A Higher Form of Intelligence: Hugh Trevor-Roper and Wartime British Secret Service

Throughout his distinguished career, the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper was known in many incarnations and guises: the ‘sleuth of Oxford’; Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford; the Spectator's Mercurius Oxoniensis; Baron Dacre of Glanton; and Master of Peterhouse College. In addition, he was to gain wider notoriety in the early 1980s as the man who helped authenticate the forged Hitler Diaries. Nevertheless, his wartime embodiment as a British intelligence officer is one facet of his personal history that has never before been addressed by scholars in any great depth. Using previously unpublished material from Trevor-Roper's memoirs and personal papers, as well as excerpts from the Guy Liddell Diaries, this article aims to highlight the fact that, contrary to the impression engendered by F.H. Hinsley's dry and depersonalized multi-volume official history, British Intelligence in the Second World War, Major H.R. Trevor-Roper, and many other intelligence officers like him, not only had a ‘good war’, but a rich and colourful one. If historians are to escape the late Sir Maurice Oldfield's indictment of that official history, namely, that it was written ‘by a committee, about committees, for a committee’, they might do worse than begin to reappraise the role of the individual in the context of Britain's intelligence effort during 1939–45. The late Lord Dacre, so this article argues, is one such individual requiring further study.     

Ethics and Intelligence after September 2001

Anthony Glees, The Secrets of the Service: British Intelligence and Communist Subversion 1939–51 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987). Pp.447; £18.

Robert A. Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). Pp.378; $32.50 and $14.50.

Peter Taylor, Stalker: the Search for the Truth (London: Faber and Faber, 1987). Pp.231, £9.95, paperback £4.95.

Frank Doherty, The Stalker Affair: Including an Account of British Secret Service Operations in Ireland (Cork and Dublin: Mercier Press, 1986). Pp.90, IR£3.95.

K.G. Robertson (ed.), Intelligence and National Security (London: Macmillan, 1987). Pp.281.

William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History. U.S. Global Interventions Since World War 2 (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1986). Pp.428. $19.95.

Joan Miller, One Girl's War: Personal Exploits in MIS's Most Secret Station (Dublin: Brandon Book Publishers, 1986). Pp.155. £5.95.     

Simon Chesterman,One Nation Under Surveillance: A New Social Contract to Defend Freedom Without Sacrificing Liberty

Brigadier General Denis Whitaker and Shelagh Whitaker, Dieppe: Tragedy to Triumph (Toronto and Montreal: McGraw‐Hill Ryerson, 1992). Pp.xvi + 372.

David Kahn, Seizing the Enigma: The Race to Break the German U‐boat Codes, 1939–1943 (Boston/London: Houghton Mifflin Company/Souvenir Press, 1991). Pp. xii + 336. US $24.95; £15.99.

Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Random House, 1991). Pp. 9 + 622. US $35.00.

James Dubro and Robin Rowland, Undercover: Cases of the RCMP ‘s Most Secret Operative (Markham, Ontario: Octopus Publishing, 1991). Pp. 314. $28.95.

Stephen J. Cimbala, Clausewitz and Escalation: Classical Perspective on Nuclear Strategy (London: Frank Cass, 1991). Pp. 218. £32.00.

Roger Carey and Trevor C. Salmon (eds), International Security in the Modern World (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992). Pp. 241. £40.00.

Philip M. Taylor, War and Media: Propaganda and Persuasion in the Gulf War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992). Pp. 14 + 338; index. £9.95.

Alex Danchev (ed.), International Perspectives on the Falklands Conflict (London: Macmillan, 1992). Pp. xii + 277. £40.00.

Alex Danchev (ed.), The Franks Report: Falkland Islands Review (London: Pimlico, 1992). Pp. xxiv+106. £9.00.

Andrew Orgill, The Falklands War: Background, Conflict, Aftermath. An Annotated Bibliography (London: Mansell, 1993). Pp. xii + 132. £35.00.

R. Connaughton, Military Intervention in the 1990s (London: Routledge, 1992). Pp. 208. £40.00.

Steven Z. Freiberger, Dawn Over Suez: The Rise of American Power in the Middle East, 1953–1957 (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 1992). Pp. 286. US $26.50.

Sigmund Diamond, Compromised Campus: The Collaboration of Universities with the Intelligence Community, 1945–55 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Pp. ix +371. US $27.95.

David Cesarani, Justice Delayed: How Britain became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals (London: Heinemann, 1992). Pp. 326. £17.50.

Gary S. Messinger, British Propaganda and the State in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992). Pp. x + 292. £35.00.

Bradley F. Smith, The Ultra‐Magic Deals and the Most Secret Special Relationship 1940–1946 (Novalo, CA/Shrewsbury: Presidio Press/Airline Press). Pp. 176. $24.95; £17.95.

