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Her Majesty's Very Secret Service
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11390 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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11 / 1986 |
1,664 Words |
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Ronald W. Baxter
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To American eyes, the British intelligence services seem a rum lot. You have seen numerous movies where the spy-catchers, usually taciturn Englishmen in striped pants, cleverly outwit KGB or Nazi subversives. And there are daring secret agents like James Bond who venture abroad and play havoc with the enemy's bases, reporting back to London to their stiff upper-lipped superiors known as "M" or "C."
But in fact the services do not really exist-officially, at any rate. Unlike the CIA, which one can easily find at Langley because the road signs tell you where it is-or you can find the telephone number in the book-the whereabouts of MI5 (the Security Service, which operates against subversion in Britain) and MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service, which spies on enemies overseas) are kept secret. So are the names of the men who run them. In the United States everyone knows that William Casey is head of the CIA. In Britain the identities of the security chiefs are never revealed except in the rare-and very much frowned-upon-newspaper leaks.
In fact MI5 is an arm of government that has never been authorized by the British Parliament. The amount it costs the taxpayer is kept secret. So are funds for MI6; but the combined annual budget may be as high as $1.5 billion. No member of either service will reveal, even to his closest friend, to his wife, even to his lover, what he does for a living. "I've got a job in Whitehall" is the usual response to enquiries. There may be as many as 10,000-employed overall, throughout the world.
There are advantages to the public in the seemingly crazy structure. As MI5 does not officially exist, it cannot be given powers of arrest; so there is no danger it could become a secret police force and an agency for political repression like the KGB (which has far greater powers for coercion of citizens than does the MI5 and the FBI put together). What MI5 officers do, if they suspect someone in the country of endangering Britain's security, is to tip off the police, who alone can make an arrest-and even then only when they are convinced that the evidence they have been given would be enough to stand up in court before a jury.
However, there are disadvantages too. The British courts in July granted an injunction, sought by the government, against two reputable British newspapers that intended to publish extracts from a book written by a former MI5 officer, Peter Wright, now living in Australia. Wright has alleged that MI5 was in the fairly recent past heavily penetrated by Soviet agents and had also, since then, become too much involved in "monitoring" the activities of British left wingers, including trade union leaders. After the judicial decision the editor of one of the newspapers concerned said the courts seem to feel the public interest lies in not telling the public anything. He added that "basic freedoms for the press anywhere in the West are being eroded by a pathetic obsession with secrecy." However, it must be confessed that most British people don't care much about the "rights" of the media to publish facts likely to embarrass the security services. No member of either MI5 or MI6 is allowed to write his memoirs after leaving the service; he can go to prison if he does so. (Peter Wright, though safe in retirement in Australia, would immediately be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act if he were to return to Britain.)
In the 1950s a series of defections to the Soviet Union did
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