The letter was later found to have been the work of anti-socialist elements within MI5 and MI6. It has been alleged that a number of foreign intelligence figures at this time were sympathetic to Hitler, in their opposition to the USSR. Its reputation had been tarnished by the capture of two agents by the Gestapo in the Venlo incident of It played a key role in the overthrow of Mohammed Mussadeq in Iran in , and was active in counter-insurgency campaigns in Malaya, Borneo, Kenya and Cyprus.
Nevertheless, MI6 remained resistant to the widely-circulating notion that Philby was a Soviet agent — until he fled to the USSR in , and confessed in his memoir that he had been a spy for over 30 years. Until , the British government continued to deny the existence of MI6 and its fellow intelligence agencies. In the late s, MI6 waged a media battle with a sacked former officer, Richard Tomlinson.
In , a list of MI6 agents produced by Tomlinson was published, and in , his memoirs were published. The events of September 11 , and the emergence of international terrorism as a major concern for Western governments, is reflected in the priorities of MI6 today. Every state in history has maintained its secret intelligence services, but their existence is always problematic for open democratic states, particularly in the age of mass media. The openness required in democratic societies is necessarily at odds with the secrecy of intelligence agencies.
As such, revelations about their work has often been a cause of public scandal. The history provides insights into the battles for survival that MI6 faced inside government with other departments which were constantly seeking to take control or make the case that a service was not needed. And there is one section of the book the current chief of MI6, Sir John Sawers, might wish to read carefully.
His predecessors, especially after World War I, had to fight against swingeing budget cuts from the Treasury. But it is the story of the individual officers and agents and their operations which are most revealing. One story revolves around a glamorous year-old woman code named Ecclesiastic. The mistress of a German intelligence officer based in Lisbon during World War II, she used the relationship to pass on false information which included misleading claims over the damage German bombs were inflicting on London.
Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square had been totally destroyed, they were told. The intention was to leave the Germans unsure about how successful the targeting of their V rockets was proving, so as to misdirect future attacks. Mr Ustinov wrote that she clearly enjoyed "the game of mobilizing her ample female resources against normal male instincts".
Some files had been destroyed but Prof Jeffery says he was reassured to find that some had survived which painted MI6 in a less positive light. There is a detailed account of the disaster at Venlo in at the beginning of World War II when German agents lured their British counterparts into a trap at the Dutch border town.
The British agents thought they were there to meet Nazi officers willing to betray Hitler but instead were captured and taken into Germany. There they were forced to expose many of MI6's secrets. There is also the story of the aptly titled Operation Embarrass, aimed at blowing up ships in port preparing to take Jewish refugees to Palestine just after World War II.
Britain was still ruling Palestine and politicians ordered MI6 to stop the flow of refugees. A handful of ships were attacked in Italian ports in and but the teams were told to make sure there were no personnel on board at the time. There are also the stories of gadgets and concealment devices, although the technical sophistication was barely a match for those used by James Bond.
Disguise also plays its part. One rather unfortunate picture reveals exactly what one officer, who was working undercover as a journalist for the Times, looked like, when he was arrested in Madrid wearing women's clothing in He claimed "he was taking the feminine garments to a lady in Gibraltar and thought he would try them on for a prank".
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