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The Special Operations Executive (SOE) (sometimes referred to as "the Baker Street Irregulars" after Sherlock Holmes' fictional group of helpers), was a British World War II organisation. It was initiated by Winston Churchill and Hugh Dalton in July 1940, to conduct warfare by means other than direct military engagement. Its mission was to encourage and facilitate espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines, and to serve as the core of a resistance movement in Britain itself (the Auxiliary Units).
It was also known as Churchill's Secret Army or The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and was charged by Churchill to "set Europe ablaze".
SOE directly employed or controlled just over 13,000 people. It is estimated that, worldwide, SOE supported or supplied about a million operatives.
[Abstract not available for the category]
:For other uses, see MI-5.
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 (Military Intelligence, Section 5),Security Service or MI5: What's in a name? on the MI5 website is the United Kingdom's counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of the intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS). All come under the direction of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). The service has a statutory basis in the Security Service Act 1989 and the Intelligence Services Act 1994. Its remit includes the protection of British parliamentary democracy and economic interests, counter-terrorism and counter-espionage within the UK. While mainly concerned with internal security, it does have an overseas role in support of its mission. Conversely, to ensure that the Home Secretary is responsible for intelligence operations within the UK, the Service may act on behalf of SIS and GCHQ even if the operation is outside its own functions (SIS and GCHQ report to the Foreign Secretary). The service has had a national headquarters at Thames House on Millbank in London since 1995, drawing together personnel from a number of locations into a single HQ facility. Thames House is shared with the Northern Ireland Office and is also home to the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, a subordinate organisation to the Security Service. It has been alleged that the Service has regional facilities with one claimed to be in Glasgow.<ref name='glasgowref'></ref> Within the civil service community the service is colloquially known as Box 500 (after its official wartime address of PO Box 500; its current address is PO Box 3255, London SW1P 1AE).Timothy Gerraty, The Irish War.
This category is for articles related to the Special Operations Executive, a now-defunct World War II era intelligence agency of the United Kingdom.
This category is for articles related to now-defunct intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom.
The following is an incomplete list of training centres, research and development sites, administrative sites and other establishments used by the Special Operations Executive during World War II.
The following is an incomplete list of agents who served in the field for the Special Operations Executive during World War II.
, also called Unternehmen Nordpol (Operation North Pole), was an enormous counter intelligence operation launched by the German Intelligence Organization (Abwehr) during World War II. German forces captured Allied resistance agents operating in the Netherlands and used the agents' codes to fool the Allies into continuing to provide the agents with information and supplies. About fifty Allied agents were identified, captured, and executed. Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks describes some of the British efforts to detect the ruse which ran for quite a long time.
The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC) is an all source intelligence organisation closely related to the United Kingdom Security Service which provides advice to the British government and firms within the Critical National Infrastructure on terrorist threat.
Operating from Thames House on Millbank in central London it provides regular assessments to government departments, major companies and institutions, predominantly in the transport, financial services, utilities and telecommunications industries.
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), colloquially known as MI6<ref name="sisweb"></ref> is the United Kingdom's external intelligence agency, part of the country's intelligence community. Under the direction of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), it works alongside the Security Service (MI5), Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS). Within the civil service community the service is colloquially referred to as 'Box 850', which comes from its old post office box number. ''MI6 and the Machinery of Spying{{ndash}} Philip H. J. Davies, p273, ISBN 0714654574. 2003-08-11.Accessed: 2007-10-05. ''Hearing Transcripts, Richard Paul Hatfield{{ndash}} The Hutton Inquiry, London. 2003-08-11.Accessed: 2007-10-05. BNL BCCI scandals, Iraq--Machine Tools for various facilities.{{ndash}} House of Representatives, Washington DC. 1993-01-21.Accessed: 2007-10-05.
Since 1995, the Secret Intelligence Service has had its headquarters at Vauxhall Cross on the South Bank of the Thames.
