Profiles in intelligence: an interview with Gill Bennett

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. ”Interview – Patrick Salmon” < https://www.e-ir.info/2015/08/09/interview-patrick-salmon/ >.

2. ”She’s Making History: Reflections of a Whitehall Historian,” Somerville Magazine, 2020, p. 28.

3. On the work of the FO/FCO/FCDO Historians, read History at the Heart of Diplomacy: Historians in the Foreign Office, 1918 – 2018, History Note, No. 22, November 2018.

4. ”Security Service Act, 1989” < https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/5/contents/enacted > and “Intelligence Services Act, 1994” < https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/13/contents/enacted >.

5. Greville Ewan Janner, Baron Janner of Braunstone, Labour MP for Leicester North West (1970–74) and Leicester West (1974–1997). Elevated to the House of Lords in 1997.

6. Sir Malcolm Leslie Rifkind KCMG KC. Secretary of State for Defence (1992–1995), Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs (1995–1997).

7. The Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552 < https://www.justice.gov/oip/freedom-information-act-5-usc-552 >.

8. ”Nazi Gold: Information from the British Archives,” History Notes, Issue September 11, 1996; and “Nazi Gold, Part II: Information from the British Archives,” History Notes, Issue May 12, 1997.

9. For the context, see “The Greatest Theft in History?” December 1, 1997. Read also Nazi Gold: The London Conference (The Stationary Office, 1999).

10. Hansard, HC. Deb., November 12, 1996, Vol. 285, cols. 261–8.

11. In September, 1999, Bennett attended a conference jointly organised by the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence and Allied Museum in Berlin, ‘On the Frontline of Cold War: the Intelligence War in Berlin’. During the conference, the publication of extracts from The Mitrokhin Archive, based on details smuggled from the KGB archive by Vasili Mitrokhin, especially the public uncovering of Soviet agent Melita Norwood, led to ‘Gill finding herself besieged by the world’s press at the boundary fence’ (History at the Heart of Diplomacy, p. 68). On Norwood and the Mitrokhin revelations, read Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The KGB in Europe and the West (London: Allen Lane, 1999).

12. On the context, see Bennett, “Declassification and release policies.”

13. Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

14. PUSD was officially formed in October 1949: ‘On 1st October, 1949, a new Department will be set up. It will be called the Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department and will be responsible for the duties at present undertaken by Services Liaison Department and by the Permanent Under-Secretary’s Committee Secretariat as well as for certain duties hitherto undertaken by the Private Secretary to the Permanent Under-Secretary’ (The National Archives, TNA: FO 1093/382, “Office Notice,” September 29, 1949).

15. See, From World War to Cold War: Records of the Foreign Office Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department, 1939 – 1951, 1–3.

16. Documents on British Policy Overseas is an edited collection of ‘the most important documents for the study of British foreign policy edited by independent historians working in the FCO’, with volumes covering ‘significant events in British foreign policy. Each volume has a main theme covering related topics with documents arranged in chronological order’ (read FCO Historical Branch, Occasional Papers No. 9: Documents on British Policy Overseas Publishing Policy and Practice, January, 1995, 1–2).

17. See Bennett, Six Moments of Crisis, 123–146 and Geraint Hughes, ““Giving the Russians a Bloody Nose”: Operation Foot and Soviet espionage in the United Kingdom, 1964 – 1971,” Cold War History, 6, no. 2 (2006): 229–249.

18. Documents on British policy overseas Series III volume 1; Britain and the Soviet Union, 1968-72.

19. Unofficial reference had been made to PUSD by former diplomat Geoffrey McDermott in The New Diplomacy and Its Apparatus (London: The Plume Press Ltd., 1973), 137–8.

20. John Whitaker Straw, Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs (2001–2006).

21. Read The Records of the Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department: Liaison between the Foreign Office and British Secret Intelligence, 1873 – 1939, FCO Historians, March 2005.

