The Secret History of the Five Eyes

The Secret History of the Five Eyes: The Untold Story of the International Spy Network. 
Richard Kerbaj.
Blink Publishing. 2022. ISBN: 9781789465037.

The Secret History of the Five Eyes is a narrative history of the English‑speaking signals‑intelligence alliance linking the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, tracing its emergence from ad‑hoc wartime cooperation to a powerful but fragile modern spy network riven by asymmetries of power, internal distrust, and periodic scandal. It combines archival research and interviews with senior intelligence figures to show both the alliance’s major successes against common threats and its repeated failures, misjudgments, and internal tensions. The book is organised into four broad periods: the Origins, the Cold War, the War on Terror, and what he calls Unconventional Battlefields, covering cyber, great‑power rivalry, and newer domains. Each section blends institutional history with case‑study chapters that zoom in on particular operations, crises, or personalities inside the alliance.
 
The book’s central claim is that the Five Eyes is less the product of grand design than of converging self‑interest repeatedly renegotiated in the face of common threats. Cooperation endures not because the five states are equal or always harmonious, but because they gain more, in access, warnings, and leverage, than they lose to power imbalances, petty rivalries, and occasional duplicity. Kerbaj presents Five Eyes as a uniquely intimate but perpetually uneasy compact: indispensable to Western security, structurally asymmetrical, and always one misjudgment or breach away from renewed soul‑searching.
 
Richard Kerbaj is a BAFTA‑winning, twice Emmy‑nominated filmmaker, writer, and investigative journalist known for his work on intelligence and national security. He has worked extensively in both Australian and British media and later moved into high‑profile documentary and drama production. Born in Melbourne, Australia, to parents of Druze origin, Kerbaj spent part of his childhood in Lebanon during the civil war before his family returned to Australia. He began his journalism career as a freelancer for Fairfax titles, then joined The Australian in 2005, winning the John Curtin Prize for Journalism and a Young Journalist of the Year award for his reporting on Sheikh Taj Din al‑Hilali. Moving to the UK, he worked for The Times and then as security correspondent for The Sunday Times from 2010, specialising in terrorism, intelligence, and counter‑terrorism stories and sharing the British Press Awards “Scoop of the Year” in 2018 for reporting on pornography found on UK minister Damian Green’s computer.