British Military Intelligence Systems in Northern Ireland is a term used to describe various HUMINT, ELINT, and SIGINT systems used by the RUC and British Army Intelligence in Northern Ireland. There have been a number of systems with only some described below. It is unclear which of these systems are still in operation or which have been upgraded to more sophisticated systems. It is suspected that Thiepval Barracks British military HQ and Knock Barracks (RUC HQ) form the primary processing hubs for these systems.
Counter Terrorism Command (CTC) or SO15 is a Specialist Operations branch within London's Metropolitan Police Service.http://www.met.police.uk/so/counter_terrorism.htm Counter Terrorism Command was established as a result of the merging of the Anti-Terrorist Branch (SO13), and the Special Branch in 2006, to form a single counter-terrorism investigative unit.http://www.met.police.uk/so/counter_terrorism.htm CTC has over 1,500 Police Officers and staff, and a number of investigators based overseas. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke is the current Head of the CTC.
Jedburgh was an operation in World War II in which men from the British Special Operations Executive, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services joined with men from the Free French Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action ("Intelligence and operations central bureau"), and the Dutch or Belgian Army to parachute into Nazi occupied France, Holland, or Belgium to conduct sabotage and guerilla warfare, and to lead the local resistance forces against the Germans.
The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is a British intelligence agency responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the UK government and armed forces as required, under the guidance of the Joint Intelligence Committee. CESG (originally Communications-Electronics Security Group) is the branch of GCHQ which works to secure the communications and information systems of the government and critical parts of UK national infrastructure.
GCHQ was originally established after the First World War as the Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS or GC&CS), by which name it was known until 1946.
GCHQ is the responsibility of the UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, but it is not a part of the Foreign Office, and its Director ranks as a Permanent Secretary.
Threat level is a term used by governments to indicate the state of preparedness required by government servants with regard to threats to the state:
*Homeland Security Advisory System; the system used by the United States *BIKINI state; the system used by the United Kingdom
Timeline of events in the history of Section F of the Special Operations Executive. See also SOE F Section networks. *The relevant modern administrative département numbers are added, after several of the place names, so as to facilitate the tracing of events geographically.
These are the networks, also known as circuits, (or réseaux to their French participants) established in France by F Section of the British Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. See also SOE F Section timeline.
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The Wilson Doctrine is a ban on the tapping of UK MPs' and Peers' (but not members of devolved legislatures) telephones introduced in 1966 and named after Harold Wilson, the Labour Prime Minister who established the rule.
Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer (also Spycatcher), is a book written by Peter Wright, former MI5 secret service officer and Assistant Director, and co-author Paul Greengrass. It was published first in Australia. Its allegations proved scandalous on publication, but more so because the British Government attempted to ban it, ensuring its profit and notoriety.<ref name="timemagazine"></ref>
Spycatcher details the author’s work seeking to discover a Soviet mole in MI5, and that the said mole was Roger Hollis — a former MI5 Director General; it also describes people who might have or might not have been the mole; and renders a history of MI5 by chronicling its principal officers, from the 1930s to his time in service.
Moreover, Spycatcher tells of the MI6 plot to assassinate President Nasser during the Suez Crisis; of joint MI5-CIA plotting against left-wing British Prime Minister Harold Wilson (secretly accused of being KGB by Soviet traitor Anatoliy Golitsyn); and of MI5’s eavesdropping on high-level Commonwealth conferences.
Wright examines the techniques of intelligence services, exposes their ethics (speculative until that time), notably their 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not get caught, and explains many MI5 electronic technologies (some of which he developed) allowing clever spying into rooms. In the afterword, he states that writing Spycatcher was motivated principally to recuperate pension income lost when the British Government ruled his pension un-transferable for earlier work in GCHQ, a ruling that severely reduced his pension.