22. See, From World War to Cold War. “Catalogue description: Foreign Office: Permanent Under-Secretary’s Department: Registered and Unregistered Paper” < https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C8392 >.

23. Ibid.

24. Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern and a leading figure in the Bolshevik government. Zinoviev was later purged and executed by the Soviet NKVD in August 1936.

25. The Communist International, also known as the Third International, formed in 1919 and officially dissolved in 1943.

26. For just some of the early commentary, see Lewis Chester, Stephen Fay and Hugo Younger, The Zinoviev Letter (London: Heinemann, 1967); Natalie Grant, “The “Zinoviev Letter” Case,” Soviet Studies, Vol. 19, no. 2 (October 1967), pp. 264–277; Christopher Andrew, “The British Secret Service and Anglo-Soviet Relations in the 1920s, Part 1: From the trade negotiations to the Zinoviev Letter,” The Historical Journal, 20, no. 3 (1977), pp. 673–706; E.H. Carr, “Communications: The Zinoviev Letter,” The Historical Journal, 22, no. 1 (1979), pp. 209–10; and Christopher Andrew, “More on the Zinoviev Letter,” The Historical Journal, 22, no. 1 (1979), pp. 211–214.

27. Nigel West and Oleg Tsarev, The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets and the Heart of the KGB’s Archives (London: HarperCollins, 1999).

28. Robert ‘Robin’ Cook, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1997–2001).

29. Hansard, HC. Deb., 12 February 1998, Vol. 306, c. 324W.

30. Ibid. Cook said: ‘Having reviewed the arguments, I recognise that there is an overwhelmingly strong reason for this policy. When individuals or organisations co-operate with the service, they do so because an unshakeable commitment is given never to reveal their identities. This essential trust would be undermined by a perception that undertakings of confidentiality were honoured for only a limited duration. In many cases, the risk of retribution against individuals can extend beyond a single generation’. An FCO briefing note prepared for the release of the final report in 1999 said: ‘The fundamental principle is that the agencies must protect their sources and methods; in particular in the case if human sources, both SIS and the Security Service have commitment to protect them indefinitely. On the release of papers, it was argued:‘ 2. In recent years both the Security Service and GCHQ have selectively released some of their older records previously retained under this ‘blanket’ policy. SIS has not released any of its own internal records. 3. The Foreign Secretary has reviewed and approved the policy that SIS records are not released to the Public Record Office. He has publicly endorsed it in the House of Commons … saying that he recognises the overwhelmingly strong reason for the policy. He added that when individuals or organisations cooperate with the service, they do so because an unshakable commitment is given never to reveal their identities. This essential trust would be undermined by a perception that undertakings of confidentiality were honoured for only a limited duration. In many cases, the risk of retribution against individuals can extent beyond a single generation. In the Commons debate on the agencies on 2 November 1998 the Foreign Secretary [said] that there was less scope for openness about SIS than the other two agencies. ‘the [sic] third agency, the Secret Intelligence Service, must remain secret. I cannot be as frank with the House about its successes as I have been about the other two agencies. Those who work with SIS overseas often risk their lives so that our lives may be safe. Their effectiveness and their lives depend on their identities and work remaining out of the public eye’. 4. SIS does routinely give clearance to other Government departments for quantities of its material that is found in their records to be released. (This includes occasional series of secret intelligence reporting, extending over several years, where only the customer department has retained them for their own research and collation purposes – especially prevalent in the MOD.) (Publication of FCO History Note: The Zinoviev Letter of 1924: Media Briefing. Information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, FOI).

31. ‘A most extraordinary and mysterious business’: The Zinoviev Letter of 1924..

32. Harold Adrian Russell Philby, also known as ‘Kim’ Philby (1912–1988), SIS officer and Soviet intelligence agent identified as the ‘third man’ in the Cambridge spy ring who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963.

