Con Coughlin: In History Lies All the Secrets of Statecraft (review of the first official account of MI5)
[Mr. Coughlin is executive foreign editor of the Daily Telegraph and the author of "Khomeini's Ghost: Iran since 1979."]
Espionage is not a subject that readily lends itself to public scrutiny. The guiding principle that has underpinned the response of successive British governments to requests for more information about the activities of Britain's intelligence services was best summed up by Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in the 1960s.
Responding to Parliament's request for more detailed particulars about the defection of Cambridge-educated Soviet agent Kim Philby to the Soviet Union in 1963, Macmillan declared, "It is dangerous and bad for our national interest to discuss these matters."
The decision, therefore, to compile an authorized history to mark the centenary of Britain's security service, MI5, marks a bold departure from the obsessive institutional secrecy that traditionally has surrounded the organization's dealings. It has also posed many challenges. How, for example, could any self-respecting historian be expected to provide a credible account of MI5's activities without compromising the organization's future operational effectiveness? After all, the whole point of having a secret service is that its murky transactions remain just that -- secret.
Sir Stephen Lander, the former MI5 director general who pressed for the publication of an official history, essentially faced two options. Either he could commission an account written for internal consumption only, thereby guaranteeing protection against any potentially compromising revelations. Or he could take the more perilous option, a public airing of MI5's 100-year involvement in international espionage, warts and all.
As a Cambridge-educated medievalist, Sir Stephen was particularly struck by the wealth of documentation MI5 had accumulated within the registry of its Gower Street offices, where the archives were stored until being moved to the organization's current headquarters at Thames House. Those archives contain a deep mine of information, detailing everything from the penetration and arrest of the Kaiser's entire British-based spy ring at the start of World War I to the inconclusive assessments of the threat Osama bin Laden posed prior to Sept. 11...
... Despite these restrictions, Mr. Andrew has succeeded in producing a highly readable book that offers several important new insights into MI5's operations over the past century. Apart from examining the difficult decisions intelligence officers face in trying to decide whether a particular target actually poses a tangible threat, the book also shows how, in the real world, espionage can be a somewhat mundane experience.
For example, Stella Rimington, a former director general, recalls how she was once dispatched to the University of Sussex in the late 1960s to see whether the Soviets had penetrated the highly active Marxist student groups there. She quickly found that the students were precocious, rather than subversive, but was unable to persuade her bosses that they posed no threat. Ordered to remain in Brighton for several months, she whiled away the time reading a number of novels...
Read entire article at WSJ
Espionage is not a subject that readily lends itself to public scrutiny. The guiding principle that has underpinned the response of successive British governments to requests for more information about the activities of Britain's intelligence services was best summed up by Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in the 1960s.
Responding to Parliament's request for more detailed particulars about the defection of Cambridge-educated Soviet agent Kim Philby to the Soviet Union in 1963, Macmillan declared, "It is dangerous and bad for our national interest to discuss these matters."
The decision, therefore, to compile an authorized history to mark the centenary of Britain's security service, MI5, marks a bold departure from the obsessive institutional secrecy that traditionally has surrounded the organization's dealings. It has also posed many challenges. How, for example, could any self-respecting historian be expected to provide a credible account of MI5's activities without compromising the organization's future operational effectiveness? After all, the whole point of having a secret service is that its murky transactions remain just that -- secret.
Sir Stephen Lander, the former MI5 director general who pressed for the publication of an official history, essentially faced two options. Either he could commission an account written for internal consumption only, thereby guaranteeing protection against any potentially compromising revelations. Or he could take the more perilous option, a public airing of MI5's 100-year involvement in international espionage, warts and all.
As a Cambridge-educated medievalist, Sir Stephen was particularly struck by the wealth of documentation MI5 had accumulated within the registry of its Gower Street offices, where the archives were stored until being moved to the organization's current headquarters at Thames House. Those archives contain a deep mine of information, detailing everything from the penetration and arrest of the Kaiser's entire British-based spy ring at the start of World War I to the inconclusive assessments of the threat Osama bin Laden posed prior to Sept. 11...
... Despite these restrictions, Mr. Andrew has succeeded in producing a highly readable book that offers several important new insights into MI5's operations over the past century. Apart from examining the difficult decisions intelligence officers face in trying to decide whether a particular target actually poses a tangible threat, the book also shows how, in the real world, espionage can be a somewhat mundane experience.
For example, Stella Rimington, a former director general, recalls how she was once dispatched to the University of Sussex in the late 1960s to see whether the Soviets had penetrated the highly active Marxist student groups there. She quickly found that the students were precocious, rather than subversive, but was unable to persuade her bosses that they posed no threat. Ordered to remain in Brighton for several months, she whiled away the time reading a number of novels...