Fro - Frz

Frolik, Josef. The Frolik Defection: The Memoirs of an Agent. London: Leo Cooper, 1975.

Clark comment: Frolik was a Czech intelligence officer who defected to the British in 1968. According to Constantinides, these "memoirs are not exactly accurate on the actual details of [Frolik's] defection, partly for reasons of security, it seems." Pforzheimer notes that book includes a discussion of "recruitment of members of the British Parliament[] and development of certain British labor leaders as sources."

[OtherCountries/Czechoslovakia/CW; UK/SpyCases/Gen]

Frost, David. "An Interview with Richard Helms." Studies in Intelligence (Fall 1981): 1-29. Studies in Intelligence: 45th Anniversary Special Edition (Fall 2000): 107-136.

"Adapted from an interview with Mr. Helms taped by David Frost in Washington, 22-23 May 1978."

[CIA/DCIs/Helms]

Frost, Mike, and Michel Gratton. Spyworld: Inside the Canadian and American Intelligence Establishments. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1994.

Clark comment: The focus here is on the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada's partner to NSA and GCHQ. Frost is a former CSE employee; Gratton writes for the Toronto Sun.

According to Surveillant 3.6, the authors "claim that Canada's intelligence agency spied on Margaret Trudeau, on two [British] ministers ... in 1983..., and on numerous others.... One of our reviewers [Louis Tordella] found scores of errors and thought the book haphazardly produced with an eye on exposé and sales.... 'This is a book of pure revenge by an alcoholic of dubious reliability.... [The] few tidbits of truth surrounded by all the wild tales will do as much harm as if it were all true.'"

Farson, IJI&C 7.4, comments that much of the publicity surrounding this book has been about CSE intercepts between the French government and Quebec's political leaders. "For the most part, [however,] the book deals with Mike Frost's personal exploits. In themselves, they are not particularly informative.... The authors ... posit that the CSE has a formidable potential for abuse and is totally unaccountable for its actions." Frost was let go by CSE because of a drinking problem and remains "a bitter man who sees himself completely rejected by the very agency for which he sacrificed the best years of his life."

To McGehee, CIABASE January 1995 Update Report, the book "provides one of the most detailed and descriptive accounts of how close-in technical intelligence operations are conducted." Rich, WIR 15.2, calls this book a "whining account" of an "inconsequential" career; "much of what [Frost] says is rambling supposition." Chambers finds the book "a touch Ageeist. Some claims strain credulity and one has to wonder about the effects of alcohol abuse on Frost."

NameBase says that Spyworld "reveals the extensive cooperation among Canada's CSE, Britain's GCHQ, and the American NSA. The three are almost a single entity, and are able to function outside the laws of their own countries through the simple expedient of secretly shifting assignments among them whenever the legal situation might prove embarrassing. So when Margaret Thatcher asked GCHQ to spy on two of her ministers in 1983, GCHQ felt it was too hot to handle and invited CSE to visit London and bring their intercept equipment. Now the 'take' is considered 'information from a friendly agency,' no warrants are needed, and everyone is laughing all the way to their computers. Except for a couple of cabinet ministers, that is."

According to Bill Robinson (barobins@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca), Canadian "newspaper reviews of the book include the following: Wesley Wark..., 'Matters of Intelligence: Canada as the Listening Post,' Globe and Mail, 12 November 1994, C26. [And] Alan MacCartney (former CSE analyst), 'Look Inside Spy Agency Raises Important Issues,' Ottawa Citizen, 11 December 1994, B4. MacCartney's conclusion is 'Read this book. It isn't a literary masterpiece, but it does raise important issues.'"

[Canada/Gen]

Frum, David, and Richard Perle. An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. New York: Random House, 2003.

Terrill, Parameters 34 (Winter 2004-2005), comments that the authors have "outlined an agenda as sweeping as the title of their book and every bit as unrealistic." Frum and Perle attack the State Department and the intelligence community, "but they also have some hard things to say about the military, whose leaders are described as nothing more than bureaucrats in uniform." Essentially, "this book presents shallow and supercilious answers to complex questions and in doing so threatens to create more problems than it solves."

[Terrorism/00s/Gen]

Fry, Helen. Spymaster: The Secret Life of Kendrick. London: Marranos Press, 2014.

Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, 10 Feb. 2015, sees this as "an exhaustively-researched book on a man" who from the British Passport Office in Vienna helped "thousands of Jews escape from Austria before the outbreak" of World War II." Back in Britain at the beginning of the war, "Kendrick and a small team began to operate the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre.... His task was to interrogate enemy prisoners of war." Fry's "book could be edited down -- there is almost too much detail in it. But it is an extremely valuable contribution to our understanding of a secret world inhabited by brave, resilient, sometimes exotic, individuals."

See also, Fry's The M Room: Secret Listeners Who Bugged the Nazis in WW2 (2012).

Noting that the author "does not link the sources in her bibliography with any specific events<' Peake, Studies 59.1 (Mar. 2015), adds that this makes it "difficult to evaluate her conclusions about the value of Kendrick's operations."

[UK/WWII/Overviews]

Fry, Michael Graham. "The Uses of Intelligence: The United Nations Confronts the United States in the Lebanon Crisis, 1958." Intelligence and National Security 10, no. 1 (Jan. 1995): 59-91.

Fry argues that UN Secretary General Hammarskjold achieved considerable success in 1958. This success was in no small part due to the "reach and accuracy" of the intelligence gathered through the United Nations Observer Group in Lebanon (UNOGIL), in competition with the CIA.

[CIA/50s/Gen][c]

Fry, Michael G., and Miles Hochstein. "Epistemic Communities: Intelligence Studies and International Relations." Intelligence and National Security 8, no. 3 (Jul. 1993): 14-28.

"[I]ntelligence studies have been and remain a very modest part of the intellectual agenda of the international relations community."

[RefMats/Teaching][c]

Fryer, Mary Beacock. Loyalist Spy: The Experiences of Captain John Walden Meyers During the American Revolution. Brockville, Ont., Canada: Besancourt, 1974.

Constantinides: "Meyers, who was from New York State, served as a Loyalist spy," operating under the British Northern Department headquartered in Canada. "From Fryer's description, a good deal of this service was as courier for the British between Canada and New York City, although Meyers achieved fame at the time for his attempt to kidnap the American General Philip Schuyler."

[RevWar/Other]

Fryxell, Alma. "Psywar by Forgery." Studies in Intelligence 5, no. 1 (Winter 1961): 25-51.

The author discusses and provides examples of douments forged and disseminated by Soviet, Chinese, and Bloc intelligence agencies during 1957-1959. Some were "sniper shots at individual important targets," while others "formed rather elaborate progressions in prolonged campaigns."

[Russia/D&D]

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