MI5: British Security Service Operations 1909-1945 [Paperback]

Nigel West (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 21, 1983

Nigel West's book traces the history of MI 5 from its modest beginnings in 1909 until 1945. The focus is on its role in WW II, recalling the enemy agents rounded up in Britain; the manipulation of the Axis espionage networks by the use of "turned" Abwehr agents and the all-important check on its success provided by the intercepted German signals decoded at Bletchley.

Laced with true anecdotes as bizarre and readable as espionage thrillers, this book is based on interviews of Nazi and Soviet agents, counter-intelligence officers, case officers and, most remarkably, more than a dozen of the double agents.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers; New Ed edition (April 21, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0586056408
• ISBN-13: 978-0586056400
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #638,332 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Of spies and times in the 20th Century, April 28, 2009

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Laurence Daley (Corvallis, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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West, Nigel 1988 MI5 British Security Service Operations 1909-1945/ Military Heritage Press, New York (Marboro) ISBN 0-8802928593 This book is full of interesting details which surely will continue to supply scholars and novelist with material for decades.

I was seeking information on WWII events for introductory chapters in my manuscript in progress "Narrations of War in Cuba" and digging through the masses of information was able to find a number of useful things. For instance, Chapter II page 49 starts with a quote (in reference to the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), which I found comparable to the Cuban Communist Party of the same era) `The loyalty of a Party member lies primarily with the Party and secondarily with his country.' Alexander Foote, a CPGP member recruited into the NKVD by Douglas Springhall in 1938, commenting on his experiences in his memoirs Handbook for Spies.

In parallel to times and events in Cuba the first lines of this chapter read: "In 1921 Ramsay McDonald's government allowed the Soviet Union to establish a permanent diplomatic representative in London, thus setting the scene for a covert conflict between the British and Russian intelligence services." Apparently this is a typo which should read 1924 [Answers.com (accessed 4-28-09) James Ramsay MacDonald [...]]. Still the 1924 date corresponds far better to the Cuban legalization of the Islands communist party under then elected president Gerardo Machado and approximates the arrival of that young Stalinist agent who would come be known as Fabio Grobart in Cuba.

I find it curious --but in all probability unrelated-- that McDonald, died 9 November 1937 on the liner Reina del Pacifico, at the same time that same Stalinist Fabio Grobart was sending Cuban volunteers on this same vessel to fight for the Republic in Spain (Vera Jiménez, Fernando 1999 (last accessed 4-24-09) Cubanos en la Guerra Civil española. La presencia de voluntarios en las Brigadas Internacionales y el Ejército Popular de la República. Revista Complutense de Historia de América. 25, 295-321 [...] Lists (admittedly incomplete) of those who traveled on the Reina del Pacífico include: Miguel Angel Mordí Rivero in April 1937: Alejo Elias Sánchez Sufro, Rafael Nodarse, and Florentino Alejo in September 1937 Apparently they landed at the vessels last stop in France at El Havre, went to Paris and from there to Barcelona presumably by land routes. It seems that Rolando (El Tigre) Masferrer (listed as Rolando Mas Ferrer) a famous lame murderous communist executioner, wounded in the Spanish Civil War, and rival of Fidel Castro, who is most notorious as a killer for Batista was not listed as a passenger under that name. Caution is advised since this last cited reference -not the reviewed volume- is a pro-communist source and its bias in this direction is considerable).

As to beautiful women agents, one can cannot help but note Joan Miller, Hungarian refugee and society photographer, who placed her mind and her body at the service of Britain (see for example her image among the photographs and their legends that follow on page 96 of this Nigel West book). She was one of the agents of MI5 who successfully penetrated the British Communist Party. An amusing side detail is the damage to her photograph done by a ragingly jealous woman.

Many more details are found in this book by Nigel West. Thus I recommend this volume as an excellent source for those interested in details of 20th century history and its endless espionage, plots and intrigues, and of course beautiful women spies.