Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5
Christopher Andrew
Language: English
Pages: 1104
ISBN: 0307275817
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
For over 100 years, the agents of MI5 have defended Britain against enemy subversion. Their work has remained shrouded in secrecy—until now. This first-ever authorized account reveals the British Security Service as never before: its inner workings, its clandestine operations, its failures and its triumphs.
had been caught’.49 As was to happen in the Second World War, the first wartime espionage case might thus have led to the development of a ‘Double-Cross System’ to feed disinformation to the enemy.50 The government’s insistence, against MO5(g)’s wishes, on public trials and courts-martial for captured spies, however, made a First World War Double-Cross System impossible, though, as the war progressed, there were some more limited opportunities for deception. At the end of October 1914, a public
a police patrol while robbing a Houndsditch jeweller to fund their cause. The revolutionaries shot three police officers dead and seriously wounded two others. Though the gang scattered, several members were arrested over the next few weeks. Among them was Peters, who was acquitted at his trial – after being ably defended by, ironically, William Melville’s barrister son James (later a Labour solicitor general).66 During 1916 G1 (which investigated suspected espionage cases) discovered links
1921), which he hoped would receive ‘earnest and early consideration’. After putting the case for SIS, the memorandum turned to MI5: It was due entirely to the work of this organization that the whole of Germany’s pre-war espionage system in this country was discovered and nursed, ready to be smashed, as in fact it was, on 3rd August 1914. … During the war it was the means, not only of detecting and bringing to trial some 30 spies and of placing under proper control (under Regulation 14B) some
he had been impressed by Steinhauer’s intelligence expertise. ‘Yes, Steinhauer is a splendid fellow!’ replied the Kaiser.19 In the spring of 1904 Melville sent his assistant, Herbert Dale Long, on the first of several missions to Germany on behalf of MO2 under commercial cover, probably to inquire into German naval construction.20 A fragmentary file on Melville’s early work for MO3 (renamed MO5 in 1907) suggests that his early priorities in Britain (particularly during the Russo-Japanese War of
seventy names on the list were already known to it.11 Unfortunately, MI5 records on subsequent surveillance of the Überseedienst espionage network do not survive. In 1931 SIS recruited another ‘extremely well placed source’ (about whose identity it gave few clues to the Security Service) who supplied copies of questionnaires detailing German naval and military intelligence requirements on scientific and technical developments in British defence industry: among them aircraft construction; river