Jonathan Thomas (
0:21)
Welcome to the Anglotopia podcast, where we explore British travel history and culture. And I'm your host, Jonathan Thomas. For over a century, in a building most of us could not name, an organization known only by its post office box number, PO Box 500 London, has been quietly reading other people's letters, following other people's footsteps, and keeping the realm's most closely guarded secrets.
MI5, the British Security Service, was founded in 1909 in the nervous run-up to the First World War, and its motto, Regnum Defende, Defend the Realm. James Bond and George Smiley are the fictions, but this is the real thing. And thanks to the extraordinary declassified files held at the National Archives, we can now at last read over its shoulder. My two guests today have done exactly that with unparalleled access and turned it into a remarkable book, The MI5 Archive Official Secrets, a Visual Record of
British spy craft for all its history. And they're the ideal pair to walk us through it.
Mark Dunton is the National Archives principal contemporary record specialist and the lead curator of their hit MI5 exhibition, the man who chose the objects and read the marginalia. Doctor Stephen Twig is the historian of the Cold War, of code breaking, and of the whole secret machinery of the twentieth century. Between them, they spent their careers and the files the rest of us were never meant to see. Mark, Stephen, welcome both of you to the Anglotopia Podcast.
So let's start with the obvious question, and I love both of your answers. What does it actually feel like to hold these secret files in your hands to read a real MI5 surveillance log or an interrogation transcript rather than a novel about one?
Mark Dunton (
1:59)
Stephen?
Stephen Twigge (
2:01)
Well, yes, the I find the files are quite fascinating. They look in a sense quite dull. There's a rebuffed cover. You're wondering what it is you're you're going to actually see. And once you open it, you get a whole host of phone calls, surveillance reports, and it's it's like a journey. you're never sure what's gonna come next when you turn the page, you get a letter, you get it it can be
quite mundane at times, you know, how are the kids doing from so and so? And it it takes you to places you don't necessarily go to in normal life. And you know you can you can hear the discussions over the phone, you know possibly aspects of spy craft on one hand. And on the other hand it's general chit-chat about what they're having for tea. It's it's strange, very strange.
Mark Dunton (
2:56)
Yes, Stephen, of course, you're absolutely right. Of course, I find that when you're handling these files, when you're turning over the pages, of course, you get a very real sense that these were records which were not meant for public consumption. It gives you a window on a sort of hidden world that was secret for so long.
So you get that real sense, you it's a bit like the title of the James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only. And so one feels quite privileged really to be looking at these files and then there's the challenge of trying to make sense of all the sort of little codes and metadata surrounding them, you know, if you can.
And of course, your eyes are light on top secrets in red. You see so many pages like that. And of course, you can take them for granted after a while. But it is a real pleasure and a thrill, actually, to be looking at the original documents.
Jonathan Thomas (
4:13)
Mark, this book is the twin of the exhibition that you've curated. So how did the two projects come about? And what is it like getting this level of access to security service records, an organization whose existence was even once denied?
Mark Dunton (
4:25)
Well, see, MI5, they've been making regular transfers of records to us at the National Archives since 1997. And we've always, we've long been aware, of course, that interest in the whole world of espionage, you know, is very, very high, you know, has been for a long, long time, you know, with the British public and, of course, the public, the wider public internationally.
And our events and exhibitions team, well, basically working with them, we approached MI5 because we do have dialogue with them because of the transfer of the records. And we said, how do you feel about an MI5 exhibition? Sort of highlighting some of the riches that you know that
you have transferred to us. And MI5 went away, they thought about it, and they came back. But we were really impressed with their response because they said yes to an exhibition, but then they also offered to collaborate with us on it. And this was terrific because it's the first time that MI5 have ever collaborated with another institution to tell its history in this way.
And I have to say they were very helpful and generous with their time. Of course, as you might expect, they've got some very well-informed people there. And, you know, working with them was great. Now, when it comes to the exhibition, which ran from April to November last year, and it was a big hit, which was fantastic, with over 55,000 visitors.
But the thing is we had to be selective about what we could include in the exhibition simply due to space reasons. And we just thought, well, it would be really good, it would be really useful, and the public would enjoy seeing a wider selection of MI5 records. So the thing is there's a lot more in the book. A lot of the stuff we weren't able to include in the exhibition.
is in the MI5 Archive Official Secrets book. And that's really how those two projects came about.
Jonathan Thomas (
7:04)
And so Stephen, you've written across the whole secret history of the twentieth century. Where does MI5 fit into the wider architecture of British intelligence? How is it different from MI six and from G C HQ? And why do people kind of muddle it up and just assume they're all the same thing?
