Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 Kindle Edition

Many years ago,Professor Christopher Andrew has written an article with co-author David Dilks.They claimed that the history of intelligence and espionage was missing and was ignored even by serious historians.They called this "the missing dimension of history".Indeed, it would be absurd today for any serious historian
to dismiss or disregard this important part of history.In the past, historians said that the history of espionage and intelligence should be dealt by quacks,second- or third-hand writers or amateurs
and that this kind of history does not have any importance or relevance for the historical profession.
However,with the fall of the Iron Curtain,this view has changed drastically mainly because classified archival materials were open to everyone.
The USA archives were among the first to declassify and thus enable historians and others to come and read perhaps tens of millions of documents that were produced by intelligence analysts and sources
during the Cold War.
Professor Andrew was among those pioneers to whom humanity and serious researchers owe a lot in this respect, because he has dedicated many years to write and lecture about many and various intelligence episodes, thus offering the readers a new perspective on the Cold War.
This is exactly what he has done again.We all remember his magnum opus on the Mitrockhin Archive, published some years before.In this current heavyweight volume, which has more than one thousand pages,he offers us a linear ,fascinating and intriguing history of MI5.
It all started in 1909 when two officers from the Navy and the Army started to work in an office in London.Their mission was to try and catch as many German spies as they could.The first German agent who showed up in England after WW1 started was Carl Lody,who was sentenced to death and he was executed in the Tower of London.The first director of MI5 was Vernon Kell and he kept his job for more than 31 years- the longest period of any director.
Another director was Maxwell Knight.He is described as someone who had a special interest " in unusual pets".Visitors to his house would usually find him taking his bear for a walk.(The bear's name was Bessie.)Knight would also feed a giant toad or carry a parrot on one of his shoulders.He did not mind being "considered a bit mad" because "a few unusual people give a little colour to life"(.p.123)
We are talking about the period between the two wars,especially during the thirties,when the job of MI5 agents was to infiltrate as many fascist groups as possible.This was also when the famous Cambridge spies made their debut and Prof.Andrew devotes many pages to the way Kim Philby and the others were recruited by the Russians.
Another short chapter deals with the way the Soviets penetrated the Communist party in Britain .
The best part of this book, however,which starts the second third of it,is-in my opinion- about the history of MI5 during the Cold War.Here we are offered much new information about the various spies that were engaged to work for the Soviet Union during the forties.The first female recruits were employed by the MI5 masters.Many new insights are given about Igor Gouzenko,a cipher clerk who was working for the GRU and decided to defect in Canada.He had with him hundreds of pages which showed clearly to what extent the Manhattan Project and other sectors of the American administration were deeply penetrated by KGB spies.In fact, one can say that Giuzenko has caused a Pandora box to open and spill out many secrets which shocked the public opinion in the west, especially in the USA and Britain.During the fifties and sixties the hunt for the Magnificent Five of Cambridge was itensified .A KGB agent by the name of Oleg Gordievsky ,who was recruited by the the British(and has written a number of intelligence studies together with Prof.Andrew)confirmed that the fifth man's name was John Cairncross.(p.441)
Chapter 9 is unique because it has-for the first time- a new topic never discussed before, namely:the role of MI5 during the decolonizanion and demise of the British Empire.African leaders were especailly kept under surveillance because of their ties with the masters from the Kremlin.
The author dismisses all the conspiracy theories which were built around Roger Hollis, one of the most famous MI5 directors,and this beacuse he found no evidence about such claims in the Hollis archives.
The most surprising revelation in the book is that Harold Wilson was under surveillance of the MI5 agents, not because he was suspected of being a spy, but because of Wilson's many contacts with the Russians.Talking one day in his PM's office to one of his confidants,Lord Kissin, Wilson told him:"There are only three men listening-you, me and MI5"(p.632) Andrew also thinks that one cabinet minister,John Stonehouse,who was a Czech agent, was the only
minister to have worked for a foreign power.Stonehouse faked his own death in Miami in 1974.
The various attitudes to the MI5 displayed by the various Prime Ministers after 1945 is discussed in detail.Harold Macmillan, for instance,used to bellitle the agents of MI5.Here, we get vintage Andrew, as he discusses in length the Profumo affair and offers the reader new facts unknown hitherto.
Additional chapters are about Mi5's role in the struggle against IRA ,and the service's battle against organized crime and the different ways that are employed to combat contemporary terrorism.There are 82 photos which show many the many players of the Great Game,including the present Director General's picture,Jonathan Evans,who has also written the foreword of the book.
This is a brilliant and authoritative work, full of vignettes and hundreds of meticulously- researched episodes running from 1909 to 2009.
In short: this work is a must for everyone interested in spies, espionage,modern and contemporary history and the role of intelligence ,written by a master historian.

As an official history, vice an unauthorized "tell-all" like Spycatcher, Andrew's work should be approached and read as a product of officially-imposed constraint. With that acknowledgement, enjoy it.

The book is well-structured. The chapters are relatively short and quickly digestable. Andrews' writing style is masterful and polished, and keeps the reader's interest. The history moves along at a measured but brisk pace.

Each section begins with a snapshot of MI5 life at a given point in time. Amusing anecdotes are mixed with Andrew's more general observations; the personalities and the lifeblood of the organization emerge from the past. The quaint, almost amateurish, charm of early MI5 makes for particularly enjoyable reading.

Beyond the well-trodden path of "the Ring of Five" etc., Andrew sheds light on lesser episodes and achievements. Complementing these are critical, detached assessments: Andrew does not shirk from his historian's duty. The result, I believe, is a balanced, constructive account of a lesser publicized arm of government.

If you are looking for "dirt", this is not the book. It better appeals to people interested in, say, long-term historical trends, organizational evolution, and panoramic history---and diversely amusing characters.

This book is mostly an organizational and management history, with much more on the interactions between MI-5 and other British government bodies than I had anticipated. I am amused that the jacket blurb includes a glowing endorsement from Stella Rimington, who is a former DG of MI-5 and was heavily consulted by the author; it's not surprising that Rimington would think it reads like a thriller.

My personal interest is in the internal workings of an intelligence agency, and in its interactions with intelligence agencies of other powers. This book contains quite a bit that I either had not known on these matters, or that I had not fully understood. It also shed light on various episodes in the history of US intelligence organizations that I was aware of but had been puzzled by. A number of these have to do with failures to take advantage of VENONA decrypts, or decisions not to use the info derived from these. These were very delicate questions, and although I've been aware of Venona for a great many years. I was never privy to decisions about what to use and what not to use, and why. I understand this much better now. By the way, for people interested in cryptology, "Defend the Realm" contains information on the construction of Soviet one-time ciphers that I've never seen elsewhere and was surprised to see here. For the first time I can reconstruct methods of attack on certain ciphers of that type, and why some messages can be completely decrypted, some partially, and others not at all. I wonder if NSA realized how much insight into methods of attack on "unbreaakable" ciphers cn be inferred from the material in this book.

There is little on ULTRA, which is OK, given that the ULTRA effort has been extensively discussed elsewhere. Unfortunately, however, there is essentially nothing on other cryptology work at Bletchley Park, including studies of what ciphers could be used by Britain and the US. For example, the book does not mention (nor does any other document I've seen) the fact that Turing, while at Bletchley Park, developed most of the necessary theory to make public key cryptography work and that he proposed this as an encipherment method for certain allied communications. His proposal was rejected for what at the time were very good reasons. But this is an interesting aspect of the history of public key cryptography, and one that's not generally known.

All told, I'm glad I bought and read this book, although much of it was hard. dull reading.