33. Milicent Jessie Eleanor Bagot, MI5 officer, born 1907. Educated at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Bagot was a temporary clerk with the Metropolitan Police Special Branch and transferred to MI5 in 1931, where she spent much of the Second World War working in the Registry and counter-subversion section. In 1953 she was promoted to Assistant Director, the first woman to do so in MI5, taking charge of the overseas branch before retiring in 1967. Bagot died in 2006, aged 99 (read “Milicent Bagot: Formidable MI5 officer who was a leading authority on international communism,” The Times, 3 June 2006).

34. Bennett, The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspiracy that Never Dies.

35. Norton-Taylor, “Zinoviev Letter was dirty trick by MI6,” The Guardian, February 4, 1999.

36. Michael Evans, “MI6 “did not write the Zinoviev Letter”,” The Times, February 4, 1999.

37. Major Sir Desmond Morton (1891–1971). Read Bennett, Churchill’s Man of Mystery.

38. The IIC was officially formed in 1931. In 1935 it was attached to the Department of Overseas Trade having initially been funded by the Foreign Office secret vote. The aim of the IIC was to ‘assist in the collection, interpretation and distribution of industrial intelligence and … to co-ordinate this intelligence for the Admiralty, the War Office, the Air Ministry and the ATB [Advisory Committee on Trade Questions in Time of War]’ (F.H. Hinsley, et. al., British Intelligence in the Second World War, Volume 1: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations (London: HMSO, 1979), 30–31).

39. Country House near Westerham, Kent. Bought by Winston Churchill in 1922.

40. Daniel W.B. Lomas, “Profiles in Intelligence: an interview with Tony Comer,” Intelligence and National Security, 2022.

41. Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). Formed in 1936, the JIC comprises of the heads of the main intelligence services and senior Whitehall officials to set requirements, review agency performance and support policy with all-source intelligence assessments. For an overview, read Michael S. Goodman, The Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Vol. 1: From the Approach of War to the Suez Crisis (Routledge, 2014).

42. Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909 – 1949 (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), 508–9.

43. Tessa Stirling, Daria Nalecz, Tadeusz, eds., Intelligence Co-operation Between Poland and Great Britain during World War II: The Report of the Anglo-Polish Historical Committee (Vallentine Mitchell & Co Ltd, 2005).

44. General Władysław Eugeniusz Sikorski, Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile and General Inspector of the Polish armed forces (1939–43). Sikorski had been killed in a plane crash while taking off from Gibraltar in July 1943.

45. Professor Keith Jeffery (1952–2016), Professor of British History, Queen’s University Belfast (‘Professor Keith Jeffery – obituary’ < https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/03/28/professor-keith-jeffery—obituary/ >).

46. Formed in 1909 to ‘serve as a screen between the Admiralty and War Office and foreign spies who may have information they wish to sell to the Government’. The SSB would counter the activities of German intelligence in Britain while collecting information overseas, especially ‘information [on] what is going on in Foreign Ports, and more especially foreign dockyards’ (TNA: CAB 16/232, ‘Conclusions of the Sub-Committee requested to consider how a secret service bureau could be established in Great Britain’). See also Christopher Andrew, Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5 (London: Allan Lane, 2009), 3–28.

47. Sir Stephen James Lander, Director-General MI5, 1996–2002.

48. Sir John McLeod Scarlett, Chair Joint Intelligence Committee 2001–2004, Chief (‘C’) of the Secret Intelligence Service, 2004–2009.

49. John Ferris, Behind the Enigma: The Authorized History of GCHQ, Britain’s Cyber-Intelligence Agency (London: Bloomsbury, 2019).

50. Prof. John Ferris, Professor of History at the University of Calgary.

51. British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, Interview with Gillian Bennett, OBE, MA, FRHistS < https://archives.chu.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Bennett_UGtTWdM.pdf >.

52. The Cabinet Secretary is the most senior civil service adviser to the prime minister and cabinet. For more information, read Ian Beesley, The Official History of the Cabinet Secretaries (Routledge, 2016).