Peter R. Young (ed.), Defence and the Media in Time of Limited War (London: Frank Cass, 1992). Pp. 281. £30.00.

James Wood, A History of International Broadcasting (London: Peter Peregrinus, in association with the Science Museum, London, No. 19 in the Institution of Electrical Engineers’ History of Technology Series, 1992). Pp.264. £30.00.

Frank McLynn, Fitzroy Maclean (London: John Murray, 1992). Pp. 418. £25.00.

Peter Tennant, Touchlines of War (Hull: University of Hull Press, 1992). Pp. 312. £8.95.

Richard J. Aldrich (editor), British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold War 1945–51 (London: Routledge, 1992). Pp. xiv + 347. £50.00 (hardback).     

Book Reviews

Armstrong, David, Lloyd, Lorna and Redmond, John From Versailles to Maastricht: International Organisation in the Twentieth Century Brubaker, Rogers Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe Gillespie, Paul (ed) Britain’s European Question: The Issues for Ireland Hesse, Joachim Jens and Wright, Vincent (eds) Federalizing Europe? The Costs, Benefits, and Preconditions of Political Systems Hooghe, Liesbet (ed) Cohesion Policy and European Integration: Building Multi-level Governance Laffan, Brigid (ed) Constitution-building in the European Union Lane, Jan-Erik, McKay, David and Newtown, Kenneth (ed) Political Data Handbook: OECD Countries, 2nd edn Page, Edward C. People Who Run Europe Smith, Michael New Cloak, Old Dagger: How Briain’s Spies Came In From the Cold Urban, Mark UK Eyes Alpha: The Inside Story of British Intelligence Herman, Michael Intelligence Power in Peace and War West, Nigel The Secret War for the Falklands: The SAS, M16 and the War Whitehall Nearly Lost Jones, Tudor Remaking the Labour Party: From Gaitskell to Blair Thompson, Noel Political Economy and the Labour Party Shepherd, Robert Enoch Powell Webster, Charles The Health Service since the War, vol. II: Government and Health Care—The British National Health Service, 1958–1979 Adams, Adrian and So, Jaabe A Claim to Land by the River: A Household in Senegal Strange, Susan The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy Vatikiotis, Michael J. Political Change in Southeast Asia: Trimming the Banyan Tree Jacobs, Michael/Real World Coalition The Politics of the Real World Landauer, Thomas K. The Trouble with Computers: Usefulness, Usability and Productivity MacKenzie, Donald Knowing Machines: Essays on Technical Change     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: The CIA, the British Left and the Cold War. Calling the Tune? by Hugh Wilford. Western Intelligence and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Ten Days That Did Not Shake the World 1980–1990, edited by David Arbel and Ran Edelist. Secret Intelligence in the Twentieth Century, edited by Heike Bungert, Jan G. Heitman and Michael Wala. How Mumbo‐Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions, by Francis Wheen. Neighbours from Hell: The Politics of Behaviour, by Frank Field. Memoirs, by Douglas Hurd. Motivation, Agency, and Public Policy: Of Knights and Knaves, Pawns and Queens, by Julian Le Grand. Concept and Controversy: Sixty Years of Taking Ideas to Market, by W. W. Rostow. The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, with an Introduction and Notes by Gareth Steadman Jones. World on Fire, by Amy Chua.     

For Queen and Company: The Role of Intelligence in the UK's Arms Trade

This article analyses the role that the UK intelligence services (particularly Secret Intelligence Service [SIS or MI6], the Defence Intelligence Staff [DIS], Government Communication Headquarters [GCHQ] and associated agencies) play in the legal UK arms trade. The article shows that intelligence has been used in support of British-based private commercial businesses, and occasionally in providing intelligence on the negotiating positions of rival manufacturers. This raises important questions about the role of the state in the private sphere, particularly the use of a large number of government assets in support of private interests and the elision of British government interests with those of a section of the manufacturing industry. This article also challenges existing conceptions of how the UK's intelligence agencies operate and relate to their customers. Conventional typologies of UK intelligence have emphasised the importance of the 'central machinery', highlighting the Joint Intelligence Committee as the focal point of intelligence tasking and analysis in the UK. However, in this case the intelligence support provided to the sale of military equipment suggests a range of parallel practices that are much more decentralised and often informal. This research therefore suggests that our conception of the UK intelligence architecture requires some reassessment.     

In search of a textbook: Recent overviews of United States intelligence history since the days of the founding fathers

Charles D. Ameringer, U.S. Foreign Intelligence: The Secret Side of American History (Lexington: D.C. Heath, 1990). Pp. xix + 458. US $24.95.

Nathan Miller, Spying for America: The Hidden History of U.S. Intelligence (New York: Paragon House, 1989). Pp. xi + 482. US $24.95.

