The Big Breach - Index of

The Big Breach; From Top Secret to Maximum SecurityCompliments of http://www.192.comdecorated with military emblems and souvenirs from Second World War SOEoperations, soon became the focus for relaxation during the IONEC.That evening Ball and Young entered the results of our work into theCCI computer. Three individuals turned up with records. Hare's oldparatrooper turned out to be a Walter Mitty with no military service,one of Castle's finds had a long criminal record and the pretty girlthat I had interviewed turned out to be the younger sister of an MI5secretary.Officially, the drab, nondescript yellow-brick building just oppositethe police station on Borough High Street in Southwark, London, was agovernment stationery store. In reality, until recently it housedanother MI6 training school. During the IONEC we spent alternate weeksat `Boro' and at the Fort. Training at Boro was oriented towards theadministrative and theoretical aspects of the work and it was here thatBall and Long initiated us into the service's history, purpose andmodus operandi.MI6's roots were in the Bureau of Secret Service, founded partly inresponse to the Boer War which took Britain by surprise, and partly inresponse to an increasingly belligerent Germany. On Tuesday, 30 March1909, a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence met in aclosed session in Whitehall. Colonel James Edmonds was the firstspeaker. He was head of MO5, the forerunner of today's MI5, whose jobwas to uncover foreign spies in Britain with his staff of two andbudget of œ200 per year. Edmonds had ambitious plans and wanted toextend his service to spy abroad, primarily in Russia and Germany. ButLord Esher, the chairman of the committee, disbelieved Edmonds's talesof German spying successes in England and insisted that Edmonds preparea detailed list of cases to back his arguments.Rather than back down, Edmonds resorted to a tactic which was usedsuccessfully by many of his successors in MI6 - he fabricated evidenceto support his case. He provided Esher with a fictional list of spiesdrawn from a contemporary best-selling novel, Spies of the Kaiser byWilliam Le Queux. When Esher asked for corroboration of his evidence,Edmonds claimed that such revelations would compromise the security ofhis informants - an excuse that was copied many times by his successorsto extricate themselves from awkward inquisitions by government. It wasenough for Edmonds to win his argument and with it the budget to expandMO5 to form the Secret Service Bureau. In 1911, the Official SecretsAct gave Edmonds sweeping and draconian powers to imprison anybodysuspected of helping the `enemy', which at the time was Germany. Thatsame primitive act is still on the statute books in Britain and eventoday there are people serving lengthy jail sentences under itsauspices. Through both world wars, the Secret Service Bureau survivedand thrived, eventually being named MI6 in 1948.In the company of America's CIA and Russia's newly revampedintelligence service, MI6 has one of the few genuinely globalintelligence networks, but with a staff of approximately 2,300 it isthe smallest of the three by a long way. About 350 of the staff areintelligence branch or `IB' officers, the fast stream which we werebeing trained to join. About 800 are general service or `GS' officers,who mostly do technical and administrative work. The remainder of thepage- 36 - To purchase the original limited edition hardback version of this bookplease call 08000 192 192 or go to http://www.192.com