Secret Intelligence Service

SIS Headquarters on the bank of the Thames almost across from Parliament
Photo: Steve Cadman

More commonly known as MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence service.

People

Chiefs of the SIS

• Mansfield Cumming - 1909-1923
• Rear Admiral Hugh Sinclair - 1923-1939
• Major-General Sir Stewart Menzies - 1939-1952
• Major-General Sir John Sinclair - 1952-1956
• Sir Dick White - 1956-1968
• Sir John Rennie - 1968-1973
• Sir Maurice Oldfield - 1973-1978
• Sir Arthur Temple Franks - 1978-1981
• Sir Colin Figures - 1981-1984
• Sir Christopher Curwen - 1985-1988
• Sir Colin McColl - 1988-1994
• Sir David Spedding - 1994-1999
• Sir Richard Dearlove - 1999-2004
• Sir John Scarlett - 2004-2009
• Sir John Sawers - 2009-

Notable officers

• Alistair Crooke | Michael Oatley | Frank Steele

Structure

Philip H.J. Davies' 2004 book MI6 and the Machinery of Spying describes the top-level structure of MI6 following a 1995 re-organisation as set out below.

• Chief of the Secret Service (C/SS)
• Head of Secretariat (H/SECT)
• Director of Requirements and Production (D/PR)
• Director, Security and Public Affairs (D/SPA)
• Director, Support Services (D/SS)
• (D/OS)
• Director of Personnel and Administration (D/PA)

MI6 designations such as C/SS are used to refer to both the post in question and the officer who holds it at any given time.

I/Ops (Information Operations)

Psychological warfare section of SIS.

In early 1998, when British and American forces were preparing to attack Iraq if Saddam did not fulfil pledges on UN inspection of presidential sites, MI6 received or invented intelligence that there were Iraqi plans to smuggle Anthrax into Britain in bottles of duty free perfume and spirits. A CX report to that effect was passed to the JIC. It was nonsense but fitted into a pattern of disinformation.

According to former SIS agent Richard Tomlinson, paid agents in the 1990s included one and perhaps two national newspaper editors.

In his controversial book being published in Russia, Tomlinson, according to book excerpts leaked to the Moscow press, said that in the early 1990s the editor of the Spectator was on MI6's books and provided cover for an agent named as Spencer who was put on the case of a young Russian diplomat, Platon Obukhov, in Tallin, the capital of Estonia.

Tomlinson writes that Mr Lawson's MI6 identity was "Smallbrow". Mr Lawson was the editor of the Spectator from 1990-95 before moving to its sister publication, the Sunday Telegraph.

Mr Lawson yesterday strongly denied both allegations.

History

Libya conflict 2011

In March 2011, the New York Times reported that CIA and MI6 officers were in Libya following the uprising against Colonel Gadaffi:

In addition, current and former British officials said, dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya. The British operatives have been directing airstrikes from British Tornado jets and gathering intelligence about the whereabouts of Libyan government tank columns, artillery pieces, and missile installations, the officials said.

External Resources

• MI6 Guardian subject page

Books

• Stephen Dorril, MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, Fourth Estate Limited, 2000.
• Philip H.J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Frank Cass, 2004.
• Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2010.

Contact

• http://www.sis.gov.uk Official website