REQUIRED: MI6
Logo - if such a thing exists...
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. |
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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Last updated:
07/09/96