BOOK REVIEW Unmasking British intelligence MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949 by Keith
Jeffery
Reviewed by Mahan Abedin
Celebrated and glorified in a succession of James Bond movies and countless
other works of fiction, the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, aka MI6)
has long been the object of extreme mystery, awe and grudging admiration.
Despite the official disavowed status of the SIS (at least until 1994),
elements in the British government and sections of the British media and
entertainment industry spent much of the second half of the 20th century
portraying Britain's external spy service as a super-efficient spying and
special operations machine, staffed by quintessentially elegant and upright
Englishmen whose prowess as field operatives is only matched by their ability
to woo the fairer sex.
In keeping with the British government's more open policy on intelligence
matters in recent years, and especially with the publication of Christopher
Andrew's authorized history of the British Security Service (aka MI5), it is
not altogether surprising to see the publication of MI6: The History of the
Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949 by Professor Keith Jeffery of
Queen's University, Belfast.
Jeffery's
work is proudly presented as an official history on the SIS's official website
(https://www.sis.gov.uk/) and the foreword to the book is written by John
Sawers, the current chief of the organization. Moreover, by his own admission,
Jeffery has been given unlimited access to SIS files spanning 40 years from
1909 to 1949.
The limitations of this type of scholarly endeavor are obvious and one which
Jeffery alludes to in the preface. Legitimate concerns about objectivity,
accuracy and lack of sufficient distance from the secret state notwithstanding,
Jeffery's work is an outstanding piece of historical research, in so far as it
sketches the origins and early development of the British Secret Intelligence
Service in tremendous and largely convincing detail.
De-mystifying SIS
"Went to the office ... and remained all day, but saw no one, nor was there
anything to do there." That was the entry on October 7, 1909 of Commander
Mansfield Cumming's diary, marking the first day of the modern British
intelligence services. Cumming was the co-founder of the Secret Service Bureau
and the head of its foreign section, which in due course metamorphosed into the
Secret Intelligence Service. The other branch of the bureau, headed by Vernon
Kell, later gained an independent institutional footing as the Security
Service.
Originating in a joint project by the Admiralty and the War Office, in the next
40 years the organization founded by Cumming would come to play a pivotal role
in the formulation and implementation of British foreign policy, in particular
by providing crucial support to the United Kingdom's war effort in both world
wars.
The stock in trade of the SIS then, as it now is, is the acquisition of foreign
secrets primarily through the recruitment and handling of human sources,
technically known as HUMINT (human intelligence). However, as Jeffery makes
abundantly clear, the SIS was also responsible for the management of the
Government Code and Cypher School (which in 1946 became GCHQ-Government
Communication Headquarters) until just after World War II. GC&CS (and later
GCHQ) is the lead British agency for the collection and analysis of signals
intelligence (SIGINT).
Grand British institutions are often defined by their founders. This is no
different with the SIS and its legendary founder Mansfield Cumming, who gave
rise to the signature "C" as the code name for the chief of the Secret Service,
a tradition that has survived to this day, even though the real names of the
heads of MI6 have been known since 1994, with the advent of the Intelligence
Services Act.
Among the many revelations in Jeffery's book is the disclosure that the
earliest document with a "C" signature in the archives was a memorandum from
Cumming to Admiral Alexander Bethell (the then director of British naval
intelligence) on January 10, 1910 (pg 726).
Hailing from a privileged (as opposed to overly-privileged) background,
Cumming's Victorian values were balanced by an enthusiastic embrace of the
modern world, typified by his love of fast cars and the possession of an early
pilot's license.
Most important of all, despite a near total lack of intelligence experience and
pedigree (for instance Cumming was not a linguist), he quickly mastered his
role and in due course became the quintessential spymaster, or in Jeffery's
words "[the] identikit spymaster: mysterious, secretive, engrossed by what
became known as tradecraft - secret writing, disguise, cover and the like." (pg
726)
Jeffery's 752-page book is heavy reading, replete with the smallest details. It
is easy to get bogged down in fascinating snippets, like for instance the
revelation that in October 1915 the SIS had identified semen as the best
invisible ink (pg 66). Jeffery writes with remarkable clarity and scholarly
caution about four areas in particular which should be of compelling interest
to academics with a serious interest in intelligence matters as well as
tradecraft practitioners.
First, Jeffery painstakingly positions the SIS in an interdepartmental and
broader Whitehall political and bureaucratic context in meticulous and
convincing detail. One of the striking features to emerge from the book is the
SIS's near-perennial quest for survival during its first 40 years of existence.
This is particularly the case during the inter-war years (1919-1939) when the
service was starved of funds and barely able to survive, this despite the
growing realization within the British government that in the 20th century an
organized foreign intelligence service was crucial to the conduct of foreign
policy.
The real debate centered on whether to allow the SIS to operate on its own or
to amalgamate it in a unified security and intelligence organization that would
house both domestic and external intelligence functions under a single
organizational roof. The service won a major victory in October 1931 when a
clear-cut distinction was made between some of the most sensitive functions of
MI5 and MI6 (pg 236). This was followed by the Bland Report of October 1944
which effectively ensured the service's survival as an independent organization
indefinitely (pg 596-603).
The SIS also had to ward off aggressive posturing by the armed services.