Stephen Twigge (
7:20)
Yes, MI5 and MI six are, I suppose, brothers, brothers from the same mother, in that both were created and came out of the Secret Service Bureau, which was created in nineteen nine. And the Secret Service Bureau had two sides to it. It had a domestic side and it had a foreign side. The two heads of those organizations shared an office for about
A month and then went their own ways. the domestic arm over the years transformed into MI5, and the foreign arm transformed itself into MI6. And MI6 is responsible for operations abroad. Basically, they are our spies and they operate globally. And MI5 operates internally and they are responsible for catching other people's spies.
on top of that, you've got GCHQ, which was initially the government code and cipher school, which was run by MI6. So MI6's greatest, I suppose, triumphs in the the war and prior to the war were were related to decoding, which was part of part of MI6, but separate from it. And after the war, it was decided that.
It made sense to separate those two organizations. So the government code and cypher school under MI6 became the what's now known as GCHQ in Cheltenham, and that's responsible for signals intelligence. So you've got MI5 responsible for domestic, MI6 responsible for overseas operations, and you've got GCHQ, which is responsible for providing signals intelligence to both of these organisations.
And I suppose that on top of that, you've got military intelligence, which is more interested in the technical aspect of weapons, weapons development. And all of these elements get brought together in the Joint Intelligence Committee, which sits sometimes under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister, but usually under a senior politician. and this is where all the elements are coordinated, and policy is derived from that organization. And that's that's roughly the broad architecture.
There are other elements, but I think that's that explains the British position reasonably well.
Jonathan Thomas (
9:51)
Well, f and forgive me, this question isn't on the list, but I'm I'm curious about how well these organizations work together because I know in the US the CIA and the FBI famously don't get along or work well together and and there's been huge lapses in cooperation. So does that different and do they do they have a internal rivalry or do they work well together?
Stephen Twigge (
10:11)
They work reasonably. I think the problem with the US system, there are about twelve or thirteen different organizations that range and they're they tend to be political in some ways, the American system, more than the British system. The British system is pretty much lifetime civil servants operate or head up MI5, MI6, some of which work for both departments. You've got Sir Dick White, for example, who was head of MI5, who later became head of MI6.
And there is a sort of crossover. I think there's less of a turf war and less of a worry about budgets than there might be in America. that might reflect, you know, the the more consensual nature of British politics rather than the ample serial politics that you get in America these days. It's it's difficult. So they get on very well. They used to get on quite well with the American colleagues, the the MI6 worked closely with the CIA and
MI5 work closely with the the FBI and that relationship seems to work quite well and as far as I'm aware still does.
Jonathan Thomas (
11:19)
Yes, and so the the Mark, the book invites readers to rummage through the documents received by the mysterious PO Box five hundred. So tell us about P.O. Box five hundred because I actually didn't hear never heard of it until we I prepared for this interview. So sounds fascinating. Well about how MI5 material actually ends up decades later open to the public at Kew. How does a secret become an archive?
Mark Dunton (
11:45)
Well, of course, PO, Post Office Box 500, it just sounds like a very anonymous address, doesn't it? And for so many years, that's how it was referred to. You get these mysterious communications and letters with that as the heading. And of course, MI5...
Well, Stephen was sort of covering some of this ground just now, but, you know, MI5 has been known by various names over its history. And as Stephen was pointing out at first, it was it was really subsumed under the Secret Service Bureau, but it's also been known as sort of M05 in brackets. And also from 1931 on
its official name as being the Security Service. But the name that's really stuck was the name that was given in 1916, which is MI5, which stands for Military Intelligence Section 5. And that is the name that it's still known by. But yes, mean, that PO Box 500 was just symbolic, really, of its almost total anonymity.
for such a long time. And I think we're going to probably talk about this a little bit later. But in the 1990s, MI5 started to become a more open organisation. And part of this was that it decided to start releasing files to us here at the National Archives, making regular transfers. And, you know, that was some
That was a real advance in terms of openness. And I think it does speak well in terms of the spirit of openness. mean, over 6,000 files have been transferred to us so far. And well, as I'm sure we're going to demonstrate in this session, they're so rich in detail. So you know.
Yeah, I think it's a great thing.
Jonathan Thomas (
14:14)
And and Stephen, for every file that's open, plenty remain closed or redacted. So one wonders what they didn't transfer to the archive. as historians, how do you work with an archive that is by its nature deliberately incomplete and where the gaps are themselves a kind of information?
Stephen Twigge (
14:30)
Yes, I think most v people have been to an archive. I think you s it doesn't take long to find out that the government department concerned doesn't release everything. Yeah, there are vast majority of its files are destroyed because they're routine files or there are photocopies elsewhere. And the the rationale is the file that takes the lead is the file that releases the material. So you come to a fairly rapid conclusion that.
These and you can tell that these are not necessarily all the files. What you can then work out is, as you say, where are the gaps? And there are gaps and there are gaps. There are redacted sentences and redacted names. And the names tend to be the names of intelligence officers who are remained secret. They've been given a a lifetime guarantee of anonymity. And so you get the story, but you don't necessarily get the name of the intelligence officer who necessarily
debrief that individual or who was in the surveillance team. So that's a small gap. Sometimes you will get a whole page missing for whatever reason. That might be due to there were probably more, you know, if you stop blacking out too many sections, it looks a bit ridiculous. So just release, you know, what they can. And sometimes you get files that are retained indefinitely for reasons of national security. One can only
sort of second guess what those reasons are. You are not meant to retain people for matters of embarrassment or otherwise. That's you're not a a a reason for retaining files. But most of the MI5 files are slightly different to other files in government departments. Most departments in Britain work under a 20 year rule, which basically means when the file becomes 20 years old.