53. Augustine Thomas O’Donnell, Baron O’Donnell. Permanent Secretary to the Treasury (2002–05), Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary (2005–11) and Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service (2005–2011).

54. Sykes was responsible for the service’s accounts from November 1915 and continued to do so for over a quarter of a century. Sykes was described as a fearsome gentleman in naval uniform, very deaf’ by a secretary working in the Finance Section (Jeffery, MI6, 478).

55. TNA: CAB 301/32, “Secret Intelligence Service (SIS): Accounts for Second World War.”

56. The Special Operations Executive, wartime sabotage and subversion organisation formed in 1940 to support resistance to Axis forces and disbanded in 1945. For an overview, read William Mackenzie and M.R.D. Foot (Intro), The Secret History of SOE: Special Operations Executive 1940 – 1945 (London: St. Ermine’s Press, 2000).

57. Details on the SOE archive can be found in Duncan Stuart, ‘“Of Historical Interest Only”: The Origins and Vicissitudes of the SOE archive’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 20, no. 1 (2005), 14–26.

58. The files can be found in TNA: CAB 301/248–257, Report of the Committee of Enquiry into Breaches of Security, 1961 (The Romer Enquiry).

59. Soviet intelligence network operating in the UK from the late-1950s to 1961. For a detailed study, see Trevor Barnes, Dead Doubles: The Extraordinary Worldwide Hunt for One of the Cold War’s Most Notorious Spy Rings (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2020).

60. A large number of KV files on the leading personalities was released in September 2019 and October 2022. See “Latest MI5 files released,” September 24, 2019 < https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/latest-mi5-files-released/ > and “Latest release of files from MI5,” October 11, 2022 < https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/latest-release-of-files-from-mi5/ >.

61. Professor Christopher Andrew, now Emeritus Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, University of Cambridge, authorised historian of the Security Service. For more, read Mark Phythian, “Profiles in Intelligence: An interview with Professor Christopher Andrew,” Intelligence & National Security, 32, no. 4 (2017), 395–410.

62. Andrew, Defence of the Realm.

63. ‘Cabinet Office: Cabinet Secretary’s Miscellaneous Papers’ < https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C13388176 >.

64. The records of the Security Service are held in the KV file series at TNA. Files released by GCHQ fall under the HW series. For more on intelligence records at TNA, see ‘Intelligence and security services’ < https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/intelligence-and-security-services/ >.

65. See Bennett, Six Moments of Crisis, 123–146.

66. Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Baron Home of the Hirsel. Prime Minister (1963–4), Foreign Secretary (1960–63, 1970–74).

67. Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky, former Colonel in the KGB, recruited as a long-term penetration agent by SIS between 1974 and 1985 when he escaped to the UK.

68. Annual NATO command post exercise simulating nuclear escalation with the Soviet Union. The 1983 exercise introduced new features, including participation of heads of government, leading some in the Soviet leadership to believe that the exercise was a cover for a real nuclear attack.

69. Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher. Prime Minister, 1979–90. On the use of Gordievsky’s information, and Thatcher’s interest, read Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher the Authorised Biography, Volume 2: Everything She Wants (London: Allen Lane, 2015).

70. Christopher Andrew and David Dilks, eds., The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence Communities in the Twentieth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 1984).

71. Peter John Hennessy, Baron Hennessy of Nympsfield, Attlee Professor of Contemporary History, Queen Mary University London.

72. Daniel W.B. Lomas, Intelligence, Security and the Attlee Governments, 1945 – 1951: An uneasy relationship? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017).

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Daniel W. B. Lomas

Daniel W. B. Lomas is author of Intelligence, Security and the Attlee Governments, 1945 – 1951 published by Manchester University Press (2016), teaching on intelligence and security at Brunel University London. He is a member of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence & Security Studies (BCISS). His research looks at intelligence, security and policymaking in Britain.