Valentine Vivian
Valentine Vivian was an MI6 officer.
Vivian was a former Indian policeman.[1]
Vivian served as deputy head of station in Istanbul in 1919, and head of station from 1920 to 1923.[2] He then became Regional Inspector for Western Europe (the German Group), based initially in Cologne and then in London.[3]
In late 1925, Vivian became head of the MI6 Section V, with responsibility for counter-intelligence and anti-communist work.[4] It acquired responsibility for running a group of UK-based agents known as 'the casuals' some of which had been acquired by Desmond Morton through contacts such as George Makgill.[5]
Vivian toured the Middle East in 1926 and 1927, and reported that Harry St John Philby was championing the interests of Ibn Saud against those of Britain..[6]
Following a 1931 agreement which gave MI5 responsibility for monitoring communist activity in Britain and the empire, Section V developed a role as a circulating section between the two agencies.[7]
In January 1940, the new MI6 chief Stewart Menzies appointed Claude Dansey as his Assistant Chief of Service (AC/SS) and Vivian as Deputy Chief (DC/SS), setting the scene for a bureaucratic power struggle.[8] A year later, Vivian complained to Menzies that he was being marginalised.[9]
In 1943, Vivian was made Deputy Director overseeing security and counterespionage (DD/SP).[10]
In August 1943, Vivian reported to Menzies on Soviet espionage:
- Soviet Russia is our friend only while it can obtain benefit from this friendship. It does not trust us and will exert all efforts in espionage activities against us even in years of friendship. When it will obtain everything it can from a friendship, it will inexorably activate all the secret forces against the ideal for which Britain struggles.[11]
During the latter years of the war, Soviet mole Kim Philby was able to exploit jealousy between Vivian and Felix Cowgill to advance his position in MI6.[12] In August 1944, Philby was informed that Vivian wanted to make him operation head of MI6's anti-communist work in place of Jack Curry.[13] In February 1945, Vivian and Philby succeeded in impsoing their demand for an enlarged anticommunist MI6 Section IX on Foreign Office adviser Robert Cecil.[14]
Vivian remained in MI6 until the 1950s, running the Inspectorate of Security (I/S), although no longer a full Deputy Director.[15]
Notes
- ↑ Philip H.J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Frank Cass, 2004, p.79.
- ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.204.
- ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.207.
- ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.207.
- ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.227.
- ↑ Keith Jeffery, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949, Bloomsbury, 2011, p.208.
- ↑ Philip H.J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Frank Cass, 2004, p.79.
- ↑ Philip H.J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Frank Cass, 2004, p.101.
- ↑ Philip H.J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Frank Cass, 2004, p.102.
- ↑ Philip H.J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Frank Cass, 2004, p.157.
- ↑ MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, by Stephen Dorril, Touchstone, 2002, p.9.
- ↑ MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, by Stephen Dorril, Touchstone, 2002, p.11.
- ↑ MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, by Stephen Dorril, Touchstone, 2002, p.15.
- ↑ MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, by Stephen Dorril, Touchstone, 2002, p.21.
- ↑ Philip H.J. Davies, MI6 and the Machinery of Spying, Frank Cass, 2004, p.180.
