The Secret History of Five Eyes

Chris's Review

The Five Eyes is the intelligence collaboration between Australia and New Zealand and the USA, UK and Canada. The association commenced during WW2 eight decades ago and is still in existence. The member agencies include GCHQ (Bletchley Park) MI5 CIA FBI and ASIO whose objective is to maintain national security and foil the enemy and today includes the latest threats from China and Russia. The book describes some of the most interesting operations and the biggest disasters which tested the trust between the countries. Events are included that occurred in Australia such as Vladimir Petrov’s case during Menzies’ prime ministership and more currently Alexander Downer’s meeting with Trump’s campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos.

Publishers Reviews

The 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.