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MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations, 1909–1945 Kindle Edition
Written by the renowned expert Nigel West, this book exposes the operations of Britain’s overseas intelligence-gathering organization, the famed Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and traces its origins back to its inception in 1909. In this meticulously researched account, its activities and structure are described in detail, using original secret service documents.
The main body of the book concerns MI6’s operations during the Second World War, and includes some remarkable successes and failures, including how MI6 financed a glamorous confidant of the German secret service; how a suspected French traitor was murdered by mistake; how Franco’s military advisors were bribed to keep Spain out of the war; how members of the Swedish secret police were blackmailed into helping the British war effort; how a sabotage operation in neutral Tangiers enabled the Allied landings in North Africa to proceed undetected; and how Britain’s generals ignored the first ULTRA decrypts because MI6 said that the information had come from “a well-placed source called BONIFACE.”
In this new edition, operations undertaken by almost all of MI6’s overseas stations are recounted in extraordinary detail. They will fascinate both the professional intelligence officer and the general reader.
The book includes organizational charts to illustrate MI6’s internal structure and its wartime network of overseas stations. Backed by numerous interviews with intelligence officers and their agents, this engaging inside story throws light on many wartime incidents that had previously remained unexplained.
“[An] extraordinary book.” —The Daily Telegraph
“Fascinating reading.” —Firetrench
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherFrontline Books
- Publication dateJanuary 19, 2020
- File size11772 KB
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Military | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
World War II | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
Intelligence | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
British History | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
MI6 | ✓ |
Editorial Reviews
Review
Keith Rimmer, NZ Crown Mines
"First released in the UK in 1983, this handsome reprint is a welcome addition that once again provides easy access to West’s detailed look at the origins of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) known as MI6."
The Journal of Strategic Security
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B07ZVM4VDR
- Publisher : Frontline Books (January 19, 2020)
- Publication date : January 19, 2020
- Language : English
- File size : 11772 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 366 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #519,966 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #165 in 20th Century History of the UK
- #334 in Intelligence & Espionage (Kindle Store)
- #740 in 20th Century World History
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Born in Lambeth, Nigel West was educated at a Roman Catholic monastery and London University. While still a student he worked as a researcher for the authors Ronald Seth and Richard Deacon, who both specialised in security and intelligence issues.
In 1977 Nigel joined BBC TV's General Features Department to make television documentaries, and he worked on the SPY! and ESCAPE! series. His first book, written with Richard Deacon, was based on the first series and was entitled SPY! Thereafter he was commissioned to write a wartime history of the Security Service, MI5, which was published in 1981, and since then he has averaged one book of non-fiction a year, including The Secret War for the Falklands released in January 1997.
He has concentrated on security and intelligence issues and his controversial books invariably hit the headlines. He was injuncted by the Attorney-General in 1982 and was served a Public Interest Immunity Certificate signed by the Home Secretary in 1987. He was voted 'The Experts' Expert' by a panel of other spy writers in the Observer in November 1989 and The Sunday Times has commented:
'His information is so precise that many people believe he is the unofficial historian of the secret services. West's sources are undoubtedly excellent. His books are peppered with deliberate clues to potential front-page stories.'
Nigel West often speaks at intelligence seminars and has lectured at both the KGB headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square and at the CIA headquarters in Langley. He is now a member of the faculty at the Centre for Counterintelligence & Security Studies in Washington DC (www.cicentre.com).
His greatest coup was tracking down the wartime double agent GARBO, who was reported to have died in Africa in 1949. In fact West traced him to Venezuela, and they collaborated on GARBO, published in 1985. He was also the first person to identify and interview the mistress of Admiral Canaris, the German intelligence chief, and he was responsible for the exposure of Leo Long and Edward Scott as Soviet spies.
His recent titles include Crown Jewels, based on files made available to him by the KGB archives in Moscow; VENONA, which disclosed the existence of a GRU spy-ring operating in London throughout the war, headed by Professor J B S Haldane and the Hon. Ivor Montagu: and The Third Secret, an account of the CIA's intervention in Afghanistan. In Mortal Crimes, published in September 2004, investigates the scale of soviet espionage in the Manhattan Project, the Anglo-American development of an atomic bomb.
In 2005 he edited The Guy Liddell Diaries, a daily journal of the wartime work of MI5's Director of Counter-Espionage. He also published a study of the Comintern's secret wireless traffic, MASK: MI5's Penetration of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and a counter-intelligence textbook, The Historical Dictionary of British Intelligence.
He has lectured at the Smithsonian institute in Washington DC, speaks regularly for Hilton Special Events, on the QE2 and QM2, and for Seabourn, Regent Crystal Cruises. His topics include: GARBO: The Spy Who Saved D-Day; VENONA: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War; The Cambridge Five: The True Story of Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Kim Philby. Anthony Blunt and John Cairncross; Double Agents of World War II; The History of the British Secret Intelligence Service; James Bond: The Fact and fiction of 007; Combatting Terrorism: How the IRA were beaten in Northern Ireland; Enigma: Bletchley Park and the Codebreakers; Molehunt: The Search for Soviet Spies.
In 2003 Nigel West was awarded the US Association of Former Intelligence Officers' first Lifetime Literature Achievement Award.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
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before, during and after the first world war,
the era between the first and second world war,
before, during, and at the end of the second world war, it is an excellent book for (ABC) intelligence.
The sheer wealth of detailed research in West's works can be a little of a challenge and require study as much as just reading, with constant cross and back checking though, it becomes a great story, adding historical depth to anyone with an interest in this engaging period of the British fascination and need of intelligence on other enemy - real or perceived - and of course, friendly nations.
MI6 touches on the great scandals of Philby et al, and is perhaps a good introduction to further reading into the events of the "Fifth Man" penetration of the service by Russian moles.