They're relation to the public. MI5 work under a 50-year rule. So in many ways, this the material within the file is less sensitive the longer the time. So they do tend to be less r redacted than than most files. And it's quite illuminating to look through the material that you can actually see who's talked to whom in the file and
What you sometimes get is individual agents are given a PF number. So you can say we spoke to PF six eight five two three. You're not quite sure who that person is, but then you'll come across another file who that agent is then named. So you can sort of put together a jigsaw of various elements from the various different files. And it's not just MI5 files. One can also look at cabinet office documents, material from the military, maybe some material from
you know it's different elements new high high echelons of the joint intelligence committee and once you sort of slot these together one can sort of see where the jigsail is coming together and which pieces may or may not be missing. And yeah there may be a file, there may not be a file. But yes you can as a historian you're used to working with gaps and I think is it Donald Rumsfeld the the known knowns and the unknown unknowns and it's a case of you know working out what those might be.
Mark Dunton (
17:48)
So.
Jonathan Thomas (
17:49)
Go ahead, Mark.
Mark Dunton (
17:51)
Yeah, was just going to add that, yes, as Stephen was hinting, really, MI5, they do really operate outside the normal framework of sort of government departments transferring records to us. And, you know, yes, I mean, that the 50-year rule is a sort of unofficial kind of 50-year rule. I mean, as things stand, they're not obliged really to actually send us anything.
But they choose to. They choose to transfer their records to us, if you follow me. So we're sort of dependent on them in terms of what they choose to release to us. But I'm just very grateful that they transfer anything. I think it's fantastic.
Jonathan Thomas (
18:37)
Is it is it safe to say that the things they do transfer are things that they want people to see?
Mark Dunton (
18:43)
Well, I don't know if that's entirely fair because they have released material to us which covers the things that didn't go so well, particularly the Cambridge spies and records relating to some other episodes. Perhaps we'll come on to that a bit more later. Yeah, sure.
Jonathan Thomas (
19:04)
So Mark, you chose the images and objects for both the book and the exhibition. So what makes a good exhibit from a secret file? How do you turn a dry surveillance report into something a visitor or reader can feel?
Mark Dunton (
19:16)
Yeah, it's a good question. And of course, as Stephen mentioned earlier, sometimes the files can be full of things which look rather routine and repetitive. And in a way, those sort of some surveillance reports just simply recording people's comings and goings, it reflects the slog.
of that kind of work of being an MI5 watcher, noting meticulously everything in case it turns out to be important later. But then amongst these sort of reports, sometimes your eye will alight on something just really interesting. I'll give you a brief example. Klaus Fuchs, the atomic spy, he was under MI5 surveillance.
particularly around 1950. And there's an amazing transcript derived from a listening device which was placed in his home at Harwell.
there's this really riveting transcript derived from a listening device placed in the home of Klaus Fuchs. And it records him moving about. And it's got little details like 2107, Fuchs stoked the fire. It's those kind of details. It gives you an almost, it's almost a sort of voyeuristic
kind of feeling actually that you're looking in on this person's life and listening in with the MI5 listeners. So I suppose when you are choosing exhibits, as I did for the exhibition, along with events and exhibitions colleagues, looking for, we're looking for stories, aspects which show human interest, human detail. You you see something and you think, that's interesting. I bet other people would find that interesting too.
And that's the sort of way that you kind of go about things really.
Jonathan Thomas (
21:33)
So, Stephen, let's go back to the beginning of the of these spy stories. The first world war gives us one of the great details, the fatal lemon. So tell us about Karl Muller and how a piece of fruit hanged a spy.
Stephen Twigge (
21:45)
Yes, it's a bit of a sad and sort of pitiful tale in in in many ways. I think we need to place it in context to begin with, in that at the end of the well, the beginning of the First World War, the German spy network was rounded up pretty much like Stock and Barrel. So the Germans didn't really have any intelligence assets within the country. So in order for them to
Try and re-establish themselves, they started sending in agents who hadn't been terribly well trained and who were not terribly suitable for the job. One of these was Karl Muller. he had some things in his favor. he wasn't German but had German parentage. he was actually born in Latvia, part of the Russian Empire at the time, and he was living in Antwerp and had
Working at the docks in Antwerp and had knowledge of naval matters. So when Antwerp was taken over, invaded by the German army, he was selected as a possible recruit. He was also quite advantageous because he was short of money, and this tends to be a good recruiting sergeant for quite a lot of spies. So he was given a very short course and
Specializing in secret inks, amongst other things. And then he was sent to Britain. he got off the boat at Hull, and he put he his cover story was that he was a German prisoner of war. A Russian prisoner of war, he'd escaped from a German camp. And for reasons unknown, he went to Sunderland, where we were reported back on shipping. and the way he did this was essentially by using l
Secret ink, but the secret ink in question was made from lemon juice. So he essentially wrote mundane letters back to this post box in, I think it was in Amsterdam. And then in between the lines, he would write, you know, ships coming in, so and so leaving troops ready to disembark, signed A.E. Free. That was his code name, AE Free. but unbeknownst to him, the the box that he was sending it.
