoslav emigres such as Leonard – his Slovenian name was Zdravko Lenščak, but is not mentioned – into the field. Field operatives were thereafter central to SIS’s wartime intelligence-gathering activities in Yugoslavia.
In July 1943 Reed had little knowledge of Yugoslavia and spoke no Serbo-Croat, but he could offer SIS his experience in the collection of information, a proven ability to work alone in remote territory, a basic knowledge of military staff work, and at least some evidence of linguistic aptitude. Following his recruitment he received a training that can only have been rudimentary – a broad introduction to intelligence gathering, assessment and presentation, Allied strategy, language and codes, and aircraft pick-ups – and then he was dispatched to Croatia with a radio operator and interpreter. He spent his first month with Partisans under virtual house arrest and was then abandoned by the head of the British mission, Anthony Hunter; in January his interpreter joined the Partisans. But despite this inauspicious beginning, his first mission to Croatia was the most successful of the three SIS assignments.
Promoted to major, Reed headed the British mission in Croatia until the end of June 1944, representing both SIS as Judge and SOE as Fungus mission. Both were located at General Staff Croatia which was commanded by General Ivan Gošnjak, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and there was the greatest Partisan base in Yugoslavia. Through his Partisan hosts he obtained a steady supply of intelligence which he passed on to SIS. At the same time he arranged for the delivery of increasing quantities of supplies to the Partisans and eventually succeeded in organizing landing grounds, where Dakotas could both deposit stores and evacuate, as a vital staging post for SOE, SIS, and other Allied officers transiting through Croatia.
Reed was flown back to London in July 1944 to report on the Partisans’ territorial ambitions in Venezia Giulia, and was duly debriefed by SIS. It was decided that he should next be despatched to Istria. The title describing this period of his life as ‘The Istrian Debacle’ shows how unsatisfied he was there. When he arrived at the beginning of September, he found in Istria numerous Allied covert organisations – the British Military Mission, LRDG, SBS and OSS – were working without proper co-ordination on or near the peninsula, and relations with the Partisans deteriorating sharply. Within two weeks, Reed’s mission had effectively been closed down; his two Slovenian radio operators then disappeared under deeply suspicious circumstances. He remained in Istria until October until SIS transferred him to Slovenia. The author made a mistake in this chapter: While the British Military Mission at this time, called Force 399, with which he was working was based at the 9. Corps and not at 11. as he writes, while the 11. Corps belonged to GQ Croatia and the 9. Corps was under Slovenia GQ, which was responsible for Istria in the time.
In Slovenia, Reed was at least able to resume his task of intelligence gathering, but continuing difficulties with the Partisans severely inhibited his activities. His sources of information were largely confined to their intelligence handouts, which were only at times of value and which were difficult, if not impossible, to verify. His movements were closely monitored and he was denied direct contact with ordinary Slovenians. In dealing with vehemently anti-Western Partisan leadership he found himself engaged in an almost constant struggle against suspicious, prevarication, and outright obstruction. When partisans refused to release two German prisoners for their evacuation to Italy for interrogation, SIS withdraw Reed to Italy as long as his presence in Slovenia was pointless.
Reed’s last assignment brought him back to Croatia under the codename Outlaw. After an unexpected struggle with some of the other British officers he again was appointed to represent both SIS and the Military Mission. During the closing weeks of the war, he followed the Partisans triumphant final march on Zagreb, entering the city only shortly after it was liberated and establishing himself on the Foreign Office’s behalf as the British Consul. In this capacity he combined his consular activities with remarkably vivid insights into the communist take-over in Croatia. Having been one of the first SIS officers to arrive in Yugoslavia, he was also one of the very last British officers to leave – actually, he never went back.
The tendency to underestimate SIS’s role in Yugoslavia, which is not confined to the official history, stems partly from their steadfast refusal to release any records into public domain, and partly from a widespread misunderstanding of the manner in which they operated. With signal intelligence and a varied network of Yugoslav agents at their disposal in this period there was no obvious reason for SIS to infiltrate British officers as well. That need only arose at the beginning of 1943. Thereafter, SIS attached British officers to most of the main Partisan formation with the exception of Slovenia headquarters, where Leonard's Yugoslav team – the Moth mission – appears to have functioned very successfully until Reed relieved them in October 1944. From the reports of Moth Mission it is clear: “The field is so great that ISLD party have been able to do great work particularly in respect of locations of factories, airfields, and description of bridges, and their information sources extend well into northern Italy … Leonard has done excellent work, but I was astonished to find that he had dropped without any previous intelligence training, and also knows nothing of the organization of the German army.” (p.140)
From the records in Archives of Slovenia the author could obtain information how Slovenia VOS (Varnostno obveščevalna služba – the Slovenia Secret Information Service under Zdenka Kidrič, organised by Edvard Kardelj in August 1941, gave all the information to the Western Allies through Leonard, that is Lenščak, and also to the Eastern Allies through Stevo Krajačić, who was a member of GQ Croatia.