Mr Wright wrote Spycatcher upon retiring from MI5 and while residing in Tasmania, Australia; he first attempted publication in 1985.<ref name="bbc1">1988: Government loses Spycatcher battle</ref> The British Government immediately acted to ban Spycatcher in the UK. Since the ruling was obtained in an English court, however, the book continued to be available legally in Scotland, as well as overseas. It also attempted halting the book's Australian publication, but lost that action in 1987; it appealed but again lost in June 1988. <ref name="bbc2">1987: Ban lifted on MI5 man's memoirs</ref>
English newspapers attempting proper reportage of Spycatcher's principal allegations were served gag orders; on persisting, they were tried for contempt of court, although the charges eventually dropped. Throughout all this, the book continued to be sold in Scotland; moreover, Scottish newspapers were not subject to any English gag order, and continued to report on the affair. Inevitably the British Government's lack of preparation and knowledge of the legal differences between different countries within the UK weakened its standing in the case. Quantities of the book easily reached English purchasers from Scotland, while other copies were smuggled into England from Australia and elsewhere.
In the summer of 1987, a high court judge lifted the ban on English newspaper reportage on the book, but, in late July, the Law Lords again barred reportage of Wright's allegations. Eventually, in 1988, the book was cleared for legitimate sale when the Law Lords acknowledged that overseas publication meant it contained no secrets.<ref name="bbc1"/> However, Wright was barred from receiving royalties from the sale of the book in the United Kingdom. In November 1991, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the British Government had breached the European Convention of Human Rights in gagging its own newspapers.UK: New Calls for More Liberal State Secrets Law The British Government’s legal cost is estimated at £250,000.<ref name="bbc2"/>
The Daily Mirror published upside-down photographs of the three Law Lords, with the caption 'YOU FOOLS'.<ref name="timemagazine"></ref> British editions of The Economist ran a blank page with a boxed explanation that <blockquote>"In all but one country, our readers have on this page a review of 'Spycatcher,' a book by an ex-M.I.5 man, Peter Wright. The exception is Britain, where the book, and comment on it, have been banned. For our 420,000 readers there, this page is blank - and the law is an ass." <ref name="newyorktimes"></ref><ref name="timemagazine"></ref></blockquote>
Malcolm Turnbull, later a minister in the (conservative) Australian Liberal Government and then in September 2008 Opposition Leader, was the lawyer who overcame the British Government's suppression orders against the Spycatcher. The book has sold more than two million copies.<ref name="bbc1"/>; in 1995, Peter Wright died a millionaire from profits of his book.<ref name="independent"></ref>
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Queen and Country may refer to: *Queen & Country, comic *Queen and Country (magazine) *Queen and Country, an artwork by Steve McQueen on the Iraq War *For Queen and Country, a 1988 British film starring Denzel Washington.
Chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee is a senior post in the British Civil Service co-ordinating affairs between the major British intelligence organisations, particularly MI5 and MI6.
The term Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC) was used for facilities in the UK, the continent { Belgium and Germany between 1945 and 1947 }, the Middle East, and South Asia. They were run by the British War Office on a joint basis involving the British Army and various intelligence agencies, notably MI5 and MI9. The CSDICs on the continent were located at:
* Diest in Belgium * Bad Nenndorf in Germany.
They were originally established to interrogate detainees, defectors, and prisoners of war who were known or suspected to be working for Nazi Germany and Japan. After the war, suspected Soviet agents were also held for interrogation. The last CSDIC facility, the Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre, was closed down in June 1947.
Jean Sassi (11 June 1917 – 9 January 2009) was a French Army colonel and intelligence service officer, former "Jedburgh" (BCRA) of France and Far East. Commando chief of the SDECE's 11th Shock Parachutist Regiment (11e Régiment Parachutiste de Choc). Maquis chief in French Indochina through the GCMA (1953-1955).
During the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in April 1954 Jean Sassi led Mèo partisans (GCMA) in Operation Condor.