Ernest Volkman and Blaine Baggett, Secret Intelligence: The Inside Story of America's Espionage Empire (London: W.H. Allen, 1989). Pp. xxi + 265. £16.99 (paperback).     

Englishmen in New York: The SIS American Station, 1915-21

This article examines the organization, personnel and selected operations of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in New York during and immediately after the First World War. Under the leadership of Sir William Wiseman, SIS agents successfully combated German intrigues as well as Irish and Indian nationalists. The greatest challenges, however, were managing the shifting relationship with American authorities and the encroachments of rival British agencies such as MI5. The roles of Guy Gaunt, Robert Nathan and Norman Thwaites are given particular attention.     

J.C. Masterman and the Security Service, 1940–72

The significance of J.C. Masterman's relationship with the Security Service, MI5, has not been fully appreciated. As a junior officer during World War II, he consistently sought to achieve good working relations with the Secret Intelligence Service. After the war he continued to take an interest in the Security Service and worked closely with other MI5 elder statesmen to ensure that the successor to Percy Sillitoe as Director-General came from within the Service. Masterman always hoped that his account of the double agents run by British Intelligence during World War II would one day be published. As the public image of the British secret services deteriorated during the 1960s, Masterman believed that MI5 did not grasp how his book could promote its interests, and so he insisted on forcing through publication anyway. The correspondence from serving and former MI5 officers in Masterman's papers vividly illustrate changing attitudes to official secrecy and the declining ability of the British Government to enforce it.     

British Intelligence through the Eyes of the Stasi: What the Stasi's Records Show about the Operations of British Intelligence in Cold War Germany

Abstract

The German parliament's Law on the Stasi Records, passed in 1991, extended the principle of freedom of information to the records of a Communist security service. By so doing, it has given historians, former targets of Stasi intelligence collection and others an unprecedented insight into the operations of such a service. Enough records of the Stasi's trials department have been made available to reconstruct a picture of the work of British intelligence agencies in the years 1945–61, and above all the work of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). They show that SIS was a very skilful service which obtained the high-grade intelligence it sought. However, SIS's work in East Germany was undone in the late 1950s by the treason of the KGB's penetration agent in it, George Blake.     

‘I can’t remember a more depressing time but I don’t blame anyone for that’: remembering and commemorating the wartime internment of enemy aliens in Britain

ABSTRACT

In October 2000, David Cesarani decried the unnecessary internment of refugees from Nazi Germany in Britain during the Second World War on the BBC Radio 4 programme Behind the Wire. Until the last few decades, little was known about the internment of enemy aliens by the British during the war. However, in recent years, novels such as David Baddiel’s The Secret Purposes, published in 2004, and exhibitions such as ‘Schwitters in Britain’ at the Tate Britain in 2013, have introduced a wider audience to this oft-forgotten part of the British wartime narrative. Some of those interned in Britain were sent to Canada and Australia, which led to the greatest tragedy of the entire internment debacle, the sinking of the Arandora Star. The year 2015 marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of this tragedy, and the memory of those who were lost lives on in the British–Italian community. However, outside those affected by the Arandora Star disaster, little is commemorated or understood by the general public. Yet the legacy of the former internees is all around us. Who has not, on visiting the British Library, walked past former internee’s Eduardo Paolozzi’s statue of Newton? What connoisseur of classical music has not enjoyed the sound of the Amadeus Quartet, perhaps the only positive outcome of internment? Pistol’s article will examine the memory of the camps and consider the differences between how internment has been remembered and commemorated by former internees and the general public.     

The Waldegrave Initiative and secret service archives: New materials and new policies

Louise Atherton, Top Secret: An Interim Guide to Recent Releases of Intelligence Records at the Public Record Office (London: PRO Publications, 1993). Pp.32. £3.25. ISBN 1 87362073.

Louise Atherton, SOE Operations in the Far East: An Introductory Guide to the Newly Released Records of the Special Operations Executive in the Public Record Office (London: PRO Publications, 1993). Pp.59. £3.25. ISBN 1 873162081.

Louise Atherton, SOE Operations in Scandinavia: A Guide to the Newly Released Records in the Public Record Office (London: PRO Publications, 1994). Pp.34. £3.25. ISBN 1 873162154.

FCO Historical Branch, Changes in British and Russian Records Policy: Occasional Papers No.7 (London: Historical Branch, LRD, 1993). Pp.42.

FCO Historical Branch, FCO Records: Policy Practice and Posterity, 1782–1993 (London: Historical Branch, LRD, Second Edition, 1993). Pp.17.     