Beyond the official history, SIS’s association with Yugoslavia has been acknowledged by small group of authors whose principal aim has been to challenge the entire basis of British policy towards the resistance movements of Tito and Mihailovich. Their view is essentially that Britain should have continued its early support for Mihailovich instead of abandoning him in favour of the Partisans. They argue that the British secret organisation – SIS and SOE – had been extensively penetrated by left-wingers, who manipulated intelligence from the field to exaggerate the Partisans' military achievements and falsely accuse Mihailovich of inactivity or outright collaboration with the enemy. It doesn’t look like that from Owen Reed’s story: SIS did not favour the Partisans from the outset and worked closely with the Chetniks and other Yugoslav political organisations in 1942 and early 1943. And, despite growing doubts about Britain’s support for the Chetniks, they didn’t suppress intelligence that was critical of the Partisans. Their conviction that the Partisans represented by far the most active resistance movement in Yugoslavia was based not on political prejudice but on their reading of what they termed “most secret” sources – that is Enigma and other decrypts. By the beginning of 1943, the Partisans were more numerous, more active, and geographically more widespread than the Chetniks, and they were holding down more enemy troops. The Chetniks were largely confined to Old Serbia and Montenegro and were collaborating with Italians against Partisans.
Reed's personal experiences shed some light on SIS’s politics. He was not a political man, and politics played no part in his recruitment into the Service. He found SIS divided in their political affiliations. But the more overtly left-wing staff, such as James Millar, did not attempt to influence his reports in a manner favourable to the Partisans; on the contrary, they were often skeptical about the accuracy of Partisans intelligence. The story of Stump Gibbon’s evacuation must also cast doubt on the accusations of political bias that have been leveled against Millar and his team. As soon as Gibbon reached Bari, and despite his strident denunciation of the Slovenia Partisans, Millar arranged for his return to London where, as a direct result, his critique of Tito’s movement reached a number of senior officials in SIS, SOE, and the Foreign Office.
One consistent theme in the broader historiography of British covert operations during the Second World War is the rivalry that existed between SIS and SOE; the friction that punctuated their co-existence was in abundant evidence in the Yugoslav theater. The Special Operations Executive was primarily created as a separate department from SIS for political rather than military reasons. SIS were formally charged with the intelligence gathering role. Their disagreements over Yugoslavia were in the evaluation and interpretation of intelligence on Yugoslavia resistence movements. In marked contrast, SIS and SOE operatives in the field enjoyed an association that was for the most part harmonious, co-operative and productive.
Reed was despatched in October 1943 with a remit to supply intelligence on both Germans and the Partisans. This did not necessarily mean that SIS was spying on Tito's followers. But OANA – Yugoslav Secret Service – did think so and many field agents of Yugoslav origin therefore lost their lives during the war or shortly thereafter. That also is not mentioned in this book. But in time, and in the context of Europe’s impending division into rival communist and capitalist blocs, SIS began to see communist organizations as intelligence targets in their own right.
By the time of Reed’s final mission, SIS were already on a Cold War footing, a reorientation reflected in the establishment of the new Soviet department at their London headquarters. The transition was not difficult to effect, for SIS had directed their activities toward Soviet Union for much of the 1920s and 1930s; in 1945, they merely sought to resume their inter-war posture. Reed was personally less enthusiastic about the prospect of his reports being used, in his words, “to pave the way for the next war.”(p 178)
Author exposes a few lessons that may be gleaned until today from SIS’s experiences in wartime Yugoslavia such as that it is not wise to have two commanding places (one in Cairo and another in London); that Yugoslavia SIS spoke with two voices and periodically delivered very differing messages. I believe this is one more proof that political divide at impera is not unknown to the great powers.
Another lesson is that when powerful countries involve themselves in the internal affairs of weaker ones, there must always be a tendency for different factions in the weaker countries to exploit foreign intervention to further their particular ambitions. (p.180)
The book is very interesting, not only for historian, with much information and a very good index, for all who are interested in the less-known role of intelligence in the World War II.

Ljuba Dornik Šubelj
Ljubljana

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