The Secret History of the Five Eyes: The untold story of the shadowy international spy network, through its targets, traitors and spies (Paperback) - Richard Kerbaj

The first published account of the Five Eyes, the elite spy network created by Britain and the United States that industrialised espionage operations.

'Puts Richard Kerbaj in the front rank of modern authors on espionage. It is, by turns, gripping and shocking and sheds completely new light on the most important intelligence alliance in the world' - Tim Shipman, author of All Out War

'Examines decades of intelligence sharing' - The Telegraph


'Reopen[s] the debate' - The Times


'Explosive' - The World News


The Secret History of The Five Eyes: The untold story of the international spy network, is a riveting and exclusive narrative of the most powerful and least understood intelligence alliance, which has been steeped in secrecy since its formation in 1956.


Richard Kerbaj, an award-winning investigative journalist and filmmaker, bypasses the usual censorship channels to tell the definitive account of authoritative but unauthorised stories of the Western world's most powerful but least known intelligence alliance made up of the US, Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. As Kerbaj shows, spy stories are never better than when they are true - and these span from 1930s Nazi spy rings to the most recent developments in Ukraine and China.


Through personal interviews with world leaders - including British Prime Ministers Theresa May and David Cameron - and more than 100 intelligence officials, this book explores the complex personalities who helped shape the Five Eyes. They include a Scotland Yard detective who became a spymaster and inspired the first exchanges between MI5 and the FBI. An American home economics teacher who helped create one of the most effective programmes to counter Soviet espionage. The CIA's lone officer in Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution. GCHQ's chief during the Edward Snowden intelligence leak. And the Australian politician turned diplomat whose tip-off to the FBI instigated the inquiry into Russia's meddling in the US presidential contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016.


Richard Kerbaj is able to draw from deep inside the secret corridors of power and his unparalleled access spans all 5 countries. Some of the people he has interviewed include former GCHQ director Sir Iain Lobban, CIA director General David Petraeus, MI5 director-general Eliza Manningham-Buller, NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers, British National Security Advisor Kim Darroch, ASIO chief Mike Burgess, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's chief Richard Fadden, and Ciaran Martin, the official who oversaw Britain's assessments on whether the Chinese telecoms firm, Huawei, should have had a role in the creation of the UK's 5G network.


This page-turning book will lift the lid on spy stories from across the English-speaking world, question the future of the alliance, and our place within it.

About the Author

Richard Kerbaj is a Bafta-winning and twice Emmy-nominated filmmaker and writer who has specialised in investigating crime- and national security-related stories for more than fifteen years. He has written extensively about the impact that counter-terrorism and counter-espionage have had on intelligence agencies, including MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the CIA, in their battle against ISIS and al-Qaeda, Russia's widespread disinformation campaigns, and China's industrialised thefts of Western intellectual property.

Richard is a multi award-winning journalist who was the security correspondent for the Sunday Times from 2010 to 2020. Before that, he worked for The Times as a foreign correspondent, and for The Australian newspaper. He has also written and produced award-winning documentaries.