British Secret Service Research Articles

The British secret services

The British secret services

Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency

This groundbreaking new book challenges the notion that covert operations are a twentieth-century phenomenon, recounting a wide array of operations sanctioned by America's Founding Fathers. These include George Washington's plan to kidnap King George III's son; Thomas Jefferson's proposal to burn down St Paul's Cathedral in London; James Madison's procuring of a prostitute for a prominent foreign visitor; and Daniel Webster's use of British secret service money to influence American public opinion. In describing these operations and more, Stephen F. Knott challenges the conclusions of the Church and the Iran-Contra Committees that America's Cold War presidents broke faith with the Founding Fathers. While Knott acknowledges the rise of a large clandestine bureaucracy such as the CIA as a twentieth-century innovation, he nonetheless argues that the type of operations conducted by the Founders were remarkably similar to those of their Cold War successors such as Truman and Bush.

The Swiss and Swabian Agencies, 1795–1801

AbstractThis article continues an examination of the British government's counter-revolutionary organization begun in ‘The Alien Office 1792-1806’, The Historical Journal, XXXIII (1990), which outlined the department's functions and secret service policy. The Swiss and Swabian agencies were one aspect of British foreign secret service; they linked the French princes' secret agents to the British government under the central European control of William Wickham, ambassador in Berne 1794–7, and military and diplomatic subsidiaries. Anti-republican secret committees were set up covering all France, Switzerland, northern Italy and southern Germany, which included members from every grade of society. French republican generals, even Ministers were swayed, allowing infiltration of the French secret police. British control was however limited to the finesse of finance – bribery was implicit. By never offering enough to the leaders and too much to assistants, initial constitutional intentions slid into subversion and assassination. The first complete andfully documented description is included of how, why, and by whom, the French deputies were assassinated at Rastadt.

British Secret Service Activity in Khorassan, 1887–1908

When great powers quarrel their lesser neighbours are often worst affected. Cajoled and wooed, they are drawn into conflicts they would prefer to avoid. Such involvement may exacerbate internal weaknesses and end by damaging them long after the causes of the original dispute have faded. Nineteenth-century Iran became drawn into Anglo-Russian rivalries in Central Asia as each sought to secure her assistance. Spectators of the so-called ‘Great Game’ were not allowed: the boxes were part of the field of play.

THE INFLUENCE OF ULTRA ON WORLD WAR II

Abstract : In the last half decade, intelligence, once a stepchild in World War II history, has assured itself a place among more fully covered aspects of the conflict. A flood of new information and insights was set off by revelations on the ULTRA secret initiated by Gustave Bertrand and F. W. Winterbotham. The cloud of mystery once dispelled, the door was open to further disclosures on ULTRA itself and the unique role claimed for it in influencing the course of the war and, conceivably, its final outcome. With so much brought to the light of day, the remaining aspects of the clandestine sides of the conflict scarcely seemed worth the trouble of keeping them in obscurity. British Secret Service files, which remained closed in the late 60's when the reduction of the traditional waiting period on the release of public records to 30 years offered so many windfalls to World War II scholars, have become increasingly accessible. This essay will assume a broad familiarity with the epic tale of how Polish, French, and British scientists and cryptologists unraveled the mysteries of the German Enigma machine and, eventually, of most of the codes in which its messages were transmitted. A similar acquaintance is assumed for how ULTRA came to be the central element in first British and then Anglo-American intelligence gathering and appraisal and for innumerable operational decisions. What will be attempted here is a rather far-reaching and risk-taking assessment of the part ULTRA played in the war's Western theaters. Factors which underlined or detracted from its impact on events, estimates of its influence on strategy, and evaluation of its contribution to the outcome of the war will be reviewed.

The British Secret Service and Anglo-Soviet Relations in the 1920s Part I: From the Trade Negotiations to the Zinoviev Letter

On the morning of Saturday 25 October 1924 Philip Snowden, the Labour chancellor of the exchequer, was woken by the sound of J. H. Thomas, the colonial secretary, hammering on his bedroom door. ‘Get up, you lazy devil!’ Thomas is reported to have said. ‘We';re bunkered.’ What Thomas really said was probably more vivid but less printable. The cause of his excitement was the publication of the Zinoviev letter, the greatest Red Scare in British political history. Allegedly written by Zinoviev, president of the communist International, to the British Communist party on 15 September 1924. this sinister document instructed British Communists to put pressure on their sympathizers in the Labour party, to ‘strain every nerve’ for the ratification of the recent treaty with the Soviet Union, to intensify ‘agitation-propaganda work in the armed forces’, and generally to prepare for the coming of the British revolution. A copy of the letter was first obtained by the Daily Mail, then circulated by the Mail to the rest of Fleet Street. It was published in the press four days before the general election of 29 October 1924, at a critical moment in the life of the first Labour government. Until its publication Labour leaders felt their election campaign was going well. Afterwards they changed their minds.

A History of the British Secret Service.

A History of the British Secret Service.

Book Review: Military and Scientific Affairs: Donovan of OSS, a History of the British Secret Service

Book Review: Military and Scientific Affairs: Donovan of OSS, a History of the British Secret Service

An Eighteenth-Century Account of German Emigration to the American Colonies

RICHARD WOLTERS, Dutch author of the memorandum reproduced below, was one of the most important and interesting figures in the European political underworld of the eighteenth century. He is discreetly listed in contemporary editions of the annual British Court and city register as His Majesty's Agent at Rotterdam, a post which he inherited from his father in 1730, when only sixteen years old. The chief duties of the post were the organization of the rudimentary British secret service of the time in western Europe and the transmission of his agents' reports to the northern secretary of state, and reporting to the British Treasury on financial matters, especially the state of the French and Dutch public finances. These were heavy responsibilities for a boy of sixteen, but he was helped in his early years by his mother, who was a formidably competent woman. So also was Wolters' own wife, who, to complete the extraordinary record of service of this family, succeeded Wolters after his death in February 1771.1 Wolters, as good an Englishman as his birth and love for hi's native city of Rotterdam would permit, served his London masters faithfully and, from his viewpoint, as an advocate of close Anglo-Dutch political connections with advantage to Dutch interests -he was a convinced adherent of William III's system of foreign policy.2 In addition to his able conduct of his main tasks, he managed to find time for reporting on, and seeking to foster, the branch of the German emigration to the American mainland colonies which was conducted under the brutal auspices of some of the Rotterdam merchants. He genuinely detested the treatment of these emigrants by the merchants, who exploited the passionate desire of the Newlanders to begin a fresh and free life in America, and he was well acquainted with their ghastly traffic in human souls. However, his motives in suggesting ways of improving the emigrants' conditions were not entirely altruistic-he sought also to serve his British masters and himself. When toward the end of 1762 he first sent this memorandum to Lord Halifax, then northern secretary of state, it was with the hope that if its proposals were adopted the control of the

British Secret Service in France, 1784–1792

British Secret Service in France, 1784–1792

British Secret Service and the French-American Alliance

British Secret Service and the French-American Alliance