‘Utterly Unrestricted Access’: Some Personal Thoughts on the Writing of the Authorised History of the Secret Intelligence Service

Readers of Keith Jeffery and Alan Sharp's article 'Lord Curzon and Secret Intelligence', in Christopher Andrew and Jeremy Noakes (eds.) Intelligence and International Relations (University of Exeter, 1987), and Robin Denniston's Churchill's Secret War (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 1997), might be excused for concluding that British intelligence regarding the Turkish national movement in Anatolia in the period of national struggle, 1919-22, was obtained almost entirely from intercepts of Turkish, Greek, French, Italian and other telegraphic and radio communications, decoded where necessary either by British Military Intelligence, Constantinople, or by the British Code and Cypher School (BCCS), set up in 1919, or its predecessors, Room 40, Old Building, Admiralty, and MI lb, War Office. Such was not the case. Throughout the period of national struggle MI lc, later known as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and the other, associated British intelligence services, in particular Naval Intelligence, provided a great deal of information about events in Anatolia, most of which was obtained, not from intercepts, but from the more traditional sources of information available at the time. These included Turkish, Greek, Armenian and Arab agents, locally recruited by MI Ic, Constantinople, and the various British intelligence services, operating in Syria and Mesopotamia; members of the Ottoman government, the Turkish national movement and the Greek Orthodox Church, friendly to Britain; employees of the Levant Consular Service; reports published in the local and foreign press (Journal d'Orient, Yeni Gun, Ileri, Hakimiet-i-Millie, Ankara Press Agency, Chicago Tribune and many others); contacts in the French, Italian and Greek intelligence services; and British control officers and other personnel posted at strategic points in Anatolia, until the spring of 1920, when following the Allied (British, French and Italian) occupation of Constantinople (the previous occupation had been unofficial), British personnel were either arrested or expelled from the area. Until the spring of 1920, therefore, information regarding events in Anatolia was more than plentiful. Only following the

In the years immediately following World War II, information was disclosed about what has been termed the shadow war of the existence of hitherto secret agencies. In Germany it was the Abwehr and the Sicherheitsdienst; in Britain it was MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Special Operations Executive (SOE); in the United States it was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Special Intelligence Service (SIS) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); in Japan it was the Kempet'ai; and in Italy the Servicio di Informazione Militare (SIM). Sixty years after World War II secrets are still being revealed about the covert activities that took place. Many countries had secret agencies maintaining covert operations, but even ostensibly neutral countries also conducted secret operations. Changes in American, British, and even Soviet official attitudes to declassification in the 1980s allowed thousands of secret documents to be made available for public examination, and the result was extensive revisionism of the conventional histories of the conflict, which previously had excluded references to secret intelligence sources. The Historical Dictionary of World War II Intelligence tells the emerging history of the intelligence world during World War II. This is done through a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the secret agencies, operations, and events. The world of double agents, spies, and moles during WWII is explained in the most comprehensive reference currently available.

In the years immediately following World War II, information was disclosed about what has been termed the shadow war of the existence of hitherto secret agencies. In Germany it was the Abwehr and the Sicherheitsdienst; in Britain it was MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Special Operations Executive (SOE); in the United States it was the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Special Intelligence Service (SIS) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); in Japan it was the Kempet'ai; and in Italy the Servicio di Informazione Militare (SIM). Sixty years after World War II secrets are still being revealed about the covert activities that took place. Many countries had secret agencies maintaining covert operations, but even ostensibly neutral countries also conducted secret operations. Changes in American, British, and even Soviet official attitudes to declassification in the 1980s allowed thousands of secret documents to be made available for public examination, and the result was extensive revisionism of the conventional histories of the conflict, which previously had excluded references to secret intelligence sources. TheHistorical Dictionary of World War II Intelligencetells the emerging history of the intelligence world during World War II. This is done through a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on the secret agencies, operations, and events. The world of double agents, spies, and moles during WWII is explained in the most comprehensive reference currently available.

This study aims to find the cause of problems such as political intervention and human rights violations related to the National Intelligence Service in Korea. To this end, the organization and duty of Korean and British intelligence agencies were analyzed using literature review research methods. As a result of the analysis, the study identified that the problems related to the National Intelligence Service were caused by the obscurity of the regulation - ‘domestic security information’ - under the National Intelligence Service Act and the abuse of investigative power during intelligence activities.
 British intelligence agencies collect, analyze, and exploit foreign and domestic intelligence and military intelligence, and perform espionage and counter-espionage. The role of the Security Service(MI5) is to protect national security from threats such as terrorism and espionage and to gather secret intelligence on threats to national security. The Secret Intelligence Service(MI6) works secretly overseas to gather intelligence, which is referred to as espionage.
 The controversy related to the National Intelligence Service is expected to be reduced due to the revision of the National Intelligence Service Act in 2020. In addition to this, the study proposes to separate the National Intelligence Service into each agency according to its roles of counter-espionage and foreign espionage.