Covert Operations and Official Collaboration: British Intelligence's Dual Approach to Ireland during World War II

Neutral Ireland posed a unique challenge to the wartime British intelligence community and the latter responded by adopting a dual approach. On the one hand, it carried out covert intelligence operations in Irish territory, involving the Service intelligence branches, the Ministry of Information, and, most importantly, the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). On the other hand, unprecedented cooperation developed between military, police and intelligence agencies from Britain and Ireland, and in particular between MI5 and Irish military intelligence (G2). For most of the war British intelligence pursued this joint strategy of covert activity and official collaboration, and MI5 and SIS shared responsibility for Ireland. However, there was a gradual shift of emphasis towards cooperation and it was eventually concluded that the MI5-G2 link could serve all Britain's security needs. This article charts this evolution and places it within the context of Anglo-Irish wartime political relations.     

From special operations to special political action: The ‘rump SOE’ and SIS post‐war covert action capability 1945–1977

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.     

Fiction,Faction and Intelligence

There is a demonstrable overlap between authentic intelligence operations and the way they have been portrayed in works of fiction, which is not entirely surprising considering the number of distinguished, and some lesser-known, novelists who have worked for MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service over the years. Setting aside for a moment the work of Compton Mackenzie, Graham Greene, John le Carré and Somerset Maugham, arguably SIS's most renowned authors, what about Kenneth Benton, David Footman and Jack Cordeaux? The writing culture was especially prevalent in the Security Service, where the legendary case officer Jack Bingham, for whom David Cornwall once worked, raised no objection to the employment of authors. His colleague Max Knight wrote some terrible thrillers, and his assistant, William Younger, chose the interesting pen-name William Mole. Bingham's wife Madeleine and daughter Charlotte, who also worked for MI5, wrote many books, and they were not alone. Curiously, however, it is Ian Fleming who has attracted the greatest attention for his great invention, 007. Yet there remains some doubt about whether Bond may not have been inspired by his former tutor in pre-war Kitzbuhel, Phyllis Bottome, whose 1946 novel The Lifeline introduced a suave, German-speaking, Swiss-educated, mountaineering, British agent a full five years before the publication of Casino Royale. A coincidence? Maybe, but the paths taken by these two authors criss-cross on many occasions.     

‘… the Defence of the Realm and Nothing Else’: Sir Findlater Stewart,Labour Ministers and the Security Service

In May 2013, a report on the British Security Service (MI5) by Sir Samuel Findlater Stewart was released by the Cabinet Office. Dated November 1945, the report on the future organization and activities of MI5 was significant in that it defined the Service's post-war remit, accountability and relations with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), laying the groundwork of MI5's mandate until the introduction of the Security Service Act in 1989. The article also suggests that the report is significant, not just because it sheds important light on MI5's wartime and post-war role, but because it helps question existing assumptions about the relationship between the Security Service and the post-war Labour Government of Clement Attlee, often viewed as a troubled one.     

The FBI,A Hundred‐Year Retrospective

No civilian government agency in the United States has received as much attention from authors as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Much of the early writing consisted of laudatory pieces that parroted the output of the agency’s extensive public relations apparatus. This was followed by a reactive era of critical literature following the Watergate scandal and the death of J. Edgar Hoover. This article surveys the key literature on this controversial agency, including both perspectives and insider memoirs, Hoover biographies, and recent scholarly works.     

Intelligence writings in Australia

Andrew Moore, The Secret Army and the Premier, Conservative Paramilitary Organisations in NSW 1930–32 (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1989). Pp.312. $19.00 (paperback).

Michael Cathcart, Defending the National Tuck Shop, Australia's Secret Army Intrigue of 1931 (Melbourne: Penguin, 1988). Pp.216. $14.99 (paperback).

Robert Manne, The Petrov Affair, Politics and Espionage (Sydney: Pergamon, 1987). Pp.310. $43.00 (paperback).

Mark Aarons, Sanctuary, Nazi Fugitives in Australia (Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1989). Pp.365. $24.00

Desmond Ball, Pine Gap, Australia and the US Geostationary Signals Intelligence Satellite Program (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988). Pp.121. $15.00 (paperback).

Desmond Ball, A Base for Debate, the US Satellite Station at Nurrungar (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987). Pp.122. $15.00 (paperback).

Desmond Ball, Australia's Secret Space Programs (Canberra: Australian National University, 1988). Pp.86. $15.00 (paperback).

Peter Morton, Fire Across the Desert, Woomera and the Anglo‐Australian Joint Project 1946–1980 (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1989). Pp.561. $99.95.     

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Operation Rollback: America's Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Grose. Undermining the Kremlin: America's Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956 by Gregory Mitrovich.     

The Intelligence War on Terrorism

From 1941 to 1944, MI5 faced determined attempts to penetrate Allied Air Forces using trained pilot agents recruited by German Military Intelligence (Abwehr). The mission of these pilot agents was to gather military intelligence and to return to German held territory. This pattern of targeting Allied Air Forces has not been recognized by historians. This article examines MI5's responses to the threat using recently released files in the National Archives.