The End of an Exclusive Special Intelligence Relationship: British-American Intelligence Co-operation Before, During and After the 1960s

Secret intelligence became a major ingredient in international relations in the twentieth century, vital as much to peace as to war. Cooperation was an ingredient in intelligence success, with the British-American special relationship the century's prime and dominant example. The US-UK arrangement reached a Churchillian apogee in the 1940s and 1950s, then in the 1960s there were signs of change. Upheavals within American society, new challenges to US foreign policy, a decline in British capabilities and the end of the Cold War did not destroy the Anglo-American intelligence relationship, but they did undermine its exclusive character.