This chapter examines how Kim Philby became synonymous with treachery and deceit as ‘a spy who betrayed a generation’ and even ‘the greatest unhanged scoundrel in modern British history’. It considers how and why Philby, despite being admitted into the most secret departments of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), chose the secret service of the Soviet Union. The chapter also analyses how he got away with spying for the Soviet Union and at the same time managed to develop an apparently successful career inside British intelligence. It argues that Philby's dedication to and zeal for communism made him an ideological spy. Furthermore, the chapter describes two Soviet espionage organisations tasked with collecting secret intelligence abroad: the GUGB (Soviet Security and Intelligence Service), part of the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs); and the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate) of the Ministry of Defence. Finally, it assesses the significance of Philby's appointment in 1944 as head of the SIS's anti-communist section.

Introduction I. The Setting Historical Perspectives The Place of the OSS in American History Within the Secret Intelligence Service Anatomy of the OSS II. Donovan on the Offensive and America's Path to War The fifth column as a danger William J. Donovan's lessons for America On the eve of confrontation William J. Donovan as Director of Intelligence and the origins of the COI -The peace feeler of Federico Stallforth - Pearl Harbor The COI and the New Pattern Germany's Military and Economic Capabilities in the COI's calculations, 1941 - Assessing the Situation in the East Between Opinion Research and Counterespionage The Foreign Nationalities Branch and the Role of German Emigres - German-Americans, Exile, and Propaganda Excursus: Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Franklin Carter and Ernst Putzi Hanfstaengl The Secret Carter Organization - The S-Project: Ernst Putzi Hanfstaengl in the Service of American Secret Intelligence - Analyses of Germany and Propaganda Plans - The End of the S-Project The COI in Crisis and the Creation of the OSS III. 1943, The Turning Point Strategies and discourses State Department versus OSS: Initial Speculation about the German collapse, 1942 - The Discussion About Strategic Priorities, 1943 Lessons from Moscow and the OSS' Answer The National Committee for a Free Germany and the Beginnings of the Crisis Between the Allies - Secret Intelligence Initiatives for Mobilizing German Emigres Germany and the Germans The Mood of the Germans as Assessed by the OSS - A German Parallel: 1918 and 1943 Ideology and Economy in the Bombing War Theories and Experiences-The Enemy Objectives Unit (EOU) - From Casablanca to POINTBLANK - Tensions with the British and the philosophy of the EOU IV. Bern: the Big Window Onto the Fascist World Allen Dulles and the Establishment of the OSS Outpost in Bern - Psychological and Military Warfare - Opportunists and Conspirators - The German V Weapons and the Attack on Peenemunde - The Wood Story V. Media War and Black Propaganda The Difficult Beginnings of the OSS Morale Operations - From the Hamilton Plan to Operation Sauerkraut - Blankenhorn's Soldiers Councils Project and the Neues Deutschland movement - OSS Radio War: Joker and Matchbox - Operation Musac: American Pop Music in the War Against Hitler VI. Penetration of Germany Conceptions The Infiltration of Agents into Germany in the British Calculation - American Secret Intelligence Plans for Operations in the German Reich - The Post-invasion Syndrome and the Significance of the OSS Labor Division for Operations in Germany Excursus Paul Hagen, the Origins of the OSS Labor Division, and the Trade Union Contacts of British Intelligence - Goldberg's 'Philosophy of the Underground' and the FAUST Plan Operations Special Operations: Foreign Workers and CALPO Communists as Trojan horses - Infiltrating SI Agents into the Reich VII. Gotterdammerung - Between Peace and War Phantom Stronghold in the Alps: The as an Idee Fixe? Defense of the Alps and the Ideological Phantom of the Nazi Underground - The in the Calculation of the OSS - The Alpine Fortress from the Perspective of British Intelligence - The Redoubt Psychosis of the Americans and the Perspective of Gauleiter Hofer - Eisenhower, Marshall, Roosevelt Last-minute Putsch The Munich Pheasant Hunt and American intelligence - The Peace Feelers of Ritter von Epp - The Munich Putsch of April 28 - Operation Capricorn: Simulated Resistance Under the Sign of Zodiac Good and Bad Germans Allen Dulles as Promoter of Postwar German Politicians VIII. The Dream of the Miracle War: the Legacy of the OSS Conclusion and Summary The End of the OSS and the Origins of the Myth - Outline of the Shadow War: A summary - The Legacy of the OSS 3