Initially identified in Whitehall as either the "C" organization or more
commonly as MIi(c), the service adopted the cover name of the Directorate of
Military Intelligence Section 6 (MI6) during World War II.
This reflected the service's origins as a military intelligence outfit, but as
Jeffery repeatedly points out, the service was often at pains to not allow its
customers in the armed services to dominate the agenda with their constant need
for immediate operational intelligence, as opposed to a more long-term quest
for high-quality strategic and political intelligence. The SIS, despite its
military origins and the fact that even as late as 1949 the majority of its
officers had backgrounds in the armed services, much preferred to concentrate
on the latter target.
Furthermore, the SIS appears to have had a more troubled relationship with the
Foreign Office, within whose embassies its stations were housed, than
previously thought. From the very early years, the SIS heads of stations were
posted abroad with cover as passport control officers, in effect ostensibly
responsible for the vetting of all visa applications to enter the United
Kingdom.
But from the outset, British ambassadors found the extra-curricular activities
of their passport control officers and their staff to be at times contrary to
and even subversive of normal diplomatic activity. This tension was never fully
resolved in the service's first 40 years and it is not clear whether the
problem diminished or intensified after 1949.
Second, and related to its struggle for greater autonomy from the armed
services, was the service's often troubled relationship with the Special
Operations Executive (SOE), formed in July 1940 to conduct special operations
and sabotage missions behind enemy lines.
Jeffery's work in this area is highly important, not only in so far as it
meticulously describes the ultimately irreconcilable tensions between secret
intelligence and special operations, but more importantly inasmuch as it
rehabilitates the SIS's contribution to the British war effort. Hitherto pride
of place had gone to the wartime Special Operations Executive, not least
because unlike the SIS, the SOE (which was disbanded shortly after the war)
hasn't been shrouded in deep mystery.
Moreover, the disclosure of the SIS's wartime efforts steals the limelight from
the GC&CS and the British signals intelligence exploits at Bletchley Park
which is widely regarded to have shortened the war by a considerable extent.
Though MI6 was formally in charge of GC&CS, the outstanding success at
Bletchley Park and the massive historical interests therein has obscured the
role played by human intelligence in subverting the mighty German war machine.
Third, Jeffery charts the origins and early development of the special
intelligence relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States.
From the groundbreaking work of Captain William Wiseman (the SIS's first
representative in the US - posted there in 1915) to the formation of British
Security Coordination (a massive SIS-run intelligence organization covering the
entire Americas) in January 1941 and culminating with the multi-layered
relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency (formed in 1947) at the onset
of the Cold War, the author sketches a step-by-step progression of the unique
intelligence relationship between the two major Anglo-Saxon countries.
Last but not least, Jeffery does a good job in explaining the SIS's ability to
absorb the best foreign talent and generally thrive in a cosmopolitan
environment, this despite the fact that the great majority of the service's
officers came from the armed forces and thus from a narrow section of British
society - and one which is often regarded as quintessentially British.
Arguably the best example is the SIS's recruitment of Georgi Rosenblum, who
gained posthumous fame as Sidney Reilly. A Russian Jew and a shrewd businessman
with intelligence contacts across Europe, Reilly achieved legendary status as
the "Ace of Spies". A committed anti-Bolshevik, he was finally outwitted by the
Bolshevik secret service (the OGPU) and lured to his death in an elaborate
deception operation in September 1925.
Scholarship or propaganda?
There will be many who will be reluctant to accept the book's scholarly
credentials at face value. After all, an official history of the SIS runs the
very real risk of making important omissions or presenting the facts in a
manner that is not injurious to the interests of the secret state.
While the general thrust of Jeffery's narrative is positively inclined towards
MI6, his treatment of the facts - or at least the facts laid at his disposal -
is rigorous enough to withstand the most probing scrutiny. Certainly Jeffery's
book has a more convincing flavor than Andrew's authorized history of MI5, but
as a caveat it should be remembered that Jeffery is dealing with a period that
by intelligence standards constitutes the distant past. Hence there is a much
less pressing need to spin the facts and whitewash crimes and mistakes.
In conclusion, it is apt to refer to Jeffery's own conclusion, namely the
reference to Colonel Walter Nicolai (chief of German military intelligence
during World War I) and the Tsarist intelligence officer (and subsequent MI6
asset) Vladimir Gregorievich Orlov, both regarded by Sir Stewart Menzies, the
third chief of the Secret Service, as the greatest authorities on secret
service work.
Jeffery quotes Menzies as commenting that both Nicolai and Orlov had demanded
40 years as the minimum time required to establish a "really efficient"
intelligence service. Jeffery has done a fine job in capturing the essence of
that supposed truth.
MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949 by Keith
Jeffery. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, September 2010. ISBN-10: 0747591830. Price
US$48, 832 pages.
Mahan Abedin is an analyst of Middle East politics. He has been writing
on intelligence and security matters for 10 years.
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Jeffery's
work is proudly presented as an official history on the SIS's official website
(https://www.sis.gov.uk/) and the foreword to the book is written by John
Sawers, the current chief of the organization. Moreover, by his own admission,
Jeffery has been given unlimited access to SIS files spanning 40 years from
1909 to 1949.
