Publications

The terrorist attacks that have been haunting European capitals show us that counterterrorism is necessary and essential in modern day society. The intelligence services and other organisations active in the field of counterterrorism are faced on a daily basis with the question of how extensive and intrusive their actions can be. What are the limits? Which actions are ethical? And most importantly: how do the professionals themselves deal with these – often complex – dilemmas?

Over the past twenty years or so, intelligence and security services in several Western countries and in Russia as well have allowed official histories to be published. Authors, in some cases in-house historians, were given access to archives of the service and allowed their use for the publication, albeit in all cases with limitations as we shall see. This article discusses official histories which have been published in several Western countries and in Russia since the 1990s.