9/11 created a new situation in international relations generally, but especially for the intelligence services. While terrorism did not represent a new phenomenon, the scale of the threat was completely new. Another important effect of 9/11 is noted by Tormod Heier, underscoring how the imperative of fighting terrorism for intelligence services such as the Norwegian NIS led to cooperation with several new partners in areas such as Central Asia and in the Greater Middle East. The arguments for liberal democracies having secret intelligence services are, in many ways, based on realism's core assumptions. The monumental leak caused by Snowden made the public much more aware of the intelligence services' surveillance and collection practices. The Norwegian Intelligence Service states some of the dilemmas of moral hazards well in their 'Ethical Guidelines'. The intelligence services are powerful institutions, with a significant role to play in order to protect freedom and to ensure the endurance of robust and stable liberal democracies.

De Gaulle's relationship with his secret intelligence and subversive services, the Bureau central de renseignements et d'action (BCRA) headed by Colonel Passy, as well as with British intelligence is examined in the light of the now declassified archives of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and the BCRA. These archives reveal that de Gaulle failed to interest himself seriously in secret intelligence or subversion before the arrival of Jean Moulin in London in October 1941. De Gaulle's subsequent relationship with the BCRA and British intelligence was defined by an obsessive need for political control, which only served to compromise the BCRA's otherwise successful collaboration with British intelligence.

IF the unveiling of hitherto secret material about British penetration of the enemy’s communications during the Second World War finds no precise parallel in the documents released for the period between the wars, the Public Record Office nevertheless offers a good deal of material about the ‘intelligence’ of those days. Admittedly, the records ofthe intelligence services themselves (a loose but convenient term to cover a number of agencies which gathered material in or about foreign countries, or carried out covert operations there, or resisted attempts to penetrate British secrets) are still withheld, as are the papers of committees which dealt with the intelligence services. Probably the pre-war archives of the intelligence services are but patchily preserved, though assurances have recently been given1 that such material is not wilfully destroyed, and will be kept in case its release ever becomes possible. But since the various services had to provide the fruits of their work to departments of state, and the Foreign Office controlled, under the direction of the Permanent Under-Secretary, the Secret Intelligence Service, material relating to SIS had occasionally to be incorporated in the records of that Office.

The Intelligence Services Act1 is largely modelled on the Security Service Act of 1989 (the 1989 Act) which dealt with the Security Service (MI5).2 That Act substantially followed the structure of the Interception of Communications Act 1985 (the 1985 Act). The new Act (the 1994 Act) deals with both the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) also known as MI6 and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and, most importantly, it establishes for the first time a system of parliamentary accountability for all three services.3 In this article, I propose to examine the new Act from the perspective of the rights of those likely to be under surveillance by the secret services. I start from the view that, whilst it must be recognised that the effectiveness of the country's security and intelligence services necessarily depends on a degree of secrecy which would be unacceptable in other institutions, this very latitude puts them in a uniquely powerful position to abuse their powers and, on behalf of their political masters, to make use of them in ways not acceptable in a democratic society. It is crucial, therefore, that the need for complete secrecy is carefully considered and not accepted uncritically. Society is entitled to be assured that basic principles of political, financial and legal accountability be abrogated only where it is absolutely necessary and that, even where full accountability is not possisble, the most democratic options available will be pursued.

This article examines the post‐war dismantling of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and amalgamation with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). It is argued that the existing literature has been unclear on this matter, confusing two very different SIS departments, the Special Operations Branch and the Special Political Action Section. The article then examines how the assets and personnel of SOE were dispersed to three different divisions of the SIS; the Directorates of Production, Training and Development and War Planning, and then examines the separate origins and function of the Special Political Action Section.

