Laura M. Calkins

Select Publications

Laura M. Calkins (2025). British surveillance of postwar Soviet radio jamming:
US–UK intelligence relations and interference detection at BBC Tatsfield, 1948-1949
Journal of Intelligence History 24 (2), 162-183, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/16161262.2024.2363716

Abstract: Following World War II the BBC, better known for radio programme broadcasts, continued its long-standing work of radio spectrum surveillance at the specialized receiving and measurement facility located at Tatsfield. Both before and after Soviet jamming of US and British Russian-language broadcasts escalated in April 1949, Tatsfield catalogued the technical characteristics of jamming signals. BBC engineers, experienced in interpreting types and sources of radio interference, issued fortnightly summaries with interpretations of these technical observations. US intelligence agencies knew of Tatsfield’s findings, but differing perspectives in Washington and London resulted in divergent responses to the technical intelligence data. With rising tensions in wider Anglo-American intelligence relations, fueled by the Soviet weapons program and security breaches, such differences presaged separate approaches to Soviet communications threats. US agencies received greatly increased funding, while the BBC’s budget struggles persisted. Even so, this interference detection was a high-water mark in Britain’s early Cold War intelligence work.

Published Books

China and The First Vietnam War, 1947-1954
Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia. Abingdon UK: Routledge, 2013

This book charts the development of the First Vietnam War – the war between the Vietnamese Communists (the Viet Minh) and the French colonial power—considering especially how relations between the Viet Minh and the Chinese Communists had a profound impact on the course of the war. It shows how the Chinese provided finance, training, and weapons to the Viet Minh, but how differences about strategy emerged, particularly when China became involved in the Korean War and the subsequent peace negotiations, when the need to placate the United States and to prevent US military involvement in Southeast Asia became a key concern for the Chinese. The book shows how the Viet Minh strategy of all-out war in the North and limited guerrilla warfare in the South developed from this situation, and how the war then unfolded.

Voices From Vietnam
Eye-witness Accounts of the War 1954-1975
(with Richard Burks Verrone) London: David & Charles, 2005.

The political and military struggles in Vietnam consumed the resources of both the East and the West. Once the United States committed its armed forces in 1965 to defend South Vietnam's independence, the conflict took on epic dimensions. The Vietnam War marked the largest commitment of American combat forces since World War II and became the longest war in US history. This remarkable collection of human stories from all sides of the conflict charts the war from its opening stages to the dramatic evacuation of Saigon in April 1975. Compiled from hundreds of interviews with veterans and eye-witnesses, and including rare archival photographs, it provides a unique insight into the most socially and politically divisive war of recent times.

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