Too Official to be complete picture

BOOK REVIEW : The Defence of the Realm –The Authorised History of MI5
by Christopher Andrew
1032 pages ,Allen Lane,Penguin

Christopher Andrew’s authorised history of the UK’s intelligence service MI5 whizzes past some of its big embarrassments

They used to say that if you do not want too many people to read your report then the best way is to make it so long, pack it with annotations and obfuscate at crucial points so that sooner than later the reader will lose interest. After 1100 pages based on information carefully gleaned from 400,000 Security Service (MI-5) files, Christopher Andrew’s monumental work - The Defence of the Realm - is the authorised history of the service. One wonders though how many will actually sit down to read this. Andrew’s book is a little longer that Stephen Dorril’s study of Fifty Years of Special Operations of MI-6 (SIS) published about ten years ago. Obviously the SIS got their book in first maybe because they have a shorter history.


Since it is an authorised version, which has been carefully scrutinised for clearance, it is natural that any information that would jeopardise national security interests has been excluded from the book, consistent with the policy of the Neither Confirm nor Deny principle. Andrew discusses the Hollis (DG MI-5 1956-65) saga in a few stray paragraphs strewn all over the book, Philip Knightley is more detailed about the suspicions relating to Hollis in his book on British intelligence - The Second Oldest Profession. This is the difference between an authorised version which is what Andrew’s book and Knightley’s book which could be defined as an authoritative version. Similarly, the 1996 defection of David Shayler and his disclosures of some operational details was a major embarrassment for the service but Andrew gives this a page and a half. Knightley has more on Shayler.


Shayler’s disaffection was at a time when cutbacks and constant changes in the mid-90s had affected morale. Some of the changes made at that time had improved efficiency but had affected camaraderie in the service, which is an intelligence service’s main asset.


There are the expected episodes of the suspicions that Prime Minister Wilson was suspect, apart from the treachery of the Magnificent Five - Philby, Burgess, Blunt, Maclean and Cairncross. Andrew speaks of the excessive paranoia that pervaded an intelligence organisation when moles were discovered or suspected to exist with spies spying on each other. In such an atmosphere of intrigues and conspiracies, real and imagined fears abound and, at times, are undistinguishable. The CIA counter –intelligence chief, James Angleton was an enthusiastic contributor the paranoia that gripped the British service those days. As Peter Wright, one of the great supporters of the conspiracy theories within the service, later admitted that as the scent of treachery lingered in every corridor, fears fed easily on the KGB defector Anatoli Golitsyn’s bizarre theories. It becomes necessary to ensure that intelligence agencies are carefully regulated so that while they remain externally ruthless and efficient against the enemy they do not end up subverting the very state that they are supposed to serve.


The Cambridge spies happened because intelligence of the period was distracted by the German threat and ignored the inroads the KGB had made into the system and the idealism of the few. The Nineties were difficult years for the service with the disappearance of the Communist threat. As a result the service seemed to lose its coherence and relevance till the Islamic extremist threat surfaced. This happens in all intelligence agencies because when the threat is not evident no one wants to think about it and prepare for it. When the threat eventually surfaces apparently unannounced, the agencies get the blame for not anticipating this. Today, the main activity of the service is counter-terrorism and following Islamic extremism.
There is little reference to India except for the early years. Later, in its 1985-86 report the Service referred to the growing threat from Sikh (and other sub-continental) terrorism and later asserts that good intelligence along with arrests of Sikh and Kashmiri terrorists ensured that the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi ‘frustrated plots to attack Rajiv Gandhi during his state visit.’


The book is not something for the average reader. It is serious stuff and like the trade itself, complicated and at times, fascinating. It is either for the historian or the professional and will find its place mostly on library shelves.

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Source : Mail Today , 17th Jan 2010