MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949

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On 6 May 2004 it was announced that Sir Richard Dearlove was to be replaced as head of SIS by John Scarlett, former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee. Scarlett was an unusually high-profile appointment to the job, and gave evidence at the Hutton Inquiry. [78] At the Coroner's Inquest into the death of the Princess, on 13 February 2008, speaking by video-link from France, Tomlinson conceded that, after the interval of 16 or 17 years, he "could not remember specifically" whether the document he had seen during 1992 had in fact proposed the use of a strobe light to cause a traffic accident as a means of assassinating Milošević, although use of lights for this purpose had been covered in his MI6 training. [52] On being told that no MI6 file on Henri Paul had been found, Tomlinson said that it "would be absurd after 17 years to say I can positively disagree with it, but... I do not think the fact that they did not manage to find a file rules out anything either". [52] He said he believed MI6 had an informant at the Paris Ritz but he could not be certain that this person was necessarily Henri Paul. [52] Post-MI6 activities [ edit ]

After the war, resources were significantly reduced but during the 1920s, SIS established a close operational relationship with the diplomatic service. In August 1919, Cumming created the new passport control department, providing diplomatic cover for agents abroad. The post of Passport Control Officer provided operatives with diplomatic immunity. [17] Dorril, Stephen (2002). MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service. Simon and Schuster. p. 752. ISBN 9780743217781.

You have been doing some proper research into the British Secret Service: are the books complete fiction or do certain elements of this really exist? The turning point in Jeffery's story, the making of a secret service with a truly international range, was the Second World War. This was the golden age of SIS. The budget tripled. Personnel soared from fewer than 100 to almost 1,000. But it was also the beginning of the end. Philby, Burgess and Maclean were all in place by 1941, the former an object of admiration respect. Jeffery's account includes the first of his terrible treacheries, but not the embarrassing denouement. Cochrane, Alan (9 February 2008). "Former spy in line for top Scottish Tory job". Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 9 December 2019 . Retrieved 15 February 2013.

Foster, Peter (5 April 2014). "Tony Blair 'knew all about CIA secret kidnap programme' ". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022 . Retrieved 25 August 2017. a b "MI5 and MI6 unable to stop Secret Wars' publication". The Guardian. 15 April 2009. Archived from the original on 10 February 2021 . Retrieved 3 December 2012. Special Forces Club: a private club in Knightsbridge catering exclusively to members, both current and retired, of the intelligence services in Britain and abroad, along with the Special Air Service (SAS). [104]

During the Second World War the human intelligence work of the service was complemented by several other initiatives:

It is tempting to see him as a sort of mirror image of Philby, but there is one crucial difference. Whereas Philby was ideologically committed to communism before he joined MI6, and infiltrated the spy agency so as to betray it, Gordievsky became enamoured of the west when he was already on the inside. Partly, he was appalled by the Berlin Wall, but mainly he was radicalised by the crushing of the democratic uprising in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Johnston, Philip (16 November 2006). "MI6 licensed to thrill listeners to Radio 1". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022 . Retrieved 1 July 2012. And this was the kind of little news item which would have gone through to Britain because they were so worried about German spies in the Second World War. Ian Fleming was the personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence at the time, and it seems to me almost inconceivable the item didn’t pass across his desk, because the co-incidence of writing about it in From Russia with Love is just too strong. In February 2013 Channel Four News reported on evidence of SIS spying on opponents of the Gaddafi regime and handing the information to the regime in Libya. The files looked at contained "a memorandum of understanding, dating from October 2002, detailing a two-day meeting in Libya between Gaddafi's external intelligence agency and two senior heads of SIS and one from MI5 outlining joint plans for "intelligence exchange, counter-terrorism and mutual co-operation". [86] 2015 onwards [ edit ] a b c d "MI6 spies exposed by Balkan rivals". The Telegraph. 27 September 2004. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022.Main article: SIS Building The SIS Building at Vauxhall Cross, south London, seen from Vauxhall Bridge A substantial part of the Polish resistance activity was clandestine and involved the establishment of cellular intelligence networks. The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany also placed the Polish people in a unique position to gather intelligence on the enemy, as they were often used as forced laborers across the continent. This proximity to key locations and military installations allowed them to provide valuable insights to the British intelligence services. [32] The key card that Britain held in these exchanges was our manifest superiority in intelligence, in particular our success in breaking the German Enigma code. Churchill authorised full disclosure of this achievement to the Americans, even at a time when the US was still neutral. The British made full use of their unique superiority in this field, which, even in the present diluted form, remains a cornerstone of the relationship. Gordievsky was KGB through and through. Born in 1938, just as the great terror was winding down, his father was a secret policeman and his older brother became one too. Bright and studious, he won a place at the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations – the “Soviet Harvard” – and it was almost inevitable that he would end up in the Soviet Union’s most elite corps: the first chief directorate, the KGB division responsible for spying on foreigners, rather than harassing Jews, Baptists and free thinkers at home.

a b c d Du Chateau, Carroll (31 May 2000). "Outcast: the spy who wants to spill the beans". The New Zealand Herald. Duško Popov, a Second World War double agent; he was the key for operations in Nazi Germany and, as an MI6 agent, he was the inspiration for Ian Fleming's James Bond Judd, Alan (1999). The quest for C: Sir Mansfield Cumming and the founding of the British Secret Service. London: HarperCollins, ISBN 0-00-255901-3. Le Carré’s cold war novels are full of an amoral bleakness; both sides are so worn down by the cold war that there is little if any difference between them. The Spy and the Traitor, however, is in no doubt that Gordievsky was serving a cause that was just and correct with “an adamantine, unshakable conviction that what he was doing was unequivocally right”. His decision to hand the KGB’s secrets over to Britain was a “righteous betrayal”.Consider the case of Colonel Dudley Wrangel Clarke, an expert in strategic deception, using a role as a war correspondent for the Times as cover. To extend his efforts, Clarke travelled to Spain where, shortly after arrival, he was arrested by the authorities dressed, "down to a brassiere", as a woman.