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Whilst MI5 is concerned with threats
to national security in the UK (internal), MI6 is concerned with such threats
from foreign countries and organisations (external). This is the role we
perhaps more traditionally associate with intelligence gathering. More towards
"spying", away from the detective work that MI5 engages in more
these days. MI6 recruits agents, and attempts to infiltrate foreign groups
and governments who it perceives may be a threat to UK national security.
For MI6 the end of the Cold War has posed a different problem than the one
MI5 faces. MI6 now has more targets, with the world’s focus less concentrated
on Moscow. Terrorist groups, and states, are now high profile targets. Networks
of new agents are required, as the requirement for intelligence shifts.
Industrial espionage, furthering British trade interests has also moved
into the national interest. Gathering intelligence on friendly governments,
obtaining advanced knowledge of their negotiating positions is also a new
target for MI6. These are changing times for this organisation...
It should be remembered that the UK has
two intelligence / security agencies (MI5 and MI6) whilst most countries
only have one. So the following organisations are only partially equivalent.
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA): US Intelligence Organisation
CESID: Spanish Intelligence Organisation
MOSSAD:
Israel's Intelligence Organisation
Russian SVR
MI6 is based in
London, in a new purpose built set of offices at 64 Vauxhall Cross, on the
South Bank of the Thames. The building is said to be architecturally "interesting".
It would be nice to get hold of a picture of this building.
I believe that Mr David Spedding is in
charge at MI6.
I have no idea how many people work for
them, but the numbers are not great. The Sunday Times (14/04/96) reveals
that currently fewer than 10 people are involved in counter-proliferation
(tackling the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons around
the globe) in MI6.
There a number of books on the UK Intelligence
agencies:
| Secret Service | By Christopher Andrew. A clear history of the Secret Services in Britain. Includes the special relationship with Special Branch. |
| Spycatcher | By Peter Wright. This book is famous because of the UK Governments attempts to get it banned.Wright wrote the book when MI5 failed to pay him the pension which he felt entitled to. It gives a valuable insight into MI5. |
| Next Stop Execution | By Oleg Gordievsky. Publisher Macmillan (ISBN 0-333-62086-0). This is an autobiography of Gordievsky, a KGB officer who was recruited by the SIS in the early 70s amd finally defected to Britain in the mid eighties after he was blown by Aldrich Ames, a KGB spy in the CIA. |
| Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the Secret War | This is an account of the life of Dick White, head of MI5 and later the SIS. |
| Foreign Intelligence Organizations | By Jeffrey T. Richelson (Ballinger Publishing Co., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988). Lots of good information on both MI5 and MI6, as well as GCHQ and Special Branch. Also covers intelligence organisations of every other country except the US. Contains the current organisational charts for MI5 and MI6. |
| MI6 | By Nigel West. Rather plodding(?) |
| The Second Oldest Profession | By Phillip Knightley. Very cynical about the 'alleged' capabilities and successes of the intelligence agencies. Believe he is a British writer for the Times. |
| MI5: The Security Service | From the horse's mouth! A 34 page booklet on MI5, published by the
goverment. ISBN 0-11-341087-5, (4.95 UK pounds). This publication was the first time the UK government publicaly admitted the existence of MI5. |
This section is undergoing some changes
- if you have a better review of any of the above books, to a book which
is missing, please contact me...
In the recent controversy over the Ordtech
and Matrix Churchill arms-to-Iraq deals it was alleged that several of the
business men nearly convicted (they were found innocent on direction of
the judge) were recruited by MI6 agents to spy on Iraqi arms installations
and report their findings to MI6 operatives. We await the findings of the
Scott inquiry which is investigating Ministers signing of public interest
immunity orders (such orders attempt to suppress information from being
used at a trial for reasons of national security) relating to these cases.
Reported in The Telegraph (30/10/95).
UPDATE: Scott has reported but it remains to be seen what everyone will
make of it all yet. I shall write some more here when it becomes clear what
the implications, if any, of the Scott report are. One thing is clear Scott's
enquiries have cleared the intelligence agencies and government of any accusations
of conspiracy. 22/02/96
UPDATE: It appears that following the vote in Parliment, narrowly won by
the Government, the Scott report has been burried. 02/04/96
Rosemary Sharpe, a British diplomat who
was until recently the first secretary at the British ambassy in Berlin,
was named by the German magazine Der Spiegel as an MI6 operative. She is
alledged to have brought information (about Russian military equipment)
from German intelligence officials now under investigation on corruption
related charges. Britain has been exonerated by the Germans from any implication
in the alleged corruption. But the incident caused embarrassment in both
London and Bonn, as it is unusual for the identity of an intellgience officer
to be disclosed, and because it is embarrassing for German to be implicated
in operations against Russia when it is suppost to be on close terms with
Moscow. The Telegraph 30/01/96.
