Spies, Culture, and Society

A revealing look at the interrelationship between secret intelligence agencies and the wider societies and cultures they inhabit

Intelligence agencies are traditionally understood as cloistered entities. Hidden behind a veil of secrecy, they conduct their activities relatively free from public scrutiny, and their assessments are ideally detached from the cultural and political biases that pervade our fallen world.

Today, however, intelligence services have come in from the cold. They feature routinely in our popular culture and our political debates. Our ideas about them, from "deep state" conspiracy theories to popular tropes drawn from spy fiction and cinema, have even influenced the outcome of major elections. Likewise, as John Le Carré once put it, intelligence officers do not sit "like monks in a cell" but are themselves products of the social, political, and cultural domains they inhabit. 

Spies, Culture, and Society brings together some of the world's leading experts on intelligence and its wider impact to explore different aspects of this reciprocal relationship between spies, culture, and society. The topics covered include the influence of spy films and novels, interactions between spies and journalists, the historical roots of the "deep state" conspiracy theory, Western intelligence and imperialism, and more. Together, these chapters showcase a new way of understanding intelligence agencies as fundamentally integrated into the cultures, societies, and political systems that they seek to analyze and protect.

Offering meaningful insights for intelligence studies scholars, Cold War historians, and media scholars, this collection offers a new paradigm for understanding intelligence agencies as fundamentally integrated into the cultures and societies they seek to protect.

Simon Willmetts is an associate professor of intelligence studies at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs at Leiden University. He is the author of In Secrecy's Shadow: The OSS and CIA in Hollywood Cinema, 1941–1979.

Constant Hijzen is the historical adviser at the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and is a research fellow in intelligence and security at Leiden University. He is the author of Roots of Counterterrorism: Contemporary Wisdom from Dutch Intelligence.