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Since the mid-1970s, a variety of conspiracy theories have emerged centering around Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. These range from Wilson having been a Soviet agent, to Wilson being the victim of counter-espionage plots by members of the civil service.
The "Zinoviev Letter" is a 1924 letter that was allegedly sent from Grigori Zinoviev, president of the presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (Comintern), and Arthur MacManus, the British representative on the presidium, to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain. It claimed to advocate intensified Communist agitation in Britain, including in the armed forces.
It is thought to have been instrumental in the Conservative Party's victory in the United Kingdom general election, 1924, which ended the country's first Labour government.
In 2006, a new biography of Desmond Morton, Churchill's Man of Mystery: Desmond Morton and the World of Intelligence by Gill Bennett, stated that it was a hoax perpetrated by Morton, then with the Secret Intelligence Service of the British government.
An 11-month study by British Foreign Office chief historian Gill Bennett, undertaken with the assistance of Russian archivists, concluded (January 1999) that the document was probably forged at the behest of "White [i.e. anti-communist] Russian intelligence services" to "derail the treaties and damage the Labour government”. 'Head office' British intelligence responsibility for the letter was "inherently unlikely" as it "implied a degree of cohesion and control, not to mention political will, which simply did not exist". At Her Majesty's Secret Service attributes the forgery to Vladimir Orlov, who had been an aide to Gen. Wrangel during the Russian Civil War. West, At Her Majesty's Secret Service, Nval Institute Press, 2006 ISBN 1591140099 pp 34 - 39
Published in the conservative British Daily Mail newspaper four days before the election, the letter came at a sensitive time in relations between Britain and the Soviet Union, due to Conservative opposition to the parliamentary ratification of the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement of 8 August.
Dated 15 September 1924, the letter is often thought to be a forgery. Much of its content otherwise persuasively echoes Comintern vocabulary, the letter contains errors which led many to denounce it as a hoax.
One particularly damaging section read:
:"A settlement of relations between the two countries will assist in the revolutionizing of the international and British proletariat not less than a successful rising in any of the working districts of England, as the establishment of close contact between the British and Russian proletariat, the exchange of delegations and workers, etc. will make it possible for us to extend and develop the propaganda of ideas of Leninism in England and the Colonies."
British Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald's attempts to cast doubt on the letter were hampered by its widespread acceptance among government officials. MacDonald told his Cabinet he "felt like a man sewn in a sack and thrown into the sea."
The Soviet authorities did not deliver the immediate unequivocal refutation of the letter required following a British Foreign Office protest note of 24 October. Not until 17 November did the ECCI even discuss the matter. On 21 November Britain's new Conservative government repudiated the unratified treaty.
JARIC - The National Imagery Exploitation Centre, part of the Intelligence Collection Group (ICG) within United Kingdom Defence Intelligence, is a photographic interpretation and intelligence centre based at RAF Brampton near Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire.
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Colonel Hugh Anthony Johnstone OBE was administrative head of SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) in the British Army during the 1970s.
He became known when he was identified (by the radical magazines Peace News and The Leveller) as the much-publicised anonymous witness Colonel B in the ABC Trial in 1978.
Johnstone was commissioned into the Royal Corps of Signals from Sandhurst in 1952. He was promoted Lieutenant in 1954, Captain in 1958, Major in 1965, Lieutenant-Colonel in 1970, and Colonel in 1975. He retired in 1979.
Sir Peter Ricketts (born September 1952), Foreign Policy in an Era of Globalisation. Institute of Diplomacy and Foreign Relations. Thursday 15 2009. KCMG, is the Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a senior civil servant in the United Kingdom.
Before Ricketts took over the position on the retirement of Sir Michael Jay in July 2006, he served as the Permanent Representative to NATO in Brussels. He was also previously the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.
He began his career in the Office in 1974 and served as the Assistant Private Secretary to former Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe. Apart from Brussels, he has been posted to Singapore, Washington D.C. and Paris.