The Government
reacted with astonishment at a high court ruling which said the George Blake,
should be allowed to receive £90,000 in royalities from the sale of
his memoirs. From 1951 to 1960 Blake, now 73, "betrayed his country"
by disclosing secret information and documents to the Soviet Union while
he worked for the SIS. Blake was arrested and convicted in 1961, but escaped
in 1966 and fled to the Soviet Union. He now lives in relative povery in
a flat in Moscow, the information he disclosed is said to have cost several
British agents their lives.
Lifelong confidentiality is imposed on former members of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
This became a contractual obligation in 1987, and was enshirined in the
Intelligence Services Act in 1994. (reported in The Times 20/04/96)
At last! Some positive publicity for
MI6, and about time too! MI6 are reported to have pulled off a major coup
against the French Navy. Details of France's anti-submarine warfare programme
are said to have been obtained after a French civilian engineer was duped
into providing information for which he was paid generously (neither the
engineer, or any of the other French officials involved were aware they
were acting as informants for MI6). MI6 was tasked with finding out more
after the Royal Navy learnt that France might have developed the capability
to track submarines. Such a system would undermine Britains's nuclear deterrent,
four Trident submarines. Although details are sketchy, the device is said
to be capable of tracking submarines from satellite by monitoring the tiny
distortions in waves caused by a submarine's underwater wake. Reported in
The Sunday Times 16/06/96.
Officers of MI6 will now have the right
to take disputes to an industrial tribunal. Malcolm Rifkind, the Foreign
Secretary announced the lifting of the general ban, and said that access
to tribunals would now be considered individually. "Staff will be allowed
access to an industrial tribunal in cases where national security considerations
can be met by the procedural safeguards available. Where they cannot, access
will continue to be disallowed." Safeguards will include closed hearings,
or even hearings only heard by the president of the industrial tribunal
alone. The announcement was made three days before an officer dismissed
in 1995 was due to challenge the legality of denying him access to a tribunal.
He was dismissed after claims by his personnel manager that he was not a
team player, he lacked judgement and was not committed to the service. He
contests this, claiming he has not be allowed access to papers to substantiate
his claims. Reported in The Telegraph 24/07/96.
UPDATE: The officer in question has been denied access to the tribunal,
and is considering an appeal against the decision. The Sunday Times 18/08/96
A spy story and a half, behind the tit-for-tat
expulsions of British and Russian diplomats. Norman MacSween, 48, chief
of MI6’s Moscow station prepared for a crash rendezvous with one of
his trusted agents, codenamed Plato. Meeting an agent is unusual and dangerous,
only done when an agent was in trouble. At the rendezvous, Plato failed
to show. He was already under interrogation at the headquarters of the FSB
(Russian MI5), supplying a detailed confession. That is the story the FSB
would like told, the truth is somewhat stranger.
Russian television news shows were treated to the strange sight of MacSween
arriving at his Moscow rendezvous. The commentary told viewers that he was
waiting to meet Platon Obukhov, 28, an employee of the foreign ministry.
Later on the television programme Plato confessed to spying for Britain.
News of Plato’s capture surfaced in May, when the FSB demanded nine
MI6 officers be expelled (a number far greater than the total of the MI6
station in Moscow). The head on the SVR (Russian MI6) stepped in and a compromise
of four expulsions on each side was reached. The FSB were furious, its coup
against Britain had been thwarted. MI6 went to work, to determine how it
had been compromised. Was it poor tradecraft, was he a double agent (a dangle),
or worse was there a mole?
After several months of review, MI6 were sure that poor tradecraft was not
to blame.
MI6 had been initially cautious about Obukhov when he was recruited, he
had little reason to betray his country. He was a golden child, and his
father was Ambassador to Denmark. Curiously, he also wrote violent crime
and spy novels, under his own name (much to the annoyance of the Russian
foreign ministry). He had however supplied valuable material, all the material
was checked and found to be accurate. MI6 were convinced this was the genuine
article.
This is now in doubt, if he was a dangle a lot would be explained. Exposing
MacSween made little sense, he was already know to Russian intelligence,
just as the SVR station chief in London is know to MI5. If Obukhov was a
dangle, and his Russian handlers had decided that the information he was
passing was no longer useful, then a final expose of MacSween and the MI6
station may have been a worthwhile prize. Particularly given the pressures
on the FSB in Russia, following their failure in Chechnya. However, there
is no evidence of this. All the information Obukhov supplied appears to
have been gold, a dangle would have started to feed misleading intelligence.
This leads the third possibility, a mole. For more than a year MI6 has known
of an FBI investigation into a Russian mole in the CIA. MI6 has been here
before, with Rick Ames (see article on MI5 page). So far the Americans are
not saying. The final and most frightening theory is a mole in MI6. This
seems unlikely, as MI6 retains agents in Russia in far higher positions.
One person who could clear up everything is Obukhov himself, but he only
talks to his interrogators. The likely answer is that this young spy, forgot
for a moment that this was reality, not one of his novels. A mistake that
will probably cost him his life at the hands of a firing squad. Meanwhile
MacSween’s career is at an end, his image seen world-wide, despite
the British government’s best efforts with a D-Notice.
Reported in the Sunday Times 04/08/96.
