James Gannon is a freelance writer and producer of documentaries for

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's ...

. He has published many articles on a variety of subjects.

Life

James Gannon is the author of ''Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies and Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth century'' (2001). The book discusses key episodes of 20th-century

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tang ...

and cryptology involving the Zimmermann telegram; Enigma decryption and "

Ultra adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park ...

"; the

Battle of the Atlantic The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allied naval blocka ...

; Erwin Rommel; the

Colossus computer Colossus was a set of computers developed by British codebreakers in the years 1943–1945 to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) to perform Boolean and counting operations. Colossus ...

; Frank Rowlett and Japan's

Purple Purple is any of a variety of colors with hue between red and blue. In the RGB color model used in computer and television screens, purples are produced by mixing red and blue light. In the RYB color model historically used by painters, ...

cipher In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...

; Allied

Operation Overlord Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Norm ...

deceptions; World War II spies and spy organizations;

Rudolf Roessler Rudolf Roessler (German: ''Rößler''; 22 November 1897 – 11 December 1958) was a Protestant Germany, German and dedicated anti-Nazi. During the interwar period, Roessler was a lively cultural journalist, with a focus on theatre. In 1933 while ...

and the Lucy Spy Ring; Takeo Yoshikawa and Japan's attack on

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the ...

;

Joseph J. Rochefort Joseph John Rochefort (May 12, 1900 – July 20, 1976) was an American naval officer and cryptanalyst. He was a major figure in the United States Navy's cryptographic and intelligence operations from 1925 to 1946, particularly in the Battle of ...

and the

Battle of Midway The Battle of Midway was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that took place on 4–7 June 1942, six months after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and one month after the Battle of the Coral Sea. The U.S. Navy under A ...

; Richard Sorge; Donald Maclean;

Klaus Fuchs Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs (29 December 1911 – 28 January 1988) was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly a ...

; Venona; Oleg Penkovsky; and Ryszard Kukliński. A thread running through Gannon's book is the ubiquity of distortions in accounts of

and cryptology, and the readiness of unscrupulous individuals, agencies and countries to take credit for the achievements of others.James Gannon, ''Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies'', passim.

Notes

References

* James Gannon, ''Stealing Secrets, Telling Lies: How Spies and Codebreakers Helped Shape the Twentieth Century'', Washington, D.C., Brassey's, 2001. American male journalists American historians of espionage Year of birth missing (living people) Living people {{US-journalist-20thC-stub