To had already been compromised, and the letters that were being sent there were being picked up by MI5. So they knew that somebody whose code name was AE3 was sending back information from Britain to Germany on troop movements and naval ship manoeuvres. they then got another letter from a slightly different hand, but the same postmark.
On the on the actual letter, and it says, In A. E. Free's absence, I am going to give you the following information. So he sent various bits of information back. and it was discovered that this chap was I think called Hahn, and he was he was a baker in London. So MI5 then decided to raid the baker shop, as it were, and interrogate. Well, he didn't interrogate Hahn, he interrogated his wife, who was unfortunately in the premises that.
At the time. And he said, Well, my husband's been talking to this Russian chap who lives around the corner, in I think Russell Square or just off Russell Square. And so my father and the police went around to Russell Square, broke in and found lots of letters, lemon juice, Mullah himself, and asked him, you know, why have you got, you know, what's this lemon for? And he claimed it was to dental treatment for his teeth.
which didn't necessarily go down, was believed. But they also looked through his suitcase and it it found out they had German clothing and not exactly brilliant state crafts. and so essentially the lemon was then sent for analysis, and it was found to be pretty much the same lemon. I don't know how you do these things chemically, but the same lemon that was in the the letters that have been sent. And
Before long, he basically confessed that he was a German spy. And unfortunately for him, he was then sentenced to death and executed at the Tower of London. But there was an interesting element to this in that the trial was in secret, and so MI5 kept on sending letters in his name and in one of them he asked, or MI5 asked for some money, obviously to pay expenses, and which
they received quite a handsome amount and then they bought a staffed car with the actual money, which was then called the Moolah, which even more embarrassing was stolen outside from MI5 headquarters in the nineteen twenties.
Mark Dunton (
26:38)
Yeah, right. Also, I'll just add that the Treasury also came along when they found out that this car had been purchased with the funds that they'd received from the Germans. The Treasury told off MI5 for unauthorized use of expenditure. And also, the car was stolen. Yes, it's Stephen Sikes. It's a great story. It's an amazing story.
Jonathan Thomas (
27:04)
Should have kept her receipts.
Mark Dunton (
27:06)
And the lemon black shriveled and compressed. There were two lemons in our collection, One that was discovered in his dressing table drawer with a bit of cotton wool wrapped around it. And another one which was found in his overcoat pocket. so, yes, as you say, Jonathan, the lemon was fatal, really, for Karl Muller.
Jonathan Thomas (
27:31)
Well, don't trust the lemons then.
Mark Dunton (
27:33)
Thank
Jonathan Thomas (
27:34)
So the siege of Sydney Street was in nineteen eleven. and that's when a young home secretary named Winston Churchill turned up to watch a a big set piece. And this is a big set piece in the book. So what happened and why does it matter to MI5 story? Because a lot of Americans may never have heard of this event, but it's actually super interesting.
Stephen Twigge (
27:53)
It's a an interesting episode. It it it it stems from the flow of refugees from from Russia and Eastern Europe, mainly from the Soviet well, the Russian Empire as it as it was at the time. And they set up when they were there was very little in the way of well passports went around in those days and people just fetched up and
There's very little that the authorities could do about it. there were, especially in the east end of London, there were a lot of people from mainly Jewish, I suppose, but there was a lot of anti-Jewish feeling in Russia, but they set up quite a lot of political organizations. and these tended to be fairly revolutionary and left-wing and radical. and one of these were some Latvian subanicists, who in order to
basically bankrolled their political agenda, decided to rob a few banks and jewelry shops. And in part of one of these break-ins, they were caught and there was a gunfight and some of them fled. Two police officers were were killed. There was a massive manhunt for them.