This is the first comprehensive study of British policy towards Switzerland during the Second World War. Switzerland occupied an ambiguous place in British belligerency. While epitomizing the kind of political values Britain claimed to uphold in declaring war against Nazi Germany in 1939, its inexorable drift into the Axis orbit after mid-1940 inevitably prevented British officials from isolating Anglo-Swiss relations from Britain's broader diplomatic and strategic objectives. The book situates British policy towards Switzerland within the history of the British blockade and financial warfare campaign, the Holocaust, Anglo-American relations, and the Allied strategic bombing offensive. It argues that Britain was more successful in benefiting from Swiss neutrality than has hitherto been assumed, especially in the acquisition of manufactured goods, secret intelligence and humanitarian services. London retained a stake in the maintenance of Swiss neutrality long after the severance of direct communications in June 1940. At base, however, British policy was shaped by a set of entrenched beliefs about Switzerland and Swiss neutrality that proved resistant to change, despite the growing evidence of Swiss-German economic and financial collaboration. British policy towards Switzerland rested on a view of Swiss neutrality that was forged as much from the preconceptions of British officials as from a dispassionate reading of Switzerland's place in the war.

The remarkable case of GRU (Glavnoe Razvedyvatel’noe Upravlenie, Soviet Military Intelligence) Colonel Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky is the best example available to researchers of intelligence liaison between the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). The purpose of this chapter is to examine joint CIA/ SIS Human Intelligence (HUMINT) tradecraft in terms of agent meeting sites (internally in Moscow, externally in London, and in a third country, France), agent communication plans, agent management philosophy, reporting and compartmentation of agent information, and disseminating Penkovsky’s information to ensure internal source protection within their own intelligence bureaucracies. This chapter argues that the joint tradecraft used in the case was insufficient to protect Penkovsky and thus he met an untimely end after less than two years of clandestine service. Yet, paradoxically, this chapter will also demonstrate that the case was as productive as it was, during its short tenure, because of the joint nature of the tradecraft. Specifically, neither SIS nor CIA would have been able to accomplish as much as had been done by running Penkovsky unilaterally. It is a paradox that the both the success and demise of Penkovsky as an intelligence agent comes, at least partly, from the liaison relationship in which context he was run. It is clear that Penkovsky could not have been initially met in person or successfully debriefed and tasked without vital contributions from both liaison partners. Yet, the operational schizophrenia with which his case was marked may have directly contributed to his remarkably short tenure as an intelligence agent. The Penkovsky case deserves examination because it is arguably the most significant joint HUMINT case of the Cold War. George Kisevalter’s biographer, Clarence Ashley, argued that, ‘The [HERO] operation developed by the CIA and its British partner, the SIS, to capitalise on the opportunity has rightly been termed the most successful in the history of espionage.’1 As Len Scott observed, ‘The case of Penkovsky further illustrates the British-American intelligence relationship. CIA documents provide details of SIS-CIA collaboration as well as insights into the roles(and identities) of SIS officers, though relevant SIS files remain classified.’2

The role of members of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in helping Jewish refugees flee Nazi persecution in the 1930s has garnered wide interest. It has been claimed that SIS officers, in their cover role as Passport Control Officers (PCOs), helped ‘save’ thousands of Jews from the Third Reich by issuing immigration visas. The focus, however, has been on individual SIS officers, rather than the collective effort of the many passport control staff involved in issuing visas. There has also been a tendency to devolve the matter into a process of producing crude balance sheets of numbers of Jews ‘saved’. This article seeks to understand how SIS came to exploit passport control work as cover for its activities and to assess the impact of the refugee crisis on SIS operations. It also aims to make sense of some of the statistics regarding visas issued by individuals such as Captain Frank Foley and Captain Thomas Kendrick, identifying some wild over-estimates. The article suggests that the humanitarian work carried out by SIS/PCO personnel should not be rendered as a competition as to who ‘saved’ the most refugees. It is important to research the subject forensically without a partisan attitude towards the personalities involved in order to uncover the truth and understand what happened.

The arrest in June 1931 of Hilaire Noulens, the Comintern representative in Shanghai, heralded a major breakthrough for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in targeting the Bolshevik threat in the Far East during the inter-war years. At the time, Noulens, finally identified by Frederick Litten in 1994 as Jakob Rudnik, was playing a central part in nurturing Communist parties across the Far East, carrying out activities for the Department for International Liaison or Otdel Mezhdunarodnoi svyazi (OMS), the logistics, communications and intelligence arm of the Comintern.1 Records released to The National Archives (TNA) in 2005 revealed for the first time that Major Valentine Vivian, Head of Section V, SIS’s counter-espionage section, was responsible for drawing up a report in 1932 on the value of the papers found upon Noulens. Vivian’s report, available previously only in sanitised form, was released in full along with all its exhibits and enclosures detailing the extent of the Noulens haul. These papers, together with releases from Security Service (MI5) records, provide a unique glimpse into the role SIS played in piecing the case together.2