Baghdad's Spy

(Paperback)

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Baghdad's Spy is the story of Britain's foreign intelligence service 1958-2001 astold from the unique perspective of the daughter of a senior spy. Corinne Souza breaks the last taboo of British espionage as she describes the impact that Crown service can have on a spy's family. Souza's story begins in Iraq, where, after the murder of the Boy King' in 1958, her father was recruited for the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6. She recalls the vivacity of Baghdad's cosmopolitan society in the 1960s and the subsequent arrangements made by the Crown for her father when he later worked from London. In the late '70s, however, his relationship with the State soured and Souza relives the vicious backlash he then faced from the No Names' - colleagues with concealed identities. In a personal and at times shocking portrait, she examines her espionage inheritance and the price she paid for refusing to follow in her father's footsteps. Controversially, she also reveals the SIS's failure prior to the 1990-91 Gulf War. Through her father's experiences, Souza traces the disintegration of British Intelligence in the Middle East since the late '70s - a legacy that led to Britain being unable to assist the CIA in preventing the horror of September 11 or come to grips with al-Qaeda. This revealing memoir is an extraordinary account of a family's secret life, the involvement of children in espionage and a man's struggle to balance loyalty to the Crown with the increasingly amoral demands of what became an incompetent and renegade service.