Posters were were sent and rewards were offered and information was then gleaned by MI5 and others that two of these people were hanging out in Sydney Street. they were asked, well, the the neighbors were all evacuated slowly and quietly. And then the people in one of the the actual gunmen in Sydney Street noticed this and started firing out of the window. This is quite uncommon in in Britain, even in those days. Guns were not all that
much in the yeah they weren't greatly in circulation. And so there was this gun battle in Sydney Street, which then the police were not terribly well armed. So they got the Scots guards involved who then brought machine guns and gatling guns and God knows what else. And there was a massive great firefight. The building caught fire, burnt to the ground, killed the people in so the two what we would now refer to as probably terrorists, were killed in the rubble and
It was not surprisingly caused a great deal of a public commotion about what are these foreigners doing in Britain? You know, we need to have more oversight of foreign political refugees, not dissimilar to what we we're seeing today. and it was also the the crossover from you know MI5 looking at people's political views and what we would now call how they would take those views to its
the logical conclusion by what I suppose what we now call terrorist means. You know, they're taking you know political violence and they're bringing political violence onto London streets. And there was a great clamour, not surprisingly, for the authorities to do something about it. And this is where sort of MI5 become involved in not just looking for subverses within military as part of the main remit was to look at subversive
elements will be in the military. And this was obviously not in the military, this was outside. It was civilian. And so it's the one of the first times they get involved in in aspects of the you know oversight of the civilian political groupings, what would we now call sub subversives, I suppose. So you can see a a move over from the the beginnings of the campaign against Bolshevism and political violence, which don't
For the time it stops being during the First World War, it's primarily about Germany. And then after that, we get the focus on Soviet Russia and political violence and as I say, what we might refer to as as terrorist activities. So you can see that change over. And you get Winston Churchill, who was home secretary at the time being very much part of this. He saw it as a great way of advancing his own cause. He was there with the cameras, his
Pictures are taken of him. And obviously later on he becomes, as Prime Minister, a strong advocate of intelligence and MI5 and both MI6. So there are lots of links here between how one views MI5's role during this period from a transitionary role from rooting out spies within the German armed forces to actually looking at the broader.
horizons of subversion within society. And it's an interesting crossover that we see during this period.
Jonathan Thomas (
32:47)
So Mark, your the book doesn't shy away from trials and executions. And Josef Jakobs holds the grim distinction of being the last person ever executed a Tower of London in nineteen forty one. So who was he and and what does the files you found tell us about his story?
Mark Dunton (
33:03)
Yes, well, Josef Jakobs, yes, he was a German spy. was parachuted into England. He landed it. This is in January 1941. And he landed in a field in Huntingdonshire and broke his ankle on landing. think he was then sort of stretched out in a field until daylight came. And then he had a revolver.
on him, so he pulled out his revolver and shot it in the air as a way of calling for help. So obviously it wasn't long before he was picked up and like many spies who had been parachuted into England, he was taken to a place called Camp 020, which is not far away from the National Archives in Kew. In fact, it's at Ham Common near Richmond.
And so many of these spies were interrogated there. Now, Josef Jakobs, you were asking, who was he? His original profession was a dentist. He was also involved in assisting some Jewish migrations in Germany for which he received large sums of money.
It does sound that he was sort of exploiting that situation. And yeah, so he's sent on this spying mission. Now, under interrogation, he was pretty uncooperative, really. He claimed that he had been sent on a mission to just simply send weather reports back from England to Germany.
And there was a lot of skepticism about this. He was in hospital for a time, you know, because I think there was a complication arising from his ankle injury. And but, you know, he kept changing his story. So he really was quite uncooperative. Maybe he had a certain amount of stubborn loyalty to the Nazis. I don't know. I'm not sure about that. But
they felt that they could not use him as, you there was no way that they could convert him into a double cross spy. I know we're going to talk about that a bit more later. And in the end, he was shot by firing squad and he was actually the last man to be executed at the Tower of London. So, you know, that was, yeah, so he's famous from that angle.
Yeah, so Josef Jakobs the other interesting thing about him is that we have a whole array of objects that were found on his person when he landed, including a German torch with a German battery inside, bit of a bit of a dead giveaway, a roadmap of Great Britain, a false national ID card with a false identity and a broken up code cipher wheel.
that he'd torn up just before he was picked up. So that kind of paraphernalia is of course very interesting and that was on display in our exhibition.
Jonathan Thomas (
36:40)
So Stephen, let's talk about the double cross system because this is one of the most astonishing chapters in MI5's history. MI5 didn't just catch German spies, they turned them into double cross spies. So how did that actually work and and how successful was it?
Stephen Twigge (
36:58)
It was remarkably successful. the majority of as Marcus said, majority of German agents that were parachuted or entered the country were picked up almost immediately and taken to Camp O to O, where they were interrogated and probably given an offer they couldn't refuse as as we say, and that they were asked
Told, yeah, would they be willing to continue their work, but be supplied with information by the British authorities in order to send back information? Most of them, given the circumstances, agreed to do this. And so we have a whole panoply of the MI5 then had to invent a whole network of individual agents and contacts that this spy had actually.