He read English at Pembroke College, Oxford.
Her Majesty's Government Communication Centre (HMGCC) is a small group tasked to provide electronics and software to support the communication needs of the British Government. It is closely linked with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the British intelligence community.
The organisation employs approximately 380 personnel and the solutions it provides are bespoke to fit the needs of the government, its organisations, and specifically its intelligence assets. HMGCC is responsible for research and design in the following disciplines: *Radio frequency engineering *Signal Processing *Software Engineering *Acoustics *Audio Engineering *Operating Systems *GUI Design *Embedded Systems *System Engineering *Manufacture and Application of Microcircuits *Study of Power Sources *Operational Research *Mechanical Engineering *Operating Systems
Operation Epsilon was the codename of a program in which Allied forces near the end of World War II detained ten German scientists who were thought to have worked on Nazi Germany's nuclear weapon/power program. The scientists were captured between May 1 to June 30, 1945 and interned at Farm Hall, a wiretapped house in Godmanchester, England (near Cambridge), from July 3, 1945 to January 3, 1946. The goal was to determine how close the Germans had been to constructing an atomic bomb, by listening to their conversations.
The FBI Counterterrorism Division (CTD) is the division of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation that deals with terrorist threats inside the United States. It also provides information on terrorists outside the country and tracks known terrorists worldwide. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the FBI Counterterrorism Division has received huge amounts of funding and manpower. The Division is headed by Assistant Director Michael J. Heimbach.
The Counterterrorism Division has four branches:
* Operations I (OPS I); * Operations II (OPS II); * Analytical; and * Operational Support.
Operations I is composed of two sections: International Terrorism Operations Section I (ITOS I) and ITOS II. The former covers al Qaeda terrorist activity on a regional basis in the United States and abroad. The latter focuses on four non-al Qaeda groups: Palestinian rejectionist groups, Iran and Hezbollah, Iraq/Syria/Libya, and other global terrorist groups. The ITOS II has a CIA manager serving as Deputy Section Chief, and an FBI manager is detailed to the CIA’s CTC as a Deputy Director.
Operations II includes three more disparate sections: Weapons of Mass Destruction and Domestic Terrorism (WMD/DT), Communications Exploitation Section (CXS), and Terrorist Financing Operations Section (TFOS). Operational oversight for WMD is housed with domestic terrorism, despite its international scope.
The Terrorism Financing Operations Section, housed in Operations II, is an operational and coordinating entity. It directs terrorism financing investigations and works jointly with partners to block and freeze assets. However, its primary role is to coordinate and support the financial components of terrorism investigations conducted by ITOS I and II. The TFOS mission is to identify, investigate, prosecute, disrupt, and incrementally dismantle all terrorist-related financial and fund-raising activities. The section is composed of four units: Radical Fundamentalist Financial Investigative Unit, Domestic WMD and Global Financial Investigations Unit, Global Extremist Financial Investigations Unit, and Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit.
The Counterterrorism Division's Analytical branch includes two sections, Counterterrorism Analysis, which supports Operations I and II; and the Terrorism Reports and Requirements Section (TRRS). The branch also includes a Strategic Assessment and Analysis Unit, Production and Publications Unit.
The Operational Support Branch manages the CTD's administrative and resource functions, FBI detailees to other agencies, and the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force. The Joint Terrorism Task Force falls under the domain of this branch.
Counterterrorism field operations are organized into squads, the number of which varies according to the amount and diversity of activity in a field office's jurisdiction. Larger field offices, such as Los Angeles, maintain counterterrorism squads for each major terrorist group, as well as for domestic terrorism and terrorist financing, while smaller field offices combined such responsibilities across two to three squads.
MI8, or Military Intelligence, Section 8, was the cover designation for the Radio Security Service (RSS), a department of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, part of the War Office. It was a British signals intelligence group in World War II.