-Caveat Lector-
from:
http://www.cc.umist.ac.uk/sk/mi6.html
<A HREF="http://www.cc.umist.ac.uk/sk/mi6.html">Military Intelligence 6</A>
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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 ServiceBy Christopher Andrew. A clear history of the Secret
Services in Britain. Includes the special relationship with Special
Branch.SpycatcherBy 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 ExecutionBy 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 WarThis is an account of the life of Dick White,
head of MI5 and later the SIS.Foreign Intelligence OrganizationsBy
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.MI6By Nigel West. Rather
plodding(?)The Second Oldest ProfessionBy 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 ServiceFrom 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.
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24/11/96
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Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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