generated during his time in Britain. And so there's there is a whole list of mythical people that didn't in exist, which were giving information to these turned German spies who are in turn sending it back to Germany. They were all under the obviously the problem with this is if any of them suddenly decides to go rogue as it were and start telling the Germans that actually I've been turned, don't believe a single word of this. So
It's it was a quite difficult and hazardous operation in in many ways, and it was remarkably ingenious in that you had to invent a whole network of individuals that would fool the Germans as well. And yeah, obviously, if a German bomb landed somewhere, you would have to give them some, I think it was referred to as chicken feed, in order to give plausibility to the agents concerned. and so we have a whole, I think there was a
one of the RAF aerodrones was deliberately set on fire in order to give the impression that it it had in fact been attacked when in fact it hadn't been attacked. So you get a a whole host of subdifuge occurring on the British side, which is then fed back to the agents, it was then fed it back to their control. So you have this bizarre sort of wilderness of mirrors as it's sometimes referred to in that Germany, the German
intelligence authorities think they're doing wonderfully well. They've got all these agents around the country feeding them all this information, but little do they know it's all bogus. And most of it's used as a deception operation for D-Day itself. And that they are it's part of Operation Fortitude. But the whole idea is to convince the Germans that the D-Day operation is a ruse and part of that is the double cross system. It's called double cross, well it's called a 20 committee
Because two crosses in in Roman numerals is 20. So it it actually went under the name of the 20 committee rather than the double cross committee. That might have given the game away. it was it was very much a tightly knit community who were involved in this. Obviously, the the more people that were in the know, the the more problems there were of possible leaks. But in a sense, that's the the the big picture. And I think Mark's got some.
So wonderful examples of how it nearly went wrong or how and I'd managed to save the day, as it were.
Mark Dunton (
40:28)
Yes, yes, we could talk about that actually. Yeah. It's really true what Stephen was saying that, there were at times, you know, was quite a precarious, risky operation. The stakes were really high. And of course, many of these double cross spies, what they were particularly engaged upon was essentially misleading the Germans about the true location.
of the main Allied invasion in 1944. several of these double cross spies contributed in a big way to that deception plan. Overall, it's known as Operation Fortitude. And the whole general idea of it is to distract attention away from the long beaches of Normandy, which, of course, was the true invasion location, and rather make the Germans think
that the main Allied invasion was going to happen at the Pas de Calais. After all, it was the shortest journey across the channel from England. And in theory, the fastest route to Paris would then open up. So it was a whole kind of operation to mislead the Germans. I mean, particularly notable in that activity was Agent Garbo.
He's perhaps the most famous of all of the double-crossed spies. he had such a... He was a Spaniard. He'd been a chicken farmer before the war, but apparently hated chickens. And he also hated the Nazis. And he had such a fertile imagination. And with his MI5 handler, Thomas Harris, together, they cooked up...
about 27 fictional sub-agents, Stephen was describing this sort of system, all reading bogus reports, it's all misleading about a non-existent first US Army group gathering together in the southeast of England, that will be heading off to Calais, more or less what they were kind of strongly implying.
Agent Garbo, there was Agent Treasure. think I might sort of tell you a bit more about her later this time. well, there really were quite a few. Agent Tate, we featured particularly in the exhibition. Although with Agent Tate, didn't so much, he wasn't really used so much in regard to the D-Day deception, but he nonetheless did some really
good work for the Allies. For example, he led the Germans to believe that there was a big minefield south of Ireland and that U-boats should avoid this area. And this is around early 1945. And he was believed so.
The British authorities intercepted a message going to all U-boat commanders, 1st of January 1945 warning saying an agent has told us that there is a big minefield south of Ireland, avoid this area, haul off to Southwood. And the effect of that was to keep the convoy route safe, you know, because these convoys from the USA bringing raw materials, food,
These were crucial to the war effort and crucial that they should arrive in England. so thanks to Tate, the convoy route was kept safe because the U-boats avoided that area. so this action saved countless lives. He also misled the Germans about where the V1 and V2 rockets were landing as well. So they altered the trajectory.
of those missiles, and so that they ended up not falling so much in urban areas, but more in the countryside. So yeah, these double cross agents, did tremendous work and as I say, saved countless lives.
Jonathan Thomas (
45:04)
Do we know what happened to these double cross spies after the war? Are they still secret?
Mark Dunton (
45:09)
Now, what we do, we know bits and pieces about it. Of course, that's the sort of information that you don't really get necessarily in the files. But writers have uncovered, particularly Ben McIntyre. He's written several very good books. He wrote a very good one on double cross. And so through his investigations, he's found out what happened.
For example, with Garbo, he ended up running a shop somewhere in South America. I can't quite remember, but he was awarded, I think, an MBE by Britain. And yeah, I'm just trying to think. They lead sort of checkered lives a little bit. it's difficult. Some of them retire from the limelight altogether. It's a bit difficult to generalize.
But yeah, there are books which will tell you, Ben Mackensar's book, very good.
Jonathan Thomas (
46:18)
So let's let's let's move on to the Cold War. So how how did MI five's job change when the enemy shifted from Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union, from sabotage and subterfuge to Cold War counterespionage?
