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The Pinprick Approach: Whitehall’s Top-Secret Anti-Communist Committee and the Evolution of British Covert Action Strategy
- Journal of Cold War Studies
- The MIT Press
- Volume 16, Number 3, Summer 2014
- pp. 5-28
- Article
- Additional Information
This article examines Great Britain’s approach to covert action during the formative years of British Cold War intelligence operations, 1950–1951. Rather than shy away from such activity in the wake of the failure in Albania in the late 1940s, the British increased the number of operations they pursued. This was the start of a coherent strategy regarding covert activity that can be conceptualized as the “pinprick” approach. The strategy was overseen by a highly secretive Whitehall body, the Offfcial Committee on Communism, which in effect became the government’s covert action committee. This article uses the commission’s recently declassiffed papers for the ffrst time to assess the merits of this approach.