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Declassified History Of The British Secret Service - Time > .British Secret Service's War With Hitler | Secret Service - Time > .
The rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia and their establishment of a communist state became the Service’s main focus after their war. One undercover agent was Paul Dukes, who went into Russia in late 1918, posing first as a post office clerk, then an epileptic and eventually, ‘Comrade Alexander Bankau’, a soldier in the Automobile Section of the VIIIth Army. Dukes reported on living conditions, and when he based himself in Petrograd (modern-day St Petersburg), he monitored the movements of the Baltic Fleet.
Smith-Cumming died suddenly at his home on 14 June 1923, shortly before he was due to retire, and was replaced as C by Rear-Admiral Sir Hugh "Quex" Sinclair. As a former Director of Naval Intelligence, Sinclair was notably different to Cumming, who had been a relatively junior officer. Importantly, as well as becoming Chief of SIS, Sinclair assumed responsibility for the Government Code & Cypher School (GC&CS) – the forerunner to GCHQ.
Section D was established by MI6 in March 1938, as a secret organisation charged with investigating how enemies might be attacked other than through military operations.
16-11-8 Why Intelligence Failures Happen - MHV > .
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6, is the foreign intelligence service of the government of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligence (HUMINT) in support of the UK's national security. Human intelligence (frequently abbreviated HUMINT and sometimes pronounced as hyoo-mint) is intelligence gathered by means of interpersonal contact, as opposed to the more technical intelligence gathering disciplines such as signals intelligence (SIGINT), imagery intelligence (IMINT) and measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT).
SIS is a member of the country's intelligence community and its Chief is accountable to the country's Foreign Secretary.
SIS is a member of the country's intelligence community and its Chief is accountable to the country's Foreign Secretary.
In the early 1900s, the British government was increasingly concerned about the threat to its Empire posed by Germany’s imperial ambitions. This led to scare stories of German spies and even the Director of Military Operations was convinced that Germany was targeting Britain. These rumours proved to be overblown, but the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, reacted to popular concern. He ordered the Committee of Imperial Defence to look into the matter and they established a Secret Service Bureau in July 1909, specialising in foreign intelligence.
The Secret Service Bureau was split into Home and Foreign Sections and Mansfield Cumming, a 50-year-old Royal Navy officer, was chosen to lead the latter. Mansfield Cumming soon decided he needed his own base – Ashley Mansions in Vauxhall Bridge Road. Early in 1910 the department set up a bogus address with the Post Office – Messrs Rasen, Falcon Limited, a firm of ‘shippers and exporters’. This was the first example of what has since then become the classic ‘import/export’ espionage cover. In 1911 the Section moved to 2 Whitehall Court, next to the War Office and close to the Admiralty and Foreign Office.
The Secret Service Bureau section specialising in foreign intelligence experienced dramatic growth during WW1 and it expanded into other offices. Potential officers were interviewed and assessed at a location in Kingsway, while a ‘very secret’ Air Section was based in South Lambeth Road. Cumming’s organisation relied heavily upon women to carry out duties as secretaries, typists, clerks and drivers. Both married and unmarried women were recruited and their pay was higher than that of most of their contemporaries in other departments. There was also a role for military personnel whose wounds rendered them no longer fit for service at the front.
The Secret Service Bureau section specialising in foreign intelligence experienced dramatic growth during WW1 and it expanded into other offices. Potential officers were interviewed and assessed at a location in Kingsway, while a ‘very secret’ Air Section was based in South Lambeth Road. Cumming’s organisation relied heavily upon women to carry out duties as secretaries, typists, clerks and drivers. Both married and unmarried women were recruited and their pay was higher than that of most of their contemporaries in other departments. There was also a role for military personnel whose wounds rendered them no longer fit for service at the front.
Following the outbreak of WW1 in 1914, the Foreign Section worked more closely with Military Intelligence. In 1916 it adopted the cover of MI1(c), part of the War Office. In November 1914 British intelligence in the Netherlands was approached by Karl Krüger, a former German naval officer. He possessed access to a wide range of information on naval construction and fleet dispositions and was willing to sell these secrets at a price. Krüger provided vital intelligence for the rest of the war including crucial revelations regarding German losses at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.
The SSB officially adopted its current name around 1920. The name MI6 (meaning Military Intelligence, Section 6) originated as a flag of convenience during WW2, when SIS was known by many names. It is still commonly used today.
After WW2, 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.
Circulating Sections established intelligence requirements and passed the intelligence back to its consumer departments, mainly the War Office and Admiralty.
The debate over the future structure of British Intelligence continued at length after the end of hostilities but Cumming managed to engineer the return of the Service to Foreign Office control. At this time, the organisation was known in Whitehall by a variety of titles including the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Secret Service, MI1(c), the Special Intelligence Service and even C's organisation. Around 1920, it began increasingly to be referred to as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), a title that it has continued to use to the present day.
In the immediate post-war years there was constant pressure to reduce costs. Cumming felt it necessary to move to smaller premises outside Whitehall so in December 1919, the Service relocated to Melbury Road, Holland Park. Cumming’s concerns about secrecy were so strong that some visitors had to go to an office off the Strand, where they would be given the Holland Park address. He even considered not revealing the address to the Director of Military Intelligence.
In the immediate post-war years under Sir Mansfield George Smith-Cumming and throughout most of the 1920s, SIS was focused on Communism, in particular, Russian Bolshevism. Examples include a thwarted operation to overthrow the Bolshevik government in 1918 by SIS agents Sidney George Reilly and Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, as well as more orthodox espionage efforts within early Soviet Russia headed by Captain George Hill.
Circulating Sections established intelligence requirements and passed the intelligence back to its consumer departments, mainly the War Office and Admiralty.
The debate over the future structure of British Intelligence continued at length after the end of hostilities but Cumming managed to engineer the return of the Service to Foreign Office control. At this time, the organisation was known in Whitehall by a variety of titles including the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Secret Service, MI1(c), the Special Intelligence Service and even C's organisation. Around 1920, it began increasingly to be referred to as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), a title that it has continued to use to the present day.
In the immediate post-war years there was constant pressure to reduce costs. Cumming felt it necessary to move to smaller premises outside Whitehall so in December 1919, the Service relocated to Melbury Road, Holland Park. Cumming’s concerns about secrecy were so strong that some visitors had to go to an office off the Strand, where they would be given the Holland Park address. He even considered not revealing the address to the Director of Military Intelligence.
In the immediate post-war years under Sir Mansfield George Smith-Cumming and throughout most of the 1920s, SIS was focused on Communism, in particular, Russian Bolshevism. Examples include a thwarted operation to overthrow the Bolshevik government in 1918 by SIS agents Sidney George Reilly and Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, as well as more orthodox espionage efforts within early Soviet Russia headed by Captain George Hill.
Smith-Cumming died suddenly at his home on 14 June 1923, shortly before he was due to retire, and was replaced as C by Rear-Admiral Sir Hugh "Quex" Sinclair. As a former Director of Naval Intelligence, Sinclair was notably different to Cumming, who had been a relatively junior officer. Importantly, as well as becoming Chief of SIS, Sinclair assumed responsibility for the Government Code & Cypher School (GC&CS) – the forerunner to GCHQ.
Sinclair created the following sections:
With the emergence of Germany as a threat following the ascendence of the Nazis, in the early 1930s attention was shifted in that direction. MI6 assisted the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, with "the exchange of information about communism" as late as October 1937, well into the Nazi era; the head of the British agency's Berlin station, Frank Foley, was still able to describe his relationship with the Gestapo's so-called communism expert as "cordial".
Sinclair died in 1939, after an illness, and was replaced as C by Lt Col. Stewart Menzies (Horse Guards), who had been with the service since the end of WW1.
- A central foreign counter-espionage Circulating Section, Section V, to liaise with the Security Service to collate counter-espionage reports from overseas stations.
- An economic intelligence section, Section VII, to deal with trade, industry and contraband.
- A clandestine radio communications organisation, Section VIII, to communicate with operatives and agents overseas.
- Section N to exploit the contents of foreign diplomatic bags
- Section D to conduct political covert actions and paramilitary operations in time of war. Section D would organise the Home Defence Scheme resistance organisation in the UK and come to be the foundation of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) during WW2.
Sinclair died in 1939, after an illness, and was replaced as C by Lt Col. Stewart Menzies (Horse Guards), who had been with the service since the end of WW1.
On 26 and 27 July 1939, in Pyry near Warsaw, British military intelligence representatives including Dilly Knox, Alastair Denniston and Humphrey Sandwith were introduced by their allied Polish counterparts into their Enigma-decryption techniques and equipment, including Zygalski sheets and the cryptologic "Bomba", and were promised future delivery of a reverse-engineered, Polish-built duplicate Enigma machine. The demonstration represented a vital basis for the later British continuation and effort. During WW2, British cryptologists decrypted a vast number of messages enciphered on Enigma. The intelligence gleaned from this source, codenamed "Ultra" by the British, was a substantial aid to the Allied war effort.
In 1964, SIS moved from Broadway Buildings to Century House, a tower block in Westminster Bridge Road, Lambeth. In 1994 SIS moved to its present headquarters, Vauxhall Cross, which has become easily identifiable from its appearances in several James Bond films.
After the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Burgess, with Philby who had been brought into Section D on his recommendation, ran a training course for would-be saboteurs, at Brickendonbury Manor in Hertfordshire. Philby later was sceptical of the value of such training, since neither he nor Burgess had any idea of the tasks these agents would be expected to perform behind the lines in German-occupied Europe.
BBC - Guy Burgess ..
As well as making programmes for the public, the wartime BBC was involved in a range of top secret activity, working with closely with the intelligence agencies and military. Cambridge Five member, Guy Francis de Moncy Burgess (16 April 1911 – 30 August 1963) acted as Section D's representative on the Joint Broadcasting Committee (JBC), a body set up by the Foreign Office to liaise with the BBC over the transmission of anti-Hitler broadcasts to Germany. His contacts with senior government officials enabled him to keep Moscow abreast of current government thinking. He informed them that the British government saw no need for a pact with the Soviets, since they believed Britain alone could defeat the Germans without assistance. This information reinforced the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's suspicions of Britain, and may have helped to hasten the Nazi-Soviet Pact, signed between Germany and the Soviet Union in August 1939.
After the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Burgess, with Philby who had been brought into Section D on his recommendation, ran a training course for would-be saboteurs, at Brickendonbury Manor in Hertfordshire. Philby later was sceptical of the value of such training, since neither he nor Burgess had any idea of the tasks these agents would be expected to perform behind the lines in German-occupied Europe.
In 1940, Section D was absorbed into the new Special Operations Executive (SOE). Philby was posted to a SOE training school in Beaulieu, and Burgess, who in September had been arrested for drunken driving (the charge was dismissed on payment of costs), found himself at the end of the year out of a job.
The existence of SIS was not officially acknowledged until 1994 when the Intelligence Services Act 1994 (ISA) was introduced to Parliament, to place the organisation on a statutory footing for the first time.
GCHQ, GC&CS, Ultra ..
The Information Research Department (IRD), was a secret Cold War propaganda department of the British Foreign Office, created to publish anti-communist propaganda, provide support and information to anti-communist politicians, academics, and writers, and to use weaponised disinformation and "fake news" to attack socialists and anti-colonial movements.