Stephen Twigge (
46:35)
the I think the focus was similar in that they there were counter-espionage responsibilities, but the stakes in some ways were especially after the atomic bomb, the Soviets acquired the atomic bomb in the nineteen fifty, the stakes were somewhat higher in that we the the British and MI5 were tasked largely with trying to discover.
what the Soviets knew about it and and quite a lot of what they did know about it unfortunately come from British sources. They had atomic spies at Harwell, the Russians had atomic spies at Harwell and in America. And as part of the the changeover, I think it became in a sense sort of less urgent but more you know dangerous
in the sense that it it changed from a war footing to a peacetime footing. The budgets were reduced not surprisingly. and also it changed from being primarily military based to looking at subversion because the the way that Britain assumed that the Soviets would actually conduct a war would be more of a hybrid war as we as we now call it, where they would get the sympathizers within the trade unions and within
you know, British institutions to actually subvert the state from within. And so rather than looking necessarily at sort of the military hardware, is equally as important was the, you know, who was in a position of power, were were the subversives, what the positions were. And they they spent an ordinate inordinate amount of time looking at the Communist Party of Great Britain, which wasn't necessarily the obvious place to look during this period.
And also the Soviet Union changed after the death of Stalin. We had a sort of a era of sort of peaceful cooperation, or at least that was the intention. And so a lot of the war, the Cold War, was fought through intelligence circles. It wasn't really fought on the on the battlefield. It was it was a shadow war in many ways. And the intelligence officers were used as back channels to ensure we needed to know what the Soviet Union was doing. We needed to know what the intent.
was and what its capabilities were. And so a lot of that was was fed into the the policy making machine. So part of MI5's role in this was trying to work out what the intentions were. possibly again by using material and the techniques during the Second World War, turning Soviet agents into double agents, sending back false information, working out what the Soviet Union
intentions were and by so doing hopefully avoid a hot war. And this was you know quite a lot. Behind the scenes, I could be it could occasionally burst onto the front pages of the press, but that was usually due to sex scandals rather than anything else. And again, both MA five and MI6 were non-avoured during this period. They everyone knew they existed, but they couldn't really talk about it. So you get these
a sex scandal in many ways is a good way of bringing that material into the public domain.
Jonathan Thomas (
50:05)
Well, let's talk about a sex scandal. Mar Mark, your your special one of your specialist subjects is the profumo affair of nineteen sixty-three. it's a scandal that involves sex politics and the Soviet naval attache that nearly brought down a government. So what the where does MI5 sit in that story and what do the files reveal that maybe the headlines didn't?
Mark Dunton (
50:25)
Yes, yes, of course, it's a very heady cocktail. The Profumo affair caused such a sensation in Britain in 1963. And of course, you've got these key players being the Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, who had an affair with a dancer, a showgirl, sometimes called Christine Keeler.
You have Stephen Ward, the osteopath and portrait artist who was sort of moving in high society circles. And it was he that introduced John Profumo to Christine Keeler. And you also, as you mentioned, have Eugene Ivanov, the Soviet naval attache, who's really, you know, he's really an intelligence officer.
for the Soviet Union. And yeah, I mean, there's so many ingredients to this story and probably time doesn't allow me to sort of, you know, go through the whole story. But in terms of MI5 involvement, actually, the truth is the files show that MI5 involvement in this was limited.
I know it's something that has been played up quite a lot before, particularly with Stephen Ward. So I think people have, some people, some commentators, maybe it's come across in some films that Stephen, know, there's impressions being given that perhaps Stephen Ward was working for MI5 and then sort of dropped by them and left in the lurch by them. But I think
The reality is a bit different to this, actually. So the files do show that Stephen Ward did meet with an MI5 officer two or three times. OK. And I think the MI5 officer gave his name as Woods at the time. But really, what was happening was Stephen Ward was very friendly with Ivanov and
MI5 was sort of warning Stephen Ward not to get too close with him. They were warning him and saying, you know, they were basically saying, be wary of him. if he tries to, you know, well, basically, you know, if he tries to sort of get any sort of secret information, let us know. And I think.
Stephen Ward did act actually quite conscientiously, it would seem, because he did report back to MI5, know, know, Ivanov has been trying to find out information regarding nuclear weapons and in relation to Germany and this and that. But the whole point is what the files show is that Stephen Ward was not actually working for MI5. And as I say, MI5 is actually involved
was really quite limited. There's some exchanges between Hollis, Roger Hollis, and the Lord Chancellor in 1963. basically, Hollis, who was the director general of MI5, is saying, you know, MI5 don't get involved with this sort of cool girl racket.
I mean, that's how they perceived the whole thing with Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davis, although they weren't actually cool girls. But they were saying, you know, we don't we haven't really got an interest in this and we don't see it as our job to pursue this. So I suppose the files are getting away a bit from the conspiracy theory kind of angle, you know, that somehow.
Stephen Ward had been working for MI5 and then dropped by MI5. It's not quite like that in reality. So, you know, I think it does add, the files do add to our understanding of the story.
Jonathan Thomas (
54:54)
So the the foreword to the book is written by Nick Harkaway, he was a novelist and the son of John LeCarre Now writing Geor as George Smiley himself, spy fiction and MI5 have always kind of fed off of each other. Having lived in the real files, how close does the fiction get? What do LeCarre and Fleming get right and what do they get badly wrong? And both both of you could answer this one.
Stephen Twigge (
55:18)
What LeCarre does is he brings the jargon of spycraft into the public domain. You know, the words mole, the lamp lighters, the the honey traps. These words are now in in in common usage, and they were they're in his novels, but they're also useless. LeCarre worked for both MI5 and MI6, and he sort of socialized these terms.
more than than most. And his novels I think are interesting in that they're not as racy as you might imagine. And if you look through some of these MI5 and MI6 files, they're not it's not James Bond. It's it's people sitting there watching people, writing down what they did, listening to phone calls. in many ways it's quite mundane. it's not the fast racy chase around town. It's it's more a background
Finding people, what are they doing, who are they contacting, what are they, what are their intentions. And so LeCarre tends to work on emotion, on on people's it the interplay, not necessarily out of ideas, even though that's part of it, but also how people operate within a an organization, and how are they constrained by that organization. And you do see a lot of that within.
The the files. There's a lot of hierarchical material of A will report to B, he will report to C. and MI5 by definition is an organization that doesn't, you know, it shouldn't necessarily go out on a limb. So you you get a a very interesting portrait of an individual. Great for biographers because you get the letters, you get almost everyone they met. I was looking for a a Doris Lessing file. you
Well, why is she on MI5 radar? And it transpired that her husband was a member of the South African Communist Party. So that was, you know, that was the angle they were looking at. They weren't terribly interested in Lessing as such. But the material in the file is fascinating. It's all about her, who she spoke to, you know, who she talked to, what letters she received. They actually photocopy the letters and the letters are in the file. So you do get a very rounded view of individuals.
and I think that's, you know, also part of the more Le Carré than Fleming, even though Fleming himself was he was more in naval intelligence, I think, which was a bit more military and a bit more daring do. So you you you see the difference, I think, where especially during the war when you've got a special operations executive. They were, I suppose, on a par with special forces these days, which is what one might imagine a an agent might be doing.
parachuting in, blowing things up and coming home again. Whereas the mundane aspect of spycraft is very much keeping a watch and taking notes and working out networks. and that's you know a very large part of the what you see in the files.
Jonathan Thomas (
58:29)
So and the this this last question is for each of you, of all the stories in the book and all the files you have read, which one has stayed with each of you, the one that you most want the readers of this book to discover?
Stephen Twigge (
58:42)
And the one that interested me was the abdication crisis. it's a partial file. it's obviously not everything has been released, but what you do get is some really fascinating stuff of is a letter there that authorizes the tapping of the king's phone, for example, which you wouldn't necessarily imagine to be released. It's a handwritten note, it's from the
Prime Prime Minister's office. And it's basically to the head of the GPO saying, please can you ensure that the King's communications are monitored during his time at Fort Belvedere, which was one of his private residences. And you also get various maps of Wallis Simpson, part of her actual daily routine. You get special brands drawing maps of where she went to and what she did.
You know, it's a fascinating idea that no one is ab above the law in many ways. Everybody is capable of being monitored by special branch, or indeed MI5.
Mark Dunton (
59:57)
Yes, my favorite is the Lemon story, is the Karl Muller story, because it's just got so many elements to it. And when we exhibited the Lemon in the exhibition, the press went rather mad over it. There were some headlines with some
Well, I thought they were quite good puns, not bad. I mean, I'm just trying to remember what they say. Gosh, actually, now I've started saying that now. Can I think what these puns were? They were really good, though. One of them was one of them talked about the the Pipcrest file.
But the other one was some.
Stephen Twigge (
1:00:45)
Which one are we talking about now, Lena?
Mark Dunton (
1:00:47)
it's about the lemon. I'm just trying to remember some of the puns that the newspapers came up with. I know, yes, that Karl Muller had a license to peel. But it's also just all the little twists and turns with the Karl Muller story, the fact that MI5, in a way, had the sheer cheek to ask the Germans to send more funds.
and then using those funds to buy a car, which they then christened the Muller and so forth. It's just all those little twists and turns are rather fascinating and the little subplot that Stephen related about the German baker in Deptford High Street, who was also part of this. So I just think it's a great story.
Jonathan Thomas (
1:01:34)
Well, Mark, Stephen, this has been absolutely fascinating, and I cannot wait to get my hands on this book myself. Thank you so much for joining us on the Anglotopia podcast. The book is the MI5 Archive Official Secrets, published by Thames & Hudson with the National Archives, and it is out on September 3rd. Links will be in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, or comment and tell us which real life British spy story fascinates you over on YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook.
And if you love the Anglotopia podcast, please consider joining the Friends of Anglotopia Club, where you can get early access to new episodes and connect with other Britain enthusiasts. Join us next time as we continue exploring the people, places, and stories that make Britain's history and culture so endlessly fascinating to discover. Thank you, Mark and Stephen.
Mark Dunton (
1:02:22)
Thank you.
Stephen Twigge (
1:02:22)
Thank you